Shuffling the English Language

Dear Mister President,

I was aghast this morning to read the following words in a story on ABC News.com:

Last week, in an interview with Fox News, President Bush revealed that he has an iPod Shuffle — the stripped-down version of the music player that’s barely bigger than a stick of chewing gum.

“Lightweight and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle,” he said.

Excuse me? Lightweight and crank it on and you shuffle the Shuffle? I am thrilled that you support Apple products, but what the hell does that mean, Mr. President? I think I can figure it out from context, but seriously, your verbs and adjectives seem schizophrenic. Admittedly, you weren’t helped by the fact that Shuffle is both a verb and a proper noun, but that doesn’t mean “lightweight” can be used as an adjective and verb.

With all due respect, you should probably stay away from such multifaceted words until you can learn to handle them more effectively in a sentence. I remain,

Your humble servant,

Matthew S. Schwartz

Joy to the World!

In celebration of the holiday season, I am releasing a brand new recording of Joy to the World, sung entirely by me. Enjoy, and leave comments!

UPDATE: Praise for Tenorrific’s “Joy to the World”

• “NICE job, Matt!” –Doctor Jerry Blackstone, director of choirs, University of Michigan

• “Lovely rendition.” –Joseph Holt, associate conductor, The Choral Arts Society of Washington
• “How fun! Thanks for brightening my (rather snowy/icy/sleety) day!” –Dr. Robert Dunn, director of music education, Case Western Reserve University
• “Matt Schwartz and Tenorrific are my sunshine on a cloudy day.” –Donald Milton III, music student, University of Michigan
• “Very nice. Sounds good. … Now you need to do an 8-part version. The more Schwartz the better.” –Mark Buckles, composer

Separated at Birth!

In my spare time, or when I am procrastinating, I PhotoShop. My skills are formidable. I surmise I could maintain a nice second income — er, only income — if only I could find a way to advertise my skills. And what should my price be?

Hmmm….. law school finals have a way of getting people to consider alternate careers, don’t they?

Bad dreams and fire alarms

Last night I dreamt that my grades were published for this semester’s classes, and I got three F’s because it turns out I wasn’t actually registered for the classes I attended! That is, I thought I was registered for Telecom law and Tax, but I was actually signed up for something like Environmental Law and Remedies… yet I didn’t take those finals or do any work for those classes, and so I failed them!

Bad finals dreams are scary, but at least they offer some reassurance that my subconscious mind is thinking about finals. This is good, because whenever my subconscious is working on a problem, it usually finds a solution and then surreptitiously passes that solution to my conscious mind when I am distracted for a moment.

We had a fire alarm in my apartment building today. No fewer than SEVEN fire trucks showed up to combat what turned out to be a little fire in an apartment on the seventh floor. When I asked a fireman if there was a fire, he said dejectedly, “Just a small one.” I can understand why he was disappointed. When you get all dressed up in your FireGear to come fight a MajorApartmentFire requiring SevenFireTrucks, and they unroll the FireHose and prepare to connect it to the FireHydrant, and even Lieutenant Lomax starts to put on his FirePants… a toaster fire just won’t cut it.

Maybe I should be a fireman!