this is just a test (bones of a new song)

This is just a test!

No, of course not.

You don’t have to.

You don’t need to say it.

Not if you don’t feel it.

You embody it, that’s all.

The way you hold me

kiss me

pass me pepper

bring me coffee

(five long beats) disagreeeeee with me

throw popcorn at me

throw your arm around me

This is just a test!

 

(Think that clunky 80’s 86 bpm dance beat)

 

Just a test

In all the fuss and fury

Just a test

of modern life it comes

Just a test

no speed but hurry

Just a test

no percussion but taiko drums

 

when performing romance

Just a test

a pirouette or two

Just a test

you line out a paraph          (note, you can pronounce it either way, I prefer   

                                                           second syllable emphasis)

on your paragraph

mess it up

with a pedestrian ‘I love you’

Now maybe once in fifteen

Just a test

years I get those magick words

Just a test

Mostly unforeseen

Just a test

it comes out like a blurt

Just a test

I get to wondering

Just a test

Is it really real

but I’m a materialist baby

I’m all about the way you make me feel

extremely horn and reed-intense instrumental, including a bass line that makes you want square up conga style and wend your way through the neighbourhood

This is just a test!

No, of course not.

You don’t have to.

You don’t need to say it.

Not if you don’t feel it.

You embody it, that’s all.

The way you hold me

kiss me

pass me pepper

bring me coffee

(five long beats) disagreeeeee with me

throw popcorn at me

throw your arm around me

This is just a test!

 

 

 

obviously I updated it. The instrumental part is coming along fine, it will all be kazoos very pleased with it so far. Only 13 more songs to write for the end of the month ha ha

 

Earthquake Tourists

Earthquake Tourists (animated film idea) (mOm I already sent this to you so if it seems familiar that’s why)

 

Fyza is the orang

Safeer is the bonobo

Millie is the gorilla

Freed by an earthquake, they leave the botanical garden they temporarily live in as they await transfer to a new national park in the tropics. Fyza will be freed – the other two will be in a permanent display with a large enclosure, but they’ll still be locked up, which we learn as the camera pans over a notice tacked next to the glass of their shared enclosure.

They wander through the apocalypse, calmly sitting down to denude a copse of fig trees and fill themselves at a pond at the beginning of the film so they are neither starving nor thirsty for the in-city action. Also, sadly, this fills their digestive tracts with nasty shit quite literally since they gorge to calm themselves. (During the course of the movie all three of them take memorably timed and placed shits.) Safeer eats the least, being freaked out by the smoke and fire and noise and humans, the other two go to town and just don’t pay attention to anything else.

They smell another ape “Binky”, and find that a banker has an illegal menagerie in his house, which he has abandoned. Fyza, who carries a piece of metal in her mouth for the duration of the movie – which she uses for many other purposes – frees the young male chimp, who becomes hostile and leaves. Safeer thinks of going with but reconsiders. There is then a comic scene of animal on animal liberation, resulting in the crushing and death of one of the lizards, which Safeer mourns, then eats. Safeer wants to stay put because there’s a food supply and she and Fyza have a shrieking fight. Finally Fyza stuffs a backpack full of primate chow and hands it to Safeer and leaves. Safeer thinks about it and follows, dragging the packsack, to comic effect (a stray dog, freaked out and whining for its family, benefits from the chow bouncing down out of the smoke). The three continue until they reach the Golden Gate bridge. A fantastical and death defying climbing sequence follows and finally Fyza sees the patch of green she thinks will be the safest place to go, and climbs down to lead her friends there. She kisses the bridge as she gets off it repeatedly and to great comic effect.

They make their way with other adventures (they help a broke family get diapers, they stop two assaults) to the green patch of ground where they are tranquilized and put small cages, and finally flown to their final destinations. The last thing you see of that scene is Fyza transferring the piece of metal into Millie’s unconscious mouth.

Two months later in Papua New Guinea, Fyza comes back to rescue her friends, and the two of them slip off into the jungle with their leader. Fyza gets her piece of metal back from Millie, who makes quite a show of how happy she is to be rid of it. The last thing you see is Fyza teaching her pals how to get at the best bits of a fruit.

Ingmar Bergman’s Undead Laugh-o-Rama

 

Ingmar Bergman’s Undead Laugh-o-Rama!

Casting calls for Nordics who get drama

Watch those stony faces soften

As they kill the dead more often

Maybe one day they will crack a smile

(The title is ironic)

 

Ingmar Bergman’s Undead Laugh-a-Minute

What a cast! You won’t believe who’s in it!

Sven Nykvist popped up from his grave

Just to hear the critics rave

Happy that he’s come back in such style

(That part is sardonic)

 

Ingmar Bergman’s Undead Laugh-a-Ganza

More tropes than a season of Bonanza

It’s the movie of my dreams

The ultimate in crossing streams

And there’s old Ingmar turning up the dial!

(And it went supersonic)

(jet roar – bombs falling, abrupt end)

 

Image

Tobie the doctor had one of these – it’s a picture of the wounds of battle done up renaissance style

Giri Haji is not a show about Japanese gagsters

I am liking this show SO MUCH AND WE ONLY HAVE ONE EP LEFT wail

Did you know coyotes and badgers have been known to hunt together? There’s video on the internet that looks like the first shot of a movie. Further pics.

Storage Jar (1858), David Drake.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Stoneware vessel (1858), David Drake At the Stony Bluff Manufactory in Old Edgefield, South Carolina, the enslaved potter David Drake made stoneware vessels of extraordinary workmanship, often inscribed with short poems describing their owner and function. ‘When you fill this Jar with pork or beef / Scot will be there; to get a peace’ is carved into one side of the vessel, among other lines. This is of 40 known surviving ‘poem vessels’ by Drake, and the first to enter the Met’s collection.

 

 

Romance

Romance is powerfully rooted in autonomic processes. oNe wishes it were not so, but it is. The idea that there’d be a professional class of person setting courtship fashions while trying to navigate the vagaries of the human sexual response under medieval Catholicism amuses me, but along with lots of other worthy contributions to letters, that’s what troubadours were. And in the west we’re stuck with it and the cultural knock-ons, and I vacillate wildly between loving a lot of it and wanting to wring its neck and gut it and singe it in preparation for the soup pot.

When I’m writing fanfic, I’m addressing romance as a way of approaching pair-bonding (unless I’m writing specifically polyamorous fic) and writing it the way I want people to behave. yanno…. Like fucking adults who occasionally lose their phones or drop the groceries. I try not to write more trouble than people need, and to write the characters as if they all have some expectation of, and agency in, making their own situations better, sometimes by taking an overt and possibly impolite interest in someone else’s troubles as a substitute for dealing with their own as an emotional way station to their own self-regulation.

For that is the dream, the magical reset button of romance. Not that love will last forever, that part’s easy. The renewal of romance is in how you can see yourself again, young and overwhelmed and sappy, but also that this love brings with it your idea of yourself as contented and working with another person on your self-improvement. These are all mental states far beyond the sexual arousal (in most although not all cases) that gets you to pair bonding (because pair bonding without sexual behaviour is also a lasting component of human life, and takes a lot of different forms.) My point is that romance is complicated, and if you want it to look like all of human life on this planet, rather than taking, for example, whiteness or being able bodied for granted, it gets more complicated still. The functioning pair bond implies a mutual commitment to self-improvement as a joint project, and when two individuals work hard on that, something more beautiful than romance occurs. They are stabilizing the world for everyone around them.

I could say more, but I’m happy with what I’m thinking.

there ya go

“Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind – vividly, forcefully – that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.” – Samuel Delaney

quoted by Isabel Yap on twitter

what I did today

My apologies; I had a secretly busy day, at least for me.

I worked on a couple of tunes. I’m supposed to be doing that but nothing bit at me hard except a lament about the little gate in the bible, the needle’s eye that the rich man will have trouble with. I will sit with that a while.

Did several loads of laundry.

Cooked up some extra veggies to put in the noodle and tofu dish already in the fridge.

Went to breakfast with Katie.

Went for a brief walk with Jeff.

Watched a bunch of stuff but happily, Giri/Haji, several episodes.

Wrote some fanfic 1300 words actually.

I’m enjoying Ragnarok but I could use without them fridging the young lesbian in the first frickin’ episode

Walkies

Paul and I took advantage of the relative warmth and glorious sunshine to go for a walk in Oakalla yesterday.

Jeff and I watched “Harriet” and really enjoyed it. Fellow abolitionist Thomas Garrett said of her, “I never met any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God.” They certainly made much of her visions in the movie, but it was used to good effect.

Absolutely loved the most recent Supernatural ep “The Heroes’ Journey” for more reasons than I can count. Anything that includes tap dancing though….

 

 

annoying stopover

the trip north was entirely uneventful, but on the way since Paul’s girlfriend lost her phone (meh, it happens) and since he already has a Yankee phone he left it at her place, so I got to sit outside her apartment building in Greenwood and contemplate the furrows and circuitous paths of my life for a while since Paul had to stop and pet cats and call her at work, of course, so I did not say a word about how long it took

Weather was fucking gorgeous in Seattle and grim in Vancouver. TWO herons on the road inbound.

I feel full of music, which is useful for FAWM.

HOTM 55277 (worked on ‘sproing’ instructions and actually sent copies to Jeri Lynn and Jeff C since he’s actually read MMCo and Jeri Lynn was much entertained by my description of the sproing).

TAKAYA HAS BEEN RELOCATED yay

Roger Waters This Is Not A Drill tour in Vancouver September 14 2020 any interest

Yeah, the cat’s outta the bag and this is what our health minister says. The first guy who was sick in Canada has given it to his wife. Incubation before symptoms was about 8 days in her case, although I hope to drill down and get more accurate notions of when her exposure started from newspaper accounts.

opinion, the gov of Can should ban travel from China for three weeks, which is the likely to break the incubation lag and do nothing but run down contacts until we stop getting infections from locally infected folks, BUT NO. AND I’M AWARE that I was just in a hotel for 4 days that was across the street from where the first case appeared in the US.

and the CDC says this.

OOOOOOOKAY NOW there’s a ‘warning’ about ‘nonessential’ travel. even so.

In the words of a beloved Canadian TV character, something’s fucky.

Corona Beer company really having a shitty January according to google searches

 

the end of a perfect day

apart from misgendering Cade Tinney when I introduced them, yesterday, for which I apologized and was forgiven by them and the con com I had the best possible con.

Thanks to my fellow judges for the songwriting contest.

Daniela Festi was an amazing choice as an interfilk guest, like flat out fucking amazing. Her musicality, professionalism and versatility was mindblowing.

Vanessa Cardui has a beautiful voice and penetrating wit and verve as a lyricist.

Rhiannon’s Lark, aka Alyssa Yeager, a zero defect singer, a great and funny lyricist, a good guitarist and hoo boy can she run a harmony looper like nobody’s biz.

Eric and Lizzie of Cheshire Moon were great guests and entertaining as heck.

Sunnie Larsen IS A GODDESS fight me.

It was so good to see Beth Runnerwolf.

Hung with Chaos for a while.

Emailed Jesse my Cthulthu Mars Bar story.

JOHN AND JEN ON SOUND my goodness HOW LUCKY ARE WE as Paul said, on both sides of the mic!!!

Ecumenifilk was great, played Lift Every Voice and Sing on the ukelele AND when I talked about how I would never sing it (just play it) the only poc in the room thanked me for my sensitivity.

BEAUTY AND HAPPY MEMORIES ALL ‘ROUND.

Conflikt 13 is almost over, and how fantastic was that

Paul and I have had a lovely time. I had a great time as toastedmaster, and apart from misgendering Cade Tinney prior to their performance (I cried for half an hour, I was alternately upset at my assumptions and weeping my face off because Cade’s a brilliant brilliant songwriter and their song about their grandad just about slew me with its stark and lovely grief, but they forgave me most kindly and gave me a sweet hug and I went around to a coupla con com folks and explained myself and they sorted me as well but I’ll have to live with my error in the livestream so O THE FUCK WELL right) everything about this con has been bordering on magical.

I am very inspired to try FAWM next month,

Many many thanks to Dave Tinney for running the hospitality suite, John Seghers and Jen!