Jonah’s Blog

As it turns out, somebody is reading this stuff. Sorry I left you hanging for so long, dude, but sometimes New Year’s resolutions get lost in the shuffle.

I have managed to keep one resolution. I am picking banjo again. The doctor and physical therapists I saw encouraged me to take a couple months off, and it didn’t work. I half suspect they just wanted to rid the world of a banjo player, even if it would only be temporary. They’re probably high-fiving over beers right now. I barely picked at all for six months and not at all from September till January.

It’s been more than four months since my last gig. I’ll be playing Sunday February 4, at Nolita House on Houston Street with everybody’s favorite brunch band, Fresh Baked. We’ll start around 12:30 and play until around 3:30. Come out and have a little pre-Super Bowl breakfast. Get a good base.

So you all know that I went up to Albany to take my master’s comps last month, but do any of you know I passed? That’s right. However, I don’t have a master’s degree yet, because I need to get the college proof of my inoculations (which I know I gave them once before). I also have to get a TB test.

During my course of study at SUNY Albany, they added a requirement that all students get tested for exposure to tuberculosis. When I started it was only necessary for those living on campus, so I never had it done. In my final semester (Spring 2003) I promised that if they let me register one more time I’d get the test before the next semester.

But as it turns out, that was not my last semester. In order to get my degree, and for the comps to count, I have to be registered for classes this spring. Earlier this month I went onto their computer system to officially register for the Spring 2007 semester, only to find a hold on my account up there.

As it turns out they still want me to get the TB test. Now I could have been coughing and spitting consumption around their sprawling campus for two years; I could have personally let the Mask of the Red Death into the cafeteria; but now that I’m never going back there again, I have to be tested.

So that’s a late New Year’s resolution, which I really should get around to fulfilling by March. Until then, don’t get too close.

It is the first of the year, and I just wanted to start off right, blogging. I resolve to blog more this year than last. That shouldn’t be too difficult, since I did not have the blog at the start of last year. I also resolve to improve my spoken grammar and my diction.

This year I will quit mistakenly interchanging the words “further” and “farther.” I know how they are supposed to be used, and I still fuck them up all the time. I also resolve to at least try to finally figure out the differences between all the usages and forms of the words “lay” and “lie.” I’d like to learn just exactly when to use “which” and when to use “that” in writing and speech. I’ll try to minimize my use of the word “gonna.”

I promise that in 2007, I will do my best not to cringe when people use variations on the tragic “between you and I.” It’s not that I care about being polite, but it just happens so damn much that if I let it get to me every single time I hear it, I’ll probably develop an ulcer. I have the horrible habit of watching Days of Our Lives (notice, there is no resolution to quit) and those assholes say it all the time. “Then she barged in on Sammy and I.”

Sports announces, politicians, and even TV news commentators and talking heads - who are supposed to be writers - all say things like “When you asked Bill and I who we’d vote for, I wanted to beg the question a step farther ask ‘Who aren’t we gonna’ vote for?’”

While I’m at it, I should try to be a little more accepting of the misuse of the “carrot and stick” cliché. People always say things like, “You should try using a little less carrot and a little more stick,” or “It’s much more in my nature to use the carrot, but occasionally I have to pull out the stick too.” Both adaptations imply that you are somehow offering someone a carrot while simultaneously, or intermittently, beating them with a stick. It completely ignores the root of the expression, which refers to the old picture of a mule walking eternally toward a carrot suspended just out of its reach at the end of a stick tied to it’s head.

So I guess I’ll have to spend this year not only trying to improve my own speech, but ignoring the speech – words, meanings and all – of everyone else.

And as I do every year, I resolve to tune my banjo and keep it there. I also vow to be nicer to bass players. It’s really not their fault.