Ron's Big Life Update - January 1997

"You have 39 new mail messages" - the result of my first vacation since I started work last year.

Well, from those of you who haven't heard from me in a while, hello and happy holidays. I just survived a two week vacation with the in-laws, and I have never been so happy to see the pearly Kodak gates in my life...

Margaret and I spent the last two weeks in Colorado. No skiing, mind you, just Colorado. We shuttled back and forth between Denver (a cool city) and Yuma (a horrendously remote farm town three hours east of Denver, where Margaret's mom still lives), spending about a week at each place. The big news for us was that Margaret's brother and his wife are now proud parents of a baby boy: Benjamin James weighed in at 6 pounds (or something like that) on Dec. 18th. There was a period when they hadn't settled on a name, and my vote of Jesus was quickly overridden. The baby doesn't do much yet, and you all know my feelings toward little 'uns, so I wasn't terribly impressed. Being an uncle ain't so great yet.

The new parents live in Denver, and we got to see as much of Denver as we could while staying out of their way. I saw the capital building, including the exact step at which the elevation is 5280 feet. (Aside: can you join the "mile high" club just by club just by doing it in Denver?) And downtown, which was neat. And some of the mountains to the west, which were very neat. And Golden, which was less neat than the mountains, but neat nonetheless.

The week I spent in Yuma wasn't exactly torture, ... well, actually it was. Seven days is WAY too long to spend in a remote farming town with nothing to do. Somehow, we managed to get record high temperatures during that week and I was able to wander around outside in Colorado in January in just a T-shirt. It hit 72 degrees once! No complaints. We drove into Nebraska and Kansas just so I could get pictures of us in short sleeves standing next to the "Welcome To Nebraska" and "Welcome To Kansas" signs on the highway.

I went to a farm auction in Yuma. That's where somebody decides that he doesn't want to be a farmer anymore and auctions off his equipment and his land. So I got to see lots of farm equipment up close and personal, and if I had a few thousand dollars to spare, I could have even bought some of it. (A fat lot of good that would do me in Rochester...) And the 1/4-square-mile of land went for $250,000. No animals at this auction, fortunately.

It's hard to describe Yuma if you've never been there. It's flat. Completely totally flat. And trees don't naturally grow out there unless they're planted; the natural shrubbery is sort of a wheat-like grass that stands only a few inches tall. It's weird. In the northeast, we get used to trees and green things. In the southwest, we get used to cacti and sand. In Yuma, just weird short grass. Bleh.

The locals aren't much more interesting. I got a laugh out of Margaret's description of a few of her classmates. Apparently, when one particular set of new parents wanted to name their new baby after Earl, the proud daddy, they were undeterred by the fact that the baby was a girl. She has since gone through life with the name Earla, and I can't imagine that she's achieved too much success with it. Likewise for Lloydine.

The big holiday score was an old Risk set, with wooden pieces. Margaret's sister got an even bigger score, with an old Monopoly set. You knew that the old sets also had wooden houses and hotels, but this set was so old that the word "Hotel" was painted on each little red wooden hotel. Amazing.

During my incarceration in Yuma, we decided to see the movie that was playing at the local theater. (Note: "the" movie. One.) We saw "Jingle All The Way" featuring Ah-nold and Sinbad. It was unquestionably the worst movie of the year, and makes "Krull" look like "Citizen Kane" in comparison. Doesn't Arnold bother to READ THE SCRIPTS before he agrees to do a movie??? And toward the end of our stay in Denver, we were reading on the couch with "My Stepmother Is An Alien" (with Kim Basinger and Dan Akroyd) playing on cable on the TV. "My Stepmother Is An Alien" makes "Jingle All The Way" look like "Citizen Kane" in camparison.

Well, 1996 ended, and tradition dictates that I proclaim my favorite song of the past year. Usually, I come up with about twenty, but this past year was a stinker and my list is exceptionally short:

• "In The Meantime" by Spacehog.

That's it. One great song, and everything else released during the year was crap. (Except for the live Crowded House CD that came with the greatest hits package, but that was just new versions of older songs.) Most of my year-end reading agreed with my assessment that 1996 was stinky from start to finish, but I don't agree with their reasoning.

The newspapers say that 1996 was bad because there are no dominant innovative styles right now. They say that alternative, gangsta rap, and hip hop are all burnt out, and since nobody's really sure what will replace them, nobody's jumping on any bandwagon, leaving just stagnation. The articles claimed that people were sick of everything, and cited poor-selling albums by Hootie and the Blowfish, the Gin Blossoms, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, REM, Presidents of the USA, and a few others. Since people were sick of all the latest trends, nothing really dominated and stagnation ruled. And since Celine Dion had the biggest selling album of the year (behind whiny Alanis Morrisette, which came out in '95), I agree that blandness dominated the year.

I think the explanation is much simpler. I think that the music industry is so obsessed with trendy product and sales numbers, that they forgot how to write songs. "In The Meantime" contained, in my opinion, the only worthwhile melody of 1996. 365 days; only one good song. Pretty stinky indeed. I don't feel too optimistic about 1997 either, despite upcoming albums by U2 and, heaven help us, Aerosmith.

I see all this as a sign that "Crap From The Past" must become the dominant force in the universe. The timing is right, I have a small but devoted following on a non-commercial station that doesn't interfere with my programming, I have a commercial sponsor (a local club at which I occasionally DJ), and I have the Ethel Merman Disco Album on CD. Yep - I am the god of hellfire and I bring you...

...1997.

Happy new year to all of you from Uncle Margaret and myself. May you claw your own eyes out before you suffer through "Jingle All The Way". And to all a good night... (and feel free to write back).

Ron "Did you see the Simpsons last week? With the hallucinogenic chili? I'm still laughing..." G

Ron's Big Life Update - December 1996

Happy Hanukah? Happy Thanksgiving? Happy Halloween? Whatever...

Rochester is still here. Last Tuesday, we did in fact get about a foot of snow ("one inch" according to forecasts. Ha!) It has since disappeared due to unseasonably warm weather and a lot of rain, so you're not missing much. No catastrophic ice storms or anything good like that.

We spent a chaotic weekend with the 'rents in Nanuet. I had my radio show from 6-8 on Wednesday, so we hit the road for NY starting at 9 PM and got to Nanuet around 2:30 AM. On the plus side, there was absolutely no traffic at all on the highways, despite last Wednesday being the most heavily traveled day of the year. Thursday we Thanksgivinged (Thanksgave?) - just Margaret, my brother, my folks, and me. Food was a-plenty. Friday and Saturday we ran around Rockland and visited family. Saturday night was my high school 10th-year reunion, which was pretty good. Unfortunately, the people I really wanted to see weren't there (sounds just like the college reunion), but it was still fun. It was an unintentional hoot to see some of the people who stayed in Rockland after graduation. I noticed quite a few Jewish girls who were wearing way entirely too much make-up, and it is a very easy stretch of the imagination to connect these girls with the stereotype of the New York Jewish women, who also wear way entirely too much make-up. There was also a disproportionately high number of lawyers among my former classmates, which I don't claim to understand. And most of them are married with a kid or two. One had a set of twins, which seems like a great deal - have one kid, get one free. You're confining yourself to misery for a few years anyway, so what's another set of diapers to change? Sunday we drove back up here. Not a fun drive at all, due to heavy rain for most of the trip. Bleh.

I drove past the site where Rockland County has planned the largest (or 2nd largest?) mall in the country, rivaling the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. (Have I ever mentioned that the Mall of America, despite being large enough to house a mini-amusement park, has a gang problem? That's how big this mall is...) Why oh why is Rockland County building this monstrosity? Traffic is worse there than ever before, and we HAVE A FEW MALLS ALREADY thank you... Stupid suburbs...

So now I'm back in town for a little while. We made Christmas plans in Colorado again this year, so I spend 12 consecutive days with the in-laws. This is the last time I let Margaret pick the travel days...

We saw Ransom, and it was better than I expected.

Has anyone else noticed that aside from the always-excellent Simpsons, the quality of everything else on TV has being fluctuating wildly? The X-Files even stooped low enough to have David Duchovny (Muldar) cry on screen. What is this world coming to? It seems like the only sure-fire things on TV are the Simpsons, and Newman. "Newman...Newman...Newman..."

My brother, by the way, is still wearing the socks that I handed down to him when I was in high school. He hasn't cut his hair since 1994 and his car is held together by duct tape. He has taken the concept of "grunge" to a distant world only imagined by the population of Seattle. Kenny IS grunge.

Not much else going on out here. I found some good records, including another copy of Bryan Adams's "Let Me Take You Dancing", an obscure disco track released only on a Canadian 12" single, and worth lots of $. (I paid $1 because the woman selling it had no idea what it was.) I also found an album by La Flavour, a disco album from 1980 featuring the song "Mondolay" and featuring production and background vocals from Donnie Iris (who had recorded "The Rapper" with Jaggerz in 1970, had recorded "Play That Funky Music" with Wild Cherry in 1976, and who would later sing "Ah Leah" and "Love Is Like A Rock"). Mondo bizarro.

Happy Hanukah to all of you. I'm hoping that this e-mail will appease all of you until I write proper holiday cards; it should be a few more years until that kicks in.

I'm going to work now. There is undiscovered crap out there, and one of them has my name on it...

Stay warm and fuzzy,
Ron "The crap is out there..." G

Ron's Big Life Update - November 1996

I've heard it said that Minnesota has two seasons: eleven months of winter, and one month of bad skating. Rochester probably isn't that far behind.

Yep, we got one whole inch of snow over the weekend. It didn't do much damage, but it served as a nasty reminder that winter is here and we better prepare for utter misery for the next six months. A rude awakening for those who thought that it might not really snow this year.

One of the sure signs of the Apocalypse (sp?): Journey has released a new album - their first in ten years. This is not good.

Not much else is going on up here. Margaret and I bought a new mattress last week. ("Newlyweds...") And we firmed up plans for the Xmas holidays - I'll be spending two full weeks in Denver with the other side of the family. Oy vey. (I didn't want to stay out there that long, but plane tickets were hard to come by.) My Thanksgiving plans worked out well - FOOD with the parents, then my high school 10th-year reunion two days after that in Rockland County. How convenient! Anyone need a ride to and from Rockland County from Rah-chester?

For you music buffs, stay tuned for my picks of the best of '96. (I'll do the best of '95 too, since I'm finally getting around to it.) Same Crap time, same Crap channel.

Go vote,
Ron "Snow? Whoda thunk?" G

Ron's Big Life Update - October 1996

"Hello, I must be going." - Groucho Marx, and much later, Phil Collins.

Is it winter yet by you? We've had absurd ups and downs in the temperature, and I'm just guessing that the rest of the leaves on the trees will give up their fight for life shortly; winter feels imminent. (sp?)

Saw three good movies recently, and for those of you whose lives are too short to see mediocre movies, all three of these are way above average:

• Trainspotting. Not for the faint of stomach, but an excellent film.
• Emma. The exact opposite of Trainspotting. Literally, the exact opposite. Although some might call it a "chick flick", I liked it anyway.
• Big Night. A movie about two guys running an Italian restaurant in Jersey in the '50s. A movie that revolves around ITALIAN FOOD!!!! WOW!!!! Two thumbs up! -burp-

Kodak's been keeping me busy otherwise. The big thing to rumble through here recently was a demonstration of DVD. ("Digital Versatile Disc". It was originally called "Digital Video Disc", but it will be used for audio and computer applications, too.) A guy from Universal Pictures came in with a real DVD player and some discs and gave a demonstration, which was very impressive. He was an engineer, and was in charge of the process of taking the original prints and getting the movie onto the disc; he dealt with the concerns of data rate, compression, synching up all the different soundtracks (there can be eight different languages for each movie), and all the other little doo-dads that we technical people love, but the layman wouldn't care about. Fortunately, he wasn't one of the weenies from marketing; everyone hates marketing.

The whole DVD demonstration was very impressive. The DVDs look just like CDs, and can hold 135 minutes of digital compressed video, and up to eight (I think) channels of 5.1-channel true surround-sound digital audio. The first-generation player that he brought with him was a Panasonic, and looks almost exactly like a CD player. The remote control for the player looks pretty much like a VCR remote, but with the addition of some extra buttons that guide you through menus on the screen. He brought along one of the discs he made, which was "The Shadow", a bad movie that nobody saw, but a nice demonstration nonetheless. When you put the disc into the player, the first thing that comes up on the screen is a menu, which gives you choices of what language you want the dialogue in, and what language you want (optional) subtitles in. (A neat feature is that the players sold in different regions on the globe will each have a chip that brings up the initial menu screen differently; the "Universal" logo might come up in Spanish, or something like that. Oh wait, that would still say "Universal"...) After you push some buttons on the remote to select your languages, the movie starts.

The movie looks terrific. I don't know the exact specs on things like the number of horizontal lines of resolution, but the picture looks great. Better than LaserDisc, and way better than anything available from a VCR. The video is compressed (with the MPEG-2 algorithm for those who care), but to my untrained eye, I can't tell the difference. The sound is seismic, to say the least, but I personally wouldn't be able to fit five speakers and a subwoofer in my living room. Not that Margaret would let me do such a thing, of course...

There are a few chapter marks that they include with the movie, so you can instantly jump from scene to scene and leave out all the dialogue in the Schwarzeneggar films. The freeze-frame is pretty astonishing; with VCR's, we're used to a lot of distortion in the picture. With the DVD's, a freeze frame is one still frame, with no artifacts. The slow advance will move you from frame to frame in the movie, where each frame is really the 1-30th of a second frame used in the video process. Pretty impressive.

Universal Pictures, and the rest of the movie industry, is banking hard on these things. They're counting on both movie sales and rentals, and will be using the DVDs to replace VHS movie releases. One of the benefits from their point of view is that they won't have to release several different tapes of one movie like they do now (Spanish language versions in South America, etc.) because they all can be included on one DVD. Neat. Apparently, it won't be too much work to put together all the different-language versions of the movie, since the new soundtrack has to be recorded anyway for foreign VHS releases. Also neat.

Can we record on them yet? No, but DVD-R (write-once) and DVD-RAM (erasable) specifications are in the works, as well as DVD-ROM (for computers; just like CD-ROM). There's also a DVD-Audio format planned, but I can't imagine that the record companies would use a format where you can put hours and hours of music on one disc. (Most CD releases only use about half of the available capacity now; I can't imagine that increasing the capacity of the disc will change anything.)

Will I buy one? Not right away - these things are set to hit the market in Japan for about $700, and the price is expected to fall pretty quickly. Although it looks and sounds amazing, there are still a few small bugs to be worked out in the players - things like, where do I plug my VCR if my TV only has one external input? And will the players definitely play my old CD's? (They probably will, but there is some concern that they won't play CD-R discs, which are the write-once CD's that we make at Kodak.) All in all, pretty exciting stuff.

One final detail from the DVD marketing people: The one feature that people like the most about the DVD players is that you don't have to rewind the movie.

Oh jeez...

Stay warm.

Ron "It's better to sound good than to feel good" G

Ron's Big Life Update - April 1996 Part 2

"Hello." - Ric Ocasek, from the Cars' "Hello Again".

Well, apparently I survived the wedding in Tucson. Actually, it went much more smoothly than I would've guessed beforehand. Our only big glitch was the first dance, which was atrocious - have you ever danced with someone in a wedding dress before? Hopefully, no one took pictures of that.

Margaret flew out last Tuesday, bought some rugs and junk in Mexico on Wednesday, picked me up at the airport on Thursday, sewed all day on Friday while I visited my former colleagues at school, partied all day Saturday, sent me back to the airport on Sunday, UPS'ed all the gifts on Monday, and flew back here on Tuesday. As you might have imagined, I only played a perfunctory supporting role throughout the whole ordeal. (That was the agreement, and I'm sticking to it.)

The party was a lot of fun. We had a great turnout from the Arizona contingent (thank you all for attending; it was great to see everybody again, and frankly, it would have been pretty dull without you.) The east coast attendance was rather abysmal - a total of four. My parents, my brother, and my friend Steve, who some of you know. It's hard to say whether Steve was fully appreciated by the Tucsonans; in the words of my friend Julie, "Steve thinks he's famous." That pretty well describes him.

I didn't get to sit down or eat very much - it's true that you don't really get to enjoy your own wedding. We hired a great photographer, who took about 100,000,000,000 pictures. Hopefully, some of them will come out.

And I managed to enjoy the whole weekend without missing a minute of work here at Kodak. I only get five vacation days this year, and I didn't want to use any for the wedding. Needless to say, we didn't have much of a honeymoon. (Some might argue that since we got married in December, that our honeymoon was spent at Margaret's parents' house in Yuma, Colorado. Honeymoon in Yuma? If you can use the words Yuma and honeymoon in the same sentence, then you've never been to Yuma.)

I think we made out OK in the gift department. We got a couple of sets of white towels, which we were hoping for. And a nice vase (thank you Tim).

And actually, I haven't seen the rest of the gifts yet (they're in transit), but I did appreciate the nice wrapping paper - Ren & Stimpy (you EEEEDIOT!), diffraction gratings, all the good stuff. Thank-you's will be prompt and courteous, I promise.

In other news, my car still smells like a new car, even though it has 2500 miles on it. I was flipping through the Auto issue of Consumer Reports, just to see what the powers that be think of not only my new car, but everything else on the market. Aside from one model of Cadillac, the Dodge Neon/Plymouth Neon is the most unreliable car on the road. Unless I misunderstood some of their graphics, it looks like 83% of all new Neons have some problem with them. Interesting.

For those of you playing at home who vaguely remember the short-lived supergroup Deth Boat, good news! Jason (my high-school friend in NY who headed Deth Boat and still works in sound in NYC), decided to finally do something with the Deth Boat tapes. He's mastering the tapes with a Sonic Solutions machine at work (!) onto Hi-Fi VCR tape, then sending it to me so I can cut a few write-once CD's. Cool! I'd done something similar to this with a few dozen sound bites that I use for my radio show, but Deth Boat on CD is mind-boggling. Jason even managed to dig up a Deth Boat outtake that was recorded for the "Mutilator II" short film, and a live cut. And only eight years after it was recorded in the studio; even the group Boston can produce an album faster than that...

Crap From The Past plays on, as expected. Monday may be tax day to some, but to me it's Dave Edmunds's birthday! (He'll be 52.) Skip out of work for the day, put on a party sombrero, and celebrate DE's B-Day! Next Wednesday is Michael "Maniac" Sembello's birthday; not quite the same punch...

We're about to plunge headlong into spring. After a whole week of cold, rainy weather, we're about to dive into the mid-60's. I'm just guessing, but I don't think it'll last.

Hope things are well in your respective necks of the woods. Stay warm.

Ron "Can you play something by Barry Manilow?" G

Ron's Big Life Update - April 1996 Part 1

How y'all are? It's snowing as I write this. Spring has hit upstate New York...APRIL FOOLS! (It really is snowing. This sux.)

Anyway, I'm back on line after some mail server problems at Kodak. Some fun things have happened since the last time I wrote. Last weekend, Margaret and I drove out to Boston to do some hurried visiting and frantic sightseeing. It's hard to absorb much of Boston in less than a weekend. And if you ever decide to visit Boston, for God's sake DON'T DRIVE IN THE CITY!!! Boston is unquestionably the least car-friendly city I have ever seen. I've driven in NYC, LA, San Diego, Washington DC, Minneapolis, Toronto, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philly, Baltimore, Tampa, and most of the other cities in the country and nothing is even remotely close to the pandemonium of Boston driving. (Thank you, Boston people, for being good sports and not charging us for all the stuff that we broke.)

Yesterday, Margaret left for Tucson; I will follow on Thursday. Yep, I don't have a whole lot of responsibility for those wedding reception plans, and I must say that it doesn't bother me one bit. I didn't even WANT a reception, but Margaret did. So be it. I'll show up in my tux, eat some food, pay the band and the caterer and the cake person and the flower person and the photographer and the room people, and fly back to Rochester. No pressure on me at all, since Margaret is taking care of all the arrangements. Should be fun. And to top it all off, I'm not missing any work at all - Friday is a holiday and I'll be back here Sunday night. No time for a honeymoon this year (not enough vacation days anyway). Maybe next year.

I saw Quiz Show yesterday. Outstanding movie, and I recommend it to everyone. It makes me glad that the U of R's radio station (WRUR - where I do Crap From The Past weekly) has no corporate sponsors to kiss up to.

Speaking of CFTP, this week, we celebrate Biz "Just A Friend" Markie's birthday. The Biz turns 32 on Monday. Sing it with me: "OOOOHHHHH baby YOOOOOOOOOOU... You got what I NEED. But you say he's just a friend. But you say he's just a friend OOOOOOOOO BABY YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU....." Last week was MC Hammer's birthday (did you know that his real name is Stanley Burrell?) and next week I go crazy nuts for Dave Edmunds's birthday. Woo-hoo!

In music news:

• New Dave Matthews Band song. Excellent. Album due out at end of the month.
• New Aimee Mann album, "I'm With Stupid", is excellent. Radio ignored it, much to my dismay.
• New Tears For Fears album, "Raoul and the Kings of Spain", is pretty good. Radio ignored it also.
• New (old?) Brand New Heavies album, "Excursions: Remixes and Rarities" (or something like that) is great.
• New Joe Satriani album is excellent. He plays with a live band (finally), and keeps his singing down to only one song. It's produced by Glyn Johns, who has worked with the Eagles and some southern bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, I think. A terrific mellow album from The Guy With The Big Guitar.
• New Barenaked Ladies album, "Born On A Pirate Ship", is out and is excellent. This must have been an abnormally good few weeks.
• I picked up the last 'til Tuesday album, "Everything's Different Now", from 1988. It's extremely melodic, and accurately previewed what Aimee Mann would do as a solo artist. I love it. The two albums preceding "EDN" aren't so hot, however.

And all this since I left Tucson? Oy!

Well, I'm outta here; I have to go get married. And to all you east coast people, I'm sorry you can't make it. There are only four people showing up from anywhere east of Colorado, and my parents and my brother count for three of them. Sorry, but I won't be saving you any cake...

Ron "I do. No, make that I already did." G

Ron's Big Life Update - March 1996

(sung): "Three Guys Talking!" - from an obscure radio show, 1988.

Well, howdy do. For those of you who haven't heard from me in a while, let me very quickly bring you up to speed. Not that anything of significance has happened...

Let's see...I graduated in December, but you knew that. I got married in December, but you knew that. I started work at Kodak in January, but you knew that also. Pittsburgh lost the Super Bowl, but you knew that because you had lots of money on the game. My car got turned into an accordion by some guy who had nothing better to do than to run into my trunk at 40 MPH, which you might not have known. So I bought a black '96 Toyota Corolla, which you might not have known either. It's very nice. Margaret drove out here and arrived at the beginning of February. She's been building and restoring some furniture since she moved out here, and when she gets bored with that (or fills up the apartment), she'll look for a job. For the first time in many many years, she has no financial pressure to work, and she likes the free time.

My friend Steve was up here in Rah-chester earlier this week. Some of you may remember my mentioning a Steve-who-set-fire-to-the-Chinese-restaurant or a Steve-who-got-married-and-divorced-in-'91. Well, it's the same guy and he was up here on business. Margaret and I went out to dinner with him, and we all had a lot of deep-fried food to commemorate the occasion. Bleh! (I told him the wings and then donuts story. Wings + Donuts = Death.) And as an extra bonus treat, I brought him on the air with me as a special guest. He played the part of "My friend Steve" on "Crap From The Past". This past Wednesday was the Grammy awards, and since I was on right before the awards show, I decided to do a tribute to the moronic/genius committee that votes for the awards by playing nothing but Grammy award winners from years past: "Theme from Shaft" - Isaac Hayes, "I am Woman" - Helen Reddy, 3 songs by Milli Vanilli, "Jessie's Girl" - Rick Springfield, "Morning Train" - Sheena Easton, "Stone Cold Crazy" - Queen (which won a Grammy for Metallica in '90), "I Write the Songs" and "Copacabana" by the Great Barry Manilow, "Love Will Keep Us Together" - The Captain and Tennille, "Boogie Oogie Oogie" - A Taste of Honey (used in the Rold Gold pretzel ad), "Night Fever" - The Bee Gees, and a bunch more. The high point of the evening was "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band, the Best New Artist of 1976. "Afternoon Delight" is a song about the virtues of a quickie in the middle of the afternoon, sung with about as much passion as milk. Coming up in future shows: Eddy "Electric Avenue" Grant's birthday, and more songs about sickness and illness. Stay tuned.

Something is wrong with my computer at work. If I try to print anything longer than one page, the printer freaks out and prints about fifty pages of PostScript commands. It was funny the first time, but it's not funny anymore.

This is a test of the emergency trigonometry system. This is only a test.

• sin(x+y) = cos(x)sin(y) + sin(x)cos(y).

This is a test of the emergency trigonometry system. The math teachers of your area in cooperation with Eudora Light have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of a trigonometric emergency. If there had been an actual trigonometric emergency, the equation you just saw would have been followed by more equations, some protractors, a slide rule, and a barrage of polygons, some containing very sharp corners. This concludes this test of the emergency trigonometry system.