Day 3 of this challenge invites us to post a song that reminds us of summer. Perhaps this is a bit on the nose, but I’ve loved this song since I was a kid, and it would go on any “pick me up” playlist. Here’s The Loving Spoonful, with “Summer In The City.
Author: autographedcat Page 69 of 211
Chair of Georgia Filkcon; musician, songwriter, essayist & dilettante-at-large. Almost certainly not what you expect. (they/them)
Today’s challenge is to post a song with a number in the title. So here’s R.E.M.’s “Pop Song 89”
Well, there were a lot of possible songs I could choose, but really only one winner. Prince’s “Purple Rain”. For fun, here’s the rare video of him debuting the song with his then-new band, The Revolution, at the First Avenue in Minneapolis in 1983.
Here’s the challenge, if anyone wants to do it themselves:
I realised today, while looking over the last couple of weeks of posting on Facebook, that I didn’t make an announcement I thought I had.1
I’m very pleased to announce that the Ohio Valley Filk Festival has asked me to be their Toastmaster in 2018! This will be my 17th consecutive OVFF, and I couldn’t be more excited. In addition to myself, guests include Cheshire Moon, Harold Stein, and Julia West! It’s going to be a great time, so I hope you’ll come out and see us!
Meanwhile, I will also be Toastmaster at Conflikt in Seattle this January, so I’m looking forward to a great deal of being Toasty next year. 🙂
My skill at self-promotion. Let me show it to you. ↩
I posted this originally on November 1, 2013. As any casual perusal of this site will show, I didn’t succeed. So this is another attempt.
It’s November 1st, boys and girls! And you know what that means!
You don’t know what that means? Oh. Well, bear with me.
Once upon a time, I wrote regularly in this space. Some of it was personal life update rambling, and some of it was musing on this and that, and some of it was just random cool things that I found around the Internet. when I look back on it, though, it gives me a insight into where I was in my head at the time.
Around late 2008 or so, I stopped writing so much. There’s a variety of reasons why, but the primary one is that there were things going on that I didn’t want to talk about publicly, but that were taking up a large number of my mental cycles. And then after going for a while, there was an odd inertia, where I couldn’t post about topic Z because before I write about that, I really should write about topics Y and X, and the next thing you know you’re backed up to topic A and the whole thing feels insurmountable.1
In fits and starts, I’ve tried to relaunch my online blog, most recently in May and June of this year, and I had a good roll until I got derailed by a few unexpected psychic bumps. But inertia works both ways. If you can get the momentum, you can sustain it.
November is traditionally NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where people promise to produce a 50,000 words towards a novel by the end of the month. It is also NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), where people pledge to produce at least one blog entry every day for the month of November. So that is what I intend.
I aim to misbehave.2
I can’t promise every entry will be scintillating. Perhaps they won’t even be as scintillating as this one.3 But I’m hoping that the inertia of doing this will get me back into the regular habit.
You can help! I’m absurdly response driven, so if there something that catches your eye and you have something to say about it, please comment. My posts are mirrored on LJ and Dreamwidth, and linked on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Follow me wherever suits you. If you want to comment where you see the post/link, do it there. If you want to comment on the main blog, you should be able to authenticate with whatever service you like in order to leave a note.
In closing, I leave you with a video I return to again and again for inspiration. Ze Frank sent this out to all his kickstarter backers just before he restarted his online video show. It’s titled “An Invocation For Beginnings”, and it’s worth watching, no matter what project you’re about to undertake.
“There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore. My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark. Warts and all, let’s start this shit up.”
–Ze Frank
Yes, you could just skip all that and start where you are, but that’s your brain, not mine. ↩
And by “misbehave”, I mean “write a blog entry every day in November. And also the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. ↩
A friend of mine on LJ has a tag that reads “don’t be interesting just post”. ↩
Redshirt
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Blackbird” by Paul McCartney and John Lennon
Redshirt beaming down to planetside
Doesn’t have a name to know him by
That poor guy
He will only be here ’til somebody has to die
Redshirt beaming down to planetside
It don’t matter what steps that you take
It’s for sure
You will not survive beyond the first commercial break
Redshirts die, Redshirts die
On every world that we’re stopping by…
Redshirts die, Redshirts die
On every world that we’re stopping by…
Redshirt beaming down to planetside
Doesn’t have a name to know him by
That poor guy
He will only be here ’til somebody has to die
He will only be here ’til somebody has to die
He will only be here ’til somebody has to die
I wrote this one a couple of months ago. My friend Marcos Duran had posted his filk about Star Trek redshirts (to the tune of “Roxanne”, and the idea for this parody popped into my head.
Banhammer
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel
You could make a cat GIF
putting down somebody’s race
You could post the president smiling
Hitler mustache on his face
All you do is post it
We’ll remove it from the feed
You could be a big dick, yeah
Ranting up and down, all around the pool
You could be a bumbling jerk, bumbling
But that violates the rule!
I’m gonna swing…my banhammer
I will erase your fame
Oh, let me swing the banhammer
This will be my admin posting
If you want to spam us
Then we will send you on your way
Don’t you try to spam us
Cause you know that just doesn’t play
I’m gonna swing…my banhammer
I will erase your fame
Oh, let me swing the banhammer
This will be my admin posting
I’m your banhammer
Let there be no doubt about it
Ban…..ban….banhammer
I kicked the asshole (I kicked the asshole)
Banned his nick (Banned his nick)
This is the Tadpool (This is the Tadpool)
So don’t be a dick (So please don’t be a dick)
If your posts are nice (posts are nice)
We will like it twice (like it twice)
Post it nice, (post it nice) I will comment twice
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I sure like you
Only you
Gonna post the good stuff
Post, post all the good stuff yeah
I’ve been finding the funny
I’ve been finding the funny
Going read that good stuff, post for you
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
I’ve been finding the funny
I’ve been finding the funny
It’s what we’re doing, doing
All day and night
I wrote this a while ago, but never got around to posting it in the songbook. The Tadpool is a social group that I co-moderate the Facebook group for; the first rule of the Tadpool is “Don’t be a dick” (also known as “Wheaton’s Law” — see the PDX Broadsides’ brilliant song of that same name for more on this.)
Second Movement
by Rob Wynne
To the tune of “Everybody Hurts” by REM
When your dinner’s done
And you sit, you sit upon the throne
When you’re sure you’ve had enough
to digest, well, let go
Just let yourself go
Cause everybody pees
And everybody poops….sometimes.
Sometimes everything is full
Now it’s time to sit alone
When your dinner’s moved along (let go, let go)
If you feel like holding on (let go)
If you think your toilet seat
Is too cold, well, let go
Everybody poops
Take comfort in the void
Everybody poops
Don’t wipe on your hand, oh no
Don’t wipe on your hand, oh no
Use paper from the roll
No, no, no, use the roll
If you’re on your own after lunch
You’ve eaten all the food
When you think you’ve had too much of this food to hang on
Well, everybody poops,
Sometimes, everybody pees
Everybody poops sometimes
Everybody poops sometimes.
So let go, let go,
Let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go
Everybody poops
I swore I’d never actually write this song. But sometimes the muse won’t let go. Dedicated to all the parents of young children out there.
One of the things I said I wanted to do this year was spend more time reading, by setting aside time in my day specifically for that. To that end, I’m also keeping track of the books I’m reading, so I can see how many I get through by the end of the year. Off to a start that feels glacially slow to me, but is at least on track towards the notion of reading around 50 books by the end of the year.
This is a reread — in fact, it’s an annual re-read. I first encountered this wonderful novel my freshman year of college, and I have revisited it at least once a year since then. One of the things I love about this book is how rich and layered it is, and how even after 30+ trips through it, I still discover new details, or make connections between things that I’d never noticed before. This is the book I buy copies of whenever I see them in used bookstores, and then hand them freely to anyone I like who says they’ve never read it.
- World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1, by Blizzard Entertainment
This is a lovely book containing what amounts to the pre-history and mythology of the Warcraft video games. It has lots of wonderful art and a tremendous amount of detailed lore that explores the complex cosmology of this universe. A second volume is expected to be released later this year, and I’m looking forward to adding it to my collection.
This is a breezy, engaging memoir by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, telling the story of his childhood and acting career. We saw him speak as part of the Seattle Arts and Lectures series late last year, when the book came out, but I am only just now getting around to reading it. He’s an interesting guy, and this was a fun, brisk read.
Subtitled “A Handbook for Unapologetic Living”, this is a great discourse on body positivity and fat acceptance. Jes Baker, who runs the website themilitantbaker.com, has written an engaging handbook for people struggling with self-image. My friend Traci Haley recommended this book highly, and now that I’ve read it, I can second it.
With everything going on in January, between two conventions, a fairly annoying bout of illness, and family obligations, I didn’t get as much as I wanted done. (I also spent a fair bit of time doing other things, so I’m still working out the right balance.
*walks in, blows the dust off the cover of this journal, and looks sheeishly apologetic*
It’s been far too long since I kept this journal. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but most of them are boring, so I’m going to skip past them to the more interesting promise of actually starting again.
With the new year already well in full swing, there’s a lot of things I want to apply myself towards in 2017. In no particular order;
- Reading
In recent years, I haven’t been reading as much as I did in the past. Or rather, I haven’t been reading books, and particular fiction. Part of that was that for a long time, a large part of our library was still in storage in Georgia, but we got that fixed back in May. Mostly, it’s just a matter of allocating my time so that sitting with a book rather than staring at a screen is what I’m doing. So this year, I’m going to take myself up on one of those book challenges where I record the books I read and try to read at least 50 in the calendar year. If I can get myself back in the habit, I should easily exceed that number. (I once had to have my mother come with me to the public library to confirm that, yes, I had in fact read the entire stack of books I’d checked out just a few days earlier.)
- Creating
I want to spend more time making art in various forms. I want to write more songs. I want to improve my guitar skills, and finally learn to play the bass guitar I bought. I want to write more essays and fiction and film reviews. And, importantly, I want to start podcasting again. All of my previous podcasting projects went onto hiatus, and I’ve really been missing that outlet. I have some ideas bubbling up, and in the meantime, I’m always available to guest if anyone needs someone to come on and run their mouth. 🙂
- Blogging
One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging more is because a lot of the things that used to make up a blog post have turned into Facebook fodder. And I’m probably not going to stop writing on Facebook, but I want to make an effort to keep this forum engaged too, because the way I approach writing on this journal is substantially different to the way I approach writing on Facebook. And I’ve found it very useful at times to go back and re-read the things I write here, because they keep me in touch with where I was at the time.
So this is, by way of being the first real post in quite some time, a rededication of this blog. I will, as is my custom, continue to crosspost things from here onto other platforms (FB, Twitter, Tumblr, Dreamwidth), in order to make it easier for people to find what I’m writing wherever it is you happen to be hanging out these days.