Category: Filk

Monday linky-lous

This is wonderful– a list of unlikely meetings.

Take your granny to the mall today. Remember, when it gets hot, you can prevent deaths by banging on the doors of your elderly neighbours and making sure they stay hydrated and cool.

Nancy the sheepherding …… chihuahua?

In keeping with the “Fuck, it’s hot” theme, today is the anniversary of the first day napalm was used on human beings.

This speech aligns well with my thinking about filk.

Jeff and I had a conversation about this the other day and thankfully he pulled the quote for me.

YAY!!!!! Google applies Boots of Buttkicking to Malware’s ass.

Jeff and I watched Dawkins on Darwin. Man, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.  I’m still having a hard time understanding exactly how people can tie themselves in the cognitive knots required to deny evolution.

Impossibilium ain’t just a song

Canadian scientists plus international cooperation FOR THE WIN.

Hmph. Listening to “The Future’s so Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” on a day like today on the way in…. wrongness, somehowerother.

Lovely time re chicken dinner at the ‘Villeans last night and then singing filk and other stuff. I HEART HEART HEART that 12 string of Tom’s and Peggy expressed surprise that I can actually play a 12 string now.  Didn’t mention that my left fumb now feels crabby.

Peter A at work has come back from another vacay with his lady wife, and once again they have brought me a tshirt, this time a flaming dragon from Tintagel.  This word will set off a long happy sigh in my parental units….

Mike got a phone interview.  He has passed the first gate… will he slay the dragon?

I KNOW TWO PEOPLE IN PERSON who have been omnominated for Hugos.  Ay!

In The Correction news…. Aughh.

Pancakes are cooked….

Now that I have a lovely feeling of accomplishment (which should have a side of emptying the dishwasher, but all things in time), a little bloggin’.

Adorable stop motion animation.

No link YET but there’s a hunt on the internet right now for the Imperial March played on a banjo.  Lots of Star Wars THEMES on banjo, but no Imperial March.

HERE THEY COME2 The final version of this zombie tune is a long long way away and candidly the vocals are not my best, but it’s fun to play with, and this excerpt is mercifully brief.

Margot and Eddie are running up and down

I showed them the full moon out the back door and they’ve been skittish ever since.

Yes, I’m up.  I was up and done making Finn pancakes at 5 am this morning.

I have cream for my coffee so the correction hasn’t happened yet.  I’m about to do a leedle bit of recording.  I really want the zombie tune done.

The Griffon song is coming along nicely

It’s a backstory song.  Griffons go back to pre-Hellenic times, but where did they come from?  Well, since it’s a lion on the ass end and an eagle on the front end (with tufty lion ears) , but has four feet (claws front, paws back) obviously there’s some seeeerious miscegenation goin’ on.  A lion and an eagle did the wild thang, but why?  How?  and what happened to the baby?  And what did the parents say?  (Hint.  Lions okay with it “My family can never be too big!”  “Huh, never figured I’d have flying grandbabies!  Kewl!”  Eagles, not so much, which considering teen pregnancy eagle mom popped one bigass egg, is no surprise.  “It looks like prey.  Gonna eat it.”  “Throw it out of the nest and let the carrion crows have it!”  “Mom! Dad!  As soon as she’s fledged the lions will take her in, so just leave her alone!”) 

Also, and I have no idea WHY, but I’m working on yet another tune about Lady Godiva.

I have now sung the zombie song for Jeff, Keith, Paul and Tanya

and Tanya’s comment was RECORD IT AND SEND IT TO BATTERY.  So I wills, I wills.

Next up.  Griffons (with bonus Hippogriff reference).

After that, 10 more in a dozen song song cycle of mythical, undead, fictional and legendary creatures.

Including:

Fairies

Vampires

Werewolves

The Phoenix

Pegasus (which the filk awards are named after, so I’d best be careful) with bonus Bucephalus and unicorn references

The children of Loki (with bonus visit from the west coast ogress from First Nations Legends)

Mermaids (or are they?)

Argus (the dog who waited for Odysseus and died upon his return to Ithaca)

Graboids

and either the Kraken or the Cadborosaurus.  I’m thinking Caddy.

Whadda weekend

Saturday was running around and working on music and then at four pm Paul and I went off to join Tom and Peggy and Cindy at the housefilk at the home of Michael and Susan, who PUT ON A FEAST OF HOBBIT PROPORTIONS and hospitality likewise, and greeted our every song with warm demonstrations of happiness that we would come into their (unbelievable, amazing, fabulous) home and play LIVE MUSIC with a BASS and MANDOLIN and duelling 12 strings.  Like that.  We sang and played for six hours and then talked politics and honestly, if I didn’t have to make soup the next day for church (which didn’t work, but fortunately the loaves and the fishes did their things) I wouldn’t have wanted to leave.  SO many beautiful books on the walls, books to the ceiling, books up the stairs. Ah, me.  Felt like home, anyway.

Then Sunday where we went to Kobatfalva in our minds, which is our partner church in Romania.  They are amused to know that we are rich and have no church, and they are poor (I mean subsistence farmer poor) and have a bell tower on THEIR church (which we helped pay for, mind you).  Then a 3 hour congregational meeting which I won’t talk about because I’m still processing. I also made biscotti and brought half to church and half to work.  Ministry, folks, it’s all about ministry, and ministry without food is no ministry at all.  Primates is primates.

Figured out how I’m going to frame the 13th February homily.  Bwa ha ha is all I will say.   

Then I cleaned up the kitchen so Jeff won’t go BLEAUGH when he gets home from Victoria today, and went to work.  Not a restful weekend, but a good one, and my back is KILLING me with those stupid chairs at church.  Grr.

Bloody hell, not another song!?

Blow you winter winds
blow where you please
hang your icy bunting
on the barren trees
decorate the windows
with capricious lace
send your clouds scudding
across the moon’s pale face

Dandelions dreaming
underneath their banks of snow
Soon they will be blooming
and soon enough the seeds will blow

Blow you winter winds
gales and chills
howl around the hollows
echo through the hills
Bringing snow and fog
bringing ice and rain
A moment of the sun
then all is dark again.

Dandelions dreaming
underneath their banks of snow
Soon they will be blooming
and soon enough the seeds will blow

Blow you winter winds
blow where you will
Now my heart feels
oh so small and still
Soon we’ll close the door
on your bleak refrain
For we will rejoice
and we will sing again

Dandelions dreaming
underneath their banks of snow
Soon they will be blooming
and soon enough the seeds will blow

Blow you winter winds
mark my skin
Soon I will be warm
with my loves and kin
Two foot and four foot
All will be within
There’s a roaring fire
at the Dandelion Inn

Dandelions dreaming
underneath their banks of snow
Soon they will be blooming
and soon enough the seeds will blow

Let the flame wars begin Me Vs. Dr. Who

It’s a series
not a season
they are British
That’s the reason
For weird stuff that they do
Among which, Dr. Who

In and out of fandoms
like a rent boy and his drawers
Dodged some feuds but man was I
collateral in wars
Dr Who perplexes me and
then he flat out bores
I’m nikulturnyi it’s true
I just don’t know what to do
I do not get, I don’t get Dr. Who

Longest running
Eleven Time Lords
Behind the sofa
scaring child hordes
I know it’s a meme
But it just makes me scream

Production values equalling
Space 1999
Forty years just makes it old
it doesn’t make it fine
Although Tom Baker in his scarf
Upon him I could dine
I’m nikulturnyi it’s true
I just don’t know what to do
I do not get, I don’t get Dr. Who

Actors begging
For a guest spot
This police box
is not a rest spot
Nor a place to bill and coo
With the mighty Dr. Who

The Beeb says it’s a superbrand
And trademarked that blue box
It runs in fifty countries
Every minute on the clock
Well keep your sonic screwdriver
the whole thing is a crock
I’m nikulturnyi it’s true
I just don’t know what to do
I do not get, I don’t get Dr. Who

John gets a parting shot

From his close friend and landpeer, the incomparable Juliana, comes an email I simply must share in its entirety:

Allegra, as an anarchist I thought you would appreciate this.   In 2007, John took to me a movie to celebrate my birthday.  It was at University of Victoria, where he had a film membership.  He carefully parked his scooter on the sidewalk next to the bicycles and we attended a wonderful film about the life of Edith Piaf.  When we came back out, it was to find a parking ticket, & he was NOT amused.  Being John he had no intention to pay the ticket and ignored a number of friendly reminders from the University.

Forward to this morning when “he” received a letter from the University telling him that they had not been chasing him for the past 1.5 years because of a court dispute regarding the right for UBC to issue citations but that he still owed the money and they now wanted it.  Apparently after appeal and counter appeal, UVIC is with it’s rights to cite violators so…. they were back at it.

I phoned, asked for Accounts Receivable and started the conversation with  “Account # blah blah”  …   I explained that John would not be paying the bill because he was dead.  I controlled the urge to tell her he wouldn’t have paid it if he was alive either.  Period of Silence, then a pause for review and she came back on the line to tell me his account had been deleted from the system.

I know John is happy to know he won.  A small victory and I’d much rather pay the $20 and have him back but… he won.

hugs and love

Juliana