I read Moby Dick. It was way too long. So I decided to list all the chapters that I found necessary to the plot and leave out all the rest. Chapters inside parenthesis were those I liked but did not think absolutely necessary to the plot. They can be read or not read at your own discretion. And now for your reading pleasure, a list of all the important chapters:

II, III, IV, (V), X. XII, (XIII), XV, XVI, (XVII), XVIII, XIX, XXI, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, (XXXII), XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLI, XLIII, (XLIV), XLVII, XLVIII, XLIX, (LI), LII, LIII, (LV), (LVI), (LVII), LVIII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, LXIV, LXVI, LXVII, LXVIII, LXX, LXXI, LXXII, LXXIII, LXXVII, LXXVIII, LXXXI, LXXXIV, LXXXV, LXXXVII, LXXXIX, XCI, XCII, XCIII, (XCVI), (XCVII), XCIX, C, CVI, CVIII, CIX, CX, CXIII, CXV, CXVI, CXVII, CXVIII, CXIX, (CXX), (CXXI), (CXXII), CXXIII, CXXIV, CXXV, CXXVI, CXXVII, CXXVIII, CXXIX, CXXX, CXXXI, CXXXII, CXXXIII, CXXXIV, CXXXV, epilogue

Of a possible 135 chapters this list discards 45, or one third of them. Happy reading!

Short post this time. I was looking at my list from earlier- you know, the one of things I’d like to accomplish- and remembered I’ve demolished several entries already. Here is the updated version:

To do:
Have ice cream from a Friendlies window in winter
Enter a tattoo parlor
Create a remix
*new* Be shut in a car trunk for several seconds

Done!
Be in a graveyard at midnight (really freaked myself out too)
Eat escargo (tasty!)

It only gets more fun from here! 2010, I will so own you!

So I have a tiny baby niece. She is not just tiny, but teensy weensy. She was born prematurely and needs alot of help including a ventilator. So far she’s done nothing but grow and get stronger, so we are all really happy about that. We have a funny story about her from maybe a month ago. Apparently she decided she’d had enough of her breathing tube and went ahead and pulled it out. It’s not like the thing wasn’t taped in place. And her arms are so super tiny, it’s amazing how strong she had to be to get ahold of the tube and get it out. Well this made everyone a little nervous, however she was actually breathing on her own. Eventually the tube was put back in because she needed the assistance. She probably just wanted to prove herself to all of us. Go baby!

Another of my nieces is 1 and 1/2 years old. We tried to get her to say Uncle Dan, but it was too hard. Then she figured out that she could say, “Uncle.” So that’s the story of how we made my niece say uncle.

Dan got the best fun new game on his iphone. It a supposed to take dictation. It doesn’t work for me. Here are some famous speeches I spoke, as interpreted by the phone. I think they read like beat poems:

Send Roman and let me. Are you crazy here? But the Berry Farm free animal man,
LOL all I have on.
(from Julius Caesar commemoration speech)

Jimmy or not to be, that is the question. Is no learning. Mind things and I think.
It’s working or take find oppose the mall.
Something- and I’m running them all together as a good.
(from Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ speech)

What I midnight here in my life? Hundred-week and we are you.
Remaining quaint and curious, mind,
I forgot to call her and I’m not a nearly-nothing. Send me there.
Can you think I just gently nothing? Pressing in my chamber door.
(from Poe’s The Raven)

R. where find out are tonight? At father in a few.
Tiny or fellow- love you. I love Milinovich.
(from Juliet’s ‘Romeo, Romeo’ speech)

Xbox, live like you’re younger.
When you break into east -and drink at the right. 67 Killian.
Business with any Taylor,
beginning and ending.
(from Romeo’s ‘But soft what light’ speech)

I’ve been to another Ben Folds concert, this time in Northampton. Two friends and Dan and I all went. Ben was solo this time. We all agreed it was awesome and my one friend even got to scream the f word with the audience during Rockin’ the Suburbs. I couldn’t find the setlist online anywhere so here it is as far as I can remember, the order may be a little off but the songs should be right.

Free Coffee (real album)
Sentimental Guy
Alice Childress
Effington
Jesusland
All U Can Eat (they give no f)
Bastard
Landed
Gone
Kate
Still Fighting It
Gracie
Annie Waits
Zak and Sara
*Picture Window (Hope is a Bastard)
*Belinda
*Levi Johnson’s Blues
You Don’t Know Me featuring Kate Heidke-Miller
Dr Yang (real album)
B*****s Ain’t S**t (acapella!)
The Luckiest
Such great Heights
Army
Not the Same
Narcolepsy
Rockin the Suburbs (encore)

Points of interest:
In the first third of the set I thought Ben was doing a particularly fine job with the piano (you know it was obviously very technically difficult and jazzy and he was playing it quite fast) and no one was clapping or cheering when it really deserved it. So I gave a high pitched shout like “Woo!” and just after I did this Ben smiled and gave a little nod.

Ben gave us 4 parts for the song Bastard, which we then messed up. That is, everyone else did. I was perfect. It was fairly hard, does he think this is an audience of music majors?

Alot of people sang the backup vocals to Kate. That was really fun especially because Ben started tilting the mike at us like, “Your turn, audience.”

Finally I was not the only one to clap during Zak and Sara. Several of us in the front clapped and Ben definitely heard us. The best part was right before Ben leaned over a little and raised his eyebrows as if questioning whether we would clap at the appropriate time.

The three new songs are those which I marked with a star. Ben called them the “Nick Trilogy” because they were written by a real guy named Nick who also has a fictional persona named Nick which Ben explained to us (not very well).

My Dan accurately predicted that Ben would utilize the awesome vocal talent of his opener band for the female part in You Don’t Know Me.

During Dr Yang, Ben broke the piano and called for someone in his crew to come onstage and try to fix it. While they were doing so the audience began calling various requests to Ben. He finally decided to grace us with a song acapella while we waited, it is the one next on my list. While it is absolutely riddled with curses, the melody is beautiful and the audience was more than happy to sing along on cue. At one point Ben improv’ed the line “I undid that s**t (pointing at the piano), I’m heartbroke.” When he finally got the piano back he said to it, “Ok Mr Baldwin. It’s just you and me.”

The rest of the songs were performed as expected, with audience inclusion in Army and Not The Same. I am never able to recognize Rockin the Suburbs and Such Great Heights right away when I hear them live, but Dan always is. At the end of Army this time Ben sang the lyric, “I thought about a lovely Steinway.”

Overall this was the best Ben Folds concert I’ve been to. I attribute it to the good seats and non-collegey atmosphere. That’s not to say Ben didn’t rock, because he did. But the good seats definitely make a difference.

I’ve been to another Ben Folds concert, this time in Northampton. Two friends and Dan and I all went. Ben was solo this time. We all agreed it was awesome and my one friend even got to scream the f word with the audience during Rockin’ the Suburbs. I couldn’t find the setlist online anywhere so here it is as far as I can remember, the order may be a little off but the songs should be right.

Free Coffee (real album)
Sentimental Guy
Alice Childress
Effington
Jesusland
All U Can Eat (they give no f)
Bastard
Landed
Gone
Kate
Still Fighting It
Gracie
Annie Waits
Zak and Sara
*Picture Window (Hope is a Bastard)
*Belinda
*Levi Johnson’s Blues
You Don’t Know Me featuring Kate Heidke-Miller
Dr Yang (real album)
B*****s Ain’t S**t (acapella!)
The Luckiest
Such great Heights
Army
Not the Same
Narcolepsy
Rockin the Suburbs (encore)

Points of interest:
In the first third of the set I thought Ben was doing a particularly fine job with the piano (you know it was obviously very technically difficult and jazzy and he was playing it quite fast) and no one was clapping or cheering when it really deserved it. So I gave a high pitched shout like “Woo!” and just after I did this Ben smiled and gave a little nod.

Ben gave us 4 parts for the song Bastard, which we then messed up. That is, everyone else did. I was perfect. It was fairly hard, does he think this is an audience of music majors?

Alot of people sang the backup vocals to Kate. That was really fun especially because Ben started tilting the mike at us like, “Your turn, audience.”

Finally I was not the only one to clap during Zak and Sara. Several of us in the front clapped and Ben definitely heard us. The best part was right before Ben leaned over a little and raised his eyebrows as if questioning whether we would clap at the appropriate time.

The three new songs are those which I marked with a star. Ben called them the “Nick Trilogy” because they were written by a real guy named Nick who also has a fictional persona named Nick which Ben explained to us (not very well).

My Dan accurately predicted that Ben would utilize the awesome vocal talent of his opener band for the female part in You Don’t Know Me.

During Dr Yang, Ben broke the piano and called for someone in his crew to come onstage and try to fix it. While they were doing so the audience began calling various requests to Ben. He finally decided to grace us with a song acapella while we waited, it is the one next on my list. While it is absolutely riddled with curses, the melody is beautiful and the audience was more than happy to sing along on cue. At one point Ben improv’ed the line “I undid that s**t (pointing at the piano), I’m heartbroke.” When he finally got the piano back he said to it, “Ok Mr Baldwin. It’s just you and me.”

The rest of the songs were performed as expected, with audience inclusion in Army and Not The Same. I am never able to recognize Rockin the Suburbs and Such Great Heights right away when I hear them live, but Dan always is. At the end of Army this time Ben sang the lyric, “I thought about a lovely Steinway.”

Overall this was the best Ben Folds concert I’ve been to. I attribute it to the good seats and non-collegey atmosphere. That’s not to say Ben didn’t rock, because he did. But the good seats definitely make a difference.

I was noticing the other day that some songs I like are done by talking with the music rather than by singing. In the songs I am listening to the talking is not the entire song but it takes the place of singing in parts. My favorites so far are:
Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy by Big and Rich – now this one I didn’t hear the talking right away. The one guy is constantly singing the lyrics while the other mostly speaks the lyrics, but he does it in such a melodic way, like he’s a newscaster- (listen to the news sometime and notice this, I’ll get to it more in a minute) anyway where was I? Oh yeah so Big and Rich talk and sing simultaneously and it just sounds really good. I should look into more of their music. That talking thing is gold.
Convoy by C W McCall and Black Bear Road C W McCall – I like the entire album actually. My parent have it at their house so don’t ask me the name. This type of talking is more like he is telling a story that there just happens to be music along to which for some reason works. Maybe it’s the deep voice again. Those get me everytime. Vocal stuff from a guy is always impressive.
Pete Seeger story songs – these are really off the edge of what you’d call straight songs. He really is telling a story and music happens to be included. I think of them as stories rather than songs (maybe in a addition to songs?) and I only included them because I think Seeger is cool and because I like to have three examples for something.

So in an earlier post I said I wasn’t going to explain the T-Pain sound but lucky for you I lied. Here go the explanation. When this rapper guy T-Pain sings, he uses a mechanism called autocorrect. It adjusts the pitch of your voice in real time to what it assumes you meant to sing. Usually this means that a half a second after you hit any pitch, it is slid up slightly to be exactly in tune with whatever key the autocorrect has chosen for you. It sounds like your voice is cracking or echoing back a little different, and it also sounds electronic-y like it belongs in a pop or rap song. (hey it does!) Now you can get it as an app on the iphone and toy with it for yourself. Dan did just this (ask him about it he’s very excited) and at the same time both of us learned all about autocorrect. We discovered that it doesn’t always work, you have to sing a certain way. Also the way newscasters talk – with a bit of a pitch to their voice – is good for autocorrecting. In fact there are a number of videos of songs created by autocorrecting and sampling the news. They sound just like pop songs.

One for the road!
I wrote the word Chocolate in big letters on the dry erase board. I really want to eat chocolate but right now I am back to my conservative diet (trying to get gastroparesis under control) and chocolate is not on the list. So I wrote it on the board because I’m thinking about it and seeing it there makes me happy. Today the town shut off our water for 6 hours. We were warned in advance and I knew we would need to shower the night before. So on the dry erase board I wrote ‘Shower at night’ and seeing how I wanted to leave the word Chocolate, I wrote ‘Shower at night’ underneath. (following so far?) I called to remind Dan to take a shower at night because of the water shut down and his comment was, “Oh that’s what you meant! I thought it was time for chocolate showers today.” Ha ha. Dan, I love you.

Ok, Dan and I are borrowing Dr Quinn Medicine Woman from netflix and I’m seeing all the episodes again. I always liked the show a lot- the characters are engaging, they often touch on issues parallel to current issues. I am writing down some bests and worsts of the show.

Funniest line so far:
Jake- No whores in the pageant.
Horace- Myra is my fiance and I’d appreciate if you’d act accordingly.
Loren- Alright, only *engaged* whores in the pageant.

Worst character change of actor:
Anyone who knows the show can guess I mean Colleen. If you do an episode about her being self conscious about her large breasts, don’t get a new actor who has tiny ones. And her hair was a different color too.

Favorite Character:
I think it might be Dorothy. When I was little it was Dr Quinn and she’s pretty good too. But she isn’t as wise as Dorothy about life. And Dorothy seems to say more stunningly accurate things with a remark that just takes your breath away. Everyone listens to Dorothy.

Favorite Couple:
OK I know it takes them years to get together and they are always back and forth and together and apart and Sully almost dies all the time- but I think he and Dr Quinn are made for each other.

That reminds me of:
another favorite netflix rerun rental, Star Trek NexGen. Troi and Riker are always on again off again but in the end they wind up together- which I think is totally bogus. Troi always struck me as being in it for the long haul with who she gave her heart to, but Riker is too much the ladies man to settle down. Their personalities don’t work. Troi had better chemistry with Worf and they could have ended up together if movie writers needed to put her with another main character. Give Riker to that chick with the bumpy nose- they seemed to get along well in that memory loss episode. That or he could remain the eternal bachelor. Either one works for me.

And by the way
Narcolepsy is a Ben Folds song I used to hate. Until I heard the WASO version. WASO is the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. It’s like I always say- A symphony orchestra can fix anything…except for maybe, Humpty Dumpty.

This is a story about a friend of mine and the word ‘grin’. We were watching a clip from the electric company in which a man sang a song about grinning. When you are happy, grin! When you feel good, grin! Along those lines. So my friend says, “Why do they always make grin about being happy. It can mean you’re sad too.”
I look at him quizzically and say, “No it can’t. What are you talking about?”
He says, “Sometimes it means you made a frown, right?”
I say, “Uh no a grin is a smile.”
“Or it can be a frown,” he says.
“No,” I say, “Look it up.”
He does and I’m right. I ask, “What made you think it meant you were sad?”
He says, “I don’t know. I just thought it did.”
I say, “You went your whole life until now thinking grin meant happy or sad?”
He says, “Shut up.”

Guts were in my yard. Also fur like from a squirrel. What eats squirrels that was in my yard? Should I be scared?

And speaking of eating wild animals,
A weird thing has happened to me twice now. I saw a wild animal 50 yards away and thought, “Ooh, I need to eat that.” The first time it happened in my yard. A turkey was ambling along near the woods and I had this strong urge to find a gun or bow and arrow to shoot it for supper. Second time was as I was driving I caught sight of a deer in the grass median. This time I thought, “Oh I would so love to taste that.” Dan asked me if I felt the same way about cows and pigs at the farm but I really don’t. I think part of it is the thrill of the chase/ me conquering something wild. Anyway I think it also tells me that I could never be a vegetarian. Meat is really good. And carrots are too easy to track.

where my old computer desk is. In case I ask you. It is in the basement in pieces under one of the two workbenches. Thanks ever so.
-Tracey