Flaming Chords

This is my front page. All comments here are screened; if you don't have my email address, you can drop me a line here. If I know your email address, I'll reply by email -- if not, I'll reply to your comment, and then rescreen both your comment and my reply.

It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)

I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.

...and we've already got the store's Chri$tma$ decorations up. Naturally, I've started butchering tired old Chri$tma$ songs in self-defense, starting with a certain traditional German ditty...

Oh, Goatse man, oh, goatse man,
You have a stretchy anus.
Oh, Goatse man, oh, goatse man,
We're squicked, but can you blame us?
On Christmas Eve, we'll stare, aghast,
at pictures of your scary ass.
Oh, Goatse man, oh, goatse man,
You have a stretchy anus.

Oh, Goatse man, oh, goatse man,
So gross and so defiant.
Oh, Goatse man, oh, goatse man,
Your ass could take a hydrant.
We're quite amazed, how wide you're spread.
We'd love to know, how you're not dead.
Oh, Goatse man, oh, goatse man,
So gross and so defiant.

(I'm sure it needs more verses, but hey, it's a start!)

A while back, I did some naughty things with really old Russian letters. This is the new version, and I've done a much better job overall -- not only is the story much better, but it now includes dialog (of a sort), a much better supporting cast, much better representation of other cultures, a corporate logo that cost over £14,000 to develop, and at least one lolcat.

As with Alphabet Porn v.1, this one has links to all the letters I've defiled. Thanks to this little thing in HTML called the MAP tag, these are still clickable! (If you copy the images, the links won't work unless you also copy the HTML... but you were going to ask first anyway, right?)

( The images under this cut were constructed with nothing but a character map, a word processor, and MS Paint. They're still probably not really worksafe. )

This is the beginning of a Christmas story I'm thinking of writing as a joke.

---

Once upon a time, there was a small boy named Timmy. He was cute as a button, and his parents just loved him to pieces.

On his way to school one day, Timmy found an old hat made of brown felt in the street. Old and dirty though it was, Timmy saw something special in it, and picked it up. It was in bad shape, being not only dirty but slightly burned, but little Timmy knew that it could be good as new with just a little love.

After school that day, Timmy made a snowman. Snow was plentiful that day, and easily packed, perfect for making snowmen. Timmy had to build this snowman next to the doghouse, so that he could make it tall enough, but his efforts were well-rewarded, as this was a magnificent snowman when it was done. All it needed was a face. Timmy pulled a carrot out of the freezer and used it for a nose. Then, he took some charcoal briquettes from the patio and made eyes and a mouth. Then, having heard countless times in songs -- well, in one particular song -- about snowmen being brought to life by magic hats, he put the old brown cap on top of his snowman.

Alas, what little Timmy did not know was that this particular brown hat, which was indeed magic, had originally belonged to a child murderer who had escaped conviction for his crimes on a technicality, and was promptly burned to death by his neighbors...

I saw The Wizard of Oz at work a while back. And for some reason, the Mother and Father of all terrible plot bunnies popped into my head. It started with the idea of someone being really disoriented by finding themselves in a magical place like Oz, complete with the realization that finding yourself in a musical must be an odd feeling. Then a whole bunch of "friends of Dorothy" references popped into my head, and before I knew it, "Dorian" was the only heterosexual person in the entire realm.

(Just in case some of you are wondering... no, Dorian does not end up trying out for the other team. Sorry. I just didn't feel it belonged in this story. I have been known to slash X-Men, Discworld, or even Jesus/Judas, for cheap laughs, though. Try those instead.)

I don't expect you to read this. As with some of my other fiction in this LJ, it's aiming for "comically bad."

(I'm posting this today of all days because someone on my list wrote, "with any luck a house will fall on Fred Phelps." Until I'm handed great supernatural powers of some sort, this is the best I can do.)

---

May 5:

A tornado has picked up my cottage and dropped it somewhere. I don't know where, but I don't think it's on Earth. It sure as hell isn't Kansas. Kansas looks gray compared to the riot of colors I'm seeing here. It seems to affect me as well; my faded black jeans turn blue as I step outside, and turn black again as I go back into my house. My flannel shirt also changes color, to green.

---

May 6:

I passed out yesterday from too much adrenalin. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. Let's see how well you take it when some random storm picks up your house with you in it. I didn't soil myself, so I think I handled it quite well.

When I opened my door, I found a few hundred people waiting outside, cheering for me. In a song and dance number that had to have taken them weeks to rehearse, they informed me that my house fell on an evil sorcerer. All that was left of him was his cowboy hat (which they said now belonged to me), and a sign that said "God Hates Fags."

I'm told that there's a benevolent wizard who can help me get home, but I think I like this place better. Very friendly folks here. Granted, the hero worship makes me a little nervous, but I figure they'll realize I'm just a regular dude like they are, soon enough.

---

May 7:

So much for staying. Everyone here is gay. All the guys here think I'd be a good catch, but that's not the part that bothers me. As far as I can tell, all of the women are grateful to me for landing on that evil sorceror, and they're happy to get to know me, but they all like other women. I asked them if guys and gals ever did... you know, things together. They looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, and then became very nervous, almost scared of me.

( I guess I'll be visiting that wizard after all. )

And when I go to Hell, my eternal torment will be nonstop scourging by the Sherman Brothers.

Under the following cut, there's an incredibly perverted filksong making fun of a bit of "stupid careless fictional nonsensical verboseness" from Mary Poppins. I posted an early, incomplete version in someone's LJ, and ended up getting inspired enough -- if "inspired" be the right term in this instance -- to finish it, going so far as to look up the original song on YouTube to make sure I covered all the verses.

( Sung to the tune of ''Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.'' For maximum effect, this song should be performed with an ensemble cast of cartoon characters at a race track, possibly with bonus points given if you can find some chimneysweeps with bad accents. Actually, I tell a big whopping lie. This song should NEVER be performed. EVER. I don't even BELIEVE in Hell, but I'm pretty sure that one will be invented for me just for writing this song, and you'll join me in this new Hell just for reading it. Oh, and once you've ignored this warning and read the lyrics, you should inflict them on all your friends -- after all, why should you suffer alone? )

Yesterday, I made a post about how Enzyte -- and the company that makes it -- will likely disappear. Then, I remembered that I made this parody a few years ago...

Click here to download!

(This is an MP3 file, just under half a meg, thirty seconds long. It's perhaps in questionable taste, but no less worksafe than the original ads.)

Every tour has its whores.
Just like every night has its dawn.
Just like every hairband has a bad, bad song:
"Every Rose has its Thorn."

(We're now required to demo the Eighties station on our Satellite Radio. Twenty years of nostalgia do not make it any better.)

One of the songs I thought I had done (except for lyrics) just took a step backward -- it turns out I made a newbie mistake on it.

Recently, I finished writing out the sheet music for it in Harmony Assistant, and for the first few times, I've shown it to a few friends, including a couple of former High School band geeks -- and both of these former band geeks seem to read music as easily and casually as I can read text. (You have no idea how much I envy them for this. Have you ever seen a small child just learning to read, using his finger to lead? That's me with sheet music.)

One of them is a lady I tried to lay, once. (It never happened, but we had enough in common -- music, mostly -- that we are still good friends.) She looked at the flute line and informed me that while flutes can reach those high notes, that doesn't necessarily mean they should.

The other is the wife of my manager at work. (Both he and his wife were good friends of mine years before we worked together.) She politely assumed that I'd merely mislabeled a piccolo line, and when I told her I hadn't, she winced.

That's the biggest pitfall in working with MIDI. MIDI instruments have the range of a full keyboard, which is at least five octaves, and often more. A real-life flute has a theoretical range of about three octaves... and a practical range of about one and a half. Above this sweet spot, they can still hit the notes, but they become quite shrill. And since MIDI sounds are sample-based, if you exceed an instrument's natural range, MIDI will do its best to accommodate you. A good thing for a keyboardist. Not such a good thing for a composer.

Ah, well. It seems I have some rewriting to do.

Dammit.

I spent about two hours on trains to attend a friend's birthday party last night. Not that I'm complaining -- the party was absolutely worth it! -- but still, two hours is a long time for me to be trying to sit still and not annoy the fuck out of my fellow passengers by bouncing in my seat and using every surface I can reach as a drum pad.

Good thing I had blank staff paper with me; in those two hours, I got about two minutes of music written. I know that this doesn't sound like much, but considering that I'm writing for orchestra plus guitars, and using an average of eight to ten staves at any given time, two minutes in two hours is actually a pretty decent clip. It's in C minor, which isn't all that unusual for me. It's also in 4/4, which is unusual for me, and the tempo is about ♩=60, which is very much unlike me. (I tend to like ♩=160 better, and I'll occasionally go as high as ♩=210.)

Still, I think I'm proud of it, and I should have it fed into my computer in a day or two. I'm still struggling a little with writing actual notes on staves -- when I used Cakewalk, I tended to use the graphpaper view a lot -- so it should be interesting to see how much editing I'll have to do once I hear it.


As I said, the party was absolutely worth the trip. The theme was Childhood regression, so along with the Muppets, I saw episodes of Schoolhouse Rock, which I haven't seen since I was about eight. The song "Dem Not-So-Dry Bones" reminded me a lot of Count Von Count's song, "Bones Inside of You." During "The Tale of Mr. Morton," I cracked a joke about wanting to write a song on Latin declension. During "Interplanet Janet," we discussed the inclusion of Pluto on the list, and about that one Animaniacs episode in which Wacko says "you forgot Uranus!" During "Little Twelve Toes," we discussed counting on your fingers, and both binary and chisanbop were mentioned immediately. And during the episodes explaining United States History and Government, we all made comments about just how... ahem, sanitary... their versions were.

(Did I mention we're all geeks?)

I'm going on American Idol, and I'm gonna preach abstinence!

Well, not really. I just wrote this for a joke. Can you imagine me of all people preaching abstinence?

The differences between me and Milo Turk: One, I have a sense of humor; two, I can actually write music. The chords and music for the chorus can be found here, for those of you who can read music and are interested. And now, the lyrics...


Little Tommy took a girl to Lover's Lane one fall,
And she discovered that he ain't so little after all,
He licked her down below until she begged him "put it in,"
And then I saw them just in time to save their souls from sin,
and I said...

(CHORUS)
      Stop screwin', ya brainless hormone cases!
      Stop screwin, or I'll get in your faces!
      You'll catch some nasty STDs,
      You'll get knocked up, I'm beggin' ya please,
      Stop screwin', you horny little shits!
      Stop screwin'!

Judy was an awful flirt, she'd just turned seventeen.
She knew without a doubt she wanted lots of nice hard peen.
She met the chess club president and QB for a lay,
behind the locker rooms, and that's where I found them one day,
and I said...

(CHORUS)

The quarterback left in a huff, I followed him away.
I knew I had to stop him lest the boy be led astray.
Soon I found him bent over for a soccer player named Nate.
They'd gotten hot and heavy, and I knew I was too late --
still, I said...

(CHORUS)

And I got home from work that day, I felt so very smug.
I said hello to my dear wife, and took her in a hug.
We went up to the bedroom, soon we both were short of breath.
And then some kids kicked down our door and scared me half to death,
and they said...

(CHORUS)


I was tempted to add a bunch more verses, each one a little more explicit than the last, until the song was a complete raunchfest and the lyrics made it clear that the guy breaking up all this nookie was getting off on seeing it in the moments before he yelled for it to stop. Later, I may just do that, but for now, the song looks reasonably complete.

I just finished an interlude to a song I'm working on. Four of the verses include three separate vocal lines, overlapping to various degrees, complete with harmonies. Four more verses include a ridiculous number of syllables in a rather tight space: Stephen bloody Sondheim would look at what I've done, and either fall in love with me, or decide right then and there that I'm absolutely nuts.

And to top it off, I didn't do this in 4/4 or 2/2 or waltz time or something easy, oh no-no-no-no-no! The music under all of these verses is in 11/4! And even better yet, it sounds natural in 11/4 -- a lot of music in odd meters tends to sound like showing off. (This same song's intro is in 13/8, for instance, and the whole point of using 13/8 in that section is to confuse the hell out of people.)

I am very much pleased!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, trust me, I just pulled off something very difficult. It'll be a while before I can offer it up for beta, because the vocal lines require more range and agility than I possess, and because the timing is so wonky that it would be pointless to offer lyrics all by themselves.

I read a hilarious bit of Jesus/Muhammad slash over at Godawful Fan Fiction, and I was inspired. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often, lest I find myself lightning-bolted. For the benefit of the Christians on my f-list, I've hidden it behind a cut. As with most of my slash bunnies, I've aimed for "comically bad."

---

( Click for hawt Jesus/Judas action! )

I just downloaded the trial version of Synful, a program that simpulates orchestral instruments for certain composition programs. The good news is, its instrument simulations are nothing short of amazing.

Unfortunately, it's resource-intensive as hell: if I try to record more than two tracks at once, it pops, skips, and eventually drops out. In Cakewalk, there's a meter that tells you how much CPU the program is using at any given time. Up until now, I've never had to pay any attention at all to it. Now, it redlines whenever I try to play even three tracks, and then it starts skipping. I'll probably redo one of my songs with it in the next few days, just because the sound is so amazingly good, but considering that the string section alone will require three separate takes, it will be a long and tedious process.

Fortunately, I don't need it for all instruments. Standard midi does some instruments beautifully; I can leave the drums, piano, harp, dulcimer, pizzicato strings, and a few other instruments alone. And obviously, a program that's intended for orchestration isn't going to have patches for extra-crunchy guitars, so I won't be using Synful for that -- I'll still need to work on my guitar chops to record the thrashy bits.

That still leaves the entire brass section (five or six tracks), the entire woodwind section (six to eight tracks), and nearly all of the strings (five tracks). At least I can compose in standard midi, which will let me use up to sixteen tracks at once, and then convert to Synful's library for mixdown. This will keep composing from being absolute agony, but a certain amount of grief seems to be unavoidable.

Part of the problem may be other software. I've generally been lax about keeping my computer running efficiently, because it hasn't come up. Now, I have to figure a few things out. What other programs might be hogging resources? How many other processes can I safely turn off? Do I need more memory? Do I need (gasp) a new motherboard?

I have fifteen days to figure all this shit out. Beyond that, I'll need to fork over about $500 if I decide to keep the program. It ain't cheap, but it compares very favorably against hiring an orchestra, and it does sound damned good. My quirky mix of Classical Music and Progressive Metal is now at least two steps closer to seeing the light of day. W00t!

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Kevin McCallister, a gifted boy who at a young age had a talent for booby traps. Sadly, his was frequently neglected by his parents, and after the second time his family abandoned him, he was removed from his home by Child Protective Services.

He was a troubled child, and at one point stole some art from a museum. After that, however, he changed his name to John Kramer, and turned his amazing mechanical skills into a rewarding career making toys. Then, he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and after a failed suicide attempt, his life took a new, darker direction...

Fast-forward to the present, where we find two aging small-time crooks locked in a dingy basement, both shackled at the ankles to a drain-pipe. One of them wakes up, and finds a tape recorder in his pocket, with a tape labeled "play me."

He plays the tape, and a deep sinister voice comes from the recorder. "Hello, Harry. Once upon a time, you broke into a house being guarded, and booby-trapped, by a little boy. Now, the little boy has grown up, and has a booby-trapped house of his own.

"In two hours, one of the machines here will mix a gallon of ammonia and a gallon of bleach into the sink on the other side of this basement. To survive, you and your stupid accomplice Marvin must get around all the booby traps and escape before the chlorine gas kills you. You'll find a rusty hacksaw just barely in your reach, to get you started.

"Live or die. Make your choice."

Don't mind me. I'm just on crack.

Saw Home Alone is part of a series on Shit Sandwiches

The Movies: Saw I • Saw II • Saw III • Saw IV • Saw V • Saw VI Other Comments: I Saw Bunnies • Saw Home Alone • Saw in 15 seconds

Does anyone out there know any good programs I can use to do animated gifs? I have an idea for one that I'd like to use over at journalfen. (I'd mention using it on LJ, but I find that on LJ, I don't end up using "bitch, please" all that often. I don't use it much at JF, either, but this strikes me as a fun twist on it.)

Here, take a look. (All times are approximate. I'm sure I'll want to play with them a bit once I actually animate the damned thing.)

1.0 sec.	0.2 sec.	0.2 sec.
0.5 sec.	0.1 sec.	0.1 sec.
0.1 sec.	0.1 sec.	0.1 sec.

Non-musicians, you may want to skip this entry. I'll try to keep it in english, but some of this is going to be a bit technical.

The Good News

My guitar is strung, for the first time in a few years. The chrome is peeling off the bridge in a few places, but nowhere vital -- it's ugly when you see it close-up, but still functional. The truss rod needed only minimal adjustment and I was able to do this myself, though I may need to fine tune it a bit later. The strings are, as I type this, in tune (B-E-A-D-G-B-E), but since they are new, I'll have to retune them periodically for a couple of days.

My signal processor not only still works, but remembers all my old settings. Granted, I'm not happy with them anymore, but they are still there, and I can tweak them as I see fit. The names of the settings are a little on the cheesy side, but I'll probably leave them as they are. I can't believe I named one of my distortion patches "Nocturne 666 Dm" -- yeesh, what was I on? (Don't answer that!)

My computer is finally set up the way I want it. All the audio jacks are up front, with switches -- I can plug my guitar (or another instrument, like a keyboard) in, and push a button to route it either to the computer, or straight to speakers/headphones. Later, I may add a mixer to this set-up, right above the monitor.

( Pictures here, if you're interested. )

As far as equipment is concerned, I am set. Sure, I could always find more stuff I'd have uses for -- an octave pedal, for example, would be great for recording bass tracks -- but in terms of all the "stuff" I'd need for music, what I have is plenty. Which brings me to...


The Bad News

I have not played my guitar in a few years, and believe me, it shows. I used to be able to play Slayer riffs in my sleep -- Slayer isn't particularly difficult, or shouldn't be, and it's frustrating that it's giving me such trouble now. My fretting is forced, partly because I don't have those callouses any more, but also because I have to work to remember where the notes are. My picking... ugh, let's not go into that.

With any luck, my fingers will remember what they're supposed to do in time. In the meantime, I'm going to have to relearn a lot of stuff that was once easy. It will be harder, since I don't have the time to dedicate to my guitar that I once did, but I suppose that's what things like discipline are for.

FlameGod develops a bit of maturity...

Sooooome-one on my f-list mentioned having heard a Gordon Lightfoot song for the first time in years. As I remembered "If You Could Read My Mind," it was one of those simple, yet lovely, songs, and way back when I first heard it, it bored the shit out of me. (Hey, give me a break. I was ten!)

I just found it online, and listened to it a couple of times. It continues to be simple and lovely... and it's no longer boring. If anything, it's more lovely -- it almost hurts to listen to it.

(Sorry. I've just got a bit of my wayward teenage years caught in my eye. Don't mind me.)


...but that bit of maturity soon goes away.

I'd like to dedicate this work in progress to swtalmnd and elfscribe5, who inspired it; to a kindly sprite I won't name, who made it possible by e-mailing me the original song; and to Janet Jackson, a great dancer with a wonderful sense of humor. (I hope.)

Surfin' on the internet, readin' nasty plots.
Readin' 'bout two gentlemen really gets me off.
...that's right, I admit it.

(CHORUS)
Slashy slashy boys, written just for me!
Oh you slashy boys.
Slashy slashy boys, subtext is king!
Oh you slashy boys.

You say you'd rather be with girls, I know that this is true.
In all the stories that I've read, men get so far with you!
"He's just a friend?" Uh huh, I know... say...

(REPEAT CHORUS)
Slashy slashy boys, written just for me!
Oh you slashy boys...

If anyone from weepingcock or any other badfic comm is reading this, enjoy! (Yes, there be slash here. Bad slash -- deliberately bad slash. You have been warned.)


Jubilee's Purpose (X-Men, Cyclops/Wolvie)

Jubilee sat at her computer screen, and proofread her work. As she perused her writing, she felt tingly. Her descriptions were pretty damned good, if she dared say so herself: the exquisite agony and pleasure that Cyclops felt, as Wolverine drove into his ass like a siege engine, smoldered on the screen; his hot breath, as he bit his pillow and grunted like an animal, fogged up the glass of her moniter.

Scott cried out, in pleasure and pain, as Logan slowly buried his cock in his ass.  Logan held still for a moment, and then slid out, slowly, then back in.  Out.  In.  Out.  In.  He sped up a little, and Scott's cries gave way to long, almost gutteral moans.

Wolvie loved this.  Not just the satisfaction of assfucking the team leader -- though that was definitely part of it -- but driving Scott out of himself.  So controlled, so self-possessed, normally, but here he was on the end of Logan's cock, half-mad with lust, only barely coherent enough to beg for more.

All it needed was some dialog. But what?

This was always the part Jubilee had trouble with. Describing the beauty of male flesh came easily to her, and the mechanics of sex between men were familiar to her through the internet... but lacking any sexual experience of her own, she had to struggle with some of the details. Just what the hell did people actually say during sex?

With a blinding flash, an idea came to her, and she started typing once more.

Wolverine paused for a moment, and Cyclops writhed under his weight.  "Oh, God, don't you dare stop, you bastard."

Logan gave a quick twitch of his hips.  "Say my name, bub."

"Logan.  Fuck me.  Now.  Fuck me hard."

Wolverine smiled, and drove himself into Cyclops like a jackhammer.

Noblesse Oblige (Discworld, Carrot/Vetinari)

Carrot felt himself melt under the Patrician's iron gaze. Vetinari was looking, looking, into his eyes, seeing plainly the nobility he'd always tried to hide. In turn, Carrot looked into the stern eyes of the Patrician and saw something he'd never expected to see in the eyes of a politician: courage. Responsibility. The weight of all the lives in his domain, upon Vetinari's shoulders.

"No, we're not so different," Carrot said, horror and arousal mingling in his blood.

"Wasn't it I who told you where the words 'police' and 'politician' come from?" asked Vetinari, his own blood boiling with desire. "Are we not two sides of the same coin? Are we not both... powerful men?" Vetinari punctuated the word powerful by delicately caressing Carrot's bicep with one hand, and caressing Carrot elsewhere¹ with the other.

For a moment that seemed like an eternity, Carrot admired Vetinari's expert and dexterous hands, and for his part, Vetinari's hands moved over Carrot's powerful body in awe. Then, able to constrain himself no longer, Vetinari kissed Carrot forcefully and passionately, and for both of them, the world moved. And didn't bother with details like leaving a forwarding address.

"Why shouldn't we have such power over each other?"

---



1. I was tempted to make a joke about a really big pair of well-placed socks, but Carrot is innocent of such things. If Vetinari found anything of great substance in Carrot's trousers, it's all Carrot.²
   
   
2. This pune was unintentional. I swear.

Some of you know that I'm working on an ambitious project that I've been flippantly calling a crunchy symphony -- basically, an album's worth of music with an overarching theme, written for drums, bass, two electric guitars, keyboard... and most of a full orchestra. Well, I'm celebrating: one song (or movement, if you prefer -- I prefer song) is completely written, musically!

This doesn't mean that my work is finished as far as it concerns this one song. I still need to finish lyrics, and then I may end up cutting measures, or repeating them. I still need to mix it -- I have a fairly rough mix I just listened to a few times in a row, but the final mixing is going to have to wait until the whole symphony is done. (I am currently using over fifty tracks, and I still find I need to add more occasionally. By the time I'm finished, I may be using eighty tracks. Mixing will be no easy feat.) And I'll still have to go in and re-record tracks, replacing the midi-synthesized instruments currently in place with real instruments wherever possible.

Still, to have all the writing done, and to have a tangible finished product, however crude... whew!

To celebrate... a little frivolity. I saw this meme in a few LJs, and I decided to steal it.

1. Put your playlist on shuffle.
   
2. Post the first lines to the first 25 songs to come up (along with these instructions).
   
3. Have people guess the songs and artists in comments to the post.
   
4. Post the answers to the ones that have been guessed correctly.
   
5. Eventually, post the answers to the ones that nobody got, because you know that no one's ever gonna get the damn thing.

In my case, I cheated a bit. Well, mostly, I used my more frequently used sublists, and I ignored a few songs because a few bands tried to make it on my list twice.

( And here's my list: )