Author: autographedcat Page 71 of 211

Chair of Georgia Filkcon; musician, songwriter, essayist & dilettante-at-large. Almost certainly not what you expect. (they/them)

The Shining Wit

By autographedcat

On October 19, 2016

In Songs

The Shining Wit
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Act Naturally” by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison

I’m gonna get myself a girlfriend
I’m gonna go make all these women see
That I’m a man who knows how to explain things
And all I gotta say is “Well, actually…”

I promise you that I know all about it
I’m quite an expert, you can surely tell
Don’t worry your pretty head about it
‘Cause I can make it simple as well

I know you’ll nod and see that I am right, here.
And jump into my arms and softly squee
You’ll fall for me the moment that I step up
To interrupt you, saying, “Well, actually…”

Yet somehow I wind up sad and lonely
It makes me so mad; I just cannot see
I know that I did nothing to deserve this
The only thing I said was “Well, actually…”

I promise you that I know all about it
I’m quite an expert, you can surely tell
Don’t worry your pretty head about it
‘Cause I can make it simple as well

I guess that she was just another hater
But I will get a girl eventually
She will not be able to resist me
When I interrupt her saying “Well, actually…”

Many thanks to Twitter user David Ballard (@dvdbllrd) for the inspiration for this.

I Just Claimed A Gym

By autographedcat

On July 29, 2016

In Songs

I Just Claimed A Gym
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “I’ve Just Seen A Face” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I just claimed a gym
I don’t know if I’ll sink or swim
now that I have. It’s just a place for me
to fight with all the Pokemon I’ve caught

la-la-la-la-la-la

Had it been another day
I might have walked the other way
And maybe caught a Pikichu
But as it is, I’ll fight a duel tonight

li-li-li-li-li-li

Strolling, yes I am strolling
Pokeballs rolling across the way

I have never played a game like this
I’ve been out walking and I’ve missed
things that were out of sight
Until I learned they were a pokestop

ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba

Strolling, yes I am strolling
Pokeballs rolling across the way

I just claimed a gym
I don’t know if I’ll sink or swim
now that I have. It’s just a place for me
to fight with all the Pokemon I’ve caught

la-la-la-la-la-la

Strolling, yes I am strolling
Pokeballs rolling across the way

Inspired by Mary Bertke playing Pokemon Go.

The Art Of The Possible

By autographedcat

On July 26, 2016

In Blog

Final thought for the night. A couple of premises. You don’t have to accept my premises, but it’s useful for you to understand these things when I’m talking.

Politics is a process designed to craft policy. Politics that is not aimed towards crafting policy is a sideshow. Looking for that one special candidate that matches you perfectly in every way isn’t politics. It’s dating.

Further, the process of politics (designed to ultimately craft policy) is about coalition building. That’s the whole point of it; to put together a group of people who agree on most things to advance a common agenda, and to give and take on the margins where everyone doesn’t agree so that everyone gets most of what they want.

So, there’s this disaffected group of people who say they hate the Democratic party, want nothing to do with it or the Democratic party’s nominee, and are generally wanting to burn the whole thing down and replace it with….something. So this conversation keeps happening:

Democrats: “We’d like you to join the coalition. What do you want?”

Them: “There’s nothing you could say or do that would make me support you.”

And the Democrats say “Okay”, and start to talk to the next person down the line.

Them: “Hey! Why are you ignoring me??”

They’re ignoring you because you told them you were unreachable. The work right now is to reach as many people as possible and get them to join our coalition. If you don’t want to get on board, then you don’t have to, but you don’t then get to sit in the middle of the hall and complain about how you don’t like Democrats. We asked you to join, and you said you didn’t want to. That’s absolutely your right, and I will defend it to the death, as soon as I get done with all this work I’m doing electing all these Democrats. Check back in December.

If you want to be part of this conversation, roll your sleeves up and get back to work. There’s a lot to do, and we’ve got 430 House seats and 33 Senate seats to flip over, and state houses and state legislatures to work on and a million other things to do. And I know there’s a lot you’d like to push forward too. We could help you with that. A lot of us want the same thing you do. But you gotta join and put your shoulder to the wheel. Because that’s how things get done.

Politics isn’t about idealism. Politics is work. It’s tough and frustrating and sometimes it feels like we are absolutely nowhere. And some days it feels like if we gave just a little bit more, we could push things closer to what we want. But we’re not going to get better wages for workers and better access to education and healthcare and a million other things if you can’t at least sing along when it comes around on the guitar.

Break’s over. Time to get to work.

Goodnight. I love you all – even the ones that don’t see eye to eye yet.

Inclement Weather Advisory

By autographedcat

On February 24, 2015

In Songs

Inclement Weather Advisory
by Rob Wynne and Jeff Williams
TTTO: “A Kind Of Hush” by Herman’s Hermits

There’s a kind of slush
All over the road, today
All over the road you can hear the sound
Of fast-skidding cars
Watch out for that tree!

Let’s the two of us
Stay inside the house, today
I don’t want to go out and get in the way
of fast-skidding cars

Now listen very carefully
Come closer and see cars sliding into the ditch
Hey, ain’t that a bitch?
The only sound that you will hear
is when the cars begin to skid and career
Roll over and over

There’s a kind of slush
All over the road, today
All over the road you can hear the sound
Of fast-skidding cars

Fa la-la la-la la-la
Fa-la la-la la-la la-la
Fa-la-la-la-la Fa-la la-la-la
Fa la-la la-la

Now listen very carefully
Come closer and see cars sliding into the ditch
Hey, ain’t that a bitch?
The only sound that you will hear
is when the cars begin to skid and career
Roll over and over

There’s a kind of slush
All over the road, today
All over the road you can hear the sound
Of fast-skidding cars
Of fast-skidding cars
Of fast-skidding cars

Tadpoolery Episode 39: Game of Spones

By autographedcat

On July 9, 2014

In Blog

There’s a new episode of Tadpoolery! In this episode, Rob and Bryan discuss

Sports, briefly
Tadpool as community / online friendships
Nerdtacular is coming!
Weird news: carjackers foiled by manual transmission.
Steam sale controversy.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
Game of Thrones season finale ( spoilers! )
NepoTuneism: “Winter is Coming” by Sunnie Larson and friends.

As always, you can subscribe to Tadpoolery on iTunes or download/listen at our webpage.

Enjoy, and thanks for listening!

Tadpoolery: And we’re back…

By autographedcat

On June 30, 2014

In Blog

In January of 2011, Scott Johnson and Brian Ibbott launched a podcast called “The Morning Stream“, a culmination of Scott’s long-time desire to do a morning-drive style radio program that reflected his particularly geeky sensibilities. Like other shows he produced, TMS was live-streamed as it was recorded, and an active chat room interacted with the hosts. Some of us started hanging out in that chatroom even when nothing was being broadcast, and a community began to coalesce. The community was nicknamed “The Tadpool”, riffing off of the name of Scott’s studio, Frogpants Studios, and soon after that, a Facebook community was created to foster a less real-time (and more enduring) interaction between fans.

As time went on, we realised that a lot of very cool people were hanging out in this community, and a small group of us decided to start a show focused on the community, in order to better get to know people. It was called “Tadpoolery”, and was hosted by Bryan Provost, Nick Nizzi, and myself, along with a rotating guest from the Tadpool that we would chat with about whatever sorts of things that person was primarily interested in. Due to the random nature of our guests backgrounds, the episodes could cover a wide variety of of topics, and frequently would range so far afield that our tagline became “The tangent is the topic.”

The original incarnation of Tadpoolery ran for 36 episodes. Towards the end of that run, we started to feel like the lack of structure was actually becoming a liability, and decided to take a brief hiatus to retool the show and get a better handle on what we wanted to do with it. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t return from that hiatus as planned.

Two years later…

Bryan and I actually started talking about rebooting the show last year, just after Nerdtacular. We wanted to keep the same vibe the original show had — it’s very much a product of the Tadpool — while giving it room to expand and evolve into something of wider and more general interest. Around the end of last year, we did a test show, which went well but had some technical difficulties. Once those were finally resolved and scheduling was worked out, we’ve now officially relaunched Tadpoolery and released our first new episodes.

Episode 37 is the test episode we recorded last year. The topics include:

Breaking Bad
Dragon Age Heroes (android)
World of Warcraft
Kingdom of Amalur IP sale
Fallout 4 hoax
Stealth games
Weird news: recreational marijuana dispensery names
Weird news: The Slutcracker (Burlesque parody of the Nutcracker)
Music: Marian Call, “Sketchbook”, Postmodern Jukebox

Episode 38 was recorded last week, where we discussed:

Travel and Tadmeets (Tadpool Meetups)
Nerdtacular is coming!
Tattoos
You Can’t Watch Everything (Josh Williams)
Nerd Rage
Star Wars and Star Wars
Iconic Vs. Definitive Portrayals
Summer of 1994 (Brian Duff)
I love the 2000s
NepoTuneism: Tom Smith, “307 Ale”
Steam Summer Sale (Rocksmith, Skyrim)
Catching Up ON Old Content (video games and TV, especially)

So as you can see, the tangent is still the topic. 🙂 You can subscribe to Tadpoolery on ITunes, or get episodes directly from our webpage. New episodes will be released on Friday.

It’s good to finally have my show back on the air. I’ve really missed making it, and I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Seattle Pride Parade 2014

By autographedcat

On June 29, 2014

In Blog

Since we live just around the corner from the end point of the Seattle Pride Parade route, we sauntered over just a few minutes before it got there and were able to get a great spot to see everything go by. I took an enormous number of photos, which Larissa then culled through them to remove all the really horrible shots, near-identical duplicates, and out of focus pictures. There’s still over 600 in the set.

Many of these photos are NSFW, so use your own discretion.

Gallery of Seattle Pride Parade 2014 photos

This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a pile of receipts…

By autographedcat

On June 23, 2014

In Blog

Just a random excerpt of a conversation between me and a friend of a friend, on Facebook

Doug Williams Although I do agree Styrofoam is evil. Cardboard packaging is my nemesis.

Rob Wynne Doug: Really? “Cardboard Packaging” is my Malvina Reynolds cover band! #kickingitoldschool

Doug Williams With 3 kids the amount of cardboard packaging that comes through my house is ridiculous. Let’s just say they could probably name where forests used to be after my children.

Rob Wynne

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Anyway, you got an XBox One for Christmas
And that new game you wanted but barely played
So I hope you’re happy.”

From “The First Drafts of TS Elliot (unpublished)”

Tiny Beautiful Things

By autographedcat

On April 6, 2014

In Blog

Every so often, a book comes to my attention that perhaps wouldn’t have normally. I’ll read a review, or hear it recommended, and think “Hey, that sounds interesting”, and I’ll make a note to myself to pick it up if I see it, or sometimes i’ll just grab it off the Amazon Kindle store where it will sit, waiting for me to find a moment to crack it open.

I don’t, at this point, remember who recommended the book “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar” by Cheryl Strayed. It’s been sitting in my Kindle Library for some time. But a couple of days ago I randomly opened it and began to read. Today I finished it.

I don’t recall the last book that so often made me laugh out loud, so often moved me to tears, so often stopped me dead in my tracks with a perfectly phrased insight or so often made me just stop, walk away from the book because I needed time to think and digest.and reflect on what I had just read.

I’ve read collections of advice columns before, from Dan Savage and Miss Manners and others. This is very likely the first collection of advice columns I will read again and again, because as much as I took from it, there’s more to take and find and connect with.

If you’re a human being who is currently in the process of living a life, I recommend this book.

A Better Plan

By autographedcat

On March 22, 2014

In Songs

A Better Plan
by Rob Wynne
Music: “Let It Go” by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (from Disney’s “Frozen”)

The weather outside is frightful tonight
But this fire is very nice
And there’s no place I need to be
out in the frozen ice
The wind is blowing and
The snow piles up in drifts
So let’s just stay here, wrap our Christmas gifts

We can’t go out, let’s just stay in
There’s no need to brave the howling din
Stay warm, no storm can harm us here
The answer’s clear

Let it snow, let it snow
It shows no sign of stopping
Let it snow, let it snow
I brought some corn for popping
There’s nowhere
That we need to be
Turn the lights down low
Curl up on the sofa here next to me

Every so often, an idea for a parody shows up that won’t go away, but there really isn’t enough there to justify parodying the entire song. These are called “show stoppers” because they typically only run up to the point that you hit the punchline of the joke, and then end.

Larissa and I finally got around to seeing Disney’s “Frozen” (which is excellent, and you should watch it), and this came into my mind and wouldn’t go away, so i finally sat down and wrote it. It’s finished; there’s only the one verse and chorus.