Author: autographedcat Page 74 of 211

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

Going to Market

By autographedcat

On November 17, 2013

In Blog

One of the things that excited Larissa and me about our new apartment was that it was walking distance to a great many things, and we can certainly do with more exercise and fresh air in our lives. So today we decided to go out for a nice stroll down to Pike Place Market for lunch and a bit of random shopping.

We left a bit after noon and headed down Thomas Street to the pedestrian bridge that goes down into Myrtle Edwards Park. We’ve already come to love this park, and there’s a great many photos taken of the waterfront and the Olympics across the water on my Instagram page. We had not, to this point, really taken the time to explore the walk/bike trail that runs all along it, though, so we set off south towards downtown to see what we could see.

We wandered along the edge of the Olympic Sculpture park, stopping to take a photo of myself under a giant ampersand.¹ There’s a bit of a sandy beach just past it, with a large sign warning people to not pester the harbour seals when they are resting on the rocks. We didn’t see any seals, but there were a number of ducks on the water looking reasonably pleased with their lot in life. Past this beach the trail empties out onto Alaska Way which continues on down past the piers on the waterfront.

We ambled on down the street, stopping to take pictures of interesting signs or structures, and eventually arrived in the vicinity of Pike Place Market, where we promptly became incredibly indecisive about where to eat. It didn’t help that, being Saturday, the market was completely packed with people, so we wandered up the block a ways and found a nice sushi joint called Japonessa which promised “a Japanese core concept with hints of Latino flair.”² We were seated pretty quickly despite having no reservation and our very friendly waiter got us set up with some ginger beer and a superb edamame appetiser, which was very fresh and salted perfectly. We then sampled the brie tempura, which was served with an extraordinary raspberry sauce, and finished with a variety of sushi rolls and sashimi.³ I have a feeling this is going to be a restaurant we return to, because everything was excellent.

Well stuffed with food, we went back over to the market⁴ We poked through the hat shop, but they only had sizes up to XL, which isn’t quite large enough for my head, so no new hats were acquired.⁵ We wandered down into the lower levels, where they keep the bookstores. There are two bookstores that I’m aware of in the Market, both with friendly and conversational clerks. I was tempted by many things, but in the end we only walked out with a single paperback.

We wandered over to Beecher’s Cheese Shop to get some cheese, but it was packed and the line was very long, so we decided to come back another day. Larissa’s foot was starting to bother her and it was beginning to get dark. So we headed up Pine St to 3rd Ave and caught the #13 bus back home.

It was a lovely afternoon with no agenda. And that’s really what Saturdays are all about, Charlie Brown.

amplectere potestem “et” ↩
This wasn’t a fusion I’d encountered before, so it seemed worth a try. ↩
Larissa declared the sashimi “the best she’d ever had”, and she’s had quite a lot of sashimi over the years. ↩
Pausing briefly to politely suggest to the guy standing on the corner with an IMPEACH OBAMA sign that he might consider the many benefits of getting a job, or at least finding something better to do with his time. ↩
I’ve been told there’s a serious hat shop somewhere in Seattle, and I need to take some time to find it. ↩

Friday Five: Perspectives

By autographedcat

On November 15, 2013

In Blog

The Friday Five is a set of interesting things I ran across over the course of the week that I thought were worth sharing widely. Most of these were already shared on my Facebook feed, but I wanted to elevate them and put them in front of people for a second time. I hope to make this a weekly feature in the future.

whose deadly web ensnareth thee abouttywinning asked you: 2012-08-09 03:37 As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction? I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.

via Tumblr

Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling Address Gender BiasLena Dunham interviewed Mindy Kaling for Rookie: Yearbook Two, and the interview covers what you’d expect those two to cover: showrunning, pop culture, moms, feminism, Nora Ephron, women’s magazines. They also both expressed their exasperation with institutionalized misogyny. Dunham: Do you ever get embarrassed to point out gender bias?

via Vulture

Stonekettle StationI’m not a particularly reflective kind of guy. I don’t spend a hell of a lot of time dwelling on the past. For me, as someone who spent most of my adult life in the uniform of my country, every day is a day to remember those I served with.

via Stonekettle

How I Learned To Stop Explaining How Old Things Make Me Feel“Get ready to feel old.” I read this on Twitter almost every day, and usually it’s a good-natured reminder that something loved by many people of approximately my vintage (born in 1970) has hit a particular anniversary. Big was 25 years ago, you know. She’s So Unusual was 30 years ago.

via Npr

The Things Nobody Tells You About GriefI’m on countdown mode. It’s been almost a year without my mom. In my head, this breaks down into hundreds of phone calls, cups of tea, and hugs and kisses that haven’t been exchanged, and a landmark birthday of mine-all missing from my 2013 memory log.

via Lifehacker

The Ballad Of The Swingman

By autographedcat

On November 14, 2013

In Songs

The Ballad of The Swingman
by Rob Wynne and Jeff Williams
TTTO: “Wichita Lineman” by Jimmy Webb

I am a swing man for the Rockies
And I have no workflow
Waiting for the call
To enter and to throw
I see the batter and the catcher
I send a fastball, low inside
And the Cardinals first baseman
Hits it right down the line

I’d like this game to wrap up early
But it don’t look like rain
With extra innings our bullpen won’t ever take the strain
And we need more hits than strikeouts
And we strike out all the time
And the Cardinals first baseman
Hits it right down the line

And we need more hits than strikeouts
And we strike out all the time
And the Cardinals first baseman
Hits it right down the line

This is just a fun little insta that Jeff and I bantered in an IM conversation. (We have conversations like this all the time. Don’t you?)

The original song this is a parody of, “Wichita Lineman”, contains one of the greatest lyrics of any love song ever written. Click on the link above if you’ve never heard it.

The Folsom Connection

By autographedcat

On November 13, 2013

In Blog, Songs

Over in the Tadpool group on Facebook, there’s a thread on the topic of “What’s your favourite song to sing in the shower?” One of the commenters wrote: “That’s a tough one I don’t know if I have a favorite… I will sing anything from Johnny Cash, Folsom Prisom¹ Rainbow Connection.”

Being a filker, of course…and a filker fresh off a con where my creative brain is already in gear, the following just fell out of my head:

Why are there so many songs about prisons
And people who are inside?
I’m stuck in this one because once in Reno
I shot a man to watch him die
I guess, in hindsight, I kind of deserve it
It wasn’t a nice thing to do
But as that train rumbles past old Folsom Prison
I can’t help but cry, wouldn’t you?

I’m not sure there’s really a point in going further with it; the joke is complete at the end of the first verse.² I really need to start a file just for little show-stoppers like this one.

Quipped another: “Folsom Prism is my Johnny Cash ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ cover album. I’d pay serious money for that album. Serious money. ↩
As Bill Sutton taught me: “Short is good. Funny is good. Short and funny is best. ↩

Cloudy sunset.

By autographedcat

On November 12, 2013

In Blog

Cloudy sunset.

They’ve gone plaid!

By autographedcat

On November 12, 2013

In Blog

People visiting this site may have noticed that it was loading slower than a molasses popsicle.¹ I’ve been aware of the problem, but I hadn’t had much luck tracking it down, despite a couple of tickets open to my hosting provider. I was just about to do the whole “Disable every single plugin and add them back one by one” routine when they sent me a note that ultimately provided the ultimate clue.

They showed me a load report which indicated that the slowdown appeared, in part, to be related to content that was utilising Google Fastpages.² The only problem was that I didn’t recall installing anything that made reference to that, so I started going through all my installed plugins to see if one of them tied into that service. Coming up empty, I started searching the web, and discovered that this wasn’t actually a WordPress plugin, but rather an option in my hosting provider’s customer platform. I had apparently turned it on³

Once I turned this option off, my page load times dropped from 5-9 seconds to around 600ms. That’s MUCH better.

This site being my main site, https://www.autographedcat.com/. not one of the mirrors. ↩
The irony of this does not escape me. ↩
I don’t recall doing so, but I may have accidentally clicked the checkbox, or else I just forgot. ↩

Long Haul

By autographedcat

On November 11, 2013

In Songs

Long Haul
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Kenworth Of My Dreams” by Richard Shindell

Sold my army rifle
Kept my long brown coat
My best friend said she’d follow me
Wherever I might roam
So I looked around until I found
A ship within my means
I put fifteen thousand credits down
On the Firefly of my dreams

A farmer’s daughter joined the crew
And she took the thing apart
And every coil and grav link
She came to know by heart
Our pilot, he’s a little strange
And Jayne is plenty mean
But I know they’ll stand behind me
In the Firefly of my dreams

But sometimes, late out on some shipping lane
I think of all the war had cost
Bad guys won, the good guys lost
I just wrote the whole damn system off

I think Inara likes me
But she won’t take me to bed
The doctor and his sister
Are running from the Feds
Shepherd says I’m running too;
I don’t know what he means
I’m just flying out into the black
In the Firefly of my dreams

But sometimes late out on some shipping lane
I think of all the war had cost
Bad guys won, the good guys lost
I just wrote the whole damn system off

Lately, life’s been pretty odd;
I’ve reasons to complain.
My character’s been questioned
So I’d like to make this plain:
From Ariel to Higgins Moon
And all points in between
I’ll do the job and then get paid
In the Firefly of my dreams

Yes, I’ll do the job and then get paid
In the Firefly of my dreams

There are many Firefly songs. This one is mine.

Richard Shindell writes amazing songs, and I listen to him a lot and cover a lot of his work. And a long time ago, it occurred to me that the long-haul trucker in his song “The Kenworth of my Dreams”, who sells everything he owns to buy a sort of freedom, was a spiritual ancestor to Malcolm Reynolds.

This is another song where the idea came to me and stalled halfway through, and then sat in a folder for a long time. I finished it a couple of years ago, but looking back over my blog, it appears I never actually posted it. I know I’ve performed this a couple of times out and about, once in a circle at Conflikt and once on a panel at Dragon*Con.

OryCon: Day Three

By autographedcat

On November 10, 2013

In Blog

The final day of OryCon had come at last, and with it my concert.

Before that, though, we packed up the room and lugged the suitcase out to the car. and then went to the main stage room to see Alexander James Adams’s set. He was in great form, and it was a treat to see him play twice in 3 weeks¹, and a great time was had by all. His Sleepy Hollow song (whose title I forget) was especially electric.

At noon, it was time for the Band Scramble. This is an event that seems to be really big here in the Northwest…everyone’s name goes into a hat, and bands are formed by pulling them out at random. The new group then has 24 hours to decide on a song to perform together and knock it out. Due to this that and the other thing, our band² (consisting of myself, Andrew Ross, Cecilia Eng, and Amanda Morris) never did get together to rehearse, so we very quickly convened in the hallway for half a dry-run of Andrew’s song “Can’t Stop The Signal”, which is to the tune of “You Can’t Stop The Beat” from Hairspray, and works well for this because each person can take a verse. Cecilia elected just to play the guitar, as the song wasn’t in her range in the key we were doing it, but that still gave each of the others a turn at the mic. It started out a bit ragged, but we threw ourselves into the “Hello, SHOWTUNES” energy of it and it came together all right in the end. The second band up featured Char McKay, Alexander James Adams, Steve Dixon, and Callie Hills, and it was really lovely. The final band³ featured Debs & Errol and Danica Dixon, and they went the extra mile and apparently, not understanding the rules of the contest, went and *wrote* a song to perform the night before. It was a lovely piece about Howl’s Moving Castle, and I hope that it might resurface because it was really lovely.

The next event was to be the song-writing contest, which I was one of the judges for, but since only one person had submitted a song, we let him sing his song and then awarded him the prize.

Next up was my concert. This was my first concert here in the Northwest, and the first one I’d done in over a year, and I’ll admit I felt a bit rusty at the start. I also made the last minute decision to sit rather than stand, which I regret now because I wasn’t really comfortable. Oddly enough, the songs at the top of the set list were ones I’d been specifically practising, and they were shaky, where as the back half of the set list was mostly songs I do often enough I hadn’t been specifically rehearsing them, and those went much better. The set list was:

Party of Four
Accept No Substitutes
Son Of A Son Of A Vor Lord
Ceci N’est Pas Un Chanson (Dave Rood)
Guinevere (Robin Batteau)
You Stay Here (Richard Shindell)
One Trick Pony (Paul Simon)
Ozymandias (Dave Weingart)⁴
Your Ex-Lover Is Dead (Stars)
Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)⁵
Space (Ben Wakeman)

Someone who was in the audience will have to judge how well it went over all. Like Mr. Tanner, I only hear the flaws. But I think it went reasonably well once I got past the first couple of songs.

Once I was done with my concert, I did what I usually do after a concert. I went to the bar and ordered a stiff drink. I had an hour to kill before my final panel, which was titled “PC vs Mac vs Linux vs Unix”, which we spent very little talking about because it’s not a fundamentally interested thing to talk about for an hour. Both myself and my co-panellist agreed that computers are tools and you select the tool that’s best for the job at hand, and then went on to talk about the history of the personal computer⁶, and what’s on the cutting edge of development for user interface design⁷. Despite the fact that we spent very little time on the topic at hand, we had a lot of audience engagement and everyone seemed to like the conversation, so I’ll call it a success.

At this point it was 4pm and we both have to work tomorrow, so we reluctantly begged off a dinner invitation and hit the road. Three hours later, we were home, ordered pizza and watched a couple of episodes of Pawn Stars, which was about precisely what we had enough brain power to process.

I had an absolutely magical weekend. Much thanks to the concom, and particularly Daniel Reitman and Andrew Ross, for inviting me and giving me so much to do across a broad spectrum. I made some new friends, had some interesting conversation, and quite honestly had the time of my life. I’m already looking forward to coming again next year.

since we’d just seen him at OVFF ↩
Which was inadvertently named “Only Here For The Flowers” ↩
The Band of Awesome ↩
Requested from the audience ↩
One day, I want to do this with a proper band so we can do the extended outro ↩
How did we get into this mess? ↩
How are we going to get out of this mess? ↩

Son Of A Son Of A Vor Lord

By autographedcat

On November 10, 2013

In Songs

Son of a Son of a Vor Lord
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Son Of A Son Of A Sailor” by Jimmy Buffett

As the son of a son of a Vor lord
I went out into space for excitement
I set out to bamboozle a captain and crew
By pretending I’m some sort of pirate

As a schemer of tactics and a student of war
I make up my plans as I go
Read many accounts about soldiers and Counts
It was all that I needed to know

Son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a Vor Lord
Under the gun, talk on the run
My momentum carrys me forward

With a fleet of my own in a distant war zone
I crafted a brand new persona
I can shake the hand of the ImpSec man
While he pretends he doesn’t know me

And my lady was born on Station Kline
Floating out in the space lanes
Fast on her feet, runs the whole fleet
And her beauty is matched by her brains

Preparing to race through the wormholes in space
Our forefathers mapped out before us
Feel the hull thrum as the jump engines hum
And see what is waiting there for us

Wherever I go, I’ll find trouble I know
In deep space, or the Dendarii mountains
I don’t stop to reflect about what happens next
At least I didn’t end up an accountant

But a son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a Vor lord
Under the gun, talk on the run
My momentum carrys me forward

I’m just a son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a Vor lord
My honour is bound to the Emperor’s crown
And I know I will not die of boredom

I started writing this song five or six years ago, and got stuck in the middle because I wasn’t even sure at what point in the series the song was set. I put it away and ran across the notes on it recently while tidying up some old folders, and suddenly i knew what I needed to do with it.

This is based on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkoskigan Saga, and specifically is set sometime before Memory, but after Miles has had time to establish himself with the Dendarii mercenaries. So, maybe sometime around Brothers in Arms or Borders of Infinity.

I debuted this song in my concert set at Orycon 35 in Portland, Oregon.

OryCon: Day Two

By autographedcat

On November 10, 2013

In Blog

Whew! Another long fun day at OryCon.

Last night at 11pm was the Polyamory panel, which was in a smallish room absolutely packed with people. There was a lot of discussion about different ways to approach non-monogamy, and a couple of people there were dealing with particular issues in their own relationships that they asked the room for advice on. There was a great deal of advice handed out both generally and specifically. I got a good laugh when I noted that 95% of relationship advice for how to have a good poly relationship also applies as to how to have a good monogamous relationship, “and the 5% that doesn’t mostly involves calendars”.

I had hoped to make it to open filk last night, but after this panel was over, I was exhausted so I went back to the room and went to sleep instead.

We got up and out in time to get breakfast at the hotel buffet before I had to be at an 11am panel titled “Social Media: Revolution or Time Sink”. It was a spirited discussion about the various ways not only that we all use social media, but the way that marketers use the information they collect from our engagement on social media for various purposes.¹ We got a lot of good questions from the audience, and it was thought provoking.

I had a couple of hours off after that before moderating three panels in a row. The first was titled “Putting the Play Back Into Role-Playing”, and had a neat group of RPG vets. We talked a great deal about storytelling, collaboration, and how role-paying is ultimately what you bring to the table as a player more than the mechanics of the given game you are playing. I was left at the end of it with a desire to get into a really crunchy character-driven RPG again.²

Immediately afterwards³, we convened a packed, standing-room-only hour titled “Fifty Years With the Doctor”, celebrating everyone’s favourite Time Lord. The audience (and the panel) was a pretty even split between old-time fans of the show like myself and folks who had only gotten into Doctor Who with the new series. Two of the panelists even said that they got into the show because of their kids, which was a neat sort of reverse-generational story that you don’t run across too often. After a few opening remarks, we pretty much threw this one open to the audience, and had a rollicking good time rockin’ the TARDIS.⁴

The third panel of the afternoon was titled “The Positive Influence of Video Games”, and was just me and one other panelist. He had a lot of notes on scientific studies on the topic, and some background as a developer, so there was a lot of interesting data. But aside from those studies, we also talked about the aesthetics of gaming and whether or not video games could be art, the sorts of skills and social connections that gaming can help develop, and stories about games that had changed our thoughts about things or made a positive impact on our lives. We got a lot of good audience participation on this one, too, and I felt pretty good about it.

I met up with kitanzi in time to hear the very tail end of Callie Hills’s concert, which was unfortunately scheduled against my panel, and then we went back up to the room and ordered some food for dinner, after which I took a short nap before my final event of the day, which was being part of a “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” game. If you’ve never seen the TV show, it’s improv theatre games, with the twist here being that a lot of the topics and scenarios were tailored towards a science-fiction con crowd. My favourite game was one where we each took on the persona of a fameous author, and then discussed our approach to a book. The topic was “Romance Self-Help book”, and the authors were HP Lovecraft, Terry Pratchett, Dr. Suess, and George RR Martin. The lady who had Dr. Suess went on a sad monologue about trying to gain the affections of Sam-I-Am, turning to me at the end and saying “He won’t try my green eggs and ham. What should I do?” and I, as GRR Martin, stepped forward and said “It was at this point in the story that Sam-I-Am suddenly and tragically died.”, which good a good laugh. When it died down, I said “But love must go on, so I am introducing 743 new characters in the next chapter.” which got an even bigger laugh. We also had a lot of fun with traditional bits like Party Guests and Dating Game.

Once again, I find myself too tired for open filk. But I have my concert tomorrow at 1pm, so i’ll get to do at least a little bit of filking at this con. But for now….sleep.

Which is ultimately, in my view, not really as sinister as we tend to treat it. 95% of the people collecting data are doing it to more efficiently sell us things we might actually want, which means less time wadding through advertisements that you don’t care about. Since they’re going to put ads in front of us anyway, they may as well be for things we want to see. ↩
Aside to the old Defensive Perimeter folks: I miss you all so much. ↩
luckily, all three of these were in the same room ↩
If the TARDIS is a’rockin’, don’t bother clockin. ↩