Preface To King Fill-In-The-Blank: Someone Get Me Away From This Piano

Did you know that in a clavichord the strings are struck by tangents, whereas in a harpsichord they are plucked by quills? I think I did but it was of no consequence so I forgot I knew.

Here's something that might blow your mind: the first piano was built around three hundred years ago. Isn't that incredible? The piano is not a terribly old instrument at all. Not like the flute, versions of which have been found that are forty thousand years old. But then you have to build a piano, & you can carve a flute out of a bone. (They've found those.)

Of course younger still are "keyboards," which are basically synthesizers, which are just a little older than I am. What, do you think, is the youngest musical instrument? & no, you can't count Autotune. Which is younger than most (but not all) of the musicians who use it, but not even out of its teens.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, pianos. I think I admired pianos for a long time before I appreciated them. It might have something to do with Elton John. Not his music so much as the album "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player." I must've seen that album when I was a kid & the title stuck with me. The piano player is immune from the saloon shoot-out! That seemed cool.

Was I afraid of being shot in a saloon? Who knows? I was just a kid, after all.

We're Not Out Of The Woods Yet!

We're not even in the woods! We're on the path that leads up to the woods! & oh no! That was our last exclamation mark. All we have are a bunch of periods, commas, & semicolons. We need to be extra careful as well - we don't have that many ampersands left either. If someone were to say, "We need to watch out for bears & tigers & hunters & lions & antelope and buffalos and giant cakes of brie, " well, there you go. We used all the ampersands up.

Now we have some of these: ¡¡¡ There are a lot of those, but they're useless without exclamation points, and also without words in Spanish. Or Portuguese maybe? Do they use both the ¡ and the ¿ in Portuguese? Oh, yeah. We got plenty of question marks. The trouble is, people like to answer questions. So it's confusing if I use too many question marks. You know? If we write sentences like this with a question mark, it's weird? You see? We won't do that then? After that one, at least.

By the way, if you've read this this far, you may be wondering why we refer to ourselves as "we" at this moment and not use the first person singlular pronoun. Can you imagine, we're out of those too. (Rats, we should've used a question mark there - Can you imagine? We're out of those too.) So even though it sounds like we're (at best) more than one person writing this or (at worst) we think we're royalty, we can't use the first person singular pronoun because we haven't got any.

Hey. We have an idea. Why not use the upside down exclamation point as the first person singular pronoun? Or would that seem pretentious? ¡ don't think so. ¡ just have to forgo capitalization. which is fine. ¡ was running out of capital letters anyway. but not question marks? no, ¡ have plenty of question marks. Also semicolons; but ¡ already said that.

ah, now ¡ think we're in the woods.

Boy! What A Long Night!

Wanna know what I did last night? It was on the WMUL web site yesterday:

Pretty exciting, eh? Also, pretty exhausting. I'm beat.

I did three hours continuing the indiepop a to z madness I started many moons ago. But I did finish the e's! Hooray for me! Hooray for indiepop!

Indiepop doesn't even notice what I'm doing.

Go! Listen! Now! At selfhelpradio.net!

I'll be here if you need zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 25?

Hey! Aren't you supposed to be sick in bed?

Well, I am sick at my computer. It's much the same as if I were in bed, only less comfy.

But if you're still sick tomorrow you won't be able to do Self Help Radio!

Ha ha, no worries there. I'll do it even if I'm deathly ill.

You just want to infect the kids at WMUL!

Infect them? With what?

With your cold!

Oh, I thought you were thinking of something else?

What?

The plague.

What plague?!?

Exactly.

So you'll do the show whether you're well or not?

I'll be fine to do the show tomorrow.

It's the next installment in your indiepop a to z series?

It is.

Why do you keep doing them?

I started it, I might as well try to finish it.

This would be number 24, yes?

No.

No?

No.

But the last time you did one of these "whither indiepop a to z" posts, it was called Whither Indiepop A To Z # 23!

It was. But I also did a Sugar Substitute after that & continued the indiepop a to z. So you can listen to either Indiepop A To Z # 23 or Indiepop A To Z # 24 if you want, but the new one will be 25.

You think you're so smart.

If I was this smart, would I be talking to myself like this?

I suppose not.