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Housefilk!

Last weekend was time for another gathering of the Atlanta filkers! This time, our host was jingoro (Daric Jackson), who lives in Doraville.

After we got done at the Cat Clinic, we came back home for a quick lunch, and then drove over to Athens to collect khaosworks. The trip was mostly uneventful, except for when a person tried to pull out across traffic right in front of me in a 45mph zone. I slammed on brakes and wrenched the wheel and ended up in the left turn lane facing the wrong way on the other side of the median. Thank god there was no traffic waiting there or I’d have had no where to go, and if I hadn’t moved to avoid the silly woman in the SUV, we’d have t-boned her in the front quarter panel or drivers door. It would have been very ugly.

As it was, we got to Sushi Yoko (formerly Sushi Yoshi), a local Japanese restaurant near Daric’s house. They had an extensive menu, and I ended up with the matsu (a combination of sushi, tempura, and teriyaki beef), while kitanzi had the take (the same combination of foods, except with sashimi instead of sushi). Everything was absolutely marvelous, especially the tempura which was perfectly battered and the teriyaki beef, which had strips of impossibly tender steak in a light teriyaki glaze. The gyoza appetizer I ordered was also done perfectly — the best I’ve had in quite a long time.

After topping the whole affair off with ice cream, we set off to the actual filk. I got a bit confused because we were approaching Daric’s house from the north rather than the south as I’ve done the last few times I’ve been to his house, but we found it without too much trouble and got set up inside. After everyone managed to get settled and tuned and supplied with drinks and chocolate, the music began.

in attendance were myself and kitanzi, khaosworks, Dave and Signe Wegener, jingoro and his daughter Megan, mrpsyklops and his daughter Jennifer, Jerrie Adkins, thatcrazycajun and Mary Mullholland, and Michael Liebmann. Because of the small crowd, we ended up doing a traditional PPorP bardic circle, ensuring that everyone got both a good chance and a good prodding to do something. 🙂 Highlights of the evening included Terence’s “Pulp Fiction” and his unfinished Scheherezade song, Jennifer Cooke doing “House of the Rising Sun” with her father, Mary’s Jubilee song, and Matt’s Buffy rap song. I played a variety of things, ranging from Poul Anderson’s “Mary O’Meara” to Dave Carter’s “Gun Metal Eyes” (which I learned from filker0 and spiritdance). At one point, Signe did a Vorkosigan song, so I followed it up one of my own, which I recently decided was actually finished, and I’ll post here shortly. I also did “Dungeonville” in there somewhere. There was also a thread of cat songs, after Jennifer said she always heard dog songs but no cat songs. This led to a number of cat songs, including “Overflowing Catbox Blues” performed by Michael, and “I Meant to Do That” performed by kitanzi, with a big singalong on the chorus.

We had some fun with political songs, as Matt did Roy Zimmerman’s “Defenders of Marriage”, prompting me to pull out and make an attempt at “Hell Froze Over Today” by the same author. (I want chords for that….drsnark, do you have them?)

One of the things I always look forward to when having a filk at jingoro‘s house is the anime music videos he always shows. He’s a creator of these fan produced videos as well as a collector, and it’s always fun to see the creative talent that goes into making them. I’ve acquired the software to do those myself, so we’ll see if I can manage to pull one off. Lot of work, but it looks like a lot of fun!

I borrowed khaosworks‘s Canon G3 camera and took a LOT of photos. You can find them here, though they still need to be captioned. Sorry about all the red-eye. 🙂

We ended up breaking up about 1am, and headed back home to crash. The next day, after kitanzi took him on a grocery run to Harry’s, I drove khaosworks home. We had a great time, and cant wait until the next filk.

NEW SONG: The Last March of Gondor

I had refrained from posting this song yet, as I didn’t have a title I liked for it. I’m not 100% sure this is the best title either, but it’s the best one I’ve come up with so far, and at some point, you have to set your children free upon the world.

This song was inspired by a typo. telynor was discussing tracks which will be on the forthcoming Three Weird Sisters album, and made an interesting keyslip, referring to a well known Echo’s Chidlren song they have covered as “Least of My King”. It floated into my brain and connected with my muse, and the beginnings of this came out.

kitanzi and I batted it back and forth in e-mail, and by the end of the day, we had a song. (Thus proving to us that we could actively write songs together! This one’s our first!) Feedback from others, especially telynor and cflute, was helpful in tweaking it and making it better. We debuted it at Boskone to an enthusiastic response (and thanks to ladyat for the bodhran accompaniment!)

To set the scene, imagine the mustering of the troops after the Battle of Penlinor Fields, as Aragorn prepares to lead the Armies of the West to Mordor’s Gate.

NEW SONG: Somewhere On the Windows Server

My friend Jeff and I were having a silly conversation on AIM, which involved, as is often the case for us, snippets of silly song lyrics. Often, these are just laughed at and passed on, but sometimes they actually take on a life of their on.

This is a mood piece, much like the song it parodies. I may still tweak a word here or there, but it more or less wrote itself between us.

Boskone (Saturday)

In which we actually make it to some of the convention, plus venturing out to Harvard Square to see a really good concert.

Catching up again

Well, so far I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with my unofficial and unannounced pledge to post actual me-content more often. As I said way back when I started this journal, I don’t tend to like talking about myself very much. But since you’re obviously reading this hoping for SOME kind of content, I suppose I should endeavor to supply you with it. 🙂

Gafilk was tremendous fun. There were too many highlights to really mention, but I will say that unclechristo was as amazing as always, and it was wonderful to get him to a con over here, callylevy was sweet and amazing and talented and everything we expected from her, quadrivium did a superb job of toastmistressing (holding herself to a much higher standard than we were, really, poor dear), and Rand and Adam were, well, Rand and Adam. Then there was Howie. Wow. He was still feeling a bit under it all, which, all things considered, was still pretty good shape to be in. But no matter what state his body was in, his verve and personality and wit were as strong as everything I’d ever heard and more.

We had more people at this convention than ever before, and while it was exhilarating to be around all those wonderfully talented people, I spent far too much time running around being frantic to really absorb it.

On the other hand, it was a weekend filled with personal interaction with friends and loves, and that’s what a con is for. Some of it was, of course, absolutely none of your business, other than to note that it was nice to finally put some theories into practice. (*snuggles someone very snuggly* 🙂

Normally, I couldn’t pick a *highlight* of the con, but this once, I can. The banquet was un-freaking-believable. First, there was the incredible band, with Jodi (musesmuse) on vocals and backed by the “Gafilk House Band” (Mary, Dave (surrdave), Brian (siliconchef), and Blaise). This would have been cool enough, but there was a dance floor, and we took great advantage of it. I got to dance with kitanzi, alymid (twice), mokatiki, and plaid_dragon. What a wonderful time. Thanks to all of those lovely ladies for a wonderful evening.

I did get to play a little bit at the dead dog, but we went home at a reasonable hour, because kitanzi had to get up and work the next morning. And that’s as much of a Gafilk report as you get this year.

NEW SONG: Never Seen The Tech Desk

First, a disclaimer: yeah, this is inspired by my own work experiences, but to be fair, every single place where one tier of people had to support another, lower tier of support folks, this has been true. I’ve even been the clueless git on the other end of this song, so believe me that this is all in good fun.

This song is dedicated to anyone who has ever had to work in ANY sort of help desk environment, and especially for the SysOps who have to support THEM.

Surfacing

Wow. I didn’t actually mean to disappear like that. See, it’s like this, first there was OVFF, and then we were both sick, and…

This is gonna take more than one post to catch up. I can tell. 🙂

Sherman, set the wayback machine for two weeks ago…

Instafilk

Short Takes

From epi_lj, I find that quislibet has translated a large portion of Sir Mix-a-lot‘s seminal musing on caliphygian bounty into Latin

I just got another one of those annoying “We protected you from a virus!” emails. The thing that made this one noteworthy, though, was the oddity of its report. It starts by saying it wanted to warn me “that the e-mail sent by <not disclosed> to <not disclosed> is infected with virus”. It then proceeds to give two blocks of instruction, headed “If you are the sender” and “if you are the recipient”. Er, I’m not sure: am I <not disclosed>, or am I <not disclosed>. If only technology wasn’t so confusing…

Shout out to my pal Graham — welcome to LJ, musicmutt!

Happy birthday to the seriously cute magid!

Lots of cute usericons out there, but this one nearly made soda come out of my nose (courtesy of dpaul007)

My mind does strange things…

So someone in a newsgroup I was reading was talking about watching the talking heads on CNN during the coverage of the blackouts, and how the Governor of New Mexico kept insisting “There oughta be a law! There oughta be a law!” and, well…..

Woof! You sure gotta climb a lot of steps to get to this office building here in New York City. But I wonder who that sad little power station is?

I’m just a grid, yes I’m only a grid
When I’m overloaded I blow my lid
Last night I failed and the whole east coast was plunged into darkness
And I couldn’t make light cause I was all out of sparkness
But I know I got repaired today
At least I hope and pray that I did
But today I am still just a grid

*GD&R*

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