The Song for the Week You Were Born

    I am about halfway through my SiriusXM free trial, and I am starting to hear many of the same songs multiple times.  One in particular happens to be the song that was number one on the charts the week I was born.  Fortunately, it is a fairly good and well-received song that I like.  I won't be naming it, as I don't want to date myself.  However, my lack of social skills and general love life, pretty much forces me to date myself.  At least it is with someone who likes my body and not just my mind.  Or so I'm told.  (Sorry.  Bad joke.) Anyway, this has given me an idea I want to try on social media.  Instead of just wishing someone a "Happy Birthday" with emojis, backgrounds, and perhaps a GIF, I want to provide a clip of the song that was number one the week they were born, or perhaps a mix of various songs that were number one that day throughout their lives.  I first though about having songs that mention their birthdays.  However, unless a birthday falls on a holiday or is randomly chosen for a song, not that many dates are mentioned in songs.  Strangely enough, I actually know someone whose birthday falls on a holiday, as well as someone whose birthdate is mentioned in a song.  I actually sent a video of it to that second person last year.  The song was up-tempo and very appropriate for a party.  Now, I think my new idea can work for everyone.  Unfortunately, not everyone has a good song that was number one on their birthday.  For example, I really wanted to do something for a friend of mine, who doesn't have that much of a social media presence.  I looked through my copy of The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 9th edition, by Joel Whitburn. (There really needs to be an update, but there have been too many songs to fit everything into a single volume anymore.) I knew the year, and I was somewhat certain of the day.  The good news- the number one song was by Paul McCartney. (Linda has a co-credit, but it is still his first number one after he left the Beatles.)  The bad news- it's "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey." I admit, the title/s are kind of mediocre.  I caught a video for the songs on YouTube.  Neither one is really uplifting.  I'm not sure how the song/s reached number one.  At least I can still use other songs from other years, if I chose to go this route.  Songs such as "Get Down Tonight," by K. C. & the Sunshine Band, or "Abracadabra," by The Steve Miller Band, or other more recent tunes.  Hey, at least I like these two.  I'm not sure who else would like them, but it is still the thought that counts.

Loops and Loopholes

   I've mentioned a few time on this blog that I have a glitch whenever I play Candy Crush Saga via Facebook, one that I try to exploit as much as I can.  Because if this glitch, which only appears when I play using my Mac's Safari browser, I can gain infinite lives and maintain very long winning streaks.  I also can receive limitless boosters.  I don't know how it happened, but I love it.  I sign into Facebook and then log in to the game.  I play an easy level I already played, usually 6000.  If I win, then the game activates as if it was the first time I played it that day, even if it isn't.  If I win, I continue playing.  If it looks like I will lose, I log out of the game and Facebook.  I then leave the browser and open another browser, which I usually immediately close. Note that I don't have to go into Facebook or the game on the second browser to use this glitch.  I then go back to Safari, Facebook, and Candy Crush where everything starts over.  Now, this glitch has had its downsides.  For one, ongoing challenges wouldn't always activate, as the game would think I was just starting for the day, instead of going forward.  I need to log out of the game after an extra win or two, to make sure a challenge activates.  Sometimes, different challenges would be running on different browsers, at the same time, even when only one level should be going on.  This doesn't always work, but it allows for some unusual playing.  For instance, if a timed bonus starts just before I log out, it can automatically reactivate when I log back in.  Just this past Monday, I used the glitch to stretch a on hour bonus with boosters to over five hours and multiple booster bonuses. I almost had double digit flying saucers this way.  This biggest gain was in the daily log in bonus, which would activate every time I used the glitch.  This allowed me to stockpile thousands of the striped/wrapped duo booster.  Unfortunately, I was stuck on the first day.  That's one of the reasons why I started using a second browser, just so I could get the rest of the cynical bonuses.  That all ended a little over a week ago.  The game changed from a fixed cycle of bonuses to a random selection, with the caveat that the possible bonuses get bigger with each consecutive day.  So, instead of getting booster x on day one and y the next, I could get any among a bunch of boosters, sometimes repeating on consecutive days.  While this isn't technically bad, it is unaffected by the glitch.  I now only get one chance, apparently per browser, per day.  My stockpiles will no longer be growing as fast.  With the glitch, I could use the primary striped/wrapped bonus every first time I open a level and never have my stockpile drop.  Now, I need to be more careful with booster management, at least a little.  I still have a huge stockpile of many of them, after all.  Also, this glitch doesn't always work.  If I make a mistake, a lose my winning streak bonus, currently over 400.  It maxes out after five wins, but it still takes work if I have to start over.  I have a strong feeling that I accidentally did something to cause this glitch, so it probably only works on my computer, and only on this Candy Crush game on not any of the others I also play.  Or even on other similar games, although they have been known to act strangely if I log out before I actually lose a level.

Writing Can Be Hard

 Yesterday, I posted the first part of the first chapter of the follow-up to my novella Dada, titled Pop.  The titles are connected both by being names to call the male parental unit, as well as being art movements that were decades apart and only tangentially related.  Note that both meanings were crucial to the first novella, and they might still be important in the second one.  Originally, the major ideas for Pop were going to be included in the first book as a flash-forward second section.  I later decided to just write an entire second novella instead.  I moved some of the story beats into Dada, but I kept some others to be used in later chapters here.  However, the first scene remained almost exactly the same.  Chris, the main protagonist, and his brother Sam are getting ready for the day in front of a dressing mirror.  I even still have Sam going downtown for an interview, for the same purpose.  What that purpose is won't be revealed until Chapter 3, as well as a big surprise I hinted at throughout the first scene.  I have Chris keeping a few more secrets from Sam as well, but they won't be brought out for a few more chapters.  One secret won't be revealed until near the end of the book.  To prepare for Pop, I had to go back over the first book so that I could remember character names, relationships, and other important facts.  I am embarrassed to admit it, but I had forgotten Sam's name, it had been so long.  I had also forgotten that I had named Chris's high school friends similar to slang terms for the male anatomy.  Intentionally.  Of course, I had the teenage Sam point that out to Chris immediately.  I never got to have Chris acknowledge the fact though.  He really should have realized that his closest friends had nicknames so close to those terms, but they were never used. (The names in question are Jim, Will, Rick, and Pete.  You can guess what the slang terms are.) At least I finally updated the first two chapters to their second drafts, the ones I used for my first UK application.  I remember correcting a sentence while going over the book to begin writing this one.  I hope it wasn't in the example, or that might be a reason why I wasn't accepted.  Anyway, I don't want to give any spoilers away, but I can mention a few more things.  First, the novella starts out in New York, but most of it will take place in Lexington, Kentucky, the opposite of Dada.  Second, Chris will be reunited with his old friends, although he already has met with them a few times between the two books.  Third, the reason why the friends drifted apart involves secrets that they had been keeping from each other, and not just Chris's smugness.  I hate to admit it, since he is very loosely based on me,  but Chris is kind of a tool.  Finally, I finally bring Chris's mother into the picture.  While she is in the first book, she is only seen while she is on the phone with Chris or mentioned in flashbacks.  How to two react is an important scene, although I may wind up downplaying it, since I have bigger plans for the two in the third book.  I have yet come up with a title for that one yet.  There really isn't another art movement that can also be used as a term for "father" that I can think of.  Hopefully, I can come up with one when I finish with Pop, which could be sometime late next year.  One part of one chapter a week equates to about forty to fifty weeks, depending upon my other workload.  It's a start.

Miscellany Inaction

I just finished my summer class a few days ago.  It will be a few more days before I receive my grade for the class.  I just hope it is good enough to go on.  It was not the best idea to take a monthlong class.  Cramming four months of work in just four weeks was difficult for me.  If my grade is good enough, I will be taking two more classes this fall.  One of the classes will be in advanced poetry writing.  I have already taken the class for fiction.  Strangely enough, I feel that my best poems are better than my fiction, but I still prefer the latter over the former.  Which brings me to my next subject. While I haven't mentioned it for a few months, I do have more than one blog. Two in fact, but I'm going to focus on just one of them today.  The T. H Weingarten Miscellany.  I started it as a way to collect enough material for graduate school submissions.  So far, it hasn't worked to well.  There is a mix of material there.  The majority of the blog is dedicated to the first draft of a novel/novella called Dada. The first part of the first chapter can be found here.  I have recently updated both parts of the first chapter to reflect how the passages looked when I submitted them for my application.  I will be doing the same for Chapter 2 in the next few days.  I bring this up because Dada was always supposed to be the first part of a trilogy.  Well, I have decided to start the second book.  Starting next Tuesday, or so, I will start posting chapter parts for the follow-up, Pop.  For those who hadn't read it yet, Dada is about Chris, a twenty-something man in a job he hates.  Out of the blue, he becomes the guardian for he younger half-brother, who is rapidly going through puberty.  On a road trip back to his father's house, the two have a few adventures.  The story culminates at their father's mansion (his family was really rich back in the day) where Chris finds out about a number of family secrets in quick succession, including what happened to his father.  Pop takes up Chris' story four years later.  Both Chris and his brother have undergone a few changes in that time.  I'm thinking that the first scene will show just how many changes have occurred, and they will blow your mind.  I don't want to give to much away yet, but I will say that the first few chapters will take place in New York, but the action will move back to Lexington about halfway through.  I am planning on having about as many twists as Dada did, if not more, and that's saying something.  Maybe nothing as major as Chris' father's art movie, but close.  I still haven't included the full text of that chapter yet, but it is available for messaging if anyone is curious.  I warn you though, it is risqué.  Even the synopsis I did post got a tad too close for comfort for public viewing.  Here's to a few more months of writing my second book.