I woke up with a start this morning at five o'clock, with only one thing on my mind: cat litter.

You see, last night I told Nath that I would take care of scooping the litter before I went to sleep. She even began to do it herself but I assured her that I had it covered. Then I snapped awake this morning with the realization that I had not, in fact, taken care of it. I'm not sure how exactly this woke me up; perhaps one of the cats was scratching in the litter box and the sound penetrated deep into the guilt receptors of my subconscious. In any event, I got up, scooped the boxes, and for good measure fed the cats. Then I went back to sleep for a couple of hours.

The feeling was frighteningly similar to that feeling you get when you fall asleep studying or doing homework. It's 1:00am and you're up late doing homework. You blink, and suddenly it's 6:30am, your head is on your desk, and you're not done yet! And your homework is covered in drool! That's the exact sensation I had -- How did I let this happen?

Well, fortunately the situation was not exactly the same. As I was saying to Nath this morning, at least I didn't wake up with my face in the litter box.

In a meandering discussion about movies a few days ago, a friend lamented that as wonderful a movie as it was, it's a shame that The Matrix was founded upon such a ridiculous premise. Why did the machines need to use humans as a power source, particularly in such an inefficient way? Didn't Morpheus mention that the machines had a workable form of fusion anyway? And even if humans were good power plants, why did their brains need to be entertained? Couldn't they just be lobotomized? In that case, why not use some other mammal that generates more heat?

Imagine, just imagine if you will, what the movie would have been like if the machines had chosen to enslave, say, cats instead of humans. I think we all know it would have turned out very differently, as we might see from this dramatization of Morpheus the Cat explaining The Real World to Neo the Cat:

Clearly the machines should use cats as their power source: everybody wins!

I can't resist following up on my earlier entry about Keyboard magazine and Freff. That entry described a curious synchronicity. What happened today was downright surreal.

We had just returned home from a grocery run when the phone rang. Nath answered and handed the phone to me. A voice said "Hi, this is Connor Freff Cochran". I should emphasize at this point that it in fact was Connor Freff Cochran.

It turns out that he was just calling to explain that the book I had mentioned earlier would be a little late to publication. But the first few moments there were somewhat odd, because I had no idea why Freff would be calling me out of the blue. Had I run into him at a party at some point and not remembered? Did we have a mutual friend? Was he just making prank phone calls? Did he want to sell me a subscription to Keyboard? I was mystified, but of course there was ultimately a perfectly reasonable explanation. Not that I would have minded a touch of the Inexplicable, mind you.

Apparently, Star Wars: the Phantom Menace will be released on DVD in mid-october. The DVD will feature hours of additional material, including seven deleted scenes spliced back into the movie.

That's just what we need: more of that awful movie. I think they should be considering taking even more scenes out of the DVD version, never mind adding scenes back in.

The only thing that could save it for me now would be if they got Patrick Stewart to re-record the voice of Jar-Jar. Now that would be entertaining.

On the bus home today, I was thinking about the fact that people always confuse multiples of ten with teens in spoken English. When someone tells you that they spent 17 dollars, all too often do you have to ask, "was that seven-TY or seven-TEEN?" No doubt this confusion has been in place for decades, if not centuries. It's an unfortunate proximity in pronunciation that we'll just have to live with.

Or will we? Why should we put up with a deficiency in the language? Why not just make a change once and for all to remove most of the ambiguity? Obviously, we need to find new pronunciations either for the set {13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19} or for the set {30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90}. Therefore, I humbly present suggestions for both.

The first idea would simply be to pronounce "-teen" as "-tayn". Thir-tayn, four-tayn, fif-tayn, and so on. The vowel is obviously different, and it's a little harder to muffle the "n" sound at the end of an "ay".

Alternatively, consider the following pronunciations for the multiples of ten: thiddy, foeddy, fiddy, siddy, sendy, eddy, nyeddy, where "foe" in foeddy sounds like the word foe and "nye" in nyeddy rhymes with pie. Not only are these completely distinguishable from the teens, they're also highly entertaining.

I encourage you to try one of these systems (my preference would be for the second) out with strangers and see how well it goes over. I eagerly await the day when these new pronunciations have swept the nation and I hear the business reporter on NPR say, "the Dow fell foeddy nine points today; the NASDAQ was up eddy two."

About twelve years ago, I began a phase where I read Keyboard magazine regularly. The synthesizer was my instrument of choice, you see, and as a Major Recording Artist of the future I needed to keep up to date on the latest trends and technology. Frankly, I don't really remember what was in the magazine or why I read it. Fortunately, I do remember stowing a copy or two.

After some digging, I located the September 1992 issue. Cover story: Tori Amos (must be why I kept it). It's a bit of an introductory article on the new pop sensation and a bit of an interview with her. Also, because this is Keyboard, there's a transcription of her performance of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Looking at the table of contents, I see that the typical issue contained features about performers, composers and producers, hardware and software reviews, and a number of instructional columns related to all aspects of keyboard and synth playing.

One regular column certainly does stick in my mind, though: Creative Options. Freff (later Connor Freff Cochran) wrote a monthy essay about creativity. There was no set plan, no method, no requirement of a keyboard-related theme. But each month's essay was a little gem that with luck would unlock an extra unit of creativity, or at least offer an unusual perspective that could lead to insight later. I remember several of the essays quite clearly. Friends of mine might also remember a short recording done by Freff that I played over and over again; it began, "It started in a recording studio on a backwater planet in the obscure fringes of a minor arm of the galaxy. One man with a vision, and the strength of will to apply it without compromise..." Although I don't explicitly recall these essays frequently, I would say that they shaped my creative impulse in an important way and so I owe them (and Freff) my gratitude.

Of course, once in a while I do think about Freff. Such was the case a day or two ago. I decided to see what he was up to. Well, he has a website (www.freff.com) and posts regular essays there. Most interestingly, however, he has finally responded to reader pleas and is publishing a book of Creative Options essays. This book, the first in a series, is being published this month. The fact that I chose to visit his site just in time to order a special copy of his first book is an amusing bit of synchronicity, especially appropriate in Freff's world. Perhaps we could say that reading all those columns of his gave me a mental model of Freff, one that subconciously predicted the release of a book right about now. Perhaps I'm better off saying that I'm glad I came across the website when I did, and I'm looking forward to the first book.

Every now and then, I go through one of those phases where I feel like an old man. This happens when, through biorhythms or infelicitous alignment of the planets, a couple of unrelated infirmities gang up on me simultaneously.

The day before I left for Montreal two weeks ago, I noticed that my eye was red. Not both eyes, not even one eye, just one side of one eye. This condition has persisted, varying in severity over time. I saw the eye doctor yesterday morning, who diagnosed me with "redness" (although her word for it was much fancier). I could take drops to make the redness go away, but it's hardly worth the effort. Needless to say, the poking and prodding of her examination has returned my eye to its original bright red state.

And then, a couple of nights ago, I happened to notice that my big toe was numb. My foot wasn't asleep, but one side of my left big toe was a little dead. I doubt I'll need a toectomy, but I'm curious about the cause. This crime that has been purpetrated against my body has several possible culprits. Perhaps it's my terrible posture while working. Maybe it's my heavy-footed squash playing. Or it could be the fact that I walk funny. At the very least, I've temporarily stopped doing all my work hunched over on the couch with the laptop on the coffee table. If memory serves, that wasn't listed as a recommended posture in the workplace ergonomics manual. I'm back at my computer desk, sitting in an office chair. Too bad that I still walk funny.

One of the funniest greeting cards I ever bought was very simple. On the cover it said, "Time marches on..." On the inside, it concluded "...your face." That's roughly how I feel right now -- the boot of time is treading upon my eye. I suppose it marched up there via my foot, where time gave my big toe a good stepping-on.

Today began like any other day. Get up, have some cereal and orange juice, go to school, watch a building get destroyed...

The story of my department's physical space is long and sordid. For too many years, we've been housed in a completely inadequate, aging, tiny, seismically vulnerable, ugly, hot building. Even the water fountains don't work very well.

When I began my graduate studies, I was told by the elder grad students in the department that by the time I was finished, I would have been part of the Great Exodus to a mythical New Building. This building was to have been completed within years of my arrival. Well, those plans failed horribly through a combination of bad planning and mismanagement at the university level, and five years later I'm telling the newest batch of grad students the same thing -- they will be the lucky ones to populate the new building. If they're lucky.

Happily, our sad tale is not without the occasional glimmer of hope. This morning I turned up on campus early to watch an older building (not belonging to our department) begin to get eaten alive by The Beast, a very large, very powerful building-destroying-machine. Not a wrecking ball, it was more like a jaws-of-life at the end of a long manoeuvrable arm. This gruesome appendage seemed to caress the side of the building, but those caresses sent whole brick walls toppling to the ground. A very satisfying feeling after years of frustrated waiting in our current cramped quarters. For you see, when this old building is reduced to dust, our glorious new accommodations will rise in its place. That is, when the money to build it turns up. Until then, we will be the proud proprietors of a hole in the ground. But trust me -- the hole will be more progress than we've had in years. All hail the hole!

We got back last night from another lovely visit with our lovely families. This trip included Tim Hortons doughnuts but no Montreal bagels, and in an astonishing break from tradition, not a single movie.

During the return flights, I noticed that the flight attendants said something interesting during the pre-flight patter. As they explained why you should keep your seat belt fastened while seated, they said "The captain will do everything possible to avoid turbulence". Come on -- that can't really be true. Surely there are many things that are possible but that the captain wouldn't do to avoid turbulence. They could fly the plane a thousand miles off course, or climb to fifty thousand feet, or drop to five hundred feet. Heck, the captain could just cut all power to the engines. Or not take off at all. These are all things the captain could possibly do, and yet we are still subject to turbulence when flying.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that our flight out of Montreal was delayed 90 minutes, and so I was a bit punchy by the time I heard the pre-flight announcements. Incidentally, we had such a long layover scheduled in Chicago that we had no trouble catching the second leg of our flight (which took off a half hour late anyway), and we got home roughly on schedule.