Sunday, February 21, 2021

Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 27: Line 14 (386)

 "There are several ukulelists in my pit-band," said Miss McAdoo, "tenor, baritone, and soprano."

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I'm sorry but all of this talk about ukuleles has caused me to slit my wrists. I probably need medical attention. I hope neither the paramedics nor the ambulance driver are hipsters who can't stop themselves from taking their ukuleles to work but I am in Portland so there's only like a ten percent chance of that not happening.

"tenor, baritone, and soprano"
Thanks to Pynchon, I now know there are more variants of the ukulele than the standard soprano. It's possible somebody once tried to explain this to me but I simply heard them saying, "Blah blah blah blah blah." Like that Uber driver that one time I took Uber when my friend was in town and they had the ability to use a smart phone to coerce a person needing extra money to survive into being our designated driver and the guy's name was Brent and he had a ukulele in the car and he graciously invited us to play it if we wanted. Or maybe the barista at the local cafe who heard somebody say the word "ukulele" and then was all "Oh, you play too?" and, well, I can't tell you what was said after that because a high-pitched tonal note descended upon my skull for the next five minutes and my eyes went all white and cloudy and I might have gotten a message from a long dead ancestor. Or maybe somebody at my bank once mentioned it seeing as how their front window is covered in stickered words that are supposed to describe living in Portland and I'm pretty sure one of those words is "ukulele."

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