I want you to try something, he said. What, I said. Let’s try playing with exact intonation, he said. He played the notes on the piano, I played them on the cello, correcting them until they were exactly right. All I can say is, huge difference. There is a bad habit I have acquired, and that is accepting approximate intonation when I play. If it sounds approximately like the song I’m supposed to be playing, close enough for government work, as they say.

But now that I have heard the difference, I know this to be false. Even if the intonation is very, very close, too close to really hear that the notes aren’t perfect, you’re playing a different instrument. When the intonation is perfect, the cello resonates differently. The body of the cello, and the other strings, resonate with the overtones in that perfect note.

Or something like that. Sounds great, in any case.

Doesn’t sound like such a cheap cello, I said. Even expensive celli are like that, he said. They don’t sound really brilliant until the intonation is perfect. When it is, then you notice the difference.

John Dean has a new book, and boy is he disgruntled.

• Learn to play the harp

• Put harp out where you think tortoises might be
• Play
• Tortoises will crawl out of their hiding places and come in close to listen
• Catch as many as you need before they can run away

It’s still too cold to put our tortoise outside, so she spends the days in our kitchen, usually hiding under the bench when she isn’t wandering around underfoot pretending to be a hockey puck. When my daughter practices, she (tortoise) crawls out from under the kitchen bench, through the living room towards the library, where aforementioned daughter is practicing. It’s sort of a Hallmark moment every time, if Hallmark were cooler.

How e-voting threatens democracy.

Harris discovered that she could enter the vote database using Microsoft Access — a standard program often bundled with Microsoft Office — and change votes without leaving a trace.

The rising sun was big and orange, divided horizontally into a brighter upper half and a darker lower half that shrank and melted into the brighter upper half as it rose over the hills until, finally, you couldn’t look at it straight-on anymore.

Four magpies flew across the bridge, and perched briefly on a streetlight before flying on. The streetlight flickered off as if the magpies had stolen its light.

At breakfast he said, that was the best five euro I ever spent. That fortune teller reminding me that I have a happy life did me more good than a month of therapy.

How would you know, she said, you’ve never had therapy.

No idea why she’s trying to get me to a therapist. I like my nightmares, insomnia and being depressed now and then. Part of me fears that if that suffering were to end, something really nasty would happen. I have a happy life, I don’t want to jinx it.

I have a happy life. I’m a happy guy.

They say, though, as long as you fear you’re crazy, you’re not crazy. So if you think you don’t need therapy, maybe you do.

Magpies were a Leitmotif in Parcival. The version I read, anyway.

I’m a big Parcival fan. Der reine Tor. The pure fool. Listen, I don’t recommend being a fool, not to anyone. The word does have a negative connotation, after all.

Still: maybe being a fool is not the same thing as being stupid. It’s just not being wise, or conventionally wise.

Maybe it’s stepping outside this big social construct and looking at things honestly. Court jesters were fools, after all. Their job was telling the truth, after all. Nothing funnier than the truth.

After all.

Man, I could use a fu*king cigarette.

It is foolish to look behind the curtain, at the man behind the curtain. It is foolish to look behind the mirror. It is foolish to look at things from the outside. It is foolish to trade your only cow to a stranger for magic beans. OTOH: gold! A giant woman (in one version)! Golden eggs! Singing harp!

It is foolish to make eye contact with someone from beyond the pale. OTOH: I don’t care about money. I am happy.
I am happy.

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