You Should Learn To Play A Musical Instrument

THESIS: You should learn to play a musical instrument.

Introduction:
ATTENTION-GETTER: I play three instruments: piano, guitar, and bass. I’m not amazing at any of these, but I know enough to be able to play some of my favorite songs. I didn’t bring my guitar in, but I would still like to play a song for you. This is “Tangled Up in Blue” by Bob Dylan. Feel free to play along if you know it. That was both fun and stimulating.

THESIS AND PREVIEW: You should learn to play a musical instrument. The reasons include mental and physical benefits and more developed intelligence. Also, it is easy to do, it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money, and it can establish a sense of achievement.

Things I Learned From Reading A Cosmopolitan Magazine While Bored And On Break At Work

1) 32% of guys will forgive a girl who has cheated.

2) You are only masturbating too much if it gets in the way of you doing your job and making money (note: I do not know if they included getting paid to masturbate in these findings).

3) The term “Party Rape.”

4) Blake Livley, of the CW’s Gossip Girl and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 fame, thinks her best feature is her eyelashes.

5) If you are friends with a guy and you would like to know how large his penis is, getting close to him and “accidentally” knocking your hand into his member is perfectly acceptable behavior.

An Excerpt From Something I Am Working On That At This Point In Time Does Not Yet Exist Outside Of My Head

“How honest do you want me to be with you. On a scale of one to ten.”

“Eight.”

“All right. I was kind of expecting you to say ten, so I need a moment to figure out how to lie to you.”

55 Words

For an assignment in my creative writing class in high school, we were instructed to write very short stories that were made up of exactly 55 words. Here are a few of mine.

Save

He sees her struggling. He stands up and blows his whistle as he points to her in the water. His legs push off the chair as he makes his flight into the air. He crashes into the water, a huge wave is created as he swims to save her. It turns out she was faking.

Race

The racers sped around the track, their colors combined into one orangish-red. We thought it would have been a little longer. The fanatics were there, cheering for their favorite like it was their own son. Oh no! One racer curves off towards the side. He’s out of the running, he cramped on the hurdles.

Flight

After sitting for twenty minutes, the plane finally took off down the runway. I felt us aim towards the sky, I was leaning back without reclining in my chair. My ears popped. I released my breath and pushed them back out. We finally leveled out. I glanced out the window as we hit the mountain.

Mirror

She saw everything behind her, the street lights made it all clear. There was something else coming up. She started to slow down. It was another thing she recognized. She thought back for a second about everything in her past. She stepped on the gas. Everything got smaller as she looked through her rearview mirror

Running

The bright lights and sounds made him realize he had to leave. He cut across the sidewalk, burst through some bushes, and tucked and rolled onto someone’s lawn. The footsteps were approaching, he could hear them getting louder and the shadows became larger. He couldn’t run away any more. He had lost in flashlight tag.

Andy

He makes his way out to the jeers of the crowd. He declares he is the real King of Memphis. He makes an open challenge to the audience for a match. The challenger steps through the ropes, but she’s quickly defeated. One. Two. Three. Andy Kaufman remains the Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World.

My Big, Dumb Rock Song

by Paul Mikesell

This is my big, dumb rock song.
Chunky chords and a flying riff,
Nonsense lyrics
That seem to stick.

The old fans scream, “Sell Out”
As my face is splashed on MTV,
Those same fans are still at my shows,
The crowd goes back as far as I can see.

The arenas are booked
And my hair is gelled up.
To get the crowd in my hands
All I need to say is some random stuff

Like, “Hello Boston,”
“Hello California” and “New York”
My face on the Rolling Stone
Can erase my past life as a dork.

We play the intro of the hit
And we hear the crowd roar,
They’ve never ever even heard
The other songs we wrote before.

“La La La La,”
We sing on the hook,
The masses will never realize
That all that this took

Was just ten minutes
To write this big, dumb song,
When you write about girls and parties and cars,
On the radio you can do no wrong.

My indie-cred is show
Until they release the next single,
We’ve weaned the masses
On this stupid jingle.

The next single’s still catchy
Like the Beatles or the Stones,
But a little more raw
Like the Clash or the Ramones.

The difference it comes
By the words in the song,
They mean so much more to mee,
But you’ll still sing along.