Welstred, the commoner - Lord Sigmus of Realms Berated

We'd like to start off by listing a NEW LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY™.

• Being a fan (of Phish, StoneFloat and The Big Wu in particular, but pretty much of any band...)

• Seeing the complexities and beauties around me (see the post on The Sharpened Eye below)

• Really, really cold weather that bites your face... (the extreme notion being the frosty-beard effect)

• Plants. Yeah, pretty much. I love them and taking care of them.

• EXERTING CREATIVE ENERGIES! (This blog being one of them, my ongoing musical notions one of the multiple others...)

• Wacky conversations. (These can be witty or just plain bizarre... time travel and waffles)

• Seeing family and friends that I haven't seen for a long time. (I'm looking forward to break, folks, let's be frank.)

There are a lot more, maybe I'll share later. Maybe not.


Phish is a group of people I ultimately admire. They're a group of people that have really given me a formation for much of my creativities... they've not only helped to sculpt my inclinations towards good music, but have taken humour towards life and creativity and given it a viable excuse in music. It's delightful, happy stuff with an unquenchable sort of nature to it. There is no real way to put it out. The music really just goes on and on and I'm pretty sure that if the band wanted to they could resume the music at any time they pleased. Bottom line - they make me feel awesome.

It is no wonder, then, that I have researched the history of the band in depth. I know the ins and outs... but most of all, I appreciate the early days of the band when it was mostly just a spinnning shape of notes and rhythms. But today, I got a show that means more to me than any show I got in the past.


The place... the grassy space inbetween Wilkes, Davis, and Wing dormitories at the University of Vermont. The date - May 3rd, 1985... one exactly year before I was born. (My pre-birthday you could say.... I was exactly -1 years old) It's suprising that the date didn't catch my eye at first.... it was the year that stood out, in fact. It stood out as the earliest recorded show in circulation that I have ever seen. (I had always thought that an '87 show at Nectar's in Burlington had been the earliest in common circulation and in MP3 format) The actual show was on an "end-of-the-year BBQ" for the three dorms... almost comical stature for a band that just this year played a festival for over 50,000 people.

As if that wasn't enough, this is also a moment of "Genesis" (with a capital G) for the band and it's sound. Before this point, the band had played with Jeff Holdsworth the rhythm guitarist for early Phish, but hadn't discovered Page McConnell, the mighty keyboardist who would become such an integral part of the band's sound. It is in fact THIS show that Page first plays with the band, sitting in for the latter half of the set. I was struck because I couldn't hear the keys on the beginning of the show and when Trey introduces Page as a suprise I nearly fell off my chair. What could be better for me, the early days buff, than to have in my posession the inagural moments of our beloved Leo?

Yeah. (*insert laughter of ten thousand people here*)

• Pancakes with apples in them?

Write me a scram-jet program please. Send it to my e-mail or send it to my little room suspended in the Madison air or send it to the house that I only live in when I'm not at school but like quite a lot. That would be cool because scram-jets are pretty cool and I have several uses for that sort of program.

I tried to play my acoustic guitar on top of Bascom hill all bundled up in the 0º weather tonight at 11:45ish, but I realized that to grasp the pick and strum without muting the strings was pretty hard, even with my bum gloves on. Soon after that I got frostbite on both of my legs and they snapped off and so I sold them to a butcher who made sausage out of them. I used the money to buy myself the vintage amplifier I've always wanted and paid off the rest of my college. (Hey, legs are a rare commodity, okay?!?)

(*insert monkey and steamship noises here*)

Whistle a little for me. I'll hear you wherever you are. Do it and I'll say, "Wow, now if that isn't some fine whistling. Thank you for doing that." If you can't whistle, don't worry, you can always snap your fingers or something. Humming is good, too. Pretty much anything that you do that makes just a little pleasant noise, I'll absorb it into me and when I've collected enough, I'll secrete it out and collect it in a small flask. I'm pretty sure that the secreted whistlings of friends are some sort of magical species or something.... good for healing things. That would be pretty cool.

Not really related to that topic is my favorite lovely idea for people in a mostly surrealistic sense. I believe that I will begin to simple store objects inside my body and grow them out of my torso whenever I need them. When I want to put them away I simply touch it back to my body and it absorbs back inside of my body. This is convenient because if I need a cup for drinking out of I can simply grow it out of my body and don't have to worry about cleaning it because it is clean when I absorb it back in anyway. Pencil dull? No problem... reconstitute it and then grow it out again... fresh as ever and never a nicer eraser (let me tell you)!

(*black and white lines that stretch off into both the positive x and negative y directions*)

Trey is peeking over my computer. Goodnight Trey.