Friday, September 21, 2012

Sleeping Disorders

With sleeping disorders growing to epidemic proportions in our society, I feel that it is my responsibility as an oboist to offer up a unique solution to this problem, born of the countless hours I have put in to keep up my oboe playing. To that end I offer the following proposal as a boon to all insomniacs of every stripe and with every personality disorder.

My proposal is that we immediately establish “The Reed Channel”. The channel will be aired from midnight to 6 am. It will feature close-up shots of hands making oboe reeds. That is all that can be seen on “The Reed Channel”. The motto will be, “All Reeds All the Time”.


Thursday, September 6, 2012

Music Insurance

Dear Ms Pianist,

We have received your claim for the malpractice session dated October 15th of this year. We are sorry for the trouble you are having with the Beethoven Sonata.

As you accurately stated in your letter, our payout to you has resulted in  our raising your premiums by 20% this year. We understand that as a musician you cannot raise your rates for performance or for teaching by 20% in a single year and still remain in business, but don’t you really think that that is your problem, not ours?

We have heard your argument before that raising premiums to pay for claims means that our company takes no risk, and that we get to keep all the money we have collected from you over the years. I assure you we do not keep it. We give it to our CEO’s and other executives.

We reject the argument you made that the premium money we collect  is like the “protection” money paid by small businesses to gangsters in the old gangster movies. Don’t you think that saying that premiums are like “protection” money  collected so that the gangsters will not hurt the business owners is carrying an analogy too far? However, we like a good analogy as well as the next guy.