Month: January 2021

yipe

tried home recording THREE SONGS this morning but my accuracy is terrible and my intonation is worse, so rehearsing but no recording…. mebbe later. I have to record a version of Planets are people too – which I am wishing at this point to rewrite from top to bottamus as the scansion sucks golf balls down garden hoses.

I’m also working on The Wind Will Bear Your Name (the song is four fuckING LINES LONG and do you suppose I can find the injection point for the second line? round and round and round I go, it’s absofuckinglutely insane making.) I will get it eventually.

I well recollect the two days of bilious fury trying to get the count right for the chorus of Gelis and Nicholas, over and ber luddy over until I could do that nifty four counts three counts thing that just makes it zing rhythmically BUT I AM BACKWARD in the ways of percussion and just getting into muscle memory was a major undertaking. I feel sorry for Jeff though, if he was trapped in the john upstairs while listening to this sonic torture; there’s basically a hole in the floor between the downstairs guest room/music room and the upstairs john, so every howl, gargle, squawk and arhythmic repetition reverberates upward and dashes itself to death on the tiles.

Just got a call from Katie, where’s my wallet, possibly there. WITHOUT BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO OR OVERHEARING MORE THAN MY SIDE OF THE CONVO Jeff levitated upstairs and greeted me, as I’m talking to Katie about it, at the top of the stairs, wallet in hand. She’ll collect it after work.

I’m also working on The Seananverse. I’m sorry, but once you write the line ooo ooo how could things get worse/never ask that question in the Seananverse you’re obliged to write the rest of the song. I have settled on a key, and that the accompanying instrument is a guitar. More details as events warrant.

9711 words total so far on the best roommate chapter. (Cracks knuckles: hard stuff today. I have some tactical goals and a rough approach – full marks if you know where that quote is from.)

Song a Day – One of these days

Yes, another very short one. I wrote this back in the 1980’s when it was good advice. YOU KNOW WHAT? It’s terrible, simply terrible advice now. School is 10 to 20 times more expensive than it was when I was a kid and without intergenerational wealth it’s hard to get through a professional degree.

One of these days/You will see through the haze/ and then you will roll in clover/Until that time, you stay in school/Until the recession is over.

I will not be buying this software today

open this image in a new screen to embiggen

When you go to the checkout (SchedulePress individual, on sale for $39 now!) and this appears, do you back away slow? or do you back away fast, take a snapshot, and then send it to customer support because you’re a dirty great cow!?

Yes, I went for option 2. (Later, no, I didn’t bother. My classic laziness reasserted itself.)

I guess I AM REALLY PISSED OFF about how within two seconds of my having installed it they were bugging me to review it. SO I DID I gave it a good review, not five stars because I haven’t used it all, but it looked good so…

Now every other day I’m being asked to review the software, and every other day I type in “I already reviewed it,” so

candidly

I think this is the kind of thing I’m allowed to whine about.

And since the iteration I have is free, I need to find another kind of software. brO it was a great suggestion and I was using it, but this is… suboptimal

Song a Day – Tickle Song

I wrote this song with the help of the kids back around 1990. I had read an Ann Landers advice column as a child in which she came out firmly against tickling children without their permission, and I’d noticed that kids love to be tickled but they can be overstimulated. This song allows children to have a metered amount of tickling and then recaptures consent at the end of every verse, or the tickling STOPS. Grownups can obey boundaries! BODILY AUTONOMY.

Also, I played this song at the kids concert at the Polyamory Camping trip Katie and I went to in 2012. Someone with a degree in early childhood education said she thought it was the best song that was played that night because most adults simply never think about children outside their own convenience and management requirements. And yes, the adult entertainment came out afterward, and the kids went to sleep.

 

If I tickle tickle tickle
you will wiggle wiggle wiggle
and you’ll jiggle jiggle jiggle
and you’ll giggle giggle giggle
and then sometime sometime sometime
you will yell yell yell
PLEASE STOP

and I’ll stop, and you’ll say GO (or PLEASE GO)

If I tickle tickle tickle
you will wiggle wiggle wiggle
and you’ll jiggle jiggle jiggle
and you’ll giggle giggle giggle
and then sometime sometime sometime
you will yell yell yell
PLEASE STOP

and I’ll stop, and you’ll say STOP (or PLEASE STOP, or NO MORE)

Settler Saturday #3

Reading or spending?

Reading (put ’em on hold at the library if you’re broke, buy ’em second hand, buy ’em new):

Birdie

In Search of April Raintree

Shadows Cast By Stars

Sanaaq

Son of a Trickster

The Marrow Thieves

Spending:

Check out Indigenous owned galleries and local Indigenous artists or check out the Indigenous beaders on twitter, they’re amazing….!

Cool article.

Moving day

moving day

moving day

if you can’t pay the rent you’ll have to live out in a tent because it’s

moo

ha oo

ha oo-ving day

Katie rented the truck for today and goes to pick it up at 10 am; I’ll go over to Planet Bachelor this forenoon and help out how I can. Jeff and I are so glad we’re not moving right now it’s quite remarkable.

Here is a lovely poem, with some context.

9,189 9443 words

As we come up on the Inauguration I find myself more and more frightened. I tell myself that Trmp and his people are too stupid to manage an insurrection, but it’s really the grift that’s the point, but I’m still afraid of good people dying, and the number of people in Canada who feel the same way as the Trumpites is huge, and this is a long term problem that will not go away.

Image

Cartoon of a donkey and an elephant. In the first frame Donkey’s placard reads UNITY and the Elephant’s F*** YOUR FEELINGS. The second frame the donkey’s placard is ACCOUNTABILITY and the elephant’s now covered in rainbows and butterflies, says UNITY.  NICK ANDERSON

power failures

3 in one 24 hour period. Killed one of Jeff’s router power supplies. Resetting clocks over and over. Power failures feel weird now; like we’re prepping for the big one, like civil unrest is ‘about’.

Funny tale of waking up: I tossed my fluffy hoody into a laundry hamper but when I woke up this morning it looked like a sandworm head coming out of the floor and I almost squawked in terror.

Biscotti in oven for Tom. I cleaned the racks and wiped down the interior of the oven, it’s started to smell oily and smoky. Soon, Time Team (we’re in the last season unhappy sigh) and running the dishwasher and the rest of the day gets underway.

Total word count 9189 on Best Roommate. In this latest bit, Amorfo came to pick up the sproing and scared the living shit of Keegan.

Watched the movie Synchronic. I liked it – there are some visuals that were quite striking and the basic concept is interesting. It is a B movie – very earnest and low key. The final shot has an element of ambiguity, but it also contains friendship, which is kind of the point. Anthony Mackie is quite good.

I blew an incredible kazoo solo this morning. I can only ask an intemperate universe that Jeff had his gd headphones on.

I’d Like To Ask all of the Smart People to Leave

This is the song you sing when the police are about to raid. It is not very cheerful about police. FULL DISCLOSURE I have never been injured by police, but I can name a lot of people who have been. I see you, Jan and Suzanne.

Lyrics:

I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave / why should they stay here for this crap? / I’m going to sing some stuff like you would not believe / You’ve been warned, it’s a trap! / Why would you want to listen to anything silly / like me attempting to sing about an armadillo’s will he? won’t he? / I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave / and when you’re gone we’ll all have fun

We’ll have some more when we are done / the drugs alone weigh half a ton / so if the cops come BETTER

run like hell, run like hell / cops are coming, run like hell

Broke my nose, ripped my clothes / cops are coming, run like hell

Cheap cologne / *BROKE MY PH-O-O-ONE* / cops are coming, run like hell

I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave / and when you’re gone we’ll all have fun….

 

I’ll tread where I please

What’s EXIF data???

Image

The Don’t Tread on Me flag with “Don’t call my employer and say you recognize me in the FBI photos from the Capitol” tagline

I’ll Tread Where I please

 

OH MY FUCKING GOD Susie Bright just followed me on Twitter, excuse me while I fan myself.

REPENTANCE BEFORE UNITY

song of the day HERE THEY COME

This is my zombie song, written on the way home from Conflikt 2011 in the car. Anthony said this was a banger in any genre which I most appreciated, especially since it isn’t true. But yes, this drifts into an approach of commercial viability. This song was inspired by Jeff playing Left 4 Dead for weeks at a time. ‘Reloading….reloading…reloading…’

I was going to post this later in the year but I was thinking about the people defending the Capitol calling the approaching mob zombies so… yeah.