You'd Really Have To Hear It

Have you heard of The New Dominions?

They're an a cappella group. They sing rock songs. By which I mean, they sing the lyrics. And the percussion. And the other instrumentation. And the wacky tech bits.

They sing "Drive My Car" on their latest album, Almost Awesome. "Drive My Car" has a guitar solo.

It is possible to sing a guitar solo.

I don't mean that it's possible to produce the same notes as a guitar solo. I mean that it's possible to produce roughly the expected sound of a guitar solo with your voice. Or with someone's voice.

Maybe this is a normal thing. Maybe to everyone else, this is just another day in the world of music. But to me, this is new. And it rocks my world.

Strangely Attractive

This is the geekiest, and the most frightening, thing I've seen all week. Batman. LEGO. LEGO Batman. Naturally, Nightwing has truly strange hair.



There are plans for a video game.

My Newest Fiction Adventure

Othar Tryggvassen has a Twitter. It's a mostly day-by-day account of his adventures as a professional hero. Full of lines like "Have noticed that Spooky is staring at me. Follows my every move. Unnerving. Ate some cheese."

I love stuff like this. Square Zero has something similar--the characters post in the comments section. Which is weird, especially if you've read Schism, the webcomic it's based on. (And which I wish would update. Hasn't in ages, but when it was updating I liked it a lot.) They'll often have these odd, extended arguments with people. I don't know if the author already knows these people, or if they're just random, but either way, it's cool.

Having characters interact directly with the fans of a production is cool. It's the sort of thing that works especially well with webcomics, and other web-based media. The reader space is less formal, and it's easier to get from a webcomic to whatever forum or blog you're using. Not a bad marketing technique, really. Especially when done on a social type site, like the Othar thing is.

But what would be really cool is if the character interaction system was the whole point. Say you had a blog, or a series of blogs, and they interacted with each other and with the audience. There could be some kind of plot, and it could even be set in some world other than mainline Earth, but you'd also have the audience interacting with the characters in more or less the same format that the characters interacted with each other. Be a bit like roleplaying.

I need to get on this.

Sound Effect

The flies are back. They'd gone away for a bit, but that was just a temporary gambit.

Now they're definitely dying. When I kill them, they go "crunch."

Links Ahoy!

Now here's an interesting website: 9 Degrees of Bloggeration. Scott Duster blogs about the blogs he finds as he chains through the links, Kevin Bacon style. So far, there's a lot of Spain.

In the spirit of the thing, I found this blog through Today's Rock Stars, which tracks the profligate use of rock star metaphors to describe people decidedly non-rock star. Which I found through a link from the proprietor's other blog, the Silent Penultimate Panel Watch, which tracks the overuse of the silent penultimate panel in newspaper cartoons. Which I found through Narbonic. Actually, the director's cut, but you don't want to go there if you haven't read the original strip.

Trust me. You want to start with the first strip and just keep on going. There be plots ahead!

Fly Update

It appears they arrive only at night. And I never find corpses, so my original presumption that they were dying may have been a tad hasty. Perhaps they are merely stupid, and incapable of flying properly.

They Multiply

My room is being invaded by dying flies.

I have no explanation for this.

Jam!

Happy now.

Because strawberry jam that makes the sea steam is far from the wackiest thing Scary Go Round has ever pulled. So awesome.

Also: only good can come of cream. This I have learned.

Damn, This Is a Good Website

Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed)

Geekery and feminism, all in one blog.

We need more of this.

Nethack Quiz

 |[..+#
 |.c.| 
#+...| 

If I were a NetHack monster, I would be a cockatrice. People tend to go out of their way to avoid me; those that don't have to treat me very carefully indeed.

Which NetHack Monster Are You?

For the Love of Lex Luthor

I've picked up a new catch phrase.

FOOLS! I HAVE NO USE FOR YOUR PITIFUL CURRENCY! I WISH ONLY TO ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF . . .

SUPERMAN!


I just replace "currency" with whatever I'm talking about at the time, and hey! Instant comeback! So far "education" is my favorite.

I got it off this excellent website. I am all about the mad science.

I sang to a llama because that’s how I roll

Got this awesome blog meme from Jeff's Gameblog. It's just crazy enough to work!

Fwd: I smelled a noodle because I'm sexy and I do what I want.
Fwd: I yelled at my science teacher because I'm sexy and I do what I want.
Subject: I ran over a stuffed animal because Big Bird said to and he's my leader

Work the 3 tables below, then: type out the sentence you end up with in the subject line of a blog post and copy this text. Also, link back to the blog you read it on. DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING ALONE!

Pick the month you were born:
January-------I kicked
February-----I loved
March--------I karate chopped
April----------I licked
May---------- I jumped on
June---------- I smelled
July-----------I did the Macarena With
August-------I had lunch with
September---I danced with
October------I sang to
November----I yelled at
December----I ran over

Pick the day (number) you were born on:

1-------a birdbath
2-------a monster
3-------a phone
4-------a fork
5-------a snowman
6-------a gangster
7-------my cell phone
8-------my dog
9-------my best friends' boyfriend
10-------my neighbor
11---- ---my science teacher
12-------a banana
13-------a fireman
14-------a stuffe d animal
15-------a goat
16-------a pickle
17-------your mom
18---- ---a spoon
19------- a smurf
20-------a baseball bat
21-------a ninja
22-------Chuck Norris
23-------a noodle
24-------a squirrel
25-------a football player
26-------my sister
27-------my brother
28-------an ipod
29-------a surfer
30-------a llama
31-------A homeless guy

Pick the color of shirt you are wearing:
White---------because I'm cool like that
Black---------because that's how I roll.
Pink----------because I'm NOT crazy.
Red-----------because the voices told me to
Blue----------because I'm sexy and I do what I want.
Green---------because I think I need some serious help.
Purple--------because I'm AWESOME!
Gray----------because Big Bird said to and he's my leader.
Yellow--------because someone offered me 1 ,000,000 dollars
Orange --------because my family thinks I'm stupid anyway.
Brown ---------because I can.
Other---------because I'm a Ninja !
None----------because I can't control myself.

Now type out the sentence you made and put in your subject line and copy the text of this post.

Don't forget to link back to the person that tagged you!

Poor Kitten

I killed my kitten today. I was trying to throw it a treat, but accidentally threw a longsword.

Now God is angry at me.

WoAdWriMo: Best Name Ever

This is a bit late, but-- Worldwide Adventure Writing Month! It's awesome! Tell your friends!

I haven't quite decided that I'm going to do it, on account of having a lot of stuff that is to be happening this month. But, most of it is in the first half, and then I'll have a lot of (hypothetical) free time.

I've done National Novel Writing Month, so part of me says I should do it just on that account. So I can say I've done both, and because it can't be any harder. I hope.

I'm thinking that my somewhat misreading of Keep on the Borderlands might not be a bad place to start. Also, something desert themed. Probably do D&D, or maybe possibly d20 Modern/Future, because I have a decent idea of what works in those systems.

Not that I have any idea how to write an adventure. I've never actually run a published adventure, if you don't count three hours worth of Nightfang Spire which I subsequently abandoned because it was weird and incomprehensible and really not what anyone in the group was looking for. I've run a couple of decent campaigns, but I've never run anything remotely approximating an adventure, because it's unusual for me to work in such episodic terms.

Which is, oddly enough, why I think I should do this WoAdWriMo thing. Because I've never done anything much like it, and I don't think I'd be likely to for any reason other than a defined event like this.

An Improvement

Someone should dub The Matrix with dialog that consists exclusively of internet memes.

"HA! HA! I'm using teh internets!"
"Hax!"
"I'm in ur base, killing ur doods"

It's like they were made for each other.

Works Every Time

There is no situation that cannot be improved with the words, "GIANT SNAKE!"

That's it.