So I had a prelim last Thursday that frankly, I wasn’t prepared for. Despite all my efforts to wake up in time for my 10:10, it just didn’t work. From having wake-up calls from my friend to putting my phone alarm on the highest volume, it just wasn’t happening.

I even put my phone on the floor on the other side of the room to make myself actually get out of bed to turn it off — still didn’t work. I would somehow convince myself to get under the sheets (the lecture slides are all online, right?).

So after a month of either missing class or getting there late, I had one night to get it all together.

On Friday night at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals ripped through a slew of musical styles, from rock to folk to ballads to country swing. Adams and his band roared through genres as quickly as Will Ferrell rips through mostly-shoddy Hollywood comedies (Step Brothers, Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Stranger Than Fiction, Talladega Nights — all of these post-Wedding Crashers, just to name a few).

As you no doubt are aware, one very delightful way to enjoy music is by attending a concert. In our modern day and age, concerts come in many forms. They are high school band concerts, Fanclub shows, marching band numbers at C.U. football games, the Backstreet Boys reunion tour … wouldn’t that be AWESOME? They adhere to stereotypes held by the old (“Damn kids, with their rock and roll!”), and to those held by the young (“OMG, classical music sux!”).

We go to concerts for many reasons. For example, a mother might go to her son’s clarinet recital because she is proud of her son, or a Bible Belt resident may attend a Christian rock concert for some spiritual indulgence — or because attendance is equivalent to an indulgence in the pre-Enlightenment sense. Either way.

Joe Morgan was a stellar baseball player. The 10-time All-Star second baseman was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990 after a 19-year career with exemplary numbers — a .271 batting average, an OPS of .819, 268 home runs, two World Series titles, two Most Valuable Player awards and five Gold Glove awards.

Joe Morgan is significantly less stellar in his new endeavor: color commentary for ESPN’s lead baseball broadcasting team. After retiring from the game at the end of the 1984 season, Morgan bumbled his way into the broadcast booth for various networks and subsequently started polluting his play-by-play partner’s commentary with pseudo-insightful asides and painfully obvious statements (“He’s going to want to drive in a run right around now”).

It has recently come to my attention that not everyone makes playlists according to what their middle school physical education teacher played while they did lunges on the blacktop during third period.

While en route to Montreal this weekend, my compatriots in Canadian tomfoolery appeared to be visibly shaken by the sheer volume of Phil Collins tracks on my “in-case-the-iTrip-fails-us” mixes. Phil Collins, Seal, Fine Young Cannibals and Toto rounded out the six-hour journey to Backwardsville, where they speak French instead of English and walk their cats instead of their dogs. (Seriously, I have pictures.)

I am not the eco-friendliest person. I don’t know if me and the environment are friends; I’d say we’re more acquaintances who drunkenly bump into each other at the bars and make plans for lunch — “Like, not this week, because I’m really busy, but maybe next week?” — and then we both forget about it.

But if the biological system I just anthropomorphized as a literary device didn’t like me then, it sure isn’t going to like me after this one. But that’s OK, because while I like the eco-friendly movement — I really do — I just like people more.

Before every socially conscious person gets up in arms, I’m actually only talking about one aspect of our “Go Green!” society: reusable bags.

The other day I passed by Collegetown Video on my walk home from class. Its oddly industrial-chic storefront was covered with all manner of incentives begging customers to come in: membership benefits, a DVD repair service, three movies for the price of two, and so on. As I walked away, I couldn’t help but feel that these were the last desperate cries of a dying business model.

This feeling was reinforced when I got home and found a new Netflix movie in my mailbox. And later that evening when I watched Weeds online. And the next day when I downloaded Pineapple Express in the law library.

It made me wonder: When was the last time I’d actually set foot in a video store?

It’s totally old news by now that Ashton Kutcher began coaching high school football. It’s such old news by now that it’s not even really funny anymore. Shock value made it amusing and, of course, Kutcher’s past as MTV’s original prankster made it semi-unbelievable. But now, a week later, nobody cares.

Actually, it’s not exactly that nobody seems to care, but more that the joke has sizzled out and died. Even the poor guy who just learned today about Ashton’s amazing career move will not laugh, and the corners of his lips will only tease upwards for a split second before he realizes he kinda-sorta missed the bus.

I want you to stop for a second and think about music. What does it mean to you? When do you listen to it? When do you play it? What do you use it for? This might be, if you’re really thinking about it, an enormous list. We use music to celebrate, to mourn, to get together and PAR-TAY, to reflect a huge range of emotions, to calm us down, to pump us up, for the simple beauty of sound.

More and more, I am being asked by individuals why my column, in which I usually tell humorous stories about my life, is in the arts section of The Sun. I respond to these Naïve Nancys, by reminding them that humor indeed is an art form attempted by many yet mastered by few, and that my life is a masterpiece in the works. Some, though, just won’t have it.

For that reason, I decided that I would placate those whom wish I were not in the Arts by donning my aesthete hat this week and using my column to critique graphic design and propaganda. In order to appeal to the broadest base of readers, I will be dissecting Gannett Health Services’ shiteous imagery that presently can be found on their website.