Category: Filk

The Pirate’s to do List

It’s talk like a Pirate Day!

 

THE PIRATE’S TO DO LIST (For Talk Like A Pirate Day, Sept 19)

I’ve heard that there’s an island full of sugar cane for rum
My reputation goes before But I have never come
I have heard that there is a market fair where gold is flowing free-ee
And it’s on my list of things to do
and I’ll get there eventually
I will get there
I will get there
I will get there eventually
It’s on my list of things to do
& I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve heard that there’s a convent school of lasses of fourteen
The men speak of it oftentimes but I have never been
I have heard their beauty dismays the sun
& jealous is the queen
And it’s on my list
of things to do
etc

I’ve heard there’s a ferocious beast
that lurks among the reefs
whose tears (if you can make it cry)
will cure all ills and griefs
I have told the crew that it’s just not true
but they stick to their beliefs
and they stuck it on my to do list
and I’ll get there eventually etc

I’ve heard that there’s a hidden spring
A bubbling font of youth
The men go on like anything
as if it is the truth
I tell them please don’t buy maps and keys
from a fortuneteller’s booth
They can swim there for all I care
And they’ll get there eventually
they will get there they will get there
they will get there eventually
They can swim there for all I care
And they’ll get there eventually

Yay, writing again!

The folks haven’t contacted me about the job I applied for – they wanted my availability for an interview and I guess are too busy to get back to me.  This seems to happen a lot. I hold my breath hoping for good news and don’t get any, and then all of a sudden I realize that I’m supposed to be writing.  Anyway, This Bit is working out well.

King Canute, your agent’s on the other line.

Filking tonight and giving Keith a ride to the ferry in the morning.  Then churchy stuff in the afternoon (another pointless workshop called Focusing on What’s Important, but hey, there will be food), and Water Ceremony on Sunday.  Apparently some money has fallen out of the sky for growth.  I think we should buy a yurt, decorate it loudly, and have church in a different location for a year to go out among the people.  Church in a yurt.  Beautiful. I think I wanna yurt.

Back to Michel and his bad stupid foolish holy crap day (writing).

Why I don’t date, part 49/b.

Guy responds to me liking his profile.  He comes clean about his weight.  I know that it’s a good thing he’s done this and praise his honesty.  I ask him how his feet are and never hear from him again.  All I wanted to do was find out if he can walk half a kilometre on level ground unassisted, and I specifically said I don’t do hills.  I guess that was pushing too hard.

Where’s my flying car

Bill and Brenda Sutton ask the question….

Tre and Battery came over yesterday and we laughed and talked and drank beer and broke out the pinball machines for the little guy. Very pleasant afternoon, and Jeff and I love that they never call first. We’re either here and happy to see them or away and sad we missed them. It’s like slipping back into another era, when it’s good that friends drop by.

In about twenty minutes we’re going to jump in the car and guh help us PAY for a movie. But 10 am on a Sunday sounds like the perfect way to avoid the crowds; Guardians of the Galaxy is supposed to finally be ‘the summer hit’. The fan reviews have been AWESOME. We shall see.

I am working on the novel still… it’s still fun after all.

Keith called yesterday (how good to hear his voice) to basically just check in. Happy sigh. If it wasn’t so oppressively sticky and hot, I’d say my life was a big old dream.

more filking

A lovely time filking yestreen at Tom and Peggy’s, Cindy also in attendance. I got to sing soprano for most of the evening, which is fine if I’m not singing loud.

I hope everybody has a happy pride day! or not.

I light a candle for pOp, and he knows why. You have a visit from Jeff to look forward to, and once he’s back I’ll come out and see you.

Got a call back from an employer NOT A FRICKIN AGENCY. I have to wait another week.

Saw, and loved, Edge of Tomorrow (stupid name, good movie though; it’s Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day.)

Jeff and I have been permanently ruined by A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Mr. Nosepuller told us to pay attention to the recreation of the couple, and now it’s in every single thing we watch.

Made wordcount yesterday and practiced.

I very much enjoyed this cartoon. SFW.

Bela Lugosi (is the King around here)

Click here if the embedded audio player doesn’t work for you.

It’s all about a fannish party that gets a little, uh, surreal.  The first two verses are more or less as it happened, and then it goes into the stratosphere of implausibility and meta.   Well my momma lived next door to Bela Lugosi – he kept trying to give her cigars – and I was too polite to say, “I think you’re lying,” so I said, “Alan, I think you’ve been working too hard!” He said, “No, she really DID live next door to Bela, call her in Ft. Lauderdale and you will see!” I thought, I gotta think of something to one-up this puppy, so I dug down deep in my memory (and said)

“I was seen by our Royal Queen in my crib when I was less than a year! And she leaned right in, and she cooed so loud, my auntie and my grandma could hear! And then… they misspelled my name in a newspaper clipping, if I clap my hands it appears….” and he said,

“That’s real nice, but it cuts no ice, cause Bela Lugosi is the king around here (Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)

Drunk woman interrupts: “Well I shared a cab with Sinead O’Connor.  I could tell she’d kill for a smoke. I said, “As soon as we get out and hit the sidewalk, we’ll go someplace quiet and crack some jokes… wish ta hell I could remember, what she said, it was a cutting remark and she cut me dead -”

(Allegra sings the chorus) “I live in mortal fear that we’ll run out of beer, but Bela Lugosi is the king around here!” (Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)

Extremely high and goony woman interrupts, “Well I want you all to know I had an alien’s baby, and everything came out fine, but the eyes, and when she smiles, all her teeth are a little bit pointy, and she never seems to be the least bit surprised.  I showed her “Plan 9 from Outer Space” – she said, “That’s IT, I give up on the whole human race….”

Allegra exultantly sings the chorus, “HAVE NO FEAR, SOMEONE BROUGHT MORE BEER, And Bela Lugosi’s still the king around here….(Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)

So now you know the backstory for this song I wrote about 20-25 years ago, just after I met the gentleman in the first verse, whose mother DID live next door to Bela Lugosi.

Library run

It has been yonks since I visited the library… I picked up two doorstops, one being the really excellent William T. Vollman novel Europe Central, which is an examination of totalitarianism as it affects the creative mind, set during the period just before and during WWII.  Some reviewer or other said you don’t read Vollman for the plot but for the individual sentences, and he was absolutely right.  Vollman is a powerfully strange individual, but his depiction of Kathe Kollwitz was so amazing I looked it up.  I am looking up much of what  he references on the internet and going to some strange and dark and eerie and interesting places.  He’s also, like Dunnett, a portrait painter and polymath and this impacts the work.  Good times.

I also picked up Part II of the Mark Twain autobiography, but the way it’s put together really sucks and it weighs 5 kilos if it weighs a gram, so I put that one down, even though some of the anecdotes are killer.

Last night filking with Cindy and Tom and Peggy; tonight Birthday Celebration with Mike M and friends; tomorrow hymn sing, back at Tom and Peggy’s.  I just love singing Frobisher Bay with those folks. I took Peggy hazelnuts as a thank offering.

400 words on Tarot for Atheists yesterday.  If I ever get finished with the introduction it will be one of the strangest pieces of atheist literature ever written; I know I’m saying the right things in the worng way, and some of it simply has to be cut but like most writers I don’t edit myself worth a darn. Also practiced lots.

Keith double booked himself for his own birthday party a while back so Paul and Jeff watched Internet’s Own Boy without him, so there, and had barbq chikn.

Time to make pancakes, I promised Jeff.

unchurch was delightful

/// but I still had to wash dishes, LOL.

I am feeling kind of icky still but definitely better than late last week, when all I wanted to do was take to my bed.

I’ve been practicing a lot. Otto sounds great.  The housefilk on Saturday evening was fun even if I bailed early.  If I was going to sleep over that would have been different. Jeri Lynn and Jeff were there which meant there was cello (SO AWESOME ON THE HERE THEY COME ZOMBIE SONG!!!) and Appalachian dulcimer, which is just the sweetest sounding instrument.

Jeff and I bought another awning and sprayed it with anti UV goop in a hopefully successful attempt to get the material to survive more than four years.

This week… job applications and selling more stuff, I hope. Also a walk around Burnaby Mountain and a quote for a replacement awning.

Racism

My inner racist got taken for a thorough run this morning, when I received a barely literate and yet pun-enlivened email from the Taxi company subsequent to my angry complaint.

I can’t repeat it because that would be racist.  (Oh look, a really bad pun, which ties into the race of the person writing it, of which the person writing it is COMPLETELY unaware).  But the temptation to be a smart ass and recount the whole epistolary extravaganza is almost killing me.  I sent it to someone who won’t judge me, just so we can both appreciate it.  The thing about racism is that you think you’re doing a good job of fighting it and you turn out to be kidding yourself.  Again.  I’ll have to meditate on this one a good long while.

Lovely time in Victoria, I return refreshed and ready to attack the job market again.

I don’t think my dad is ever going to ask what is bothering me again though… although I’m thrilled to recount that he has now heard Lemming’s Twofer.

 

 

 

The world on the slowdown

Katie came by yesterday to cut my hair and listen to the message Keith left (so burbly!  So full of enthusiasm!  and his pa will join him soon!) so it was a brief but useful interaction.  We’re obviously still pretty sore with each other, but life f*cking well goes on.

No word count yesterday; it was a disappointing day but at least Thursday’s trip to the doc reveals me as being, yet again, a dirty great hypochondriac.  Honestly, sometimes I think the best thing about me breaking my shoulder was that there was no arguing about it.  Everyone agreed, yup, dislocated AND broken; no hypochondria there, girl.

Third series of Sherlock so wombly and disappointing that I nearly screamed with frustration.  I put my Darth Vader blankie over my head a lot.  (I bought a Darth Vader blankie for 15 bucks at the Interfilk auction at Conflikt).

Jeff took me to breakfast this morning and will be heading out to work at a couple of customers later.  I hope I quit coughing long enough to do something useful, like make word count, or rehearse, or do laundry.

Racism workshop two Wednesday afternoons hence at my place.  It will be a corker.

I need some tea.

 

 

They just sang this in England, at the filk convention there.  http://www.leafpress.ca/Mondays_Poems_2013/Chris_Hadfield/Is-Somebody-Singing.htm

Happy sigh.

today, church and other things

I’ve got to deal with revision 5994 of Mt. Washmore,

Yesterday I baked banana bread (with orange zest, cardamom and almond butter, lordy but it was good) and took it to the house filk at Tom and Peggy’s, which was so poorly attended nobody else was there so I called Rob (who apparently is not getting my emails, which is troubling, especially since he doesn’t have either text or voicemail enabled on his phone) and he came by with pie.  We ate Reuben sammiches, stir fried veggies and green salad (and it was om nom nom) and sang and played. I am now apparently part of a group called Harmonic Anomaly, or something like that, and we’re going to sing songs that need lots of harmony and provide same.

 

I woke up super early this morning

So I took out some trash and put salt down on the back deck so Jeff doesn’t skid down on his ass, cause it be icy out there.

Jeff is off to Victoria this morning. He will be watching the Superb Owl with pOp.

Otto is back from the shop. I paid because it was the only way to get him back, cause I’m not giving them another crack at him. I am very unhappy with the results, and super unhappy with the tech, who didn’t even restring the mandolin properly. The world is full of competent people who only fuck up when I’m their customer, and I’m in line to receive customer service from every last one of them. It is my karma for all the exceedingly crappy service I’ve given to others in my life, I suppose. At least the Mac came back genuinely repaired, although the new layout of the function keys is going to take some getting used to.

I wrote 3200 words yesterday. Don’t know if I can meet or beat that today, but mOm isn’t complaining, as I’m basically forwarding everything to her as soon as I write it. I need to completely finish that scene and then I’m off to the hardest scene of all….

Housefilk at Tom and Peggy’s this afternoon to evening, happy sigh. I’m getting a sore throat but I’m going to load up on Throat Coat tea and fluids and vitamin C.

 

Conflikt

I had a good time at Conflikt.  The end. Okay, more details.

Princess Bob taught me to crochet. Cindy fed me chocolate.  Peggy brought me tea.  The Tinneys, all three of them in diverse ways, completely and totally kicked ass.  I got a Darth Vader plushie blanket and a couple of CDs and a couple of pieces of jewelry. I wrote 850 words on my novel.  I fed Lemming steak.  I collected many hugs.  The world is a happy place full of nice people.

Tomorrow, I have to go back to reality and start making lists and getting rid of my mountain of crap.

Filk Band Camp Weekend

I would like to have a weekend recording songs with my filking buddies.

1.  Ask a bunch of my favourite filkers if they would set aside a weekend to record.  Anybody who didn’t want to come didn’t have to, but it would be best for 10-12 people so there’s enough tracks for an album.

2. Rent a location (cause you have to do it in advance).

3. Invite a filk friendly sound engineer or two (for pay OF COURSE).

4. Prior to the recording date we each get to pick one of our own tunes and make a scratch track in the right key and tempo.  We forward it to everybody from the group we want to contribute to the song and request that they either work up an instrumental, or a harmony, or whatever is mutually agreeable.

5. We pick the songs to be recorded out of a hat and record them in that order.

6. Occasionally we stop for food and drink and sleep.

7. Final say for what the song sounds like is between the engineer and the songwriter.

8. We release the album.  Profits if any (sing bwa ha ha!) go to wherever we designate at the time the project commences.

9. We end up with music that’s like the best ever filk circle and a wide variety of textures, styles and subjects.

 

Happy sigh.  Damn wooooolf mooooon, I can’t sleep.