#itsmerandi

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: itsmerandi replied to your post: ...

Yeah tbh with the way that awful orange demon is riling up people rn, I’d be scared to go to a protest rn even if rona wasn’t popping and if police weren’t attacking people. Like I’d just be too chickenshit that we’d encounter some armed MAGA peeps or some shit. This is why I keep my scary ass in the house lmao.

that is a GOOD ASS POINT. 

gosh like. 

i’ve always known that if some shit did pop off during a protest i was at, my ass would be gone SO FAST. i 100% would not be one of those folks who stands and fights. I’d just dip. sprint in the opposite direction. *insert ‘fuck this shit i’m out’ video*

[firelord-frowny]

Do you have any HOA stories? 👀

LOLOLOL omg. I’ve heard many stories from my mom since the place she owns and lived in for 20ish years has a homeowners association that she apparently still has to argue with to this day. She told me a story the other day about how her HOA used to include another lil neighborhood across the street that was bigger and had more houses/land/property. So naturally, when there was any kind of work that needed to be paid for, like landscaping or remodeling or replacing/repairing thing, the costs were split between the entire HOA. 

But almost all of the extra work that was being done and needed to be paid for was for the houses across the street. And so my mom’s side of the street was like “Well gosh, we don’t get to benefit from most of the stuff that we’re paying for since it all goes to the other neighborhood, so why should we have to pay for it?” And so they decided that they wanted to break away from the other neighborhood and form their own HOA. 

The folks across the street threw a FIT! Refused to negotiate terms, refused to allow my mom’s side to split from the HOA. Why? Because the other neighborhood was getting all these extravagant upgrades and improvements for hella low costs since my mom’s neighborhood was obligated to help pay for it. If they allowed my mom’s side to secede, suddenly they would have to pay several more thousand dollars for whatever work they wanted to do. 

My mom’s side wound up having to hire a whole-ass lawyer to help them break away from the other HOA.  My environmental sciences prof in college also shared a story about her HOA: She lived in a kinda uppity neighborhood where all the properties had bigass lawns just sitting around wasting space, and the HOA basically forbade anyone from doing anything ecologically beneficial to the land because it would be ~unsightly.~ So, there were strict rules on like, how large any gardens could be, or how short the grass had to be cut, etc. And there were also big swaths of shared land that I guess was collectively owned by all the homeowners together. 

So, she would attend every single HOA meeting and be like, “Hey guys. I have an idea. Lawns and mowing are bad for the environment, so let’s stop doing that.” 

And they said no every time and they all hated her bc she just kept asking at every single meeting lmao. 

Finally, after some YEARS, they finally caved in and dedicated one lil bit of the land to be a ~no-mow zone~ lmao. 

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: if you’re a classical musician and/or someone who...

What’s the beef? ��

THE BEEF!!!!

ok this is a STORY. Mind you, it’s probably not a very interesting one for folks who don’t know or care about this kind of shit, but imma tell it anyway!

SO. 

There’s this composer named Claud Debussy. Debussy is BASICALLY my favorite composer. Ever. I mean, I usually give Bach that honor, but if I’m being real, Debussy is RIGHT beside him in my hierarchy. Debussy is typically regarded as the defining composer of the impressionist era (though he apparently hated being described as impressionist!). I fell ENTIRELY in love with Debussy when I was 12 and had somehow wound up on a road trip to Rhode Island (like literally, I got home from school one day and my parents were suddenly like “pack a bag, we’re off to Rhode Island” and i was like ????? wat? but it was a GREAT trip) and along the way, my dad had turned to classical radio, and as I was dozing off, I heard THE. MOST. GORGEOUS. MUSIC. I. HAD. EVER. HEARD. It was the feeling of swooning, put into music and I was IN LOVE. But unfortunately, I didn’t catch the name of the piece - only that it was by Debussy. And at the time, I didn’t know NEARLY enough about classical music to be able to figure out what the piece was. 

But FINALLY, about two years later in the 10th grade, my classical music education was well underway and I tracked down the piece - it was the 4th movement of Debussy’s quartet in G minor. 

I listened to the other 3 movements and found that I loved them just as much. And bam, just like that, Debussy became one of my all time favorite composers. 

Now, I ADORED this quartet for years. And then! I go to college. I’m a music major. And I’m fucking hating every second of it. I’m EASILY one of the better musicians at the school, but I’m constantly pegged as “the underdog” if for no other reason than because I was the only black girl and the other decent violinists were all asian. In my first semester, I get stuck in this shit quartet with players nowhere near as good as me, playing music that i HATE by Mendelssohn. Gross. I’m having a shitty time. 

BUT THEN!!!

For the next semester, I have the opportunity to choose the music my quartet plays! I DEMANDED the Debussy quartet. AND MY WISH WAS GRANTED. And not only did I get to choose the quartet - I also got to choose who else would be in my ensemble. So I picked the best damn cellist at the school, the best damn violist, and one of the other top violinists. And??? Our coach that semester was, literally, one of the greatest violists in the country, if not the world. Like. She’s that fucking phenomenal. And she was an AMAZING coach. I loved her so much. I learned SO MUCH from her. And getting to play this quartet with these classmates under the tutelage of this coach was HEAVENLY. 

But then. 

Early on in the semester, I find out who’s in the other quartet - literally all of our rivals. My rival, my 2nd violinists rival, the violists rival, and the cellists rival. 

So I’m like, oh, okay. No biggie. It’s whatev.

BUT!!! THEN!!! I find out they’re playing the Ravel quartet. Now, at this point, I wasn’t terribly familiar with Ravel other than that he was another impressionist composer. A contemporary of Debussy’s. They knew each other. They were frenemies. 

So of course, I go and listen to the 1st movement of Ravel’s quartet. 

And my jaw fucking dropped. I’m likee *bernie mac voice* wayment...

wayment... wait a FUCKING minute...

The ravel quartet. is a damn near LINE-BY-LINE RIP OFF!!!! of the Debussy. I even fucking looked it up and discovered that Debussy wrote his quartet like a solid decade before Ravel’s! And that Ravel almost literally used the Debussy quartet as a BLUEPRINT. Like, you can go through the music and fucking highlight the sections in all 4 movements that he damn near copy-pasted from Debussy. All he did was lower the key by a whole step and change some of the rhythms. But the melodies? The textures? The structures? ALL OF IT is lifted from Debussy. 

Now, people say that Debussy and Ravel just had that sort of relationship where they both copied off of each other. That’s probably true. But Ravel’s quartet was so derivative to the point that I found it actually offensive and annoying. And I truly DON’T understand how anyone can have any respect at all for that quartet, considering how there is absolutely nothing organic or genuine about it. Like, you probably don’t even need to have much or any classical training to hear how similar it is. 

So there I was, listening to this quartet that our rival group is gonna be playing, and I was FUMING!!! And I had my group all listen to it at our next rehearsal, and THEY were fuming, too! 

The 2nd violinist goes, “This isn’t even fair. Why would they choose to play this when they knew we were doing the Debussy? What are we going to do?” 

I said, “We’re going to fucking destroy them. That’s what.” 

And so, we did. 

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: how do you even become a stop motion animator? Do...

There was this one girl who was a natural at Foley the day we were dicking around with it and her attempts ended up being the sounds we used in our editing, so maybe people stumble upon it that way and end furthering their studies in it? Like independently with a mentor or just on their own? Maybe it’s a subsection of a concentration in sound production???

Oooh that’s neat! 

I just remember in college like, my school’s music program had a bizarre fixation on “new music,” which is basically a HELLA avant-garde genre of music that exists almost purely to ~push the boundaries~ and keep finding new sounds that can be made, and a looooooooot of those new sounds are discovered by percussionists! And at some of the concerts we had to attend, I realized that a hell of a lot of the percussion performances reminded me of the lil videos I’ve seen about Foley artists.

Like, there was this one piece that the percussion professor wrote and performed where he had a bucket of water on stage with him, and he had some small objects of various sizes and shapes and weights, and then he’d throw or drop them into the bucket from different heights and at different speeds and intensities to make a different splashing sound each time. Like, a lil tiny drippy sound, or a BIG OL FAT SPLASH. And I think he had like... some metal rods that he’d hold in the water and then hit them with a mallet, and it would make a ringing noise that was kinda altered by the movement of the water. 

And while he did all this, he was standing on a lil wooden board that had like, sand or something all over it, and he was just kinda shuffling and stomping his feet to make different noises with the sand. 

I remember another instance where part of the performance included just fuckin taking a big tub of marbles and just. Just pouring them out onto the floor lmfao. 

It was all very weird shit that most people would never classify as “music.” But the sounds were just so INTERESTING and I always meant to ask the percussion professor if there’s any substantial overlap between foley artists and percussionists but I almost never ran into him so I didn’t get the chance lololol.

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: !!! I just saw the fed ex man delivering packages...

When I’m expecting a package/delivery, I ALWAYSSSSSSS peep out the window to see if the person is wearing a mask.

Sigh!! Most everything I order winds up being delivered by USPS anyway, and every time I’ve seen him he’s been wearing a mask, so I usually don’t worry, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway since I disinfect literally everything that comes into the house. But like. I know not everyone is taking that precaution. And! Even if a particular delivery person is wearing a mask, that doesn’t mean that the other people involved in the chain of custody all wore masks, too. 

This is so! Stressful and dumb!! :( 

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: also??? i literally don’t want to ever hear...

One single noodle �� I had no clue you went to protests! Are you planning to go to any of the ones happening now? Yeahhh tbh that doesn’t surprise me at all about the white people. There’s always gonna be that disconnect. But hey! We need bodies are protests and their bodies can protect our bodies so let them keep coming!

!!!! tbh, I would 100% be down to join these protests if only I lived alone. But there’s literally nothing in the world important enough to me to get my to put my mommy’s health in danger. Soooo I’ll just have to keep Angry Blogging about it instead lmao. But yeahhhh like between 2010 - 2014ish I was actually kinda ~active~ in terms of just showing up at demonstrations. Basically I would nag and guilt trip my parents into going with me lmfao. And then in college I’d go to campus-organized stuff sometimes. But like jeez wow, none of it ever escalated into all the clusterfuckery that’s been going on this time D: and i mean it’s no coincidence that shit is hitting the fan 10x worth under this presidency than it ever did with obama. 

and RIGHT UGGGHHH a weirdly enthusiastic and creepily voyeuristic white ~ally~ is deeeeefinitely preferable over the racist ones.  

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: also??? i literally don’t want to ever hear...

GOSH the number of literal BABIES I’ve seen involved in the resistance makes me SO SAD. Like they shouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit. The girl who recorded the video of Floyd is 17 years old!!! Imagine seeing that shit in real time at 17!!! ��

This suddenly reminded me of the time when I was 12 years old and got held at gunpoint by a cop in Baltimore City. 

[firelord-frowny]

itsmerandi replied to your post: i HATE having to pee!

BRUH I’ve had to pee for like, the past hour idk and I just…CANNOT lmao. But imma do it! Bc of this post! Also bc holding your pee is bad :/

RIGHT lmfaooooo my mommy has been warning me for YEARS that holding my pee will weaken my bladder and I’ve always been all *eyeroll* WHATEVA WHATEVE, I DO WHAT I WANT, but now i think it’s finally happening lmfao oops. I’m prolly gonna have to wear ~depends~ when I’m a lil old lady.