Michael's Texas Embrace

Novella month, day 10

2009-10-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

She motioned to one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Have a seat. Can I offer you some candy or a metropolitan?”

I sat. The plaque on her desk identified her as Sandy, Director of Processing.

“I’ll have a metropolitan,” I answered.

She hummed and mixed us each a metropolitan from a desk-side bar.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were the Director of Processing.”

“That’s me,” she sang, giving the second metropolitan a stir.

“I would have thought someone else would have met me at the elevator.”

She laughed, a little tinkling laugh. “Like a secretary? Or one of those awful women in one of those tight white outfits. I take a more hands-on approach than they do in admissions.” She tittered again. “God help us if the Director of Admissions got his hands dirty.” She sat a drink in front of me. “All of our hands are dirty down here.” She winked.

She took her seat once more and took a long, slow sip of her metropolitan with her eyes closed. She was really savoring it. “Mmm-mmm-mmmm,” she sang. “Did you want to watch us kill people?” she asked brightly.

“Not especially.”

She tilted her head and frowned. “We do it in a very nice way.”

Novella month, day 8

2009-10-08T16:55:00.001-07:00

“As I was explaining, Lou wants an informative commercial.”

The Director spat once more into the nearly-brimming dish.

I continued, “Something that sort of illustrates our processes, but makes people feel good about choosing us to kill their loved ones.”

The Director cocked an eyebrow. It hovered, twitching slightly, for the briefest of moments before falling. “Kill? Sir, we do no killing here. Physical Abatement is the term I prefer.”

I nodded. “Perhaps we’ll use that term in the comm—“

The Director interrupted me by noisily clearing his throat. He tapped the glistening dish of saliva. “I must warn you: when this is full our conversation ends.”

Overhead the air conditioner kicked on, ticked steadily for a moment, and hissed.

Novella month, day 7

2009-10-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

I scanned the waiting room until I spotted an empty seat by an attractive woman. A brunette, older than me but still attractive, sitting next to a decrepit woman trembling in a wheelchair. The old lady had liver spots creeping across her head like slugs, some unfathomable migration towards death. The air smelled of menthol and disinfectant and some unsettling undercurrent—potpourri mixed with putrescence.

I sat beside the woman and casually looked her over as I reached for a magazine. The only choices were magazines on cooking and housekeeping or golf. I chose cooking and housekeeping.

“Waiting rooms always want to teach you to cook or putt,” I remarked with a smile.

The brunette returned my smile in a pained sort of way but said nothing.

“My father used to say, ‘Teach a man to putt, and he may win a round of golf, but teach him to cook, and you feed him for a lifetime,’” I said.

The old woman coughed and her wheelchair shook all over like a temblor was upon us. Her hazy, milky eyes bulged and watered.

My brunette friend wrapped her arms gently around the old woman’s shoulders, as if too much pressure would shatter the woman’s shoulder blade. The old woman issued a low steady moan and something viscous and dark slid from her mouth.

“I can see why you’re having her put down,” I remarked.

The brunette shot me an unkind look. “Put down?”

Novella month, day 6

2009-10-06T20:16:00.001-07:00

The main elevator stops at the lobby; all points below ground are accessed through Admissions.

I made my way across the quiet, cavernous lobby of KWC toward the Admission Department. The receptionist was an ogre of a woman hunched over a gossip magazine like a hyena over a carcass. I half expected her to snarl and snap at me with her teeth when I rang the bell on the counter. I made a mental note to use an actress for the commercial if I decided to film anything in the reception area.

The receptionist did not have anything identifying her name. I named her Donkey.

“Donkey, I am here to tour the facilities.”

“Sir, in this realm you are at my mercy. I beg you show some credentials ere you begin this journey.”

I slid her my ID badge with the laminate curling at the edges. She eyed it suspiciously, holding it to the light and warping it so that it gleamed at odd angles in the fluorescents. She slid it back across the counter warily. Her eyes flickered uneasily to the corners of the empty lobby. Somewhere above a camera whirred.

“Donkey, I trust my papers are not only in immaculate order, but satisfactory to your keen and judgmental eye. Now, I pray thee let me pass.”

“Nay, traveler. I must detain you but some while longer and inquire: to what purpose do you ply thyself? Take you me for some knave, to let you into my henhouse for naught but villainy? You come with honey to my door, but beware you risk drawing bees or bears.”

I nodded and held aloft my hands in surrender. “My intent runs not to villainy, noble guardian. My goals are scholarly alone. I am but a tourist seeking to learn that which I know not of thine land.”

Donkey’s eyes narrowed. “Thou wouldst not dare tempt me with learned words only to enter, fox you are, and slay my hens with a wanton and vicious nature, wouldst thou?”

“Nay, for your hens are old and decrepit. Their sight doth wane and they doth shake all the night, and surely they are not long for this world. I would not deign offend my tongue with such unworthy meat. Nor would I offend my sense of sport by hunting prey so ill-fitted to provide a stimulating chase. Twould be like hunting something already caught—an empty experience of no import or satisfaction.”

Donkey fell silent and considered my words. At length she fixed her dark gaze on me and spoke: “As if I were a treed cat with dogs about the trunk, baying and snarling for my end, I have little choice of action. I must let you pass, for I can find no further reason to detain thee.”

I bowed low. “I thank thee Donkey. A more just and fair guardian of Admissions than thee could not be dreamt on earth or in the turning spheres of the heavens.” I made to proceed through the doors beyond her station, but she raised a hand.

“Traveler, wait but a moment longer, for I have one last thing to impart to you, and it is this: You may proceed through my guarded gates, but beyond is the chamber of waiting. There you must remain for a spell till the Overseer of Admissions grants you entrance to see the workings of her realm.”

Donkey pressed a button and there came to my ears a gentle buzzes. The doors began to swing open in silence. “Traveler, I shall inform the Overseer that you await her arrival. Enter now, and sit and she shall come at length unto thee.”

I looked within and beheld a waiting room with many ancients accompanied by their low-eyed offspring. “Guardian Donkey, doest thou expect me to wait within amongst those weakened and most unwell elders? Might I not retire to some other place to wait?”

Donkey shook her head, with her eyebrows knitted upward in compassion. “Nay, traveler. There is naught but one place to wait.”

From within the chamber issued coughs, raspy murmurs, the spiky rants of the confused. I looked over my shoulder again at the vast, antiseptic, empty lobby, and entered the warm, crowded waiting room.

Novella month, day 5

2009-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

At a loss, today I turned things a little odd. I think from now on, if I don't know what to write, I'll just make something random happen.

.......................

I sat and stared at the wall and tapped on my pad and longed to make a television spot that visualized the Turkish Radio Department’s commercials. I tested my hand at sketching a chainsaw.

David Funch came tapping on my door. Funch is a pig-headed lecher. I like him.

“Hey-hey, it’s the Funcher!” Funch cried. He likes to ask women in the office if they want to “Munch the Funch.” He started out in the admissions department and worked his way up. He claims to have euthanized over 50 sick old people. Their skin hung off their bodies like wet rags, he said.

“Funch,” I said. “I’m in a dilly of a pickle.” Funch hates it when people say things like “dilly of a pickle,” so I say things like that all the time to him.

“You sound like an old lady,” he replied. “I should put you down where you stand.”

“I’m sitting,” I replied dryly.

He said nothing and straightened his bow tie.

“Lou wants me to make a new commercial,” I told him.

“Jesus,” he said, sitting down. “Are the number bad?”

“You know they’re not. His mother hates the commercial.”

“Oy. What I wouldn’t do to his mother.”

“Do you mean kill her or screw her?”

Funch shrugged.

“He wants something informative, but kind of feel-good.” I paused and watched Funch push his cuticles back. “How would you make people feel good about what we do?”

“Don’t know. Hot chicks in latex, probably. Crawling all over this old man who only has a month to live. And he looks real happy until he gets run over by a train. Cut in half, you know.” Funch shakes his head. “A damn shame.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Human sub consciousness operates without sense, as if in a dream state. They’ll understand it without even knowing they understand it, see?”

Funch stood and divided himself into three parts and hovered in the middle of the room, arguing with himself in simultaneity. At length, the parts converged. “There,” he sighed.

October Novella month, Day 2

2009-10-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

And here's is the next day's work...

I nodded. “You have something particular in mind?”

Lou put his thick hands behind his back and paced my office a few times and wrung the air between his fingers. “Either something artsy or something informative.”

“Artsy or informative,” I repeated.

“Do not chew on those words, bud. Turn them into something.”

I opened my mouth but Lou waved his hand and continued. “Like old people. Gross, shriveled. They’re gasping for air, flopping around like fish on a dock. Maybe they’re covered in something slick and shiny like oil or Vaseline. Okay. There is a woman. Beautiful, black hair. Completely blank looking. Like she has no emotions. She watches these gasping, flopping old people, and then she stoops and holds out her hand. This is when we see a close-up of a drop of water dripping from her fingers and falling into the shriveled lips of one of the old people.” Lou stops and stares at me.

I cleared my throat. “That’s pretty edgy, Lou.”

He furrowed his brow. “You think perhaps it is too edgy.” It wasn’t a question.

Leaning back in my chair, I tapped my little notepad with my pen. It’s an antique fountain pen, and it is exceptionally nice and very fancy looking. I tap it whenever I want to pretend like I am thinking. “It might be, Lou.”

Lou nodded once, soberly. He had been trying to sober up.

Notebook. Pen. Tap, tap.

“Maybe something comforting.” Lou resumed his pacing. “Reassuring. People are reassured by facts. Maybe something explaining our refined, very humane process. Shots of clean rooms lit by fluorescents. Comfortable beds with flowers on the bedside tables. That sort of thing.”

“I think I can come up with something,” I said.

“Good. So. Okay. Spitball some ideas. Maybe come up with a few pitches. Type them up and shoot me the electrons when you’re done. Do not kill old people in this commercial. Do not do anything that will cause me to listen to endless grief from my mother. I am very very serious in this respect, and I vow to you to reject outright any idea, no matter how good, that I think travels that dangerous avenue.”

I nodded and tapped.

********

In 2010 the United States Government passed the Steinway Humane Euthanasia Retroactive Protection Act (SHERPA), effectively legalizing euthanasia for terminal patients. The law naturally required anyone offering services under the SHERPA act be licensed, bonded, and certified in humane euthanasia practices. This immediately created a cottage industry. Overnight large corporations created and branded euthanasia divisions, installing CEOs whose bonuses are based on kill rates.

Killers Who Care (KWC) Incorporated is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gerber. I work in the marketing department, specifically focused on television ads. Matilda Hock handles print and radio ads are outsourced to Turkey. Their accents are terrible and no one can understand them, which is just as well because a.) no one listens to the radio anymore, and b.) the commercials are generally filled with chainsaw sounds and people screaming. I cannot tell if the Turkish department thinks that is funny or if they genuinely imagine that KWC slaughters the elderly with chainsaws. Either way, few people can even tell the radio spots are KWC commercials.

October is Novella Month! Part 1

2009-10-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Murf and I challenged each other to a nanowrimo warm up...um, challenge: write a novella (20K-25K words) in October.

Here's my first day's work:

You’ve seen the commercial dozens of times. Late at night when your mind is tired and unguarded. At lunch while you are lulled by daytime talk trash. At the midpoint of the most inane drivel imaginable. Your mind wanders; your eyes drift toward the window or a smoldering cigarette or the ice cubes melting away at the bottom of an otherwise empty glass. It is raining. It is sunny. The street outside is in darkness broken by light pooled around streetlamps. You are drowsy, dozing in a chair or on a couch. You cannot sleep, bleary-eyed, you sit in the dim flickering light of the television. Eyes lingering on the clock as it creeps toward morning.

The commercials that come before the commercial are loud. Blaring, shouting at you, singing to you. Cooing, screaming, imploring, urging. Then silence. You hear the steady pulsing beep of a heart monitor and your eyes drift to the screen. The labored breathing fades in and on the screen the dim details of a darkened room take shape: a bed, a white blanket, an ancient woman, tubes around her face like tentacles, hospital equipment stands like sentinels at the head of the bed.

The camera zooms in, uncomfortably close to the old woman’s face and the commercial has your full attention. She is impossibly wrinkled, skin shiny and sagging like wet latex, liver-spotted. Her hair is but white wisps trembling on her skull. Her face fills the screen at a disorienting angle. You can see dried snot crusted around the oxygen tubes at her nostrils. Drool glistens on her chin. Her lips quiver with each ragged, half-moaned breath. You are horrified and entranced. The IV drips. The camera pans back and you become aware that someone else is in the room: a middle-aged man, dog-eyed and sad. He has dark circles under his eyes and a receding hairline. His glasses rest on his nose at an angle.

You see the pillow in his hand and the trembling gun and for a moment their purpose does not register with you. The man hesitates for the briefest of commercial moments, then strides to the head of the bed. You notice him close his eyes—just for a second—before he presses the pillow against the woman’s face. She starts to struggle, but her movements are slow, weak, feeble, confused. She is swimming, a stop-motion backstroke under blankets, as the man presses the gun to the pillow. He clenches his teeth and the camera cuts away as he squeezes the trigger.

The scene cuts to the same room. Blue and red lights flash in the window as a policeman, shaking his head, slips a bloody pillow into an evidence bag. The scene fades to black as a narrator, deep voiced and grim, says, “Euthanasia without a licensed permit is murder. Call the experts at KWC, Incorporated. It’s legal, safe, and humane. At KWC we let them go with compassion and comfort.”

The whole thing lasts less than a minute. You hate it, but you watch every time, absorbing the details, repulsed, mesmerized. The disgusting, dying old woman. The exhausted man pushed to the breaking point. The disappointed officer and that pillow, soaked, dripping. You hate; you wonder how a commercial like that even got made.

But when the time comes for you cancer-ridden mother to be put down, you will probably call KWC, Inc., and I will have earned my salary.

********

Lou, the great brick pig of the office stood before my desk, panting, clammy. His suit could split at any moment and give birth to great rolls of fat with tufts of damp hair sliding between. He scowled and placed both hands on the front of my desk and leaned forward heavily. His eyebrows butterflied up and down as he spoke. “We need a new commercial.”

This was nothing new. He had been dropping hints that he thought it was time for a new campaign.

“The old commercial is old.” He said.

“It’s not that old. And the numbers still look good.”

“Six months is ancient. That’s like being 80 in commercial years.”

“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not. It’s time to take that commercial out back and shoot it.”

I leaned back in my chair to consider this.

“Shoot it in the head and put it in the dumpster and get me a new baby.”

I pulled out my notepad. “What did you have in mind? Another murder commercial.”

He shook his jowls. “Hell no. I have experienced nothing but grievous complaint about that commercial. My mother, my mother has not shut up about it since launch. Says it’s disgusting. Violent. Panders to the lowest bla bla bla. She has accused me of fear mongering. I tell her the commercial was not my idea. She says that if I am the director of marketing, then I am responsible. Now listen. When my mother is 90 and shitting blood in the corner of the room, I will personally administer the kill drugs. But I will not listen to her harp at me for months about another commercial.”

I wrote “no murder” in my little pad.

Lou straightened up. “And please, no mothers this time. If someone has to die, please let that someone be a man. A very ugly man that is obviously in great pain and gravely ill. Maybe he’s crass. Maybe most people would like this man to die.”

I wrote “no mothers” in my little pad.

“But, and here’s the thing—it still has to be edgy. You have seen, I presume, Divine Intervention International’s new ad campaign. The one with the angels and fairies and shit. And the lady with the six arms. That commercial does not want to make me kill an elderly relative."

Nanowrimo, Final - 51,049

2008-11-30T18:53:00.000-08:00

I did it! I always thought a novel would be tough...but it was easier than most short stories I've written. Heck, I'm going to start another one next month!

NaNoWriMo Day 25 - 45,043 words

2008-11-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

I'm still on track! Here's the worst bit of dialogue I could find! WTF?

......................................

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the motel door. Callista opened the door and Lyle burst into the room. He looked her up and down and immediately noticed she was tip-toeing on her right foot.

“You hurt your foot,” he said.

She nodded. “Sprained, thanks to the KKK.”

NaNoWriMo Day 24 - 43,008 words

2008-11-24T21:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am still trucking.

......................

“What’s going on?” Callista asked.

“Thaddeus, Orion, and I are going to go see what’s going on down there. To do that, we have to transform.”

Callista looked across the forest at the rising column of smoke. “Can I go with you?”

Gram cocked his head to the side. “How? By riding on me?”

She had not thought about that. It did seem disrespectful to ride on someone’s back. She imagined putting a harness on a werewolf, perhaps a bit and a blanket. Callista Grey: Werewolf Rider. She started giggling. Gram frowned at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is no time for giggles.”

NaNoWriMo Day 19 - 33,605 words

2008-11-19T20:25:00.000-08:00

“It’s a godamm blood bath in there,” The Sheriff announced. “You could take a damn bath in it.” He looked at Lyle. “You seen that mess?”

“I got here the same time as you,” Lyle responded.

“Guess you did.” Sheriff Darby surveyed the mostly empty parking lot and wiped at his brow with a handkerchief, then sighed wearily before turning to Callista. “You the one found this mess?”

“Yes sir,” Callista said.

“I reckon you’ll have some interesting dreams then,” Darby said. “Write ‘em down for me.”

Callista tucked her hair behind her ears. “Write them down?”

Darby nodded and squinted at the sunset.

NaNoWriMo Day 18 - 31,589 words

2008-11-18T21:12:00.000-08:00

I'm ahead of "break 50K by the 30th pace," but behind my new goal of being pracrically done by the 26th...we'll see how that goes...

.......................................

She down shifted, accelerated, and felt for an instant like a hot country chick, out to hunt a werewolf. A lone wolf in the night comes to embrace the tender maiden in a dewy glade, with silken-sandpaper tongue, with velvet fur, with alabaster virgin skin, they entwine, throbbing chords of different species—one rope, knotted in loved till, like dogs, they are tied together on sensuous, wet moss amongst the ferns. She blinks, an eon passes like so many beats of a butterfly’s wing till at last the wolf’s seed is spent; they loosen and uncoil and grope toward each other, fang to cheek, twitching ear to luminescent skin, furry haunch to silken thigh till blurring, their hearts and veins and throats and skin throb as one in the opalescent green glade. The girl and the wolf gaze into each other’s eyes and the wolf knows her soul: he sees his doom and she licks her lip and slip the dagger between his ribs and into his breast. The wolf is drained and his life flickers out—yet his seed is carried from the verdant eternal in her womb, in ecstasy, in horror and squalor and glee.

NaNoWriMo Day 17 - 30,297 words

2008-11-17T20:27:00.000-08:00

I broke 30,000! I'm going to finish this thing even if the last five thousand words is a sing-a-long orgy inside a giant robot fighting a demon with six dongs!

.......................................

“—One last question,” Lyle said. “Does it hurt? When people change into werewolves, I mean. In the movies they’re always screaming and carrying on.”

Rupert ran his hand along his bearded jaw, a habit, Callista noted. “Actually, it’s quite the opposite. It feels good…I might even say arousing. Every part of you expands and your nerves are heightened.”

“Well damn,” Lyle said. “You’re sort of sayin’ your whole body is a hard-on.”

Rupert replied, “That might not be far from reality. But then your reasoning falls away and your mind goes dim and you wake up somewhere strange with your clothes all ripped.

Lyle nodded gravely. “I’ve had nights like that.” He rose and gave Rupert a vigorous pat on the shoulder. “You ain’t a werewolf buddy. You’re a drunk.”

Nanowrimo Day 16 - ~27,700 words

2008-11-16T22:39:00.000-08:00

I don't have an excerpt today--the most recent file is on the laptop and I'm on the desktop right now, and it's late.

I'm putting myself on an accelerated schedule from here on out to try to get done, or mostly done, in time for thanksgiving...don't want to have to rely on the holiday weekend to finis a novel!

Tomorrow: 30,000 or bust!

Nanowrimo Day 15 - 25,024 words

2008-11-15T13:18:00.000-08:00

Halfway there!

Lyle said, “I don’t know. What do you think? Think somebody can just up and blow up everywhere? Like, he woke up and exploded." He paused. "Some ole Chinese dude once dreamed he was a butterfly—you heard that?”

“I think so. He woke up and wondered for the rest of his life if he wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Right?”

“That’s the one.” Lyle fell silent.

Callista asked, “What does that have to do with Buck?”

“Well, maybe Buck dreamed he was an explosion, and instead of spending his life wonderin’, he just blew the hell up all over the room. Hell, I don’t know. How do you make sense of anything? What do you think?”

“About what?”

“About whether you’re you, or you’re something else, dreamin’ that you’re you. What if you wake up and you’re an explosion, or a wolf-thing? Maybe werewolves are just people that wake up at night and realize they’re just wolves, dreamin’ they’re people all day.”

Nanowrimo Day 14 - 23,402 words

2008-11-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

She rounded a corner and heard a quiet rustling sound from last room on the floor.

Callista eased forward toward the room; the door was ajar. She pushed the door open with the tip of the flashlight and there was the lumberjack, sitting on the floor, rummaging through a chest.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She had not known what to expect, but she was caught off guard by this casual rummage.

“Looking for something to help me escape or kill you,” he said. He pulled papers, books, and what looked like packets of herbs or seeds out of the chest, turning each thing over in his hand and examining it, sometimes smelling the item.

Nanowrimo Day 13 - 22,190 words

2008-11-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

She grabbed the lumberjack’s arms and dragged him into the dark parlor. She felt curiously like a murderer; the heist had gone wrong and she’d had to kill her partner. With a gasp, she left him in the middle of the room. He looked out of place on the floor, and Callista had a strange feeling of guilt. Here she had only been in her uncle’s house for a few days, and already she had two prisoners.

She fled the room and wedged a chair under the door, not entirely certain that trick actually worked. She retrieved the pistol and her phone from the living room, called Lyle, and sat down in the kitchen to wait.

The lumberjack knocked on the inside of the parlor door in what Callista thought was a metered, polite manner. “Miss,” he called from within in a personable tone. “Would you let me out?”

Callista did not respond. She did not think it prudent to communicate with murderers or rapists or whatever the lumberjack was.

He said, “I think there has been a misunderstanding.”

He said, “I mean you no harm.”

He said, “You’re totally overreacting here.”

Nanowrimo Day 12 - 20,267 words

2008-11-12T20:40:00.001-08:00

Barnibus Doyle was not the only visitor that day. Much to Callista’s chagrin, quite a few visitors materialized at her door. A man dressed head-to-toe in camouflage obligingly offered to shoot the wolf-boy for her—he too had been listening to a police scanner and thought the creature would make “awful interesting jerky.”

A man identifying himself as “Leonard from the National Park Service” wanted to verify if the creature might not belong at the wildlife reserve. He declined to specify which wildlife reserve, and Callista sent him on his way.

To Callista’s surprise, Marge, owner of Marge’s restaurant, showed up with a massive, ruddy man. “We’re here to kill the monster,” she said frankly. The chunk of granite behind her nodded. Callista simply closed the door.

Nanowrimo Day 11 - 18,392

2008-11-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

Lyle and Callista stood, dumbfounded, gaping at the strange, trembling creature. It started to whimper pathetically.

Callista said, “I don’t think this thing is dangerous.” She reached toward it, and it bared sharp, uneven teeth.

Lyle pulled Callista’s hand back. “Anything cornered is dangerous.”

“Well we can't leave it up here.”

He crossed his arms and regarded the creature. “Well what do you want me to do?”

“Look, I just don't think it's dangerous. It's like a scared little animal.”

“Except for the part where it's some kinda wolf monster.”

“Right. Except for that.”

Nanowrimo Day 10 - 17,342

2008-11-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

The darkness moved before them. Lyle's flashlight brought forth the flash of two eyes peering from the gloom. The creature moved. Callista saw a snout and fur. A long shaggy grey body broke left and into darkness.

Lyle spun and fired. His bullets hit the wall, but before the light and the deafening shots, a form dropped to the floor and squealed—a high keening. Then the thing froze and trembled against the wall.

Before them cowered the strangest thing Callista had ever seen. It was small, perhaps seventy or eighty pounds, roughly four feet in length, and covered in fur. The creature pressed itself into the corner and whimpered like an injured dog. And Callista thought that perhaps it was a dog, until it turned its face to the light.

Nanowrimo Day 9 - 15,119 words

2008-11-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

Callista laughed. She could not help it. “I’m sorry, you expect me to believe you when you say my uncle John killed your grandfather, and that it’s common knowledge? Don't you have laws around here?”

“Oh we have laws. But my granddaddy was a werewolf, and you ain’t got rights when you’re a monster.”

“But wouldn’t your grandfather have been a person most of the time?”

“People don’t eat live chickens by the dozen like damned super foxes.”

Callista furrowed her brow, feeling as if she were treading water. “Is that all he did, was kill chickens?”

“That I know of, anyway.”

“And you think he should have died for that?”

Nanowrimo Day 8 - 13,351 words

2008-11-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

When she reached the third floor window she found it was not a glare that prevented her from seeing anything. The window was blacked out. And it was locked. She shook it and hit the edges with her palms and it did not budge. Puzzled, she descended the ladder and tried another window. And another. She tried every window on the third floor and found each of them the same: blacked out and locked tight.

She sat down in the grass and frowned at the house. Was the third floor fake? Just for show? If that were true there would be a massive hollow space above the second floor. It must at least be an attic or a storage space. That would explain the surprising lack of personal effects in the cabin. Other than the Hall of Werewolves, the interior was decorated with generic, rustic décor, as if it were for tourists—a rental, a caricature of a cabin. Except for all the mounted heads, of course.

Nanowrimo Day 7 - 11,940

2008-11-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

“Well, like I said, as far as I know they are what you’d call a localized phenomenon. They’re Appalachian werewolves. Like good ole boys who tear it up on the weekend, except they happen to be secretive, cursed, half-wolf creatures hell-bent on murder. Although, I ain’t convinced they’re all hell-bent on murder. I seen one outside Big Pig’s pub one night, ‘bout two in the a.m. I didn’t have my gun on account of being off duty and drunker than hell. I thought I was likely a goner. Conventional werewolf wisdom is they’d assume kill you as look at you, but this one was just lookin’ at me. I put my hands up like I was under arrest, too. Said ‘easy there boy,’ and told it I weren’t keen on killin’ or being killed. You know, I swear, it tilted its head like it was trying to figure what I was sayin’. Then it sort of grunted and took off. It could of killed me if it had a mind to. It just didn’t. And for the life of me, I can’t figure what that means. Does it mean they’re more like people than they get credit for? That there’s good and bad, like regular folks? I don’t know, but I might think twice before takin’ a shot at one.” Lyle fell silent and glowered at the heads along the wall. “Let’s get out of this room. It’s stuffy.”

Nanowrimo Day 6 - 10,065

2008-11-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

I broke 10,000! 1/5 of the way there feels like an accomplishment!

...............

It was the largest cabin Callista had ever seen. A sprawling three-story thing with walls of huge logs, so dark they seemed black. The cabin looked like a dozen different architects had conspired against it, each one trying to see how much farther interlocking logs could be stretched. There was a ridiculous turret on one side, and a severe, cathedral-like front with a roof pitched at an impossible angle. Callista found herself wondering how anyone had shingled it, and what brave souls risked so much for the sake of shingling.

“You must have fearless, selfless roofers in these parts,” she mumbled to Lyle.

He cocked his head to one side. “I don’t pretend to follow, Miss Grey.”

“Lyle, you can call me Callista. But never Cal. Cal is a criminally underweight girl with a boy’s haircut and a filthy mouth.”

“I have been formally put on notice.”

Callista pointed to the roof. “It’s just so steep.”

Lyle followed her gaze. “John Two had a powerful conviction that werewolves were loathe to enter buildings with overly steep roofs. I believe he also thought the creatures had a fear of your more gothical structures as well. That’s the only thing I can figure for putting a turret on a log cabin, anyway.”

Nanowrimo Day 5 - 8,555

2008-11-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

The trio walked across the parking lot together. Callista commented on the name of the motel. "Field Ham Inn is an unusual name, Mr. Scoob."

"Scoob. It's just Scoob." he replied. "I found a ham in that field over there." He waved absently toward a scraggly field behind the motel. "Spiral cut, smoked ham. With a maple glaze. One of the best days of my life."

Callista struggled not to laugh, to cackle wildy in the parking lot. The hour was late in this strange land. "Oh, my. That was quite a find," she managed to say after mastering herself.

Nanowrimo Day 4 - 6,709 words

2008-11-04T17:36:00.000-08:00

Lyle continued. ”You allege that this here bus crashed, and that you and these alleged other people, heretofore referred to as passengers, were aboard this here bus?”

She nodded again. She would have said something if she knew what on earth he was getting at.

He made a note on his pad. “There any pigs on that bus?”

“Pigs?”

He nodded solemnly.

“Why on earth would there be pigs on the bus?”

“I don't know. I just thought it'd be funny if there were. Funny like peculiar.”

“I'm sorry, officer, I don't understand.”

He sat his pad down and looked at her, with his bleary, bloodshot eyes. “I'm just trying, ma'am, to assertify what transpired.”

Nanowrimo Day 3 - 5,233 words

2008-11-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

I over shot to make up for a deficit yesterday by writing with the laptop in front of the TV. When you're not overly concerned about quality, why worry about concentrating?

“Callista, there are brave men, and confused men, and hurt men, all over the world.”

She was scanning the seats, looking for the teenage boy and the old lady. “Yeah?”

“I am all three of those men,” Cameron continued. “And that’s a lot of men for one pair of pants.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah. But I need a tailor,” he responded.

“A tailor?”

“To let out my pants.”

Nanowrimo Day 2 - 3,181 words

2008-11-02T19:43:00.000-08:00

Argh, I end the day 19 words under count...

“Would you like something to drink? I have an unopened bottle of water,” Callista said, holding up one of several bottles of Mountain Springs.

“If I were to drink anything on this god-forsaken bus, it would be your blood,” he said, in a flat, metered way.

Nanowrimo Day 1...1,804 words

2008-11-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

I've decided to right a cliche-ridden, commercial piece of crap werewolf adventure for Nanowrimo. For real. With cheesy names and everything.

....

Callista Grey was the only person wearing a cocktail dress on the Greyhound Bus. She shimmered in light green chiffon against the dull interior of the bus as it wound its way through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Why no one else was dressed as she escaped her. Chiffon just seemed to glide across bus seats and benches. It was delightful.

Epic Win

2008-10-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

I sit at work all day and surf the internet, and I always see interesting articles and sites and think, "I should share these."

Then I get home and forget. Today I did not.

First, Failblog is epic win. Go there. http://failblog.org/

My favorite game of the moment came out in 2004. For free. Made by a Japanese guy who goes by Pixel. It's called Cave Story, and it is free, but I would pay for it. It's coming out on Wiiware at some point, so you can pay for it if you want. But you can play it now for free, and you should.

This poll expresses it nicely.

For real. Cave Story, it's old school Metroid loving rulingness. For free.

Cave Story! http://www.cavestory.org/index.php

(edit: Cave Story will be out for Wii Ware "Holiday 08." It will have more detailed graphics (It still looks old-school, but it will look a little more 16-bit than 8-bit) and have remixed music. Should be between $5 - $10.)

bump

2008-08-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

Murf: how are you enjoying huntsville so far? think you will ever blog again?

Michael: goonies

you seen that movie

Murf: i do and have

Michael: there is a character

likes candy bars

Murf: chunk

Michael: okay.

now. Blogging.

blogging is like chunk

chunk likes candy bars

but he's got that bomb that's implanted in his heart

so if he eats candy, it triggers the detonator

you remember the scene

where he's like, "god...i want some snickers!"

but the dude with the face, he's all like, "no chunk!"

"you'll die!"

so chunk sits down on the railroad tracks

and hugs his legs up to his chest.

and he says, "i feel just like a little boy"

and that lady, the man-looking lady from that movie, puts her hand on his shoulder

and says, "you are a little boy."

and she gives him candy that's special.

like, cause it won't set off the bomb--you know.

and that's when they find the treasure.

Murf: wow, it's been awhile...

i don't remember it quiet that way

crazy how memory starts to fade after 30

Michael: yeah...

but blogging is like that, see the analogy?

This is like an EP...

2008-06-10T18:05:00.001-07:00

Soon Texas State will delete my free webspace. So here's the last gasp/splash! Six songs, that's like an EP, right? All the songs are filled in with an album title (you'll see it on your mp3 player). The title is from a song I didn't finish! Awesome! You don't get to hear that one! Sweet!

Anyway, here it is! The official soundtrack of the summer! They're like, cruddy 60s pop!

Interior World

Whisky Mountain Woman

The Surface of the Earth is Dead

King of Fighters ('94)

Dogs in Jail

Untitled 80s Victory Song

Long-overdue update...

2008-05-29T19:38:00.001-07:00

Oy, I should blog more!

Anyway, I am gruduatized!

Maggie got a job in Huntsville, AL, and we're moving there at the end of June.

Very, very soon I will post a whole bunch of songs, before I lose my Texas State webspace!

Cha-zam.

Thesis...

2008-03-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Right now, fedexkinkos is laboring to print out my thesis...152 pages of sheer fiction writing genius (three copies.)

What will those professors say in my thesis defense, when confronted with superheroes, wizards, talking chickens, and the apocalypse? I don't know. Probably: "This is the best thesis that doesn't make any sense that was written by a weirdo that we've ever read!"

Tomorrow I give it to my committee....

Beard of Bees.

2008-01-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

Murf said we were making 90 second long beard songs. So I damn well did. My beard is not made of bees, but I can imagine how it would be, you know? Powerful and frightening. And lonely in the way the greatest of rulers feel alone. Alone in the steamy, sensuous bath of power.

Beard of Bees (version 2)
Beard of Bees (version 3)

There are two versions here, you see. Version one had some nice keyboard parts, but it was a little messed up, so I did it again, and added drums and distorted guitars. But I thought I had destroyed it, so I made a slower, quieter one. Then I fixed the second version and couldn't decide which one was better. I'm still not sure, but maybe someone else will have an opinion.

Beard Week 4: Moods.

2008-01-03T15:49:00.000-08:00

My Beard is a little over four weeks old. The mustache has more blond and red hair in it than the rest, so it looks like there's less hair...until I dye it all black with orange stripes.

Behold! The Dusk Spider.

2008-01-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

This is the Dusk Spider. Its web was about 8 feet wide. It was at a height of roughly five and a half feet. And it was right across the trail. It obviously planned to get on someone's face in the night. I would say it had about a four inch leg span. Maybe four and a half. It was pretty freaky.

2008!

2008-01-01T18:15:00.001-08:00

2008...

Is the year of allergies.

:(

This is Bullcrap!

2007-12-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

>
>
>Re: 'Sup dixwad!
>From: 2SweetTim
>To: Michael
>
>
>yo i noticed you been takin a pitiful stab at quality
>on here lately. no wut? its a buncha bullshit. u think
>i want songs about love or shopping? wrong assface.
>i wanna here songs about babies n pigs n maybe ponies
>4 tha ladies.
>last time i even got my rocks off on this site wuz
>maybe that song about banging truckers an guitars.
>seruiosly, just hit record and sing a song my girl will
>get slick to an wanna rock it.
>
>4 real yo.
>
>2Sweet.
>
>

You're right, 2SweetTim! I came up with a random name, hit record, and sang for a couple of minutes. Then I did some one-take overdubs of half-assed instrument playing. Garbage forever!

Pig Shucking

Roxorz.

Check out my BeATz

2007-11-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

When the boys down in the R & D department listed all the best things that could go in a song, this is what they came up with:

-Cool guitars (disco-y and fuzzy lead with a phased sound.)
-Bass guitar that sounds like an early 80s post-punk band played it.
-Cheesy electro-drums and real drums at the same time.
-Synth bass.
-Cowbell.

So we worked up a concept song to be shown at the trade show, and the results pleased us.

How You Been?

This is a little different from my standard fare, I think. For one, there are a lot more words, and they're not very funny. But I think it sounds all right, and I'm pretty sure this is my best drum track. I've been trying to figure out how to make happenin' dance drums with real drums and drum machine mixed together, and it finally clicked. I'm very pleased.

I also tried to mix it differently. More compressed I guess. So the vocals are down and the bass is up, etc. And I've only included the choicest of notes for the post-guitar solo guitar solo.

Whatcha think?

Lyrics!

Bap.

And now for something completely different?

2007-09-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I spend most of my song-writing time working on short songs about food, animals, space, etc. But a tune popped into my head in the shower (really) and I decided to try to write a full-on pop song. That is, a song that's not weird or silly. I played it on the keyboard for Maggie and she thought it sounded pretty good, so I recorded it. That is, a song that's not weird or silly.

I'm pretty happy with the results. The musical mode is the same: weird noises, synths, glockenspiel, melodica, etc. It's just not silly. Heck, it's like a bum-assed love song, and I'm happily married, so the subject matter isn't even relevant to me. The lyrics are pretty generic anyways, but the song sounds pretty cool I think. Anyway, here's my stab at down-tempo pop!

I'm The Winner

Let me know what you think, since this is an experiment. (And don't worry, I'm working on a song about babies fighting ninjas.)

Friday is Engineer Day!

2007-08-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

I never claimed that I didn't take requests! Heck, I take requests with gusto! Murf wondered if I would ever do a new version of the "Engineer's Blues" song. Heck, I decided to make three of them. I guess I couldn't decide how to do it.

Engineer's Blues
Engineer's Blues in the 80s

Yeah, there are only two versions there. I'm still working on the third. It just didn't come out right. But these two popped out pretty much the way I meant them to. And they were fast records, too. This proves once and for all that country (ish) and electropop are the two genres of music most easily attained by the amateur home recorder. Or, at least it seems like those two genres are easiest for me. Maybe I could start an electropop country band and be rad.

Lyrics!

Let's work all night!

Hard luck rockin' in the free land.

2007-08-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

Maggie got me a totally sweet Little Big Muff pedal for my birthday. The Big Muff is, in my opinion the all time lord of fuzz and distortion pedals. Classic and eternal, from the seventies to the Smashing Pumpkins, fools, the Muff has owned.

So I obviously need to to grind out a miserably crappy classic rock song entirely for the sake of playing a crappy fuzz solo. I spent almost an hour working on this song, so you best recognize the, um, hour-ness of it. That's just the way it goes when your living and loving is so hard.

Hard Luck Rock Woman

Aw nuts. I just realized that I should have totally ended this song in a fade-out guitar solo. That might have helped the lameness of it. Maybe someday...

Feel the...um, something...

2007-08-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

I recorded a new version of a song that's two years old, that no one has ever heard.

About two years ago Maggie went off to a conference for school and left me at home with the dog...and a terrible sickness. I didn't go to work. I could barely speak. I laid in the living room and watched asian movies and anime and talked to the dog and took lots and lots and lots of medicine and drank waaaay to much tea with honey in it. I think I put theraflu in the tea, in fact. At some point I became fascinated with my froggy, croaky voice, and recorded a song on the fly. The song is the song I'm posting here, and I don't think I changed it that much.

So, this song doesn't make much sense. It's weird, but not really funny. Since I was sick, and drugged, and sort of one-taked the words, I guess it's just whatever the heck it is. But for some reason, I have thought about this dumb-ass song a number of times these past two years, so I decided to record it.

The Flames

I thought I was trying something different with the production, trying to be more sparse. I don't know think it ended up that way, but the bass is thumpier, and the tambourine is more prominent, so I guess that's something. I also reveled in the use of my analog gear, so filters and ring mods and analog delay abounds. I'm not too sure about the mix; I might redo the whole thing sometime. But here's what I gots so far, yos.

Lyrics!

Um, yes.

New Music!

2007-07-21T17:54:00.001-07:00

I finally fixed my computer! It only took seven months. It turned out most of my audio drivers were corrupted, and I guess parts of Windows too. But I backed it all up, and then reformatted my HD and started from scratch. I have new recording software that I'm still learning. Today I recorded my first new song ALL YEAR! Man it's been a long time.

I didn't mean to record a song about food. I had planned on being done with food songs, but this one just sort of happened and it was short, so it seemed like a good way to teach myself the new program. I like the sounds, especially the end. It sounds like an Atari getting detonated on a sixties guitar.

Poisoned Milk

New Feature! Lyrics! (Whoa! a seperate web page from the main one...I'm learning stuff!)

Hooray!

Shame in Modern Society.

2007-06-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

People are ashamed to talk about the whoosh tube. But sometimes it bloops. This is no cause for shame.

Spiders (but not really).

2007-06-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, at two different times, I walked through spiderwebs (two different ones). I checked myself thoroughly, but found no spiders. However, for many minutes after each incident, I perceived tingling and/or crawling sensations on my skin, where no spider was to be found.

Either the spiders were of the phantom variety, or my mind played subtle, gentle tricks on me.

Templates in Modern Life

2007-05-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

This new template is stupid. The top is too bright and the layout is not attractive. It looks cluttered. And yet, I feel no thrill at the thought of changing it. This soup stinks, but let us linger in its smell to fully describe the odor.

Hedonism in America.

2007-05-19T12:36:00.001-07:00

I dipped my Totinos Pizza Rolls in Ranch Dressing. I do not regret it.

Olives.

2007-05-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

I just ate some olives, and I enjoyed them. I was concerned--for just a moment--that I could swallow a pit. I did not.

And now...

2007-04-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, that was fast, but now the first half of the cd is gone and the second half is up. Cool, huh?

It's been awhile...

2007-04-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been awhile since I posted. I've probably been busy.

I got a new soundcard, and I thought I would be back in business this weekend recording dumb ass songs to post, but my new soundcard doesn't work either, so it must be a problem with my motherboard or my computer as a whole, which sucks because I have no idea how to fix it at the moment and I have a bunch of songs I want to record. Crap.

It has come to my attention that Murf does not have the last Sweetness album. This week I am posting the songs and album artwork. But I can only do half at a time. The first half is up right now. So, um, I guess if you want a couple of bad songs, you can download them along with some bad album artwork.

The Sweetest of Meats

Okay. Bye.

The Sweetness

2007-02-22T22:01:00.000-08:00

So Maggie thinks I should make a Sweetness MySpace page. I think I will. But...What songs should I put up? Maggie want the "Night Eyes" song from the last album, for starters, so that goes. I mean, that song is a master stroke of some kind, I guess. Such conviction. And "Heart of the Warrior" goes without saying. But I think Myspace lets you do four.

How about helping me out by voting on your four favorite Sweetness songs? Whatcha say?

Swiss pilot is one step closer to human Starscream.

2007-02-10T08:57:00.000-08:00

This is pretty neat, a swiss pilot has designed back-mounted wings with little jet engines on them. He can jump out of an airplane and fly for four or five minutes, steering by turning his body and the wings. This is important scientifically, because it gets us one step closer to real live transformers. You need unfoldable, working wings, and here they are in this video. He even has a rocking soundtrack. The transformers were, of course, all about the rock as well.

Jetman!

Now he needs a way to land without a parachute. Parachutes are not as cool as landing straight into a jog and pulling out a laser gun. Or, maybe this is one step closer to real live G.I. Joes. He should yell "Cobra!" when he jumps out of that plane.

Yes.

2007-01-31T10:05:00.000-08:00

You find yourself in a clearing dominated by an ornate stone dais. The sounds of ogres marching in the distance can be heard.

Honda Fit Review.

2007-01-15T08:14:00.000-08:00

My old car got smashed to bejesus so I got a new car. Now I have a car payment. I guess that was inevitable. We'll try to pay it off as fast as possible. Sadly, this cuts not only the beer budget, but the fast food budget and the musical equipment budget. Luckily I have amassed about as many instruments as I could possibly need, but my sound card is broken, so I can't record on my computer. I guess it's broken, anyway. My computer doesn't seem to recognize its existence...

Since my car was beloved and supposed to last for eternity, until the great car rapture when the car-trumpet in the sky is finally sounded and all the cars rise up from the earth and leave us for heaven, I had to find a car as close to mine as possible. Unfortunately, it turns out Honda hasn't made civic hatchbacks since 2000. And to go from a hatchback to a sedan! Never! You can't put two bicycles in the back of a sedan and feel good about it. Or a drumset and a bass guitar. So I got a brand-new Honda Fit:

It's little! Smaller than my old car, but somehow larger on the inside. Like Snoopy's doghouse or the Genie's lamp. Also, unlike my car, this one is red.

This is the dash. It looks more futuristic than my old car. It should, of course. It's eight years newer. Although, I think we can all agree that in 1999 we thought the year 2007 would be the real future. You know what I mean. There doesn't seem to be a "hover" or "fly" button anywhere.

The backseats flip up, so you could allow a small pony or a great dane to stand sideways behind you. Also, the backseats actually recline a little bit, so passengers in the back can get some shut-eye while you drive. Ungrateful bums. It's not like they offered to drive for awhile.

The backseats lay down flush with the cargo space, unlike my old car which had a bit of a hump. You could cram a lot of children back there! Depending on age and weight, I'd guess eight or nine children could be crammed in there.

The Honda Fit is the car of choice for transients. The front seats are designed to recline back flush with the backseat (which in turn recline a bit) creating a cushioned area long enought for someone my height to lay down in. If you plan on sleeping in one hatchback this year, I recommend the Fit.

How does it drive? A lot like my old Civic, really. It's a little "zippier." And since the front end is so short, it feels like it could turn very sharply, like a go-cart.

The end.

Bad Luck Super Extreme Explosion!

2007-01-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary:

Yesterday I took off from work because I was sick. I went to the doctor in the morning. Then I went to Target and filled my prescription. Then I left Target to drive the 5 minutes back to my apartment. Then I was in an accident that pretty much destroyed my beloved car and landed it in an impound yard. Today we bought a new car. That is all for now.

p.s. I'm still sick. Soon I will post pictures of the new car.

p.p.s. I am okay. The only thing injured is the middle finger on my left hand. It is sore, but not broken. My neck is a little sore. Pretty good for being hit so hard your car spins 180 degrees around in the road! Other casualty: my glasses. I would say they got broke by the airbag, but they're gone. I mean, they disappeared completely. They were not in my car. I think they flew out the passenger side window when it exploded. Probably the fire department swept them up. I have new glasses now.

Also, I am a Giant Nose.

2007-01-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

I'm still here! My computer is fixed, but now my soundcard is busted, so I can't record anything. One thing after another, I tell ya! Blogger still won't let me switch over to New Blogger, so I still can't post on Totally Vague Reviews or Totally Crappy Comics. I even have comics to put up there. Gosh, by the time I get switched over, my "It's 2007!" comic will be out of date!

Right now I'm sick with terrible allergies or a sinus infection or something. I place the blame squarely where it belongs: Texas. Damn you, Texas, and your horrific Cedar allergy seasons. I feel real bad, like I'm a giant walking stopped-up nose.

Of course, I'm not really a giant stopped-up nose. People would be running away from me. I'm really just a guy who sounds real stuffy, coughs every now and then, and has blood-shot eyes.

I'm so sad.

2006-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

There's a new blogger.
I'm still old blogger.
I have to be new blogger to post
a comic on the comic page.
but
I don't want to sign up right now.

I'm eating breakfast.
And I need
to shave.
There is work to be done,
banking to do.
Later, there will be manicotti to make
and a computer to rebuild.

New blogger, New world,
please wait a little while
for me.

computers...

2006-12-09T18:20:00.000-08:00

My semester is over! I play video games and read fantasy books and comic books now!

Except, that my computer died days ago. I turn it on, and the computer turns on, but no information is sent to the screen. Either the video card or the mother board is busted. But I have yet to ascertain which one it is. It makes me sad. You don't think about how important the computer is until it's broken. Now it's like there's this big void. I think, "I'm bored." But I can't surf the internet or record music in my office. I just hope the stuff on the hard drive is okay.

Oh people! Hold on to your computers! Caress them! Blow the dust out of them with canned air! Back up all your files! If they be buggy, take heed!

My comics may be sporadic, and my music capabilities are crippled. Oh!

Sandwiches.

2006-11-14T23:20:00.000-08:00

Mysteriously, a song about food is being posted.

Lady Sandwich

Yes.

Yes, I know Halloween was two weeks ago.

2006-11-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

I kept putting off posting some pictures of our wildly successful Halloween costumes. Well, no more! Here are some pictures!

Here's me and Maggie.
Maggie is Red from Fraggle Rock!
I'm Link from The Legend of Zelda games!
Maggie made our costumes! She is sew fancy!

Nintendo Power!
Thirty random asian girls on sixth street
have a similar picture. Clearly, Nintendo Characters
are hot.
James and Murf made their hats and Maggie
sewed their gloves.

Anything else for now? No!

New blog!

2006-11-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Murf started a new blog, which I am blogging on as well. It's a blog for fine art and comics.

Totally Crappy Comics

Not really a post.

2006-11-06T23:01:00.000-08:00

Urg. Much homework doing have I been. But tomorrow I turn in my next story for workshop, then all I have to do is make a website and a short film and maybe write a paper. In a day or so, I promise to put up a Halloween blog with pictures and music.

In the meantime, I have resumed posting things on the Last Lines. For now.

PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET!!! I call on you for aid!!!

2006-10-11T22:12:00.000-07:00

Okay. I have this class I hate. Technical communication: Visual Rhetoric. I thought it would be neat to learn about visuals. And the first book we started reading WAS neat, all about the ambient optical array and vision theories and brains and stuff. Then we started reading this other book and it became obvious that my teacher sucked and so did the assignments.

This week, I'm supposed to make a line graph with at least five data variables or something. Which is fine, I can maybe draw a dumb-looking line graph in paint. But I have no data. The teacher seems to assume that aside from reading a couple hundred pages of text a week and working on a paper, I have time to learn some program that lets me make bar and line graphs AND collect fucking data (he says it can be "work related" whatever that means. I count fucking money and type in account numbers for a small portion of the day. The rest of the time I read. I don't have any "work related" data.)

SO......does anyone have any line graph suggestions? I mean, I've never made one before and I don't have data. I don't think the data really matters, since the prof. just wants to see me make a nice looking graph. Does anyone have any data for me to graph? Does anyone have a program that makes line graphs easily?

Argh.

This is funny.

2006-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

Ryan Adams is crazy. Crazy funny.

Go here.

Ancient Sumerians y'all!

(Just listen to the intro song.)

Dragons, coffee.

2006-09-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

>
>
>To: Michael
>From: 2SweetTim
>
>
>Yo mike wazzup? been awhile g. i wuz kickin it 2
>some classic rawk n i thought whatever hapened to
>long tunez bout dragons an shit with wycked guitars
>an sords an shit.........like all this tekno shit
>aint got that flow. climbin mountains wit wizards
>like led zeplin. my girl thingks shakira is da bomb
>but im like, she aint wailin ona axe with lightnin
>behind her bitch shut up.....
>
>can you kick it classic like the good stuff for your
>main dawg 2Sweet?
>ill listen 2 it witha beer.
>
>22Sweet.....
>
>
>ps no tekno shit in this one k.
>
>

Tim, always for you, man.

I Would Save the Maiden...

Food songs are over. Adventure songs have begun!

(P.S. This one was hard, let me know if you have any suggestions. I puzzled over the music around the second guitar solo, since I'm kind of a lousy lead guitarist. Any ideas?)

Enter the Web of Illusion: A Short, Short Novella.

2006-09-19T20:29:00.000-07:00

Prelude:

In Texas, there are big trucks that drive about 90 miles an hour down the freeway, swerving in and out of traffic like formula ones.

Chapter One.

Driving to class, I was behind a truck. The truck was pretty big, and had detail work done on its paint. In short, it looked like the sort of trucks that drive very fast in Texas. Following a strategy of getting behind reckless speed freaks and following at a safe (albeit speedy) distance, I switched lanes and matched pace with the truck.

Chapter Two.

Time passed. The road reeled ever outward into the nothingness of Texas.

Chapter Three.

It slowly dawned on me that I was not actually going fast. I looked at my speedometer. Ten miles below the speed limit.

"What the hey?" I exclaimed.

Chapter Four.

It occurred to me that the truck merely appeared to be a fast truck, and thus gave off the illusion of speed. In fact, the truck was The Great Deceptor, and I was ensnared by the tangled brambles of illusion that grew from it.

Chapter Five.

I passed the truck.

The End.

ACL 2006: Day Two

2006-09-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

So me and Maggie and our friend Nicole are standing in the near-dark watching Austin band Explosions in the Sky and this hippy-looking guy with no shirt walks past and stands about three feet in front of us. I notice him briefly and refocus my attention on the rock music at hand. The Maggie says something like, "That guy is taking off his clothes." Well, what do you say to that? I look at the guy again, and sure enough, his pants are around his ankles and his boxers are low enough to display about one third of his crack. Our first thought is, "this guy is drunk and getting ready to pee right there."

Wrong.

He drops his boxer shorts all the way and waddles, full-frontal through the crow to this couple and grabs the guy's wrist as the guy backs away. By this point we are all enthralled. A naked hippie! Clearly on drugs! What the hell is he doing? Does he know that couple? It was fascinating. Eventually the guy, I guess, coaxes the naked man to put his pants back on, and the naked man disappears. Leaving the stage area, we passed him. He was lying in the fetal position on the ground.

Other than that, we saw some great bands. TV on the Radio was fantastic. Maggie really liked What Made Milwaukee Famous.

Ben Kweller was enjoyable, but he got this outrageous nosebleed, blood was all over his guitar and the piano and it just kept coming. He asked the audience for a tampon, and by god somebody delivered, but it fell out after about half a song and, since the blood just kept coming, he had to leave the stage.

Calexico was a fun concert band. Although, in concert they were like a crazy exploded mariachi band and on their website they sound like folk. Go figure.

The Shins were great. They were a little more rocking live.

Aimee Mann was a little disappointing. She toned it all down too much. And Massive Attack was sort of like listening to Massive Attack with lots of stage lighting. Willie Nelson did exactly what you might imagine.

Then there was...

Kings of Leon. This band sucks a mighty jug of suck, and dumb-looking people sing along. Screw you Kings of Leon.

More tomorrow!

ACL 2006: Day One

2006-09-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

It's time for the Austin City Limits Music Festival again! Today was the first day, and man, it was hot (mid 90s? Upper 90s?) but it felt cool since the last day of last year was 107 with dust so thick it looked like fog (is this sounding fun?)

Today's best band was Wolf Parade
for sure. Weird keyboards, theremins, and rocking abounded.

Other highlights for me were Okkervil River, whose sloppy rocking was quite enjoyable despite the fact that I missed the first half of "No key, No Plan."

Gnarls Barkley was enjoyable in their neo-post-motown-gospel-by-way-of-indy-mash-up stage act, complete with chicks with bow ties and Cee-lo singing in a white suit.

Sparklehorse was pretty good, but still disappointing. How do you have four albums and manage to not play most of your best songs? They kept starting songs and I would think, "They're playing this song?!?"

Hey Van Morrison! When did you pick up that country band to play behind you? Because all your best old songs were rock or jazz. I don't need you to bring along lap steel and singing gospel ladies. Where the hell was "Moondance?" Or any of the other songs I know. I mean, you did "Bright side of the Road." I guess that's something. Except I wanted "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Jackie Wilson Said." How about "Wild Nights?" Argh. We heard John Mayer, he was as expected. Kind of pleasant voice, good guitar, mediocre songs.

Tomorrow will be random, but I'm looking forward to the Shins, Aimee Mann, and Explosions in the Sky. TV on the Radio should be good. I'll report back tomorrow with links to my favs. But wait for Sunday! Ween! The Flaming Lips! And the legendary Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers! Sweet!

It's winter!

2006-08-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

I decided today that it was winter. It's actually about 34 degrees outside. It's overcast as far as you can see. Maybe it's drizzling a little. A day to sit inside, watch a DVD, and eat some spicy ramen noodles. Except, you have to keep the blinds closed to keep up the illusion, otherwise you see how bright and hot it is out there. I can dream...

I'm still playing with the gameboy and the ring modulator. Here's my second gameboy song:

In Space No One Can Hear You Disco

This one is just gameboy and ring modulator. I panned my bass and drums to one side and my lead to the other and split the signal with a cable, so the lead could run into the ring mod, letting me tweak my lead in real time. Only, to then have stereo sound, you have to have a new set of non-panned instruments, and you have to twist the knobs on the mixing board real fast to pan the tracks to the right position for stereo. It's fun.

Oh, Andrew asked for links to the programs used for video game music making. You can use an emulator and do it on the computer. Sometimes it's a little glitchy, but it gets the job done.

The program I'm using is Little Sound DJ. If you go to the site you can download a free demo version. The page also has links to gameboy emulators. You might want to download the manual too, and check it out, there is a learning curve. There's also a link down at the bottom to the LSDJ wiki, which has some good info.

Also, Nullsleep has a good tutorial to get you started fast. It's under the "Documentation and Tutorials" section.

Haven't I modulated you somewhere before?

2006-08-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Whoa. As sort of a birthday present to myself (because I ordered it on my birthday) I got a moog ring modulator (moogerfooger mf-102). What is a ring modulator you ask? Well, let me answer not with words, but with this picture, which will tell you nothing:

See? The Gameboy is there for size reference and added sexiness. I guess if you need more info, you can get it from the sluts at wikipedia. They're giving information away left and right.

So, what does it all do? Well, it does this to my voice. Wicked. Now, you may wonder what use could that be, really, other than messin' shit up. Well, you could use it to process a disco beat made on those fantastic sounding 4-bit gameboy drums. Which is probably exactly what you were thinking.

The ring modulator has a soft side, too. It makes fantastically expressive tremelo. This would be good for your bleeding-heart types that perhaps want to make sissy music and not awful noise or 4-bit disco.

In classic analog synths ring mod was generally used to synthesize bell or gong-like sounds. Here is a square wave pattern run through it. It bongs a bit. It would bong in a nicer way if I wasn't spastically twisting knobs on it the whole time. Geez.

The unit, like modular synths, has a bunch of jacks on the back, so you can reroute its functions with cables. For instance, you could route the LFO out to another synth, or route the carrier oscilator directly into the audio input to get a sine wave. Or you can route a separate audio source in to the carrier oscillator to modulate two different audio sources. I tried modulated my guitar against the above square wave pattern, and got this. Being able to do these things makes this by far the most versatile effect I've ever got. I could modulate my voice with a synth or vice versa, etc, etc. Sweet!

Now I need to save up and buy some more of these units, a low-pass filter perhaps, and a control processor, so I can interconnect them and make crazy effects.

Also, I finished my Gameboy tune, or it's pretty much finished. I ran it through the ring mod, and it worked well. Let me know what you thing, I'm open to criticism since I'm trying new things here.

I Fall Asleep and Wake up in the Underground Forest (version 2.1)

Ummm...

Birthday.

2006-08-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday was my birthday. I'm 27 now. That seems like a lot. It was a pretty good birthday, though. Maggie got me a new distortion pedal (mine has been dead for years), a jaw harp (which scares me a little), and a gameboy. The gameboy is one of the old, big, gray, brick-like gameboys from waaaay back in 1989. It looks like this:

Why would any sane, modern gamer want one of these? The dot-matrix screen is hard to see. It's big and clunky. Newer gameboys can play the games that this one does, but this one can't play any newer games. Also, I have a DS. But this old gameboy has the best bass, and a warmer sound tone over all. You know, it's got that sweet 4-bit sound with that wicked 11 khz (or something like that) sample playback. Why did we even go on to make fancier sound chips? To this day, no one knows.

We went and spent more money on sushi than we've ever spent. It was wicked-sweet. I wish I was still eating sushi, 28 hours later. Sure, I'd be bloated or vomiting or passing out by now, but it would totally be worth it. Then some cool cats came over and we played games and drank into the wee hours of the morn. I am pleased.

I haven't posted in a while, I realize. I've just been working and reading, etc. I haven't recorded much music. But I'm kind of working towards and new musical dream. That is, to combine my bedroom toy orchestra/lame-ass indie rock with the sweet sounds of lo-fi video game music. And any time you're working toward something new I guess there's a pause while you learn and figure stuff out. But now I've got my gameboy and I've got a demo to show. This isn't a finished thing, but it's a good start, and I think it's beginning to come together.

I Fall Asleep and Wake up in the Underground Forest. (this song has been removed. Listen to the finished version on the Aug 19th post.)

I'm still figuring out how to compose on the gameboy, and how to get everything on there, but you'll get the idea. The gameboy puts out stereo sound, which I use, so headphones might be pleasing. I meant to put up some demos with my melodica and the glockenspiel, but never did. So you can hear them on here in the later half of the song (it's not done so it fades out.) Composing on the gameboy is like using old midisoft. That is, it's all one note at a time. And the interface is weird, on that tiny olive-colored screen. But for authentic video game sound, you really have to do it with a video game system. Because damnit, you're a nerd and you deserve the nerdiest.

Happy Birthday Andrew (the E.P.)

2006-07-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

Andrew's birthday has come again. And to celebrate the one year anniversary of me making a birthday song for him, I thought I'd do it again. Er...that is, I didn't get him a present or mail him a card, but crappy music is truly the greatest gift one human can give another.

So instead of one really, really good song, Andrew, I've made you four really, really bad ones. Loosely tethered by the theme of your birthday, I have no doubt you will find them meaningful and moving. Happy Birthday.

The First Birthday Cake
Andrew's Age
Skunk Birthday
The Birthday Hole

It's a birthday E.P.! You can consider the songs to be "in order" if you want, and listen to them in the order they are listed.

(A "other people's birthdays" dislaimer: Andrew is my brother-in-law. Maggie know when his birthday is and remembers it. This allows me to do so, and with some warning. I have a vague notion of when other people's birthdays are, but can never remember. You should all tell me when your birthdays are, in writing. then maybe I can make you a crappy song, too. I would be honored to do so.)

I mean, I probably should, right?

2006-07-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

Oh man. I don't know. It seems like I never dared to even dream. And if I did dream, it was in jest. No one ever thinks. But then-- One day-- It just-- Someone thinks. And then, that someone, does. But even still...I don't know. It could be something good. It could be something bad. I just don't know.

What do you think?

Does the world suddenly open wide before you? Or what?

New job. Rain. Dancing.

2006-07-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've been working at my new job. All I've been doing all week is computer training. It's mind-numbing. I'm training on how to count money and how to spot counterfeits and what makes a check good and what makes a check bad and even the proper way to shake hands and when it's time to check messages on my blackberry and when it is not (note: I do not have a blackberry.) Again, it's mind-numbing.

But there is hope. My trained coworkers spend their days discussing problems solving the New York Times' crossword puzzle. They hook up the DVD player and watch movies. They loaf around. Even I, a trainee, can drink coffee or eat cake or go to the bathroom whenever I want (I could not do ANY of those at my last job without permission.) When I am trained, I will read and write and get paid for it. Maybe I'll start and finish that children's book I dream of writing. Unless it's just a really weird adult book. Whatever.

But it's hard sitting at a desk all day, I find. When I get home I have to do things, since I've been so inactive all day. I do push ups and ride my bike, which is hard because it's Texas and it's hot. But I must ride anyways. I mean, people gots to do things. Tonight we went to the hot tub and pool in the rain, and I was reminded of how awesome it is to be in a pool at night in the rain, floating on your back, with the water falling into your face...

I have a xylophone (well, concert bells) and a melodica on the way, and I am excited.

__________________________________________________________________

Do you ever wonder what other people do when they are by themselves?

The other day Maggie and I were talking, and I revealed that earlier, before she came home, I had been wearing these pea green leisure suit pants I swiped from my dad's closet long ago. I have the jacket that matches, but I was trying to find a shirt that would go with it. That's a challenge. Matching anything with pea green leisure pants is HARD. Maggie seemed a little shocked by the fact that while she was gone I spent time on such an activity. Trying on different shirts and rejecting them. Putting on my gold tie. I didn't mention that I also played Jackson Five songs really loud and tried (in front of a mirror) to incorporate the famed Murf Dance with the robot. I found you need a pretty fast robot going to make it look good.

But, now I wonder--what do other people do when they are alone. Dance? Dress up? Who knows. Until I get hidden cameras in everyone's house, I will not have an answer.

Behold: The Piano Horn

2006-06-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday we traveled around, had lunch with Neal Chawla, and then proceeded to buy toys for ourselves. We went to Terra Toys so Maggie could buy origami paper. There, in the toy instrument section, for six dollars, was this finely crafted plastic beauty:

"Behold: It is the Piano Horn come before you."

I know, you can't believe it either. I took it out of the box and all it took was one richly expressive note. I knew: this was worth six dollars for sure.

So what is it? The box says it is "two instruments in one." This is misleading. It is definitely only one instrument. You blow into it and press keys down. It sounds a little like a harmonica, but it's easier to play. The notes start at G, but it's the C scale. So it's like the white keys on the piano, for not quite a two octave range. It's like a cheap melodica! This thing can really blow and stun the ladies.

"The Piano Horn is refined, and often wants for a pipe."

It's not limited to one note, either. The Piano Horn is a versatile instrument, for sure. Why is it only six dollars? Why is such a powerful tool of music creation hidden away on the top shelf of the instrument section at Terra Toys? I was about to buy a jaw harp with a picture of Snoopy on the box before I noticed this! Why don't we all have Piano Horns? Surely some company could make an electric one with a low-pass filter and built-in delay. Also, it could use a spit valve, like other fine instruments.

How big is it? It's BIG. It's bigger than my toy glockenspiel AND my tinwhistle. It's louder, too.

The Piano Horn: It's way big. Bigger than me.

But what does it sound like in a bad musical composition with other toys? To find out, my team and I worked day and night, determining that the piano horn was a little flat as far as tuning went, but would still sound OK in a mix. We also determined, through rigorous testing, that many toy instruments are, shockingly, not perfectly tuned! It's something we have to work with. We tracked two Piano Horns and added some stereo toy glockenspiel. To fill out some sound we threw in a finely crafted toy accordion on gracious loan from Miss Julie. Drums were added and some synth bass (there you may notice some of the other instruments "flatness").

This is what we came up with, through the scientific method.

Piano Horn and Friends

Due to the nature of the Piano Horn, this tune can't help but sound distinguished and expressive. Its notes soar, like lofty birds from some elegant dimension not quite our own--birds on an unfathomable, ephemeral trek, full of magic and light, yet tinged with a wan sense that endings are soon to be and no flight, however majestic, is forever.

Still, go out and find your own piano horn. Perhaps, some day, many people with piano horns will meet, and an orchestra of aching brilliance will be formed. This is our hope! All together now--

The Sweetness: Music Nerd Blog

2006-06-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

Per Murf's request, I'm putting up some tracks from James and me's new Sweetness CD. (Since Murf hasn't gotten his copy yet.)

The way we rolled for this Sweetness outing was old school. Pretty much, we'd hit the record button and start playing and singing, partially to keep it real, and partially because making songs that way is much faster. You pretty much cut out all that pesky time wasted thinking about composition and content. Who needs to worry about that? For some reason, I think because James forgot his acoustic guitar so we were working with one acoustic and one bass, the songs sounded a little thin--like they were quick notes jotted down for what songs could be. Once James left, I fattened up the tracks some, adding drums or flutes or guitars or synths. Whatever the song needed to feel a little more full. I tried to make it feel as natural as I could, and I think I succeeded. Me and James were both floored by the results.

I also did some mixing and mastering, making it so the songs were all about the same level, etc. Like I said, we're very pleased. James said it might be our best. BUT! To reiterate, mostly they were done on the fly, pretty much the same way we did the very first Sweetness. It just sounds better because we have a little more knowledge about recording, etc.

So what I'm putting up are two songs, in the original versions and the mastered versions. That is, one version will just be me and James, guitar and bass and vocals, and the other version will have the final touches I put on them. They're still bad songs done badly; we just got a little better at disguising that fact. But just a little.

Lady - Original Mix This was a lame toss-off rock song with a bit of weirdness at the end, and a puppy that's four sheets to the wind.

Lady We didn't think too much of this song until it got drums and electric guitar. Now it rocks.

Yo Soy de Aqui - Original Mix James had the music before, and adlibbed some bad spanish phrases. Hilarious? Or horrible?

Yo Soy de Aqui I thought what this song was missing was atmosphere, so I added a lot of tracks, flutes and shakers and cymbals and drums you can barely hear and synths. And I gave James a dash of really short echo for flavor. Also, the original had a sort of dramatic rising action, but our performance did not. So I tried to give it a swell. James flipped, because it sounds sweet.

There are nine more tracks!

Tennessee!

2006-06-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

Has Michael been lost in a dense forest of vicious, super-intelligent cane?

Me and Maggie have been in Tennessee for a whole week, and now we're back in the Texas. It's good to be home, mostly to sleep in my own bed, with its nice, firm mattress and its flat pillows. But we had a really good time! We got to visit with a lot of good people. We got blitzed (Maggie more than me, I had to drive) at midnight sushi, and ended up drinking and talking afterwards till four in the morning with Andrew and James. We went canoeing down the Harpeth river, which was fun even if we didn't flip over at all.

The highlight of the trip was Lisa's wedding. I did a competent job of giving her away, I guess. (That was my second time giving a bride away, if I have a daughter I will so have that job in the bag.) Lisa's wedding reception was one heck of a party. They had barbecue and margaritas and kegs of beer. They also had, if only for a short time:

David Neel: Man among men. Even a brief visit with King Dave brings joy to all. I touched his belly.

Greg and Kim were there, but I don't have a funny picture of me rubbing either of their bellies to post. I'm sorry. Andrew Haun and Jingping (is that one word or two Andrew?) were there. Andrew! She's very cute! Bring her back.

Some high lights of the reception include: Me, Maggie, James, and Carlos all doing our first keg-stands; drinking alcohol on the front steps of a historical landmark (and haunted house); me schooling James and Carlos at a foot race (we were drinking and it seemed like a good idea, and it was! We raced several times. I won them all, mwa ha ha. James rolled head-over-heels in the first race, it was funny. Why did we have a race? I said, "Hey, I'll race you guys to those trees over there." The trees were about 100 yards away. James and Carlos said okay. Somebody counted on you mark, get set, go. Of course when they said go no one moved, so I decided to run all out since no one would be expecting that. James and Carlos followed suit. Carlos quickly stopped, and James fell something crazy because he was trying to put his cell phone and keys in a cargo pocket at the same time. He promptly demanded a rematch. It was great.) Me and Lisa had an all-out, no holds barred "robot" dance-off to "Domo Arrigato Mr. Roboto." Lisa was declared the well-deserved winner, but during out dance we had the floor to ourselves and a captive audience. Go Allen Siblings!

Did Maggie take a midnight spin on James' hog? Or is this a cleverly posed photograph?

Did Andrew participate in a thrilling jazz piano duel with Michael? Was it a tender-hearted Duet? Or was it merely lame?

In other news, I got a new job, and on July first, I will become a bank teller with many less customers to deal with, no soccer moms ordering Starbucks drinks that aren't on the menu, and plenty of time to read books on the clock, all to the tune of $1.39 more an hour. Sweet!

Update-City.

2006-06-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Geez, It's been a long time since I posted. I guess I've been busy! James and Andrew came to visit and we had a damned fine time. We went here:That's Hamilton pool from inside the overhang. We went swimming here and it was super cool. Here's the thing from beach-side:We also saw the movie Showgirls at the drafthouse (for comedy, it was the Sinus Show.) We grilled out and drank beer, ate cookies, etc. Me and James had some sweet times playing some music.

Since then I've been taking it easy, playing Dragon Quest 8 again, and overdubbing and mixing down about ten or so mysterious songs for some CD or another that, I hear, some weirdo with a little too much time might have made a stupid teaser for some other weirdos that will get this CD when somebody, I don't even know, comes to some other such state that isn't Texas but still starts with a T. I hear. And I don't know, word is (from somewhere or another) that somebody, maybe named Ian, really needs not one, but two different CDs mailed to him(or was that three, or four?), and some other dude I heard about assures this so-called Ian that he hasn't forgotten, but he might have forgotten the adress to send this CDs somebody might have talked about or so on and such and such. Supposedly.

We are excited about coming to Tennessee next week.

Super Nerdy?

2006-05-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we all want to listen to video game music the way it was meant to sound, and midi just doesn't cut it. The midi "arranger" always takes some stupid liberty, and suddenly the Kingdom of Zeal is thumping half-assed house beats. And those mp3s! One minute and a half of Bubbleman's stage and then it stops? Why did I download that crap? We've all been through that.

Yesterday I downloaded a little player that plays .nsf files. NSF files are hacks of the original sound information from the NES, and the players are like emulators except just for the sound. And you can find .nsf files for just about any game! One file usually has every song from a given game, and they sound great! And usually they just loop the song until you switch the track. Now you can finally listen to Crashman's stage music for 15 minutes straight right on your PC or Laptop.

Go here for a page full of links to .nsf players.

And here is a good place to start looking for NSF music.

And if you're interested (i.e. super nerdy), get sidplay and some .sid files and listen to some Commodore 64 game music, which sounds rather different from the NES but is also lots of fun. (Michael recommends Wizball.)

Iced Coffee, Iced Coffee, I love you the most.

2006-04-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

>
>From: 2SweetTim
>To: Michael
>
>yo wuzzp michal? im still kickin the chicken and burnin the nOObs!
>N i like the stuff, but could u do 2 songs at once? sometimes 1 song
>aint enuff time if im jamming tha bone. I need like 2 minutes more.
>no what im saying?! itd be like a single, w/ a b side. thats how kinny
>chesny rollz.
>
>:P T.
>

Sure thing, Tim.

Iced Coffee

French Toast

I was in a country mood. So here are two country songs. Except since I have such a poor grasp of construction, little patience, no finesse, etc, they ended up barely being bad imitations of country music. Mabye there's a little twang. It's sort of like somebody told me what country music kind of is, I then I forgot part of what they said, and couldn't quite make up the rest.

Part of it is synthesizers, I guess. I get to a part and I think, "this is where the lap steel would go," or, "right here a mournful fiddle would be cool." But I don't have those, so I think, "I'll throw some synth in there, and it'll practically be the same." But it's really not the same at all. Not remotely. Synthesizers are cooler anyway.

I've been singing the Iced coffee song for years at work. (It's not always iced coffee, but it usually is.) And now there it is with music. That's something.

sniff Where's the maple syrup?

2006-04-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

Tears of Love (Pancakes)

I had to take a break from writing, and I started randomly singing stupid words while playing simple chords. I decided to record a quick demo, to remember the idea. Then I decided that the nonsensical lyrics were probably as good as any. I added some other instruments and some handclaps. Becuase I love handclaps. And I got 'em down to a recording science.

It sounds pretty good, I think. I think it goes to a different place than you think it will at the beginning, and I like that. But I think this picture explains things better. I mean, what is going on in this song? I'm confused, and I wrote it.

It's still a food song, because pancakes are the weapon of choice in this neverending battle. Heat up the griddle. Also, several other objects are eaten over the course of the song.

Tears of Love (Pancakes)

Now to finish my story and my one-act play! (Then my semester will be done and I will probably play lots of video games and read some Orson Scott Card.)

Ironclad

2006-04-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about a song for my next song of the week, because I'm a dork and think about that when I listen to music during the week, and this one song so impressed me today, and since it's available for free download from the band, I figured I'd just pass it on to you, like I was some kind of mp3 blogger.

Bishop Allen - "The Monitor"

It is a humble song. Simple melody, bass, drums, light guitar. Kinda shaky singing. But man are these some good lyrics. He compares and contrasts his life to the lives of the soldiers on board the ironclad ship The Monitor. Which is strange and specific enough to get my attention. But man! The ringing in his ears (from being in a rock band) is nothing like the ringing in their ears, and by the time he gets to the "we're singing la da da..." chorus, you realize the chorus is meaningless fluff compared to enduring an entire night of shells pounding against the walls. Man! What a good idea for a song! It seems very literary to me. And I love sideways critiques of modern life. Ironclads and rock bands! Similar? Not at all! Here's why.

Sir Pizzalus, I presume.

2006-04-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

(This is in special "Andrew Haun" Format.)

"What ho! Your steed looks rather peaked! Is it well?"
"My God, sir! This is no horse, but a fine and freshly baked pizza I sit astride."
"You intend to besmirch my honor by insulting my powers of perception? Dismount sir, and prepare for combat!'
"The only battle I fight is against my own insatiable hunger."
"Which the gods have given to you in spades, I see."
"You mock, I think, my gut."
"Only in that I meant to point out what I consider to be a wildly repulsive feature of your appearance. And your stench is overwhelming."
"I was hoping the smell of the pizza would cover that up."
"It does nothing to that effect, I assure you. Now dismount from that pizza and fight!"
"Just to let you know, I mean to slide down the hill on this pizza."
"The village is below! My daughters will be crushed!"
"Along with the Iospherical observatory."
"You made that up just now."
"I find that life is merely a long succession of convenient half-truths. There is an Iospherical Observatory. But it is two villages to the west."
"Yes, I find the same thing to be true."
"Would you like a pepperoni?"
"All of my days, I do."

A link! (to the thing that was linked before.)

(I was trying to write a Bright-eyesish country song this one time, and ended up adding a bunch of not-very-country-sounding things to it. You know how it goes.)

Primitive Man and Me.

2006-03-29T15:43:00.000-08:00

As a Manly Man, I often take an occasional stroll into the woods to reconnect with the ancient hunter roots of the species. I do so in the way the Ancient Ones did--completely naked except for footwear (I have sensitive feet.) In the winter it is no problem. You are cold, but the brush and leaves are at a minimum, and you walk unfettered through the forest, fingers lightly outstretched to prevent bare branches from poking your genitalia.

But today I entered the forest (naked except for hiking shoes and crew socks with a blue stripe) and the leaves had begun to return, and I kept walking through spider webs. So I picked up a stick to keep the spider webs at bay and felt even closer to primitive man. They must have traveled the same way, in comfortable footwear, a stick bobbing in front of them to clear the path of arachnids.

A new song, and a new club.

2006-03-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

Murf made me realize that it had been awhile since I posted a crap-ass food song, so I'm posting another in my exhilarating series of dumb, short songs about food. This one is about beans.

These Beans Are Tough

I'm sort of at a loss. Normally I'd say a bit about the song, but I just don't know. It's got some bongo drums, glockenspiel, and a bit of pennywhistle in it. And then at the end I drummed on some glasses and stuff and processed it until it sounded strange. But I mean, I don't really know. There it is.

Me and Murf are trying to start Michael and Michael's Song of the Week Club, and we want you to join us. Every now and then Murf seems to send me a song as an attachment by Gmail, and sometimes I send him one, and the other day I thought, what if we had an email list, and every week everybody emailed everybody else one song they heard/listened to a lot that week that they wanted to spread the word on or whatever. It would be really easy, all it would take are email accounts that allow mp3 sized attachments, and people with decent internet that were willing to spread some music love. Then we just get an email list together, and then once a week, say Sunday, everyone sends out an email with a song. And maybe a few words about what they like about the song. What do you think? Anyone interested? Post a comment and let us know! We'll start a club and share some good songs!

(Murf adds the stipulation that if you don't have a good song, you can make up your own crappy song, and send that, and irritate everyone when they open your attachment and it's some crummy song about a pumpkin or something.)

What say you?

fetch = bloody forehead

2006-03-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

So the field that I usually play fetch with the dog in was muddy and full of water. But he clearly still needed exercise, so I decided that some vigorous apartment fetch was just what the dog-doctor ordered. But apartment fetch has to be pretty hardcore to be worthwhile for the dog, I feel. I do a lot of running away with his toys and doing a somersault onto the bed. This seems to make him both excited and angry. I also do a lot of picking up the ball, faking him out, and then spinning around and throwing the toy in the other direction.

But yesterday I made a terrible miscalculation, and did a wicked-fast fake-out spin that resulted in my forehead colliding against that little metal thing that the door knob latches onto in door frames. It hurt a lot, and I fell down. Then my forehead started bleeding, and now I have a red spot right on my hairline. I guess I'm glad it's at my hairline, though, and not between my eyes or something. That would be embarassing.

"What happened to your head?"

"Oh, I bashed it against a door playing indoor fetch with my dog."

Right. Some days I feel really dumb

Exercise, and Beer.

2006-03-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

So me and Maggie, we're pretty hott, and it takes work to stay that way. So every now and then we exercise. You know, burn off the calories. We eat healthy sometimes, too. I cook some mean japanese food, and I usually have a veggie burger for lunch (that's what's hidden deep within my little brown bags I carry to work.) And exercise is good for the soul. Which is important, since after having people over to have fun, you always feel a little empty.

But there was a miscalcuation somewhere. We had some friends over to play games, and most people seemed to bring drinks this time, even though as a noble and well-prepared host, I had enough beer to cover just in case no one brought drinks. So now I have a crapload of beer in my fridge.

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRUE STORY....

After a long, hard day of supervising coffee pots I arrived home from work and played fetch with the dog. Mostly I was throwing the ball and then going to get it and throw it again, though, because the dog seemed to mainly be interested in eating grass. Disheartened, we left the playing field and returned home, both of us a little full on grass. I entertained the thought of working out, and then decided to open one of the six thousand beers in the fridge and play some music instead. It was monday, and I remembered that Keenan usually worked monday mornings, but he was gone. I poured out some of my beer for my fallen co-worker.

"Crap," I said, realizing I had just poured beer on the carpet. The dog darted around and growled.

Maggie came home and we had some macaroni and cheese. Which I'm sure is healthy. Then we decided to work out. So I worked out hard. Billy Blanks would have been proud.

After working out, I cracked open a beer to celebrate all the calories I had just sweated off. I mean, there's just so damned many of them. Beers and calories, that is.

"Damned right," The Angel Gabriel said. "Lots of goddamn beers and calories." His wings fluttered gently as he lowered the Golden Trumpet of the Lord to the floor. He opened a can of Pabst.

"Opening that seems like exercise to me," I said.

He laughed and picked up his trumpet. "Are we gonna blow or what?" he said, putting the horn to his lips and testing a B flat.

"Are you kidding me?" I said. "I've blown pretty hard my whole life." I picked up my tamborine and started shaking in 3/4. Lord, 3/4 makes me weep everytime, right to the end.

And Gabriel rolled up the scale, mellow and smooth, while the dog started comping some major seventh chords. And I shook it.

News from Dave!

2006-03-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

This is just to say,

Due to Dave's mother's health, his and Rina's wedding has moved up. They have a nifty blog for their wedding with all the details you need, and it is here.

So go check out the wedding blog, and call Dave, if he hasn't called you. If ya ain't got his number, all the contact info is on the blog. And you all love Dave, so go quick! Make plans! Give him a hug!

Testing, one, two, three.

2006-02-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

I am replacing my hack philisophical post with X-Treme Nerdiness. Yo.

On friday I drove to Houston and picked up a new synthesizer. Behold: (the colon is referring to the picture, so imagine the picture just suddenly appeared on the page before you, in a flash of blinding light.)

Buddha is sitting on the wood side paneling to illustrate that the Roland Juno 60 towers over all, even the enlightened lord.

It has pretty much everything a good synthesizer needs. Wood on the side is key. Another important question to ask when buying a synthesizer is, "does this machine have enough buttons, switches, and knobs that I could pretend I was a space captain or a scientist while I play it?" The Juno indeed has plenty of buttons, and can replicate the bewildering sound of science (which is usually fast beeps and whooshing static.)

As you can see, Gobo is excited about being able to play six (6) notes at once, because this synth is polyphonic! Sure, modern keyboards may let you play more than six notes at once, but who needs to do that? Jazz players? Classical pianists? Who plays any of that crap on a sweet synth? Losers. The 8-bit Nintendo couldn't play that many notes. And that was the peak of music.

So aside from buttons and wood, and being able to excite Fraggles, how does it sound? Way sweet 2 tha maxx. And since it has lots of buttons and sliders and switches, you can easily construct your own special sounds that annoy other people. And unlike the Moog, you can save your sounds (called "patches") and recall them at the press of a button! You can even save those patches if you run out of room, by plugging your keyboard into a cassette player and dumping the information on to a standard cassette. It sounds sort of like a modem on the tape. That was probably space-age stuff in 1982 (the year this synth was made.)

So I made a bunch of patches and then recorded them as a series of demos, because surely everyone wants to hear it. (As a note, there are no effects applied to any of the sounds. The synth makes all that noise itself.)

Juno Organ and Arp. Here's a pretty good hammond organ sound, some wicked 80s synth stings, and the far-out variable on-board arpeggiator. Whoa! Listen to those beeps!

Juno beep. I was trying to make it sound like a video game. So I played a little beepy pattern over and over and fiddled with the controls, so the sound sort of morphs as it goes along. Then I added some white noise (it has a white noise generator!), some spooky sort-of glockenspiel (with modulation), and a really sick-sounding lead. And some bubbly bass. It's sloppy, but I did all these really fast. Second takes are for sissies.

Juno Test #2. (Why is test #2 third in the list?) Cool synth bass sound, with a spooky sad part where the filter rises instead of falls. Weird lead sound. I programmed a synthy bass drum here, and then a crappy-sounding rim shot. But the fact that I can make up my own crappy-sounding drums is cool. And the sound is so robust, it doesn't ever really sound crappy.

Yep. This synthesizer makes me wonder why we bothered to move past the dazzling technology of 1982. New keyboards just don't do it like this. Unless you buy a really expensive one. But why do that when you can buy one of these for a fraction of the cost and get wood paneling? Sheesh.

Would you like you if you met yourself?

2006-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

It sometimes occurs to me as strange that I will never get to know what it's like to know me. Like when someone makes a comment about my behavior or personality, and it seems completely counter to what I think of myself--which happens a lot. This tells me that I have absolutely no idea what I'm like.

Like this evening, I was eating dinner and Maggie was like, "What the hell are you doing? Are you examining each bite of food before you take it?" And I was like, "No. Why would I do that? That would be weird." But then I lifted the next bite up on my spoon and paused--I couldn't help it--to look at the food for just a second. It turns out that I apparently examine each bite of food before I take it. I mean, what if there are bugs or pieces of glass or money in there? I all ready knew that I smelled things more than most people. My family had pointed that out. But now I'm a sniffer and a food-starer. I never knew.

Maggie also pointed out last week that if I wasn't smiling I had what she refered to as "a sort of intense" look on my face. This confused me. I imagine myself to be sort of blank-looking. Or maybe vaguely affable. Bored, unattentive, or slightly dumb, maybe. But certainly not anything in the same ballpark as intense. I can't even figure out what that might mean. I also have really only recently (like, in the last year or so) come to terms with the fact that I'm apparently pretty "dry." But once so many people refer to you as deadpan you have to accept it. I used to be pretty sure I was the opposite of that. So I often wonder who this curious person is that is me. I mean, I don't really seem to know him very well, which strikes me as infinitely strange. It would be neat if you could get everyone you know to write an honest account of yourself so you could read it, but would you jive with the results? I don't know.

I couldn't think of a good title...

2006-02-09T11:48:00.000-08:00

I had two days off in a row. Naturally instead of doing homework and catching up on reading, I recorded music and drank pop. I also ate some pretzels and had some chips and salsa. The salsa was very spicy and good.

Forest, Boat

I took a hiatus from working on songs about food in favor of doing an instrumental thing. It's actually an old jazzy thing I made up on the piano back at 116 Leonard (for awhile I tried being a one-man jazz piano trio, but I'm not really a piano player, and I don't really know much about jazz. I'm learning jazz chords, though.) Anyway, I always liked the melodies, so I decided to redo it with synthesizers and toys. I'm kind of a mediocre musician, really. I have mastered nothing, but here I figured if I layered enough mediocre things no one would notice. I guess sort of "go for atmosphere instead of technique."

I'm pretty pleased! I like all the basslines. I think I'm getting a sort of bass style, after a year of owning a bass. The bass is a bit video gamey, I think. (I doubled up acoustic bass and synth bass a lot for that sound.) And the moog really shrieks on this one, thanks to modulation and finally getting over my fear of the pitch-bend wheel (careful...). And I figure that's about as good as those toys can sound. I also ripped off Kanye and Four Tet and put in some really high, sped of vocals. Except I'm lousy and sampling, so I just sang really high to a slowed down track and then sped up the vocals. That's kind of ghetto lame, but whatever.

Ummmm, I couldn't think of a good title, maybe someone has a suggestion. The first part sort of reminds me of a forest or maybe ghosts or something, but the second part reminds me of a boat, maybe. Or dancing. Shrieking and dancing. I don't know. Naming instrumentals is hard.

Hair.

2006-02-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamt I awoke with long hair. But not too long. It was more like a bob, and a girly one at that. It had a lot of volume and a nice straight cut off about chin level. It was pretty bouncy. In the dream I got contacts because my glasses just didn't go with my hair anymore.

The dream inspired me to draw a picture. But I kept the glasses because eyes are tough to draw. And I decided with hair like that I should be holding a Zeus-style lightning bolt and a guitar, for bob-rock.

Also, I have an elastic headband.

2006-01-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

In case for some reason you meant to keep track of all the songs I've made about food lately, I have updated the Current Song Page with all of the dumb-ass food songs so far, including a snazzy extra-crappy cartoon at the top and a new song, Suzy was a Vegetarian. I know, ohboyohboyohboy, right? Get wet.

I'd tell you something interesting about this new song, but it isn't interesting at all. Why listen to it? I don't know. Maybe you're bored or something. I can relate.

Straight Butter.

2006-01-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

My first impulse is to apologize for this. It's really just the same couple of lines over and over. Except that they get mixed up as the song goes along, and I guess that's something. But I can see how this could be annoying. It's also very tinkly sounding. (Props to Andrew Haun for the Christmas gift...I'm using it! Soon I will make it sound better! And, props to my mom for the christmas gift. She got me the super slide whistle; it's metal and has about a two and a half octave range. Every year I ask for toy instruments and noise makers, this year people really delivered. It's a sure bet with me. I want more!)

So, I am sorry.

And yet, this seems like a return to something older for me. I think it's all the toys, and the incongruous chorus that almost sounds like a "serious" song. This song just sort of happened yesterday. (I had the day off.) It has inspired me, though. I want to make "drum-n-toy" music for a bit. Also, it makes me want to start a band with a bassist, and then a bunch of people playing whistles and toy glockenspiels and shakers and stuff. The bass is necessary because toy instruments are almost never in the bass range.

But I'm totally going to make more songs with the toys. Oh yeah. They all seem to be in C, so I will be composing in C major or A minor for a bit. Ah well.

Covered In Butter

Best albums of 2005!

2006-01-05T07:27:00.000-08:00

Crap! I almost didn't post a Best of 2005 list! But I will! Here it is!!

10. Three way tie: "Broken Social Scene" by Broken Social Scene, "Twin Cinema" by the New Pornographers, and "Everything Ecstatic" by Four Tet. They was real good, but I liked t'othern more.

9. "In Case We Die" - Architecture In Helsinki. It sounds like somebody throwing a kindergarten class into a room full of Indy Rockers and making them fight it out. Who would say no?

8. "LCD Soundsystem" - LCD Soundsystem. It made me shake my booty. Privately, mind you, in the living room with the shades drawn. But shake my booty nonetheless.

7. "Picaresque" - The Decemberists. I'm not in love with every song. I admit. But the ones I am in love with, I would kill a monkey for.

6. "Z" - My Morning Jacket. More focused than their last, yet stranger. "Into the Woods" is fantastic. I mean, start a song off singing about a burning kitten and a baby in a blender, and I'm yours.

5. "The Runners Four" - Deerhoof. Strange. Noisy. Excellent. Oompah-pah!

4. "Apologies to the Queen Mary" - Wolf Parade. I sure like the synths. And I sure listened to this until Maggie was like, "Argh! Are you still listening to the same CD?"

3. "Gimme Fiction" - Spoon. It's tight. And impossibly cool-sounding. And "I Turn My Camera On" is going to teach yer mamma to dance and yer gramma to suck eggs.

2. "Separation Sunday" - The Hold Steady. This one is a surprise, since I picked it up in the free CD box at work. But I've listened to it a freaking ton, and I like it more every time. It rocks, it tells a story, and the lyrics and delivery rule. Who knew that what the punk rockers should really do was try and play bar-band-style classic rock? You don't even know, yo.

1. "Illinois" - Sufjan Stevens. I almost didn't want this to be number one, just because it's so obviously the best. I thought, "surely there was something else, this album is just too good, too effortless." But no. Nothing is better. It pwns.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T00:31:00.000-08:00

Happy new year! I may be a little drunk, but I love you all! (Both of those statements are true.)

Retail Christmas: The play

2005-12-29T08:18:00.000-08:00

The christmas season saw a spike in the volume of idiots that came into the store. These idiots' main crime in the retail environment is the sin of Not Paying Attention to Their Surroundings, which of course goes back to evolution, natural selection, and the current lack of dangerous predators like tigers prowling the countryside to weed out and kill unobservant people.

But I finally figured out the best way to deal with these people: treat them like they are children. Walk them step-by-step through whatever they are trying to do. Below is a transcript of a TRUE encounter I had with a customer once I started this practice. The results are amazing.

[Befuddled looking vaguely yuppie-ish middle-aged man approaches the espresso bar while Michael is loudly steaming milk.]

STEAM WAND: Pshhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! Wshhhhhhhhh!!!! Sputter!
YUPPIE: I--(unintelligible mumbling).
MICHAEL(turning off the steam wand): Sorry, I couldn't hear you. What was that.
YUPPIE(looking irritated): I just need a regular cup of coffee.
MICHAEL: Okay, well I'm making a drink for a customer. I'll be with you in just a moment.

FIVE MINUTES LATER.

MICHAEL: What can I get for you, sir?
YUPPIE: Listen, I just need a plain, regular cup of coffee. Do you have just plain regular coffee? That's all I want. Plain regular coffee. (He looks everywhere but the menu board and the coffee list. Up, down, left, right. He leans over the counter and looks at the register screen. While scratching his head.)
MICHAEL: Why, of course we do. Shhh. Calm down. What we need to do now is pick out a size. At most restaraunts drinks come in different sizes.
YUPPIE: Just regular! Plain old regular coffee.
MICHAEL: Shhh. I understand. But what we need to do now is use our thinking skills. Regular is not a size. Now, pay attention. We have small, medium, and large.
YUPPIE(Letting out a quietly frustrated squeal and stamping his loafers): I don't know! The middle thingy. Middle and plain and regular. We're talking about coffee, right? I want plain old regular middle coffee.

[MICHAEL produces a note card and a marker and writes, "now serving middle coffee" on it and hangs it above the register.]

MICHAEL: Okay, now we have to make another decision. Are you ready? Okay, good. Do you want a light, medium, or dark roast.

[YUPPIE whinnies like a horse and falls to his knees. With his head on the counter he noses the tip cup around and huffs.]

[MICHAEL leaps over the counter and presses YUPPIE'S head against his strong, Barista chest.]

MICHAEL: Shhh. It's okay. Calm down.
YUPPIE(In a whisper): It's just--there's so much and--I'm worried I just won't ever learn. How do people do it? How do they make it with all these words and sizes and kinds. My heart swoons from the thinking of them. (lowering his voice still more)And my pooper is all stopped up and my mom said to drink some coffee.

[MICHAEL holds him until he stops trembling, and then climbs back over the counter.]

MICHAEL: I'll get you some plain old regular coffee in a middle cup. Okay? That will make it all better. (MICHAEL makes a small decaf americano with green apple syrup in it and hands it to YUPPIE, who doesn't know any better.)
YUPPIE: Thanks, mister! (He pays with a $500 dollar bill and doesn't leave a tip.)

THE END.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-24T22:04:00.000-08:00

>
>
>Dear Michael...
>
>i luv u but u dont know me but i think ur tha coolst & that song
>bout begetables was cool n stuff. i like when the things hapen
>but it's xmas so merry xmas n stuff. this dude says u suk but hes
>stupid and i jacked his girl with some x and he didnt know.
>
>do u think u could wish yr peepz the merries from me n then maybe
>make a song bout hamburgers. i eat them alot and i listen to 80s
>new wave and the cars n stuff, so give it that shit for the road yo.
>
>oh yeh i wanna party but i cant. but i got down with them grease
>punk covers on tha murfs page. hes tight 2.
>
>3sweetTina.
>

Sure I can, 3sweetTina. Let's see...

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Drink lots of eggnog, beer, wine, etc, and eat lots of ham! Michael got some strange instrumenty-percussiony things and will be making lots of noise!

Um, here's a new wave-ish song about hamburgers. forgive me for trying to sing like Ric Ocasek and failing...

Hamburgers