Feed Me
If I did this right, there should now be a feed for the whole blog as well as a feed for Thing a Week only, and they both should include the enclosures necessary to get the mp3s as they are posted. I think. We’ll see how this goes, or if anybody cares or anything. If someone out there finds a problem with subscribing, please let me know.
In an interesting (yet tortuous) side note, John Hodgman and I recorded and posted an audio file of the 700 hobo names from his soon-to-be-published book “The Areas of My Expertise.” I play Big Rock Candy Mountain on the guitar and he reads the entire list of names. We did it in one take, one long, terrible take. It took almost an hour to get all the way through, and by the end my hand and fingers were threatening to cramp up and freeze stiff. But we somehow made it through, and it was a truly transformative experience. If you’d like to listen, you can check out the website for the book (the hobo names link is under the orange box in the top right corner – you don’t have to listen to all of it for God’s sake). And then you should buy the book, because it is plenty funny.
You are lucky that I am not using it as this week’s thing.
Thing a Week 2 – My Monkey
My strange obsession with monkeys continues with Thing Two of Thing a Week. I don’t know where to begin explaining this one. Here is what I know: The guy in the song has recently had an argument with someone he loves and is trying to apologize. He happens to have a pet monkey, more of a monkey butler actually, whose name is Brian Dennehy. He’s unable to talk directly about his own feelings (the singer I mean, not Brian Dennehy), so he’s projecting his emotional life onto the monkey, explaining how the monkey feels when this or that happens. It sounds like he does this a lot, and it’s probably indicative of a larger problem. It’s kind of a sparse arrangement, drum loop, guitar, bass, and then somewhere in the mix are a few wine glasses. I thought long and hard about the monkey chorus that comes between verses, but finally left it in. This song makes me feel sad and sentimental, despite the fact that it mentions Brian Dennehy (shout out to Dr. Smith, who really wishes he had a so-named monkey butler).
Still trying to figure out if I should make this a separate podcast or just make this blog the podcast. I like the title “Thing a Week” and it’s certainly more catchy than “Jonathan Coulton” but I’m not sure it’s worth all the hassle of breaking it out, posting twice, etc. Right now WordPress is already creating enclosures for linked mp3s, so it should work as a podcast the way it is (and I’m experimenting with the WP-iCatter plug in to get the iTunes tags in there too). I suppose I could set up a separate feed for this post category using feedburner. Or I could just rename this blog to Thing a Week. Why is the internets so complicated!? If you all have any thoughts, let me know.
Artist=Criminal
From Slashdot: joining ranks with the Dave Matthews Band, another group of dangerous rock and rollers have broken the law. A band called Switchfoot has posted instructions on how to bypass the copy protection on their own CD. This is a Sony release, and the copy protection is another SunnComm specialty, easily defeated in any number of ways. Sony of course owns the copyright on the music, so Switchfoot has violated the DMCA by disseminating information on how to pirate someone else’s content. It would be hilarious if Sony sued their own band, but I think they’re probably just going to get yelled at.
In their post, the band apologizes to their fans and and explains that there’s really not much they can do about it. They’re right. Much as I wish it were true, music generally does not sell itself. I think we’re still in the zone where labels are necessary evils (but, like, really evil evils). The person who figures out why all this internetism still hasn’t gotten us to the place where artists can get heard, sold and still make a living without selling their souls to a retarded middleman is going to make a billion dollars.
Thing a Week 1 – See You All in Hell
Well, you asked for it, or rather, I told you that you were going to get it. Here’s the debut thing of my Thing a Week series. It’s 48 seconds long, but I think it has a special kind of quirky charm. The lyrics are taken from a text message that a TV producer sent while having a difficult time on some sort of aquatic shoot, somewhere far away where it’s probably hot and dusty and hard to get around. I found them funny but also a little sinister – there is more than a touch of madness in them. They are sung by my mac (via Text Edit, via Audio Hijack) and mixed with loops in Soundtrack.
I will eventually set up a page as these things pile up, but for now:
Previously, on Twitter
On Instagram
Follow Jonathan
