Hi! My name is Anisa. The first thing I would like to say is the purpose of writing this book. My friend Kyra and I are very good at deviating from the cultural norm, which, you may have noticed, is also the title of this book. Deviating from the cultural norm, also known as subverting the dominant paradigm, is simply not doing what everyone else does. For instance, Kyra and I go around school singing songs from The Phantom of the Opera. We are also lunch nomads. There is really no good reason to deviate from the cultural norm, we just find it fun. Of course, we do lots of things that don't deviate from the cultural norm. For instance, we eat two or three times a day. We usually sleep for about eight hours each night. We type things on computers. We send emails. We read books, see movies, watch TV, play musical instruments, own pets, bug annoying people, go to school approximately five times a week, and on the outside we look like normal people. But to those who know us better, we are a definite deviation from the cultural norm.
I, personally, am an admirer and player of the cello, and an ardent cello chauvinist. As you can see, I dedicated this book partly to cello chauvinism and partly to Béla. Anyone who is interested in cello chauvinism should by the CD Fat Notes by Rodney Farrar. Cellos are the best instrument in every way except that they do not sound the best if you blow into them and that's all there is to say about it. People who come to your house see your cello sitting out (because at home you never put your cello in its case) and they always say "That's a cello, isn't it? Who plays the cello?" Then you say "I play the cello," with a lot of pride. Then they say "Oh, the cello, the cello. Oh, I always loved the cello. You are so lucky to play the cello." Even people who have no idea what a cello is always say that. And they don't say that for any other instrument except sometimes, possibly, the harp, sometimes. And what can we say? Harps are so deprived. They can only pluck.
But the cello is the ideal instrument. All cellists by nature are lazy. All cellists, according to Rodney Farrar, have spent at least one life in Yendor, the planet where everyone plays the cello that follows our orbit but is always on the other side of the sun and that's why we can't see it. Playing the cello is easy. In fact, I have heard it said that when you are playing the cello, if it is hard, it is wrong. This goes along with being lazy.
So the little aliens decided that if they didn't get to see Phantom of the Opera soon they would have to get very angry. So they flew their spaceship to Her Majesty's Theatre and went in and scared Christine more than Erik did except that she didn't see them because they were in the audience and the lights were arranged so that she couldn't see them. So Christine sang and Erik sang and Raoul (evil evil) sang and Christine began wondering if there would be time enough after the performance to balance her checkbook and Erik began wondering if he should buy life insurance and Raoul was such a good actor that he "became his part" as they say so well that he couldn't think and sing at the same time and Meg was behind the stage and very bored and was trying to remember what that little thing in the back of your throat is called (by the way, it is called a uvula, but that isn't the point) and Anisa was writing the book and wondered why some people like to write run-on sentences and now to Kyra.