because it really isn't any better than the old music since it still just plays on and on, distracting and disrupting without warning, without necessity (as it is much too cold right now in New York City to be selling ice cream successfully on the streets), without care or concern for the aural invasion it provides my friends and neighbors, most of whom are more the latter than the former, with the possible exception of the woman who lives upstairs from me, although I don't really consider her much of a friend since we have only spoken about six words to one another in the past year, running the grand total of words spoken to about fifty in the five years I've lived here, which is not an awful lot, but I still might consider her slightly more than neighbor simply on account of the amount of water that has seeped down in my bathroom walls, ostensibly from her bathroom above me, seeping into my walls, creating bubbles between paint and sheet rock, and once the water dries (or bursts through the paint), the paint hardens again, and starts to chip away, which means I have to contact the super or the landlord or someone, and like my paranoia about doctors and dentists, I really don't like to contact the super or the landlord, although to tell you the truth, the worst thing they'd discover is that I have a cat (which isn't allowed, per the lease), and that's not a terrible thing, so it's probably worth it to get them here to fix the paint job on the walls, especially if I move in the next six months, which is a plan, and I don't want to have to deduct money out of the two months security they have of mine ($2200 of my money, thank you very much) to repair the walls which were altered by no fault of my own, unlike the wooden door to my bedroom which has about a dozen thumbtack holes in it, all of which I made when hanging things to the outside of the door, which I realize now was a rather stupid thing to do, but once the holes are there, I might as well use them, mightn't I, because there's no undoing those kinds of holes, just like there's no undoing dental damage, and I can't stop being paranoid about my teeth, about the fact that I haven't seen a dentist in a while, and I haven't seen a good dentist in even longer, and some of my molars hurt a little, and it makes me wonder if there are cavities and other problems, the names of which I wouldn't even know, but that paranoia still lingers, and I think that if I don't call the dentist, then there's nothing wrong, but as soon as I call, I run the risk of something wrong being discovered, and if it isn't discovered, it isn't there, which I know is a stupid philosophy, but I majored in music in college, so what the hell do I know about philosophy, a series of books and classes that confounded me in principle, if not in practice, although I can't say I ever explored philosophy much more than to find out the vague outlines of a book that this girl was reading, a girl I knew in college, a girl who dropped out before her junior year, but before that, during her freshman year, I sort of had a crush on her (I think her name was Margaret Hughes, a fact I probably shouldn't share on the internet, but most likely, I don't remember her name properly anyhow, so it won't make much difference, plus the fact that Margaret Hughes is sort of a generic name, not as generic as Jane Doe, although actually, I know more people with the first name Margaret than Jane, and more people with the last name Hughes than Doe, so maybe it is actually more generic), so I figured I might want to know what she was reading about, because she thought it was her major and all (of course, she never declared a major, because she dropped out before she was a junior, and we declared majors just before becoming juniors, which means that she actually had the opportunity to declare, just not to specifically pursue the major), but then I read the back of the book, and it made no sense to me, and the "internet" wasn't really around yet, so there was no chance of a Google search or anything, so I eventually abandoned the intent to learn about said philosophers, I abandoned the intent to study things outside of my major in order to impress girls, and I abandoned my pursuit of this girl in particular, which was to my advantage since she was rather stuck up and prudish, and combine that with my general shyness and stupidity when it comes to intimate behavior, and the two of us would never have gotten anywhere beyond the fact that she knew far more than me about philosophers, even if I knew far more about musicians, it wouldn't make a difference because everyone in the world follows some form of philosophy, whether they know it or not, but not everyone cares about music, and music isn't the sort of thing that just automatically happens like philosophy, since any philosopher (or even any person claiming to be, or wanting to be, or even just suddenly deciding to be a philosopher) can point at a life choice and say, that's an element of so-and-so, but no one can really point at much besides an orchestra and say it had anything to do with Beethoven, even if one could point out the various philosophies Beethoven might have ascribed to his music while creating it, and since Beethoven was deaf, perhaps he had to use philosophy or some other formula or method to create his music if he couldn't hear it, and it occurs to me now that I, like Beethoven, will often sit at home for hours at a time, trying to write a piece of music, but I, unlike Beethoven, am not deaf, and I can still suffer the agony of the constant disruption and distraction from the ice cream truck on the street, and I realize that this argument is weak, if for no other reason, because there weren't trucks of any sort in Beethoven's era, but nonetheless, there were (as there probably have always been, and always will be) screaming children on the streets, even if it wasn't for ice cream, and I have to say that the thought of ice cream right now is very appealing, although not from a truck, no, never from a truck, and there wouldn't be a truck at this hour anyway, since it's after one o'clock in the morning (including Daylight Savings Time, for which I had to change all fifteen of the clocks in my apartment), and there aren't stores open where one might buy a pint or box of ice cream, even if this is New York City, but I live in Brooklyn, which doesn't quite count, and nothing is open 24 hours, so there's no buying ice cream after midnight in my neighborhood, and on a hot night like this, it is simply not as fulfilling to suck on a frozen turkey burger (which I haven't tried, I can only imagine that it's nasty) as it would be to consume a pint of Heath Bar Crunch, or some similarly decadent ice cream choice, although I wonder why I would want ice cream (and even if I would really want ice cream) after having had a large dinner of turkey burgers (cooked, two of them, with mustard), a lot of spaghetti with sauce, a handful of Triscuits with Swiss cheese (is it appropriate to capitalize Swiss when indicating cheese type, I wonder), half a large bag of Tostitos and salsa (the salsa was peach and mango salsa and was quite good, if not spicy) and a lot of water, because it's important to drink water when one is sick with the flu, as I am now, although I haven't had as much water as I probably should have, even though I have had enough to make me want to pee about forty times today, but I still feel like crap, and in my delerious state, I read an email from Fish asking for additional Grumble articles, so I just started writing whatever was in my head, but the problem is that I think faster than I can type, so I cannot possibly keep up with my own thoughts while typing (and certainly not if I intend to correct whatever typographical errors I make along the way, because even though I type close to 100 words per minute, there are still mistakes made, and there are still things to delete and correct, even if this is, essentially, a stream of consciousness without a single period in the whole damn thing), and therefore I think about a lot more than I actually type, such as certain people and events that flash through my mind, but not as complete thoughts, only as fleeting moments, so I can't even include them in a phrase of a sentence (not that there are technically sentences in this run-on paragraph, clauses delineated only by the frequent overuse of commas), and I can only go on about the things that stick in my mind longer than a fleeting moment, things like the ice cream truck, which, while it isn't here at the moment, it was here earlier, and it did bother me earlier, but there are other things, like tonight's episode of "Six Feet Under," which is a stellar television program, and I've watched each episode now, and I think that they're all quite good, and I wish all the performers the best of luck with the series and their careers, particularly the one who knew my sister years ago, the one who I actually spoke to on the goddammit, my cat is a pain in the ass, or more literally a pain in the leg, jumping up onto my lap while I'm writing this, which I realize is affectionate and sweet, but at the same time, I'm wearing pajamas and not heavier denim-like pants, so when the cat leaps up and can't quite balance, he digs his sharp claws into my leg (my leg less protected by the flannel pajamas than by the denim from yesterday, and most days for that matter), and then he won't move his damn head, so while I'm trying to type, his head is in the way, and I can't type with my right hand, so I nudge him, and finally he gets pissed off and goes to eat something, and I feel guilty, because he only wanted to be friendly, and I pushed him away, and I could totally go into a self-deprecating depressed mode by suggesting that that is somehow a metaphor for my life, but I don't think it actually is, so to hell with self-deprecating depression, even if I am sick, and in this weakened condition (a phrase borrowed from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," a movie I watched yesterday, an all-time favorite movie of mine, and I watched the DVD version that has an audio track of John Hughes' commentary, so we can hear what he thought of the movie while it was happening, and he made comments about the color of the leaves and such, things which interested me far more than the typical on-set scandal bits, like the fact that Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey were dating at the time, and I realize that I dislike Jennifer Grey in much the same way that I dislike Sarah Jessica Parker, to whom Matthew Broderick is now married, and it makes me wonder even more about the few people who have said, at one time or another, that I bear a slight resemblance to Matthew Broderick, even if I am taller, fatter, less cute, and more Jewish, and whether his tastes in women somehow parallel my distastes, and with that in mind, how similar to him could I possibly be, and only now do I wonder if John Hughes and Margaret Hughes are distantly related, and had I pursued the philosophy-studying Margaret while in college, might I have someday met the film-directing John, even to the point of networking myself into the world of film scoring, a world I would love to join, but a world I know little about at this point), I am more susceptible to self-deprecating depression, but I will not give in to it, no I will not, because it's detrimental to my overall health, and I need to be better in the next day or two because I have to play the piano for a show on Tuesday night, and I want to be well, and particularly, I don't want to get anyone else sick, and I have no idea how easily my cold or flu is transferrable from my body to theirs, or if I might re-infect myself simply by sitting in this same chair tomorrow, the chair that I sat in today, while sick, but maybe the bacteria won't live that long in the fake leather of this chair, and it will be okay to sit here, just so long as I don't do something stupid like suck on used Kleenex or something, and I know that sounds disgusting, and it's certainly something I would never do, but it was the only example I could come up with on short here's the cat again, less in my way, claws still as sharp, leaping up, and he's really fat, and he has a hard time jumping up this high, not that the chair is all that high, mind you, but it's a big jump for a fat cat, so sometimes he walks across the piano to get to my desk, as the piano and the desk are in an L-shape, set that way so I can sit in the crook of the L, swiveling easily between the two, creating music at the piano, and notating the music on the computer, using Finale, which is some damn good software, although I prefer to compose the music initially by writing it on paper, and not straight into the computer, but sometimes I'm pressed for time, and I have no choice but to enter it straight into the computer, giving me no original pencil sketches, which I miss, but writing under the gun is becoming more and more common, even outside of my music work, because here I am writing this piece for Grumble under the gun, I'm trying to write fast, I'm trying to be interesting, I'm trying to write as much as I can without actually stopping to re-read it or check for spelling and/or punctuation errors (of which I hope there are none, but most likely, there will be, because there almost always are, like in most of my work for Grumble, I go back and re-read things months later, and not only do I want to rewrite things I'd written before, but I find little stupid errors, things that went unnoticed initially, things that have now been read by our vast subscription base), and as I sit here writing this, I'm tired, and should sleep (a, because I'm tired, and b, because I'm sick), but I wonder if Fish will even want to include this piece in the next issue of Grumble, because what the hell is it about, it's not funny, it's not interesting, it merely rambles on like a James Joyce novel, only in normal English, but its one clever bit hasn't even been achieved yet, which is the notion that you can begin reading from the top again once you get to the bottom, because the thought continues, although why would anyone really want to, when, truth be told, no one will even get this far, most likely, except maybe my parents, and only then if they have nothing better to do with their days, which is unlikely, since they both work very hard, but it would nice if (first) this article were to appear in Grumble, (second) my parents were to read this article, (third) and should they get this far, they can consider this a request for them to email me and say that they got this far, and if I don't get email from them, then I know they didn't read all the way through, and it's sort of a sneaky little test, and for that matter, I challenge anyone who has read this far to send me an email just to let me know that they got this far, because it's always nice to know that I've reached out and contributed something, however strange, to someone's life (and it isn't fair to skip ahead, see the hyperlink at the bottom, and only read that part, and then email me saying you've read the whole thing, because I'll quiz you, I will, I will, I will quiz you, and then you'll have to know whether I talked about Beethoven or a girl my sister knew, or Poland Spring Water, or how much more I like ibuprofen than aspirin, and if you've skipped ahead and just guess at the answers on the quiz, you will probably fail, or at the very worst, get fifty per cent right, and that's considered a failing grade, except on SATs, when there is no failing grade, but even those tests are dumb, because as my father always pointed out, they only show you how well you do on SATs), and I know that Grumble Magazine doesn't contribute to as many people's lives as we (the writers and editors) would like it to, so even if you didn't like my piece, please read someone else's, and then please tell your friends to read it, because most of the stuff herein is pretty good, and most of the stuff I've written in the past is better than this piece, this bizarre article of nonsense, this piece that that just lets the reader explore the thoughts and desires of its writer, it's nothing more than me talking for eight minutes without stopping, nothing more than me wondering whether I'll even remember typing this two weeks from now, nothing more than an endless paragraph, a run-on sentence, a page with more commas than content, but I have no excuse, because it's just the debris from my illness-addled mind, spewing forth like music from a truck on the street, a truck selling ice cream, playing new music this year, different from last years' music, although I don't understand why they changed to some new music,