not falling down

I got a new keyboard. Just the cheap standard one.

It kind of bites.

On the Checkerboard Nightmare forums a while back, infamous Electrologician Kris Straub proposed an open”you write lyrics, I write music” deal. I expanded an old magnetic poem of mine into a drab little ditty about summerand posted it, and, magically, he actually picked it and sang the words and played chords and everything! It’stotally rad.

You can download the world’s sexiest (well, only) recorded rendition of something I wrote by just clicking here. You can hear the first song from the thread, aswritten by Stephen, here. You can follow the progress of otherpossible songs-to-be-musicked in this thread. And now! The lyrics to the song are below, edited slightly from the original toreflect the couple of lines Kris changed.

[Edited, as of 2048 hrs, to reflect the fact that Mr. Straub rocks my booty, and I don't think I had adequatelyemphasized that.]

Fly Buzz
Music by Kristofer Straub
Lyrics by Brendan Adkins

Fly buzz
Why does
Everything get wet

Shrink eyes
Buzz flies
Sip your fifth and sweat

Sun glares
Sun stares
Glasses gone last week

Burn eyes
Buzz flies
Something’s smelling sweet

Listen to the sound
Of sidewalk frying down

Listen to the sound
Of sidewalk frying down

Next door
A nice store
Baking dinner rolls

Fry drops
Flip-flops
Slapping on your soles

Fly buzz
Why does
Everyone get fat

Buzz fly
Feast eye
Scrape up her dead cat

Listen to the sound
Of sidewalk frying down

Listen to the sound
Of sidewalk frying down

If you put together a mix CD, and then burn it, and then decorate it, and you think it’s a good idea to decorate it bycutting stencils out of scotch tape and taping them to the CD and then drawing around them with a Sharpie so that youget a nifty reverse-lettering effect: it’s not.

I’ve managed to completely kill the left-side CTRL on my keyboard, seriously hindering my copy/cut/paste abilities (Ithink CTRL-C, CTRL-X and CTRL-V constitute roughly half my keystrokes). I’m probably going to have to buy a newkeyboard, which could be interesting, especially as I’m considering springing for one of the fancy “stave off carpaltunnel” models. The only thing is that while I took typing and touch-type in a fairly standard fashion, I havenonstandard quirks–like hitting B, V, T and R with my right index finger sometimes–that might make the adjustment ahorrible ordeal. Anybody have any recommendations?

Update 5.9.02 1420 hrs: “FROM Ken
TO Brendan
SUBJECT keyboards

DON’T DO IT!!!!!”

Saw Spider-Man (who needs links anyway?). Good; fun; could have been better. Tobey Maguire kicks the appropriate amount of ass, but it’s that infernal Koepp at the dialogue controls again. I kind of hope he dies.

And again, courtesy of Ken and Yahoo! News, comes a brilliant “What’s Wrong With This Picture” (click for a bigger version):

Look carefully. Well, not too carefully. Full article is here. And now I have to go close out a play.

turn all of the lights on
over every boy and every girl

I still had classes and we still did the play and I still had only a few hours of free time, because my life is stillabout the busiest it’s ever been. And it was a really good day.

I got a visit from some uncles and phone calls and abnormal amounts of flowers and a beautiful handmade card and several morehasty-but-still-beautiful handmade cards and an umbrella and the hair and a puzzle and a piece of cake with a candle in it and smooches from my girl. And Will,at the end of the play, managed to add “Duke Brian of Denneheaton” to the list of thedead. Plus I got wished a happy one by three of the webcomic deities over at Altbrand. Who needs partieswhen you’ve got this?

Other stuff I’ve been meaning to get to: explodingdog hasgone above and beyond lately, and doesanybody else remember these?, and finally, thanks to Ken, the winner for World’s Best Ambiguous Headline:

So I turn 21 tomorrow. I’m not exactly planning a big bash, because a) I don’t much like big bashes and b) it is (as has been the case for eleven years) on a performance date. Anyway, these are the last free hours I’ll have for a while, so I thought I’d get this entry out of the way.

I’m not going to drink. I’m not going to start drinking. I don’t think that’s really a big deal. I don’t mind answering when people ask me why I don’t drink; I have plenty of answers to go around (“it’s not what I do” is the most popular lately). What gets to me is the sheer shock in some of my friends’ eyes when they find out.

“Like at all?” they ask. “Ever?”

I have friends who drink, and I don’t treat them any differently than my friends who don’t. Their choices don’t define who they are; I don’t think I’ll ever understand why mine apparently does.

I’m going to enjoy being able to get into clubs for 21-and-over concerts. That’s really the only difference this birthday makes to me. Having gained the right to do something doesn’t mean you have to go out and immediately overindulge in it (how many people go binge voting when they turn 18?). In fact, it doesn’t mean you have to do it at all. A privilege is a privilege, a choice, not an obligation.

Alcohol’s a good disinfectant. The day I see it accomplish anything other than that, or aid anyone or in any way contribute to the general good, I’ll try drinking it. I’m not holding my breath.

---

Also! Has anybody else heard Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” lately? I’m not even going into the mess Everclear made of it (they had to slow it down because their bass player wasn’t good enough to play it at the original speed), I’m talking about the original recording, the one you might hear at a supermarket or a party with a DJ. IT’S THE WRONG VERSION.

I LIKE this song, and I own one of the CDs it’s on (a re-release actually titled “Brown-Eyed Girl,” with about eight other songs), and I know the lyrics. Toward the end, the original lyrics go

…sometime I’m overcome thinking about
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium…

And the version that’s getting played now, all the time, is as follows:

…sometime I’m overcome thinking about
Laughin’ and a-runnin’, hey hey
Behind the stadium…

It’s pretty badly done; the line is obviously copied from where it appears earlier in the song, and you can hear that the bass and drums are different in the background. It’s jarring and annoying and stupid. I’ve been kind of hovering between “annoyed” and “outraged” about this for years, and today I looked it up and found out why.

That’s right: the version you hear now was originally a censored single in 1967. Let’s say that out loud, to make sure we read it right: 1967. My mother was younger then than I am now, and somehow the censored version is still getting played.

I could make some point about how this proves censorship is pervasive and insidious and, well, annoying, but that’s kind of redundant. What’s more important is getting the REAL SONG out there, on Morpheus and Kazaa, and replacing the stupid stupid 1967 single. Download now and strike a blow for not-stupidity!

van_morrison_-_brown-eyed_girl_(REAL_version).mp3

(That’s kind of a weak ending. Hmm. Opening night and the school show went well; tonight’s the real test, to see if we can keep it up. Wish me broken legs.)