Blogdiggity

http://thefrownedupon.com is our domain now. Go there and enjoy!

Another sci-fi idea...

Mad genius scientist creates tiny self-aware automaton toys for his girls (like calico critter size). Girls play with them for a while and love the heck out of them, then lose/abandon/forget them. Story is told entirely from their perspective, with their assumptions, etc.

Rap July 2009 - Title TBA

In motherfuckin astronomy
and cosmo-bitch-slap-a-tology,
dark matter is hypothetical which matters
'cause this matter is undefuckingtectable

But the shit's presence can be inferred from afar
by the way it pulls at your shit.

Dark matter is postulated
'cause the galaxies are all fuckin flat rotated,
like a record.

So to Explain the Flatness,
And why we can't visually Observe the Fatness
(etc... as translated from the wikipedia entry for Dark matter)

Then I Got Up

[2/4] (Bm7-----------------Cm7)
I fell down... and then I got up.
I walked into a bright light! ...and then I got up.
I was down, down, underground... then I got up.
I've got a desire... I can not contain...
Gotta get me some
[3/4] (G----A----Bm----Bm----)
Brains.
Gonna sing in that
[4/4] (G---------- A)
sweet low
[3/4] (D--------------)
tone... and the
(Em----)
Ramblin
(A----)
Shamblin
(Bm----)
shuffle we
(G)
do... I'm
(Em)
All done
(A7)
Feelin...
[2/4]
(Bm7------------C7)
-C#- PAIN!
(Bm7------------C7)
I'm on a team now
We've got goals!
It's up to me now...
Devour a thousand souls

Oh I can see now
Where this goes



and I'm
[3/4] (Em-------)
trippin'...
(A(7?)-------)
fallin... and the
(Bm ---------)
Lord comes a
(D-----------)
'callin'...and I
(Em----------)
Cannot re-
(A7)
call who
(F#maj)
I was at
(G)
all I'm
(Em)
all done
(A)
Feeeeeling I'm
(F#m)
ready for some be-
(Bm)
lieving
(G)
time for
(A)
stealing
(C7------------)

BRAAAA
(C7------)
AIIII
(Bm7----- C7)
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINSS!!!!

Burn me once...

Folkie song: our hero did "many bad things" (old-timey "shot my woman" ideas) and went to hell. By some ridiculous miracle he escapes. Then he does the same stupid shit and goes back to hell. The song is sung, from hell, with self loathing.

Newcomerz

It's hard, living at the edge of the galaxy
With my dreams way ahead of reality
I need a place where the five of me can have some privacy
Your space looks tastay

This is a message from General Five
It may tend to presage the End of your Lives
So hug your children and kiss your wives
If you dug your grave and gave 'em a wave, then you should be fine

Cause I went riding in my pimp machine
Looking for a planet that was blue and green
I found your place in space - DIBZ!
Cause light-speed hustlers gotta have space-cribs

[new voice]



They call me the diggin
Cause I just embiggen
The place where a previous race was breathin and livin
melt-down your house with my radio-kill-ray
Gotta make space for the space Jacuzzay


Take your mountains and your valleys make 'em flat
Point my beam at your women, make 'em nice and phat
Let 'em loose case the general want some
Put up the sign that says space ho's welcome

[chorus idea A]

That's how we roll on our Incredible Spaceship
Steal your soul with our Incredible Spaceship
One two three four in our Incredible Spaceship
That's the way we roll through space

Step back it's a punch-your-face ship
Knockin out zombies on a case-by-case ship
It's the end of the human race ship
Watcha gonna do when we go pew pew pew?

[new voice]
This is General Five
The King of the hive
Kickin it live
You'll never survive when I drop my rhymes
'Cause it's like we got knives
and you got guns
We get five lives
and you get one

We get to drive
You get to run
You get to _scream_
When we throw you into the sun
You've been dominated
:::human race exterminated:::

[chorus idea B]
If you love space flight Put your hands up
Go faster than light? Put your hands up
If you destroyed a space station Put your hands up
If you're enslaving a nation put your hands up

If you can sing the color green Put your hands up
If you got a killing machine Put your hands up
If you can solve quadratics in your head and you want all of the humans dead Put your hands up


[chorus c]
If you can die five times -Put your hands up-
If committing space-crimes -Put your hands up-
If you have mastered space-time with a superior mind
And you're layin' down rhymes -Put your hands up-

Show Me Your Motivation

This is the conflict song, where the Zombies (The Previously Dead) and the Aliens (The Newcomers) square off.

[feel is intense snare-on-all-four... ]


[Previously Dead]


This drug hit way too fast
I've got no context
I'm really struggling with my name


I need Attention
To find a landmark
I need somebody the same


I crave direction
I need to keep on walking
Somebody point me away


Here is a leader
He has a purpose
He knows that they have the brains


They Have The Brains!!!

They Have The Brains!!!



[The Newcomers]


I'm here for knowledge
Give me a breakthrough
There might be something we need


It's always painful
We want to minimize
The anxiety of your breed


If you could see the
Greater perspective
You'd see the tops of the walls


You'd know that we have
No real choice now
Zombies are trippin' balls

But We Have The Brains!!

We Have The Brains!!

hmmmm.... maybe not quite the right tone, but I'll put it up as a point of reference... I couldn't resist the "trippin' balls" part, because I wanted to rhyme "walls" and "trippin' balls"* is exactly the phrase I was using mentally when I came up with the idea for the Zombie Experience. Their internal experience is that of a serious crazy drug, but I want it to be fun and happy for them because that's just a lot funnier. Inside their minds they doing nice things and having adventures while constantly misinterpreting everything around them.

*I don't even know what that phrase is supposed to mean literally if there is in fact some literal angle to it, or if it's just a hilarious combination of words.

Cassady has died at the stick

I've decided that having the Zombies experience what amounts essentially to a Crazy Drug Trip is just too perfect ("unnnghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh") where they have an incredible inner dialogue but are essentially cut off from the non-zombie world because they are so thoroughly zonked that they can barely speak. I considered Thompson and Burroughs and Wolfe, and while I lean instantly towards Thompson, I'm reading Wolfe right now, so I have to start there. Oooh, and we can call it that: The Zombie Experience. Or maybe even The Previously Dead Experience, because that's what I'm calling the zombies lately... also I need names to channel Wolfe properly (aside from using a bunch of colons :::: and The Combine (yep, way before Half-Life it was the name for The Establishment in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) I need to call people by name), so I went ahead and gave the Zombie Lord the name Cain. (Always Cain!) Besides being eponymous, it's kinda biblical and stuff. I may change it if I just can't stand seeing my name that frequently...

So Cain comes up out of the plane, jet-fuel-afterburners blazing hot hwoooooooch in his sockets, and he looks around, and THIS IS IT! He knows it! He's on the plane, all out front and all there right in perfect synch. And the other passangers are all dead in the straight world, crushed by the Combine, but not where he is they aren't. He's in a new place, that next dimension, seeing the strings and their hidden vibrations, where they aren't dead but rather they've just

forgotten how to move

and he can remind them. He can pull them into his movie.

::::CONTROL::::

Cain pauses a moment and looks around at the wreckage and down at himself. He actually has what may be jet fuel on his leg and the hem of his robe (robe?) and then the potential movement of all those people just overwhelms whatever it is that he was thinking. They bizz and they buzz and they resonate at him. They have some kind of movement that's trapped in them and it nags at Cain. Nags at his eyes, ticktocks and hums and buzzes in his skull. They won't stop ticking and then they just fall into his movie so naturally... they are his to do with as he pleases. All this Control. He knows it's dangerous. He takes a moment to promise them that he'll take care of them. He actually goes so far as to make a little ritual out of it. He makes a solemn promise, a formal promise, and it comes out sounding like a bedtime prayer under his breath. He grinds his toe into the grit on the polished hull of the plane and scratches something permanent, something vital, something real... a symbol. The shape of it comes to him fully formed, more like remembering something than inventing it. Perhaps it's a long-forgotten letter from a strange and dangerous alphabet he knew in the womb. The shape is

And then he raises his hands. His thin and meaningless country-boy-gone-city-boy skeleton bends its elbows and pulls his hands together. Then, feeling the rightness of this initial gesture, he brings his hands together over his head and he squares and settles his feet on the hull of this incredible burned and destroyed ship of which he is now unequivocally the captain. :::the caption:::

At this point there is nearly nobody to scorn or praise his performance: most of his audience is thoroughly deceased. Tragedy abounds in both aisles and in every row. Here, an enthusiastic stereo installation specialist was hatching a brilliant scheme he called "octaural crossfolding". It would have made your world fresh. There... lies the unavoidably severed torso of an air marshall, who had been dutifully monitoring the behavior of the passengers, looking for terrorists... but boy was his profile wrong, and there's terror all right, and right at the middle of it is nothing less than a newly minted Lord of the Previously Dead who has no real idea what's going on.

And inside Cain's head is running his movie, and in his movie he can start this air marshall back up. He can stick the two pieces of him together in his mind just by pushing them with his eyes... like this! And it works! And he can make him start right back up. And he does. Like a prophet from the olden days (why not?!) he asks this former Sky Marshall, with his .380 Sig Sauer pistol and discreet body armor tucked beneath is shirt and jacker, to stand up and by goddamn he does. But what then? Have to keep going! The bus is rolling! Everybody stand up! And they do! The flames spit and hiss all around them, and Cain stands like a magician, like a prophet, like an ancient Lord and raises his hands above his head and over the crackling of the flames booms out "Rise!"

And they do!

Watch the fuck out world!

The Confrontation

On one side, we have the Zombies. The Previously Dead. The Shambling Menace. On the other we have The Newcomers.

Running Bassline

Run!
Run for the bass!
If you can't get it no one can.

Run!
Run from the man!
Better to run than to turn and face.

Crash!
Crash through the glass!
It's a hell of a way to start your day.

Live!
Live through this place!
And when you return you can be the bass.

Monkeyboy

Once amid the trees

His shit is uncatchable

That he throws at you

Run, Steve, Run!

Lay awake for a couple of hours last night and had Big Ideas about the album. First of all, I want to steer things a bit to match up with a project that Will is going to start on in Boston.

This first big concept is to take one of the songs (tentatively called Run The Plan) and make it the introduction song, which in turn introduces the entire storyline as just that: a storyline, a movie, a game script, etc. I think this will help in a bunch of ways. First, it's a great storytelling device, in which the story you tell is about before or after a big event, but not the event itself (although we will probably indulge ourselves in various events themselves in a number of places later). Second, if you wink at the camera a bit in the very beginning, I think it makes it easier for the audience to follow when something really absurd suddenly happens. Third, I think the song itself lends itself to opening credits rolling... so there's that.

Next idea: Run The Plan as it's currently recorded has a very insistent tick-tick-tick sound (which was me tapping the snare mic). I want to replace that with sprinting footsteps (flap flap flap) of feet hitting the ground hard in non-running-shoes at a flat-out sprint. Maybe layer in some other sounds (kids feet running, etc) to make it really full. That sound can then reappear throughout whenever we need to get back to running. It can also dissolve into the tick-tick-tick of an alarm clock, which is a bit of a cliche but works really well with a couple of transitions I want to try. Basically:

running -> Run The Plan (credits) -> ticking clock -> alarm -> Seam up the Middle (this would be a dream from Steve's storyline, something of an underwear nightmare, where he's running through the streets in his underwear looking for something elusive) -> ticking clock -> silence, then Steve wakes up (after missing the alarm and having a crazy dream) and mutters under his breath "ohshit" (not pronouncing the t) -> cut immediately to his door kicking open and he's actually running in real life this time to get to work.

Another device that I thought would be fun would be to have Steve always either crashing through a window when he leaves a building or at least having something break on his way out (crash through the window for the underpants dream definitely, maybe just have a bottle on the counter break when he kicks open the door and goes running out to work on the third song). This works really well with Will's project (to be revealed later).

More later...

Expectations

LOL. I wish I had time simply to write about how hilarious this entire project has been. Notice that I failed to split any infinitives in the previous sentence. Hopefully that buys me 4 seconds to get away. FTW - away is a preposition, right (when used in this prepositional sub-phrase)?

If It Wasn't In The Dream, It's Not In The Movie Of The Dream

Epic night last night. We started shooting the music video for Partial Abduction (which is I think the keystone song for the Alien story arc of A Cowboy Zombie XMas). It's essentially the origin story for Steve's character(s) and it intersects directly with the Zombie storyline, so it's a pretty crucial thing in the album. Now, of course, this song is built on a dream that Steve had one time, and the lyrics refer to that in Steve's lyrical style, which can be difficult to parse without a few listens. Steve says this isn't intentional, and I believe him. I think it happens because he tends to find something that's really appealing let's say for a specific part and then nothing else will quite do. Then before you know it there is a collection of those meticulously chosen lyrical stepping stones, and they don't necessarily tell the story in the most obvious way possible but if you take the time to enjoy them individually and learn the path... well, I may be stretching a metaphor a bit but I think it makes the point.

And that point is a setup to a larger one: given the more gestural nature of the exposition in Steve's lyrics, we (the listeners) are given a bit more freedom to interpret the precise scenes as they unfold. This, as it turns out, can cause a bit of strife when you go to turn that into a movie, because we each had our own sort of mental movie of the story, but when you commit that to "film" you have to choose quite literally: was it daytime? did A happen before B? was Steve or was Steve not a bunny? For the record (after much debate): Yes, Yes, and Yes. That will sound less crazy when you see the video, which should be done in a few weeks.

So we had to do a bit of work to reconcile this piece with the overall arc of the larger project, without messing with Steve's song, which needs to be able to work on its own outside the context of the album. We determined the following:

-It's daytime. (I think it has to change to night before the end just to make it possible to do some of the shots, but we will discuss)
-It basically starts in the car, with Steve and his friends on a drive
-BUT before we get in the car we get to meet the people in the car. That is accomplished via short static shots of each character over which we'll throw some text. Steve wrote down what he thinks are the names of those people but I don't yet agree. Hijinx may yet ensue.
-Britniy is not in fact a neighbor of Steve's residence, but in fact lives next to a generally-empty second home (mansion) on a lake. She knows Steve from town, though, and they have a tentative friendship.
-When Steve ditches from the car he eventually finds his way to this mansion
-Britniy is watching from her room on the fourth floor when Steve arrives at the house next door and lets himself in
-She sees the house light up and Steve move up to the top floor, from which he is eventually abducted.
-AFTER that, when the non-abducted Steve is dumped in the lake (just made that part up, works perfectly) and the was-abducted Steve is taken aboard the alien ship, she makes her assault on the house (which is the subject of That's What I Brought It For).

In other notes: Jacer may in fact be a special F/X genius. He contributed several great ideas and techniques last night that should not go un-noted. The "Halogen work-light as alien ship flyover" effect, the "car on a moving chunk of cardboard next to an oppositely-moving painting" effect, and the "Oblivion cliff-diving car-jump" effect, to name just three. I hope he can make it whenever we're doing video...

Bricks and Staples Can Keep Us Together

Well despite the unhappy absence of the third leg of the stool that is our band, Steve and I managed to press on by ourselves last night. We're really getting the workflow dialed in, and we were able to make big progress on several songs.

There were many highlights of the night, but I think my favorite was probably recording Steve playing the staple-gun, and then a pair of bricks. We spent no less than 10 minutes selecting the appropriate bit of scrap wood into which Steve would fire the staples. For the record: plywood is too hard. The winner was a piece of hemlock. I got all nervous about bringing the bricks into the studio because I didn't want to get powdered brick on the mic capsules, but we managed to pull it off without any permanent damage. :) Steve played the bricks both as a shaker (sliding them together) and as a pair of very heavy claves. The sound of a brick hitting a brick is just cool.

In other notes: we started on a song that isn't all funk and doom. I'm not going to call it a ballad (seeing as how we've pretty much agreed that it's going to be about Tina Fey's cleavage) but the melody is pretty and the chords are thus far fairly accessible. So that's cool. Of course, when we agreed to start on that style of song the first thing we did was hit Record and both of us started plunking on the piano at the same time, and next thing you know we're 20 minutes into a crazy jam mashup of the Pink Panther Theme, Hedwig's Theme, and some random part from Phantom. After that, we settled down to some normal writing, and I think the song is going to kick ass.

I have an idea for an experiment that I'm going to start soon, which is to let my girls join in on a jam at the beginning of music night, before they go to bed. It's pretty much guaranteed to shake things up, and we can always mute their tracks later if they suck. :)

Claiming Your Codependents

More blues form. The idea for this came from a song on kexp the other morning, a blues tune with the lyric "before you go..." blah, blah, something about revenge and I thought a _truly_ tragic thing would be if the "before you go" was "kill me". Variations on "if you can't love me set me free (from this life)", etc. Pretty dark shit, I know. Here goes:

Say you don't love me,
there's one thing you should know
Say you can't keep me
Got to let me go
Then I need you to free me
Straight to hell is where I'll go

Before you leave
There's just one thing you must do
Say before you go
There's just one thing you must do
Take my weapon over there
Give me one or two

Lost My Way

Starting on the blues project next. Here's starting lyrics for one of the first tracks I've started on... yes, once again the subject matter is not real life (well, it's real in the sense that I've experienced it while gaming, and that's close enough to real life nowadays. There was surround sound for christs sake... that shit was all around me).

I'm runnin' low and I'm alonely
And I believe I've lost my way
Runnin' low and I'm alonely
I believe I've lost my way
Now all I've got is one last shot
Don't know if it's night or day

I don't feel like a person
I don't have a lot to say
I'm a bad bad killer
And I believe I lost my way
And I'm goin' down shootin'
Havin' a real real bad day.

(solo)

Ain't nobody loves me
Ain't nobody wants me home
Ain't nobody don't wanna kill me
Wish they just leave me alone
So I'm gonna die in a big fire
Take some with me when I go

Track List! (time to start organizing...)

• Thunderbird Hotel - (once you go in, you know there's no coming back) (90%)
• Prairie Fire - (up in the tree, tornado of flames) (70%)
• Wait For It III - (crazy FPS run in the car) (85%)
• Partial Abduction - (don't let me go up out into the sky...) (85%)
• Pyroplastic Flow - (??) (??%)
• 899UKC - (why'd you still here?) (85%)
• Sinister - (up around the bend) (90%)
• Take That, The Man! - (Z Lord origin story) (80%)
• That's What I Brought It For - (Grenades + Love = BOOM!) (90%)
• The Deep Queen - (She went weeping to the bayou) (60%)
• From There - (how you gonna fix me? needs zombie brilliance) (75%)
• I Was There - (when they came in the shiny ship...) (40%)
• Zombie Folk - (her eyes they went through him, etc) (40%)
• Gotta Get Me Some Brains - (swing in that sweet, low moan. Needs crunch.) (40%)
• City of Brains - (improvised Zombie song... on YouTube...)
• I'm Only In It For The Brains - (old school rizzle)
• Zombie Love - (barbershop)

I'm in ur Elf Welcome Pavillion

Eatin ur helprz

Play Time

That's longer than one of our josh-won't-stop jams... (yeah, that's hours.minutes.seconds... and no it's not me, but someone who's on the team...)

That's What I Brought It For - Final Lyrics

Fourteen waiting in the living room
Twelve in the backyard
The two upstairs, they were ten feet tall
Never been so glad that my crazy dad taught me how to throw grenades.

I brought a few.

Then you watch it explode, and you die WHOAH!
...That's what I brought it for.

What are you doing here?
Where's the rest of my friend?
Think I might like to see your badge,
Gonna ask you again, and I don't speak Alien.

But I've deleted a few.

Then you watch it explode and you die, WHOAH!
That's what I brought it for!

random melody stuck in my head, 10/16/2008

(IV-I-V-)
6 - - - 1 2 3 5 - 7v -
6 - - - 1 2 3 5 - 7v -

judgement: 1,2,3

We can hear good music from bad that we might save hours or days, not minutes or seconds.

Take That, Song!

(one... two...)
Intro (three times) [G - G - x333xx]

(Flying to NY...)
G - G - Em - D -
C - C - C - G.D.Em.
(call home... so alone...)
Em - G - D - D -

(zoey said)
C - C - C - C -

(and the lights) [jangly piano part? music-box?]
C - D - Em - G -
C - D - Em - C -
Am - D - G - Em -
C - C - C - C -

(and that was a day I could smile)
C - C - G - G -
D - D - D - G (ascending G-A-B)
C - C - G - G -
D - D - C - C - C - C -

(takes money)
G - G - D - D -
Am- C - C - G -
G - G - D - D -
C - C - C - G -

(I went to the city)
C - G - D - Em -
C - G - D - Em -
C - G - D - Em - Em - Em -

(goes slightly crazy, then back... need some serious discord for color...)
(slight hint of ZL theme, no flat five (maybe once?))
Em - Em - Fm - Fm -
Em - Em - Fm - Fm -

(and the money)
C - G - D - D -
C - G - D - D -
C - C - C - C -

(and that was the day I got rich)
C - C - G - G -
D - D - D - G -
C - C - G - G -
D - D - C - C -

(from my thrillin' machine)
Am- Am- G - D -
Am- Am- G - D -
Am- Am- G - D -

(we built a giant lab)
C - C - G - D -
C - C - G - D - C - C -
C - G - D - D -
C - G - D - D -
C - G - D - D -
C - G - D - D -
C - G - D - D -
[slowly crossfade the craziest substitutions I can possibly think of]

(AND ON THAT DAY I WAS BECOME)
C - C - G - G -
D - D - D - G - (g-a-b-)
C - C - G - G -
(screw all you mf)
D - D -
(one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven tweleve thirteen)
C - C - C - C -
G -

[ukelele]
Am - Em- Am - Am -
(humming ZL theme, no flat five)

Greetings, Earthnoob

F- F - Am - Am -
We come in peace... mostly

Dm - Dm - Dm - C -
We mean you no harm... to a point, We're your new

F - F - Am - Am -
friends... kinda... it all de-

[x645xx]
vdim - vdim - vdim - Bb -
pends on whether you can do exactly what we tell you to

Bb - Bb -
We've got a plan That

Dm - C -
may require the use of your

Bb - Bb -
facilities... we're

Am - C -
going to need to borrow one of

Bb - Bb - Bb - Bb -
your Steves

(after here it's just prelim notes right now)

But you're really going to like the plan
We're going to make it better than
this freezing ball of salt you have today!

What's this, you say?

Imagine you live in an apartment,
Only so far you've never paid rent,
Bit of an adjustment,
Now we own the place

Think of us as Land Lords
Because we own your land
Although we cannot stand
The fucking snow, but you should know

We are your Grand Lords
We will be like Gods to you


Imagine Earth... better
Imagine a world... with multiple Suns
Imagine your home... warmer!
You know you're not the only ones who need a place to live,
So let me give you this advice
If you want a place that's twice as nice with half the ice

You may not know it, but

A Tersian Anomaly

Peter Ters (Ters rhymes with scare, as he was fond of pointing out) was drafted from his job as a test pilot in Seattle into the 13th Airborne Division in 1941. He flew 89 sorties and was prominent in many more legendary tales during his time in France, and later Russia and Germany. He quickly earned the nom de guerre "Stukkabane" for his skillful and gleeful extermination of the German planes that hounded their bombers. He had an immense belly laugh that was equal parts infectious and offensive for its outright volume (it wanted, needed you to hear it, intruded willfully on your privacy to say "I'm here! We're laughing! This shit is funny!"). All that wrapped into a dense package five and a half feet tall, with wiry black hair, now gone mostly white and thin. Of course, he had been born no less than twelve decades previously, so the fact that he could stand was something of a miracle, let alone the fact that he still had some hair. But that's jumping ahead.

After the war he had picked back up as a test-pilot. Exciting and dangerous work, but with little true glory. When he couldn't stand the lack of notoriety any longer, he looked up the Senator son of a war buddy, and in very short order landed a position at NASA. He flew a total of 19 missions. His crew was the first to note in their official report that they had experienced a "collective anomaly" in which the four crew on board, under the apparent effects of a cabin air gas mixture failure, had seen what they could only describe as a foreign spacecraft. They described it as being of remarkable design. At the time it was taken as an extremely alarming indication of progress by the Soviet Union.

It was not long after the Challenger disaster, when it became clear that ships were going to fly less often, and he was only going to get older, Peter turned to theoretical physics. In a way, he perceived this as an ultimate extension of the test pilot... you sit in a room and think until you have an idea... then you work that idea into something you can build or test... and then one day you give it a shot. You take an airframe and a motor and a prop, or some solid fuel boosters and a launch/return vehicle, or a theory and a missing particle and an untested accelerator, and you see if they fly. Peter was unique in that respect. Most of his buddies from WWII had not gone on to NASA, and none of his buddies from NASA had gone on to work at CERN.

His contributions to the body of theoretical work being done at the lab were not great. Still, he played an important role, and no-one on the team begrudged him his salary as the Primary Hadron Collider. The title was not precise, but it was close enough that everyone on staff, every visiting PHD, knew exactly what Peter's _real_ job was. He was the test pilot of the high-energy theoretical physics experiments. If the world was going to turn inside out while we verified the existence of the Higgs Boson, well then Peter would be there turning the wheels and firing the collider and writing down whether we got one.

It is in this context that no one who truly knew Peter was truly surprised what eventually became of him. Surprised at the exact details, of course. Who wouldn't be surprised by that? But if you have a friend in an incredibly dangerous field, you know this feeling: the assumption that they will eventually die doing something dangerous. Every time you get a call from their wife, or a close mutual friend, there is some small percentage of your mind that is expecting the bad news. That feeling turns inside out the day that it comes true. There is a part of you, which has been girding for "real life" and slowly coalescing some "adult feelings" and "adult assumptions", and has has prepared a space in your psyche for this. But then, your friend dies one weekend. On Friday you're skiing with him and then on Monday he's gone, killed in a car race or on an oil derek or in a drug deal gone bad, or in our case: frozen in time-space in a 20-foot-wide sphere of impossibleness.

It was a Tuesday. An extremely big Tuesday if you happened to be a theoretical physicist. And in the gigantic cave where Peter stood frowning over a trans-vector alignment guisemometer, pretty much every person within sight was a theoretical physicist. Not that Peter was looking at any of them. He was in pre-flight checklist mode. It's a curious feature of the test-pilot: by the job description (person who flies things that may or may not in fact fly) you would imagine a crazy Scotch-guzzling ne'er-do-well who stumbles from a hotel room with a stewardess ten minutes late for the flight and then miraculously lands the new craft after the left wing comes off. That would all be accurate except that he actually shows up two hours before the flight and obsessively (if hung-overly) inspects the aircraft. And that is what Peter was doing now, except that instead of fuel lines and landing gear he was checking inveiglement tolerances, precisely measuring the Lessinger gaps, and over and over again reviewing the collision plan.

So Peter Ters is right there when the experiment is finally conducted. He is quite literally flipping switches and calling "we are GO!" into his radio. And he is there at the collision point. They discussed this at length during the original planning meetings: how close should we be? Is there any chance it will go Seriously Wrong?

Peter intones: "we are 10 until go." Moments later he snaps "we are 5 until go" and from that point on everything becomes "a blur". There is no blur, in fact. Just a space that isn't there and photos in between.

As Peter hits zero on his countdown, he enters into what is now known as a (the) Tersian Anamoly. Peter is utterly parked in time at this point.

At some point., 40 years later, the Tersian Anamoly is disrupted and Peter rejoins the surrounding time/space

He sneaks out, despite Steve's objections, and gets loose.

After taking on a ridiculous pseudonym, he makes it onto a NASA crew. From there...

(this guy is eventually one of two backup guys)

down with the ship

Basic concept is that this is the extra ship (a small one) that crashes in the desert. There's only one alien on it, and he/she/it may or may not be "drunk" or alien equivalent, batshit crazy, hurt, etc. Whatever works. The song starts with the ship flying and then goes into the crash. Obvious parallel to the ZL plane crash. May want to have a "crash motif" we reuse across both songs.

(four on the floor, techno style, bass drum only. acoustic)

then bring in acoustic gtr line, eighth notes, down pick only. zombie notes...

then add electric guitar, same feel and rhythm...

from totally silent, bring up the Thor organ patch, starting on the sine wave side and morphing as it builds to the square wave. Organ is playing at least a four note chord, perhaps five. The root of the song key is not the bass note on the chord, but something that leads into it. (Kiefer is good at those puzzles).

Guitars start to coalesce from pure Zombie notes into something more in line with the key and the motifs of the song.

Wham. Full drums break in and everybody drops into the key, the organ backs off to a more normal patch and moves up to more of a right hand position and the bass comes in to fill in.

Possible places to go next:

1) halftime melodic bit (like a switch from the noise of the engine room to an exterior shot of the ship). a la great gig in the sky
2) alien-infected variation on "Blues in the dark" (used for the tenor sax duel in Kansas City). No idea if we can even pull that off, but it would kick ass
3) Keep going. Don't drop into key but just keep adding stuff, 4 or 8 measures at a time (urgent tense quarter note sirens, for example) but maybe try to structure it overall so that it has some harmonic coherency... like take a cool progression and stretch it way out to four measures per chords and add lots of zombal melodies that traverse the chords). No idea if you'd sing for this one or not...

I'm only in it for the brains...

I'm only in it for the

BRAINS, I always gotta have more,
Don't know what I need 'em for, but I pick them up from the gore on the
dance floor where my zombie horde crew rolled through
If you got two then I'm gonna go get four
more than you,
straight to the top and I can't stop if I'm gonna break through
to the next level, and roll with the devil
zombie lord, shambling horde, coming for you

one by one, two by two
three and four come in the door downstairs
catch you unawares in your underwears
it's just what we do...


don't ask
questions, you just hope that I change di-
rections, or you can pray for a resur-
rection. 'cause if I step to you then I'm
gonna chew grey goo little like tofu,

I sing sweet like Ella, gather up my
cerebella... welcome to hell and I own it
chewin to the bone with a horde that just don't quit till we see your head split
shit

brains
cause that's how I roll and all of them are stolen
I got one goal and

I'm only in it for the brains.

cause that's how I roll and all of them are stolen
I got one goal and

I'm only in it for the brains.


You dial 911 for the cops, but my crew never stops
Coming over the tops of your fences
And then the shit commences
No way to prevent this
And _it's gonna be horrendous_

'Cause when there's brains for the takin', do not be mistaken, we can never ever be
be shaken,
We bring hard pain and heartache in to your yard then when our hunger's sated
We celebrate it, shamble elated,
through your remains, across the stains, kick our way back out your
windowpanes...

I'm only in it for the BRAINS, I always gotta have more
And it's not a lie that somebody is gonna die so I can _get my_
BRAINS - you use 'em to think and dream and make wishes
to me they're just delicious, so lie down with the fishes,
Or curl up in the corner with the Mrs, when we're done you won't miss
us, or your
BRAINS

'Cause that's how I roll and all of them are stolen, I've got one goal:

(chorus out)

Take That, The Man (update 7)

[Update June 25-2008: adding feedback from Will]

flying to New York,
watching the lights outside my glass
nothing to report,
but then Zoey said...



and the lights came from happy and softly-lit homes
and my glass held a fine-tasting beer
as my girls drew me near

and that was a day i could smile
forget everything that's killing me
if nothing ever changed, that's a day I could smile
so, take that all you slings and arrows

it takes money, to make the world go aground
you better play along if you wanna stay around
so i secretly built me a thrilling machine
it could blow your mind on a dime
of cheap kerosene

when you put it on, you got a new reality
you became any damned thing you wanted to be
explore anywhere that you wanted to see
all compliments of me

so I went to the city to make a deal
I had the machine, and he could make it real
four hundred thousand at a time, out of steel, it was surreal!!!

and that was the day I got rich
get a new car, and a fine guitar kinda rich
that was the day i got rich
so stick that with your schadenfreude

with my cash advance, and some new pants
i was a new man, making big plans
I could make the machine so it would fit in your hand
(Am-C) Just a silver band, and it ran on CO2 man

and the money... flowed like alcohol... i could never
live enough to spend it all

that was the day I got rich
build a space station, buy some legislation rich
I say hey, that's the day I got rich
so take that, all you poverty lovers

(begin arc from quietest to finale... once this plane launches there's no stopping until the crash. Start with jet engine start, whine up through launch, into full flight, then breakup and crash).

(chords: Am - Am - G - D ? )
C - B - A-G-E-E
with my thrillin' machine
D-E-F-G - D - F - G
which was better than morphine

( transition back to chorus, Am-Am-G-D )
B-C-B-G- B-C-D-C- B - A -
I put the new machine inside.
B-C-B-G- B-C-D-C- B - A -
And it was truly beautiful

I built a giant lab.
We could make a cancer vaccine!
Or a new version of the machine!
We'll give you a new life for an hour!
we could fix death if we added some more power!
I'm like the Lord of this town.
This isn't a helmet, it's a CROWN!



(park on Dmaj for a while to turn it around)

< finale >
For on that day I was become Zombie Lord
I unleashed the first wave of my brain-eating horde
I forged my own soul into a nine-bladed sword
so

< drunks become full-on chorus arrangement >

SCREW
ALL
YOU

(choral part goes nuts, tenors and sopranos singing only the bold words)

i FORGED my own SOUL into a NINE bladed SWORD

SCREW
ALL
YOU
MOTHERFUCKERS!


(on ukulele, Am-Em-Am-Am)
and I hummed: hmmmm (introduce ZL theme, no flat 5th)

Britniy's Journey

(intro... house sounds... maybe a quiet alien conversation in the corner?)

Door pounding (whump whump). Barest hint of the Bm from the jam portion.

Long pause.

Aliens look at each other for a very long time

Again: whump whump (slightly more of the Bm)

Longer stare between them. Clearly not sure the protocol.

Again: whump whump (this time Bm is clear)

Quickly: breaking window, and clump ggggggggggg of a grenade hitting the wood floor and rolling (pineapple grenade with very distinct rolling sound)

(Am Am C E) her name was Britniy and she shot 'em down
(F F C Bdim) some kind of blood on her hands
(F F Am C) she couldn't tell what was real, wasn't sure how to feel
(G G G G) but he was dead.

(F F Am C)
(F C G G)
(G G)
(Dm Dm C F)
(F F)



(Am Am C E) Britniy went seeking on a bayou
(F F C Bdim) for a hoodoo man
(F F Am C) with a ring, on a finger
(G G G G) from his hand

(F F Am C) she met a deep queen sitting in a graveyard, wearin'
(F C G G) platinum and the skull of a man
(G G)
(Dm Dm C F) oh yeah, she was serious
(F F)

(Dm Dm Am C) she leaned and she whispered into Britniy's ear:
(F F C G) "you can see him again"
(Dm Dm Am C) you've got the ring on the finger
(Dm Dm C G) now tell him something you remember

(F/C Am2 x3 ... thoughtful pause, non-obvious ending)

(F F Am C) x 12
"I remember summertime"
"We stole my mama's wine"
"We fell asleep by the riverside"
"It was so wide"

"I remember going inside"
"I was killing two at a time"
"And then I learned you died"

"I remember going inside"
"I was killing four at a time"
"And then I learned you died"

"I remember sunshine"

F/D F/C F/Bb E/A
->to jam

Dm - Dm - F - x2313x (Bdim) - As Needed For Complete Rockage
Dm - Dm - F - A7

Bb - Bb - F - C And he appeared out on the bayou
Bb - Bb - F - C He was half a man

Gm - Gm - F - 112211 (And oh... yeah, she was serious)

Our Story So Far...

Okay, the songs for A Cowboy Zombie XMas are really coming together now, so I wanted to take a few minutes to collate the story so far and lay out the track list, just to start organizing this thing as a whole.

The overarching plot "line" runs something like this:

1) waaaay long ago some bad shit happened that essentially opened the door to the existence of what we call The Zombie Lord. Call it a tear in the space-time killtinuum. Somebody opened something they should have left closed. We'll try to work in a Seriously Ancient Deep Crow. I'm still figuring out how it works when he is asleep/dead and reawakened. I love the idea that it's the same being, but reawakened every few millenia in a different person. So there was a Roman ZL, and a briefly-lived Cowboy ZL, etc. This is noted in "I'll Follow You Into The Nine-Bladed Soul-Sword", which is a parody of "I'll Follow You Into The Dark", and which may or may not make the final album (not sure yet if parody covers will really work... we also have a nice version of Gravedigger...)

2) Set in the cowboy era we have a love and death tale of a miner/gambler who falls in love with the deputy's daughter and they start a beautiful life together but then BAM (this is not an album of happy endings) there is a Zombie breakout in the town and he finds her at last only to realize that she's been converted to a zombie and DAMNIT but he knows what he has to do, so he lures her into the saphire mine and blows the shit out of both of them. UNRESOLVED: who is this guy, really, and why does he know about Zombies anyway? Also: how does any of this relate to the present-day stuff later in the album? I'm thinking maybe she turns out to be the great-great-great-(etc)-grandmother of Britniy (who we'll meet shortly) and her tragic and highly explosive underground end left a curse or something that protects her descendents and causes people who fuck with them to tend to die similarly. Yeah, we'll be blowing shit up in this story for sure.

3) Something about cowboys and Aliens. Steve owns this piece, although he risks having someone else take the idea if he doesn't get moving (you dang heck that's a threat).

4) the modern ZL was brought into being in a normal, confused, anxious everyguy business type when his return flight from New York flew through the energy beam... no wait, I can't use the term "energy beam". It needs a name... let's call it the grabulon for now. Anyway, there was a bunch of Aliens that were trying to Abduct Steve, and when his plane flew through their grabulon it resulted in Steve being only partially abducted (which results in multiple Steves and I _think_ gives him secret powers, but we haven't precisely nailed down a power that works for the story and is suitably hilarious) and it awakened the ZL. This ZL is somewhat special in that there is a piece of electronics that is his primary ZL power thing (you know, the thing they have to destroy... it's video game cliche #22: The Obvious Weakness). Except it's not totally obvious, like a flashing "shoot here" sign over his ear. But it's guessable. That's all we really need. Anyway, his item is the latest minatiurized version of his "thrilling machine", which is how he got rich. Oh yeah, getting rich was the kickoff step for his inexorable decline (metaphorical and also pretty literal). His origin song ("Take That, The Man") lays that out pretty clearly, going from basic working family guy against the world in verse one, then into ascending rich smart guy in verse two, to complete nut job immortal Zombie Horde driving killing machine at the end. That's probably why that song will have to go late on the album... it reveals a lot and kinda hits a high note emotionally...

5) So after The Partial Abduction and the ZL creation moment, we introduce Britniy. She is a love interest for Steve(s) and her Dad is a defected eastern european (back from when they had to defect). I'm not sure exactly what country her dad is from, or what crazy secret branch of their military he was in, but whichever one had the hard-stabbingest, paranoid, grenade-spamming badasses that's it. He raised Britniy like any good Dad would, which is to say by staging mock government crackdowns and training her on live grenades by age 9. Despite all this, Britniy remains a sweet and relatively well-adjusted young woman, although of course she's also capable of grabbing a duffel bag full of pineapples and a kalashnikoff from dads basement bunker and clearing out a house full of aliens to save Steve. Steve is gone, but she manages to recover one of his fingers, leading her to believe that he has perished. However, during all the mayhem of the Partial Abjuction and Zombie Lord creation, Britniy witnessed a whole bunch of crazy stuff including dead things coming up out of the ground, which leaves her confused and with a lot of questions. When the government types show up to clean up the scene, she escapes. This is a central part of her personality, and serves as her caricature personal conflict: when things get crazy, she moves on. This keeps her from settling in a town, or with a boyfriend, or on a job, etc. All things being two or more things in this story, she also has a subtler and more real set of motivations, but those have to sort of "happen" as the details get fleshed out and she becomes more real. In any case, convinced that she can bring Steve back somehow (and needing to get out of town) she takes off to find someone to raise the dead. Like anyone might, she heads for New Orleans. This theme of the journey to or from something is reprised several times in the story. There is Britniy's paranoid and reckless escape from her home town towards New Orleans, and then a more abstract and perilous escape in a warthog in Wait For It III (I need Steve to lay out the precise details for me... he tends to write a bit more obliquely than I do and I don't want to literalize his lyrics for him... I'm pretty damn sure there's some serious peril and some real fast fuckin' driving and probably huge air). Then there is the Zombie Road Trip, in which some mid-level Zombie wranglers are on a road trip together to a huge rally that the ZL is throwing. Need to figure out what the rally is for... see the ZL motivations below. Then, while they're on the road trip, one of the Zombies breaks into the City of Brains, which is a full-on Dorothy story. The basic idea is that all these guys have a really powerful urge pulling them somewhere. But they don't really know what the hell it's all about, and some of them interpret this pull in really different ways. The most romantic of them sings the City of Brains, which is very much a riff on the Emerald City, Huck Finn, Macon Georgia and the Sun Sphere, etc. It sounds great, but when you get there you may be disappointed.

Will and I had a consult on the ride home yesterday and made the following refinements:

1) When Steve is partially abducted, he splits into three parts:
-"The Steve That Was" is successfully taken aboard the Alien expedition frigate.
-"The Steve That Remained" escapes at the end of Partial Abduction
-One of Steve's fingers, with a ring on it, is physically separated from his hand and remains in his house, for Britniy to find and take to New Orleans

2) "The Steve That Was" eventually becomes the leader of the Alien invasion force, which is coming to recover the finger and the ring. He has no knowledge whatsoever of The Steve That Remained.

3) The Steve That Remained eventually becomes the leader of the Zombie forces

4) The ZL and Steve love interest is the same woman (Britniy)

For the big climax, we have both armies coming after Britniy, who manages to reunite The Steves via the Stinger and the Ring and the Hoodoo. Steve becomes himself again, and since he can appear to either army as their leader, he turns them against each other. Mayhem ensues.

After the big army battle (mutual annihilation), we're left with Steve and Britniy -vs- the ZL, for a climactic mano a mano. The ZL tragically in love with Britniy, but twisted by what he has become, the reunited and redeemed Steve fighting desperately to save what he has only just attained.

Whew. More on the way...

That gives me an idea... i need to do more of those interpretations...

Home Invasion Blues

That's what I bought it for.


I count fourteen waiting in the living room
Twelve in the back yard
The two upstairs, they were ten feet tall
Never been so glad that my crazy Dad taught me how to throw grenades

I brought a few.

You watch it explode and then you die... WHOA!
That's what I brought it for.









<=================(some runner-up lines below here... )===================>

Where's the rest of my friend?
What are you doing here?
I think I might like to see your badge.





Where did you hide him?


I'm going to ask that again,
and I don't speak Alien,
Where did you hide him?

two metaphors are plenty

When we’re apart the sun rises at noon, and is gone before I can look out the window to see.
The leaves are silent in the breeze and I can see my breath pour out to settle on the earth and fade.
When we’re together, daylight blazes in the shade.
Iced drinks wilt and then boil into sweet tea before the rays of our friendship and of our love and of the beaming of my contented grin.
Without you I’m just pedals and a chain…
but with you I have wheels
(and someone to work the handlebars).

What I Would Do

I'd get down on my knees in broken glass,
to worship at your feet
And if there was no glass,
I would break something
that was made of glass
so I could get down on my knees
in broken glass
and worship at your feet

I would walk a road
of a thousand miles
in wornout shoes
to see you
and if my shoes were new
I would destroy them
with a hammer and nails
and a soul turned to steel
so I could walk that road
of a thousand miles
to see you

and you know that I would rather die
than see you shed a single tear
so if you think that you are going to cry
let me know... so I can get out of here

if you were beset
by a horde of sub-humans
a million strong
who feast upon the living
with a hunger undying
perpetually unsleeping
aware of your location
i would be your salvation
so that then you would love me
and if there was no horde
I would create them
and vanquish the living
so that a horde of sub-humans
a million strong
who feast upon the living
with a hunger undying
perpetually unsleeping
could swarm your location
and i would be your salvation
so that then you would love me

Pasa pasa mine

(from lyla, age 6)

cheryoky time!
pasa pasa mine!
get the can of beer!
in the atmasfier!

what do you need

"Gee Mister, do you really need that?"
"Well, Johnny, _need_ can mean a lot of things...
you really _need_ to live?"

open fire

i was kicking some ass
taking a few names
and telling the world

and you, you came to my place
you put your hand right in my face
and made me feel like i never played

and now begins revenge... now begins revenge

i will strengthen my resolve
and i will try to run the plan
and show me for who i am

i'm going to meet you on the stairs
i'm going to come prepared
and then I WILL OPEN FIRE
and I will get you back
and get you back again

i will learn where you like to go
and i will be there
we'll happen upon each other
but i will be prepared

i'll know your favorite dance
and we will dance it
i'll know your favorite weapon
i'll take no chance, it will be nothing

embrace into a run
we'll race into the sun
and dance in the snow or upon the sand

you'll step left
i'll step in kind
you'll leave the earth
i'll be right behind

From There (aka helpful, love in 5, lovin five, etc)

G Bm
You are helpful to me
G Bm
Always saving my skin
G D G Bm
I was outside of your circle of friends, but you let me in
G Bm Em D-Amaj-G
And you burn before me, like a movie about a star
Bm G Bm
And I feel useless and lonely when I don't know where you are

(zombal descending part over first chord of "chorus" to bring energy back down to verse start)

I'm on fire, your spell in me
And then you let me go
Preserve my dignity and my vanity but we both know
and you brush off my gratitude, like my best friends
is this how, is this how, is this how it ends?

[0-10-11xxx]
Cause from there... how you gonna
[10-12-12xxx] (12-0-11xxx]
fix me?

From there... how you gonna save my ass?
From there... you won't even know me.
From there...

(I-II thing in four, maybe?)

You're a puzzle to me
Questions marked above your head
But if you walked away from me right now, I might be dead
So stay with me
Fix my emergencies
Oh mama, please?

From there... how you gonna heal me?
From there... how you gonna save my ass?
From there... you can't even see me.
From there...

(searing Wilkie tuba solo)

and you fall apart before me like a movie star
and i'm useless. and i'm lonely. and i don't know where you are

How you gonna fix me from there?
I've got an emergency right here right now.

overwhelming

my best kind of thinking is thinking of nothing
and staring at something without even looking
and that's what I'm doing as I walk next to no one
and the conspiracy of obsession is suddenly clear.

Perhaps it was poison, but that doesn't matter
the scent is the bullet
and i am the innocent bystander struck
and it's all unintentioned
But Suddenly, I have been forced to remember

I remember the darkness
the streetlight through curtains
the softness of cotton
the smoothness of silk

I remember the buckles
the zippers
the buttons
the jackets
the blankets
the couches
the chairs

it's seductively fleeting
like across-the-room glances
and last-second dances, it's over too soon

the sensation escapes me
the details elude me
i'm left with a taste of a taste that has left me

do you remember a moment of naive perfection
heightened perception, uncynical
think of a moment when The Fear was all broken
will it come to you unbidden, so strong and then gone again

remember a moment, of newfound expression,
such an awkward sensation... but STRONG

O!verwhelming

It's a Pajama Jam!

I got my baby!
I got my blanket!
I got my fuzzy jams... on!

I got my attitude
I know the system
And the authority is gone!

I know the math here
I know what time it is
I know we gotta make it count

I been around this block
And I can see the clock
And what we gotta do

IT'S A PAJAMA JAM!!!
IT'S A PAJAMA JAM!!!

No you can't placate me
You cannot put me down
Don't care the consequence

I'm feelin jumpy
Just having you around
I got no common sense

AND IT'S A...
PAJAMAJAMAJAMA
PAJAMAJAMAJAM
PAJAMAJAMAJAMA
PAJAMAJAMAJAM
PAJAMAJAMAJAMA





I heard the stories
I know what happens
If you don't get in line

If you won't calm down
Here's the enforcer
He's seven times your size!

He talks sweetly
He's got a brain on his neck
But I have fire inside!

I know the system
It doesn't scare me
As long as I have what is mine!

SNUGUWAY!!!!

IT'S A PAJAMAJAM!
IT'S A PAJAMAJAM!
I AM NOT SLEEPING!
IT'S A PAJAMAJAM!
I LOST MY BABY!
IT'S A PAJAMAJAM!
I AM NOT CRAZY!
IT'S A PAJAMAJAM!
COME HERE AND LOVE ME!
IT'S A PAJAMAJAM!

nothing to show

the clock fails to stop
and I fail to take a single step
and i have nothing to show for my time

precious minutes
unkeepable moments
gone
nothing to show

soon I will sleep
"perchance to dream"
but there's nothing to show,
nothing to show for my time

a night of misses
I was there but I missed every time

and i have nothing to show (for my time)
wrong turns, lost ideas (for my time)
it sparked brilliant then gone (for my time)

I can picture the beauty I might have made
I have tasted her lips they are as sweet as a movie stars'
We have often escaped in the sweetest of dreams...
Then awake, and alone, and I have nothing to show

and i have nothing to show (for my time)
wrong turns, lost ideas (for my time)
it sparked brilliant then gone (for my time)

Dubya

(this one won't be on the Zombie album...)

the year was twenty-hundred, and the world was growin' small
and in this world was a country that stood proudly above them all
but they began to become inclusive and let secular values rule
they could have been saved by a prayer in a shool...

but instead they grabbed ahold and took a ride on Satan's tail
a hundred gay marriages caused a million Christian ones to fail
human-animal hybrids roamed the streets with the heads of beasts
there was too much peace and stability in the middle east

a righteous man was needed to turn the peace into a fight
the prophecy says he's the cousin of Jesus Christ

Dubya! he come ridin' in on the horse of justice
Dubya! with the guns of democracy at his side
Dubya! he gonna light the world with the torch of freedom
Dubya! and watch it burn just to prove he's right

"Now I'm in the Republic Party, and we got us another little fight to win"
"We gotta get another publican represident so we can go out and start shootin' again"
"With the privilege of the Chief Executive we don't need no fancy plan"
"The plan is: kick ass, when the draftees invade Iran"

Dubya! his thoughts are as clear as the clear in nuclear
Dubya! when he swings his sword, it's from the Lord
Dubya! the Bible says you gotta poor folks
Dubya! "but I can tell you: Haliburton just wants it more"

City of Brains Video Blog!

I got Lyla to make some pictures, and banged out a quick video in Windows Movie Maker.

You will need good speakers or headphones to hear what's going on... the audio is just a quick sketch. We did this in two takes, and it's almost entirely improvised except for the first part, and the lyrics. Will (playing the guitar) did a very nice job of following the crazy structure while I sang the (crazy) lyrics.

Wayner Alpha

Just look at him on the run.

Right up almost on the sun.

He's on a blue wing... got trouble in his eyes

He like to twist his own arm sometimes,,,

Come on back To us Son.

We got rooms built just your size



maybe its all this talkin 'bout

rockets made for kings to drive around





fold your cards and go



hot summer then another

slidin off the wall

crazy, crazy sound fillin up the hall

its that late bell ringin and

your back's all goin



its not the science

silly puppets

this old sofa

the cold, cold numbers

Trip On Down The Road

hey guys, pile into my ride
and we'll get on the road and drive
can you feel where we are going?
so can i

we brought this machine so it could show us the stars
and why? why'd we undie?



number 5, you're the DJ
seventeen, tell us which way.. . to turn
number eight you keep us driving straight
nine! make sure we feel fine!

now Drive!

begin crazy jam
jam until we find an idea, and run with it into a completely different piece of song
milk that for as long as makes sense
figure out a cool transition back to the original song sound

so tell me, how long you been a zombie?

To The City Of Brains

Have you been to the city?
Where the brains flow like wine...
and the girls simply dance into your arms.

Have you been to the city?

Is it real?

How does it feel to feel?

Oh the tales that I've heard, the ridiculous lies.
Too good to be true, but too good not to try.
What's the worst that could happen... could I die?

How the hell do we get there?
There's no road, no bricks of gold to shamble down... so where?

They say that if you simply believe
The Zombie Lord will point you where you need to Steve.
They sing that if you have brains in your heart
one day you'll start
and step by step
you'll find the way
you'll see the gate
they'll call your name
and let you in
they'll cater to your every whim
The Zombie Lord, who art the man
reveals your place within his plan
that urge that you cannot deny
fulfilled at last, no need to try

No hysterical women, no resourceful men
Not one terrified and screaming child. Never... again.
No more misunderstandings. No more mobs to face.

Just the streets. And the trees.

And the half-dog-half-bees.

Of our city.

Our place.

quare vos electus mihi

Oh Zombie Lord
Are you... are you Steving me?
Zombie Lord.

I unlive.
I unlive to serve thee.
You giveth, and you taketh away.

Why is that what you do?
Why have you chosen me?

in place of traditional Amen: Uuuuuuuuuundead

We Beat You To It

Welcome, opressors, we've been expecting you!
We knew you were coming, and we've been preparing!
We heard in advance about your plans...
Think you can wreck our world? Don't think you can.

We've discarded all that we held dear.
We've learned to be cold and empty inside.
We've sabotaged all of our relationships.
You bring us down now! Just try!

We wrecked it all before you got here.
There's nothing left of ours to steal.
Cheap and hollow is how your victory,
That's how victory will feel

We Beat You To It!

You think you're bringing me damnation?
The joke's on you: my soul is spent.
By the time you get here you can have it!
I've already squandered every cent.

I wrecked myself before you got here.
There's nothing left of me to beat.
Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. And hollow.
That's me!

We Beat You To It! (to end)

A Revelation From The Administration

listen... I shouldn't be telling you punks any of this. maybe it'll wipe those smirks off your faces... pretty sad that this will probably be my last moment of real enjoyment, rubbing your faces in it. you're not gonna believe this right now, but in a few days you're going to believe it, and nothing else is going to seem very important. we... uhh... well we've been in contact with another civilization, from somewhere else. and i mean, really, somewhere else. we don't have a clue where but it ain't here, and they don't seem very interested in telling us. but they can talk to us. they can speak to us in English, and probably any language for that matter. and here's the kicker: they're coming soon, and they're gonna wipe us out. it's like a bad fuckin' video game, except we don't have any space marines or death stars. so everything you've been doing to mess with us, undermine us, destabilize the system, start a revolution, whatever it is that you think you're doing, it's a waste of time. they're going to destroy the earth right out from under us. all we were trying to do was beat 'em to it...

Concerning Sufjan

So I picked up this CD the other day
And ever since then I've been feeling a little depressed
It's clear that it's simply the best
thing that I've heard in so long
He's written half my unfinished songs...

Why We Don't Need To Apologize For Breaking The World

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time
That's the basic theme of it all
Now we just can't summon the will to stop
So it's gonna go down the way it's gonna go down

and you'll get what you get
it is what it is
and all that

you see we really need to drive around

and these plasma TVs don't deliver themselves

and the A/C is on because it's friggin' hot out there!

you been outside? it's like eighty degrees

and then there's the poor guy who cuts down trees

we need that wood to build malls and payday loan outlets

and he's got a mortgage and two kids in college

they're studying forestry

and then there's China

see, they need the power, and they need to grow

it's their goddamn right

so lay off if they need to burn coal and dissidents in order to move up

from the third to the second to the first world

the key point is that they're making money

and therefore it's probably part of God's plan

oh come on... it's in Revelations, people!

you have the new edition, right?

"And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints and from the righteous burning of coal and various non-believers and monkeys, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand." (Revelations 8:4)

“He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment and/or nice Corinthian leather; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels, and say ye yeah unto him for he shall be famous and wealthy just because I mentioned his name. P.S. - Timmy Smithers, from fourth grade, can go fuck himself. No heaven for you, Timmy." (Revelations 3:5)

“And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints and which pretty much proves global warming is bullshit." (Revelations 5:8)

please think before you talk

it's not easy
not always
sometimes not even sometimes
but it's important
you must believe me

don't talk to fill time
don't continue just because you started
we'll let you out of an unfinished sentence
we'll let you out with your ego intact

if you just said something, don't say it again
trust that we heard it, and just leave it at that
please give us the benefit of the doubt
we deserve no less

spare her your vocal admiration
spare her the discomfort of answering back
if she were interested, you would know
it's just as simple as that

don't try to steer the conversation
to something that you have that he does not
it's not impressive. you must believe me
we are no longer apes and this no longer a race

Take That, The Man

7 - 5 - 0 - 8
0 - 7 - 5 - 0
0 - 7 - 0 - 0
0 - 0 - 5 - 0
5 - 5 - 3 - 5
3 - x -(3)-3

< coffeehouse open mic sounds in the background, various conversations >

(G-D-C-G)
flying to New York,
watching the lights outside my glass

(G-D-C-C)
nothing to report,
but then Zoey said...


(Am-D-G-C)
and the lights came from happy and softly-lit homes
and my glass held a fine-tasting beer
as my girls drew me near



and that was a day i could smile
forget all my deadlines and the headlines a while and I
say, that's a day I could smile
so, take that you slings and arrows

it takes money, to make the world go aground
you better play along if you wanna stay around
so i secretly built me a thrilling machine
it could blow your mind on a dime
of cheap kerosene


and like the sunshine, money flyin', streaming in
i became the man, started a plan
and that is when it all began

< coffehouse crowd becomes rowdy singalong drunks >

for that was the day I got rich
Exhorbitantly, hoardedly, morbidly rich
that was the day I got rich
oh you wouldn't believe the way I could Steve
because that was the day I got rich
with my thrilling machine, which was better than morphine
so that was the day I got rich
so take that, all you poverty lovers

(begin crazy ass jam)

I built a giant lab.

We could make a cancer vaccine!

Or a new version of the machine!

We'll give you a whole new life for an hour!

Hell, we could fix death if we added some more power!

I'm like the king of this town.

I oughtta make myself a crown.

< transition back to chorus >
I put the new machine inside.
Since then I never have really died.

< finale >
For on that day I was become Zombie Lord
I unleashed the first wave of my brain-eating horde
I forged my own soul into a nine-bladed sword
so

< drunks become full-on chorus arrangement >

SCREW
ALL
YOU

(choral part goes nuts, tenors and sopranos singing only the bold words)

i FORGED my own SOUL into a NINE bladed SWORD

SCREW
ALL
YOU
MOTHERFUCKERS!




(on ukulele, Am-Em-Am-Am)
and I hummed: hmmmm (introduce ZL theme, no flat 5th)

I'll follow you into the nine-bladed soul-sword

Zombie Lord of mine
Someday you will die
This could be the final time
Forever to stay, in the dark

No blinding light, no gates of bones bleached white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

If heaven and hell decide that they both don't need your might
Your crown and sword destroyed, and you cast into the void
If there's no one beside you when your blades embark
I'll follow you into the dark

In Zombie school, during the Roman rule
I learned the shamble-drool, from a Zombie in black
You held my tongue as you told me, Son
Fear is the heart of love
So it's love, when we attack

If heaven and hell decide that they're scared to have you inside
Your crown and sword destroyed, and you can't get a ride
If there's no minions left who can invoke the mark
I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have posessed everything we see
Remember the ManPigTree, we unleashed in that mall?
But now we're all worn out, the time to sleep is now
It's nothing to smile about, but we'll hold each other soon
In the blackest of roooooms

So when heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
They don't need your assistance getting customers inside
You told me that you'd like to smash the covenant's arc
And i'll try to bring one to the dark

singatron 12

I'm Singatron 12 and I've come to enslave you

gonna wish you went straight to the grave, you're

gonna fulfill my mechanical plans.

Whatamigonnamakeyoudo? DANCE!



(one to the two to the three to the one

skip the two to the three, skip the one to the two

skip the three and the one to the two,

skip the three and the one and the two to the three

and we're done)

summerzcomin

At first I'm scared, how's this gonna be
Is it going to be zero or infinity?
I'm gonna spend forever now underground
Will I feel it when my mind starts shutting down?
I think about people, I think about friends
I think about things I won't do again

(people)
(precious objects)
(color images)
(shapes -> black and white)

cried -> breathed -> cried -> breathed
------STOP-----------

I know now that there were 8 weeks intervening, but I experienced it as instantaneous.
Suddenly I was perfectly fine. The interior of the coffin was unchanged as far as I could tell.
I felt a renewed sense of energy and urgency, and I made another attempt at breaking through the top of the coffin. This time I seemed to have extraordinary strength, and was able to break the wood easily. Dirt poured in but I immediately and unconsciously (and frantically) adopted a very urgent sort of swimming, straight upwards through the torn silk of the coffin lining, the shattered wood of the coffin's lid, and into the loose dirt above. I swam up through the dry soil with long powerful strokes. I remember knowing without the slightest doubt that I was going to reach the surface. The earth grew warm as I moved up, and then I took a stroke in which half my arm broke the surface. It felt delicious... I felt the sun instantly. I took another big lunging stroke with both arms and threw them to the sides, pulling myself from the ground in a single, explosive and frantic motion. I remember that the urgency of leaving the ground felt very much as if I had been in a pool that had suddenly proven itself extremely unsafe. I vaguely imagined the toothy and ravenous fishes of the soil as I pulled my legs and feet quickly out to stand on the warm, loose-packed ground. It was indescribably surreal, but I'll try. Sunshine. Beautiful, warm sunshine. Warm breeze. Trees. I thought it might be a miracle, but then isn't there usually some communication involved in miracles? Wouldn't the miracle-maker also send some sort of message along with the miracle, so that I knew who to thank? Maybe it was a dream, or maybe I was dead and this is how they introduce us to the afterlife, or hell, or wherever I was. It was hard to imagine it was hell, aside from the sadistic path through the Earth I had just traversed in order to enter. That part didn't seem very heaven-like. I didn't intend to worry about it too much, though, and the more I thought about it the more I seemed to feel that I did have a sense of purpose that I didn't remember having before. Well, if I had been brought back by a greater power to do some greater deed, then I guess I'm going to do it. Seems fair.

First, though. Where was I? Standing on a sloping hillside in a clearing amid tall pine trees. Wild grass and shrubs, dry and golden in what must be the summer heat. I could see that I was some ways up the climbing sides of a deep pine-covered valley. The other side of the valley was in shade, but the side where I stood was bathed in glorious, blinding, sun. The sky was utterly clear. A gentle, warm breeze gusted occasionally, waving the grass and rustling the needles of the pines. For many long minutes I stood and contemplated my new found freedom, and its implications. Then I simply decided it was too much to handle at once, and since it might be a dream, or some last gasp of my brain as the real me lay dying, I might as well enjoy it. I wouldn't squander my time, and I wouldn't shut any doors... I couldn't see any buildings or roads, so I would need to find food and water. Then I would figure out where I was. For a moment, I considered the fact that the average man's first desire would be to contact his relatives, or his wife, or his friends. Turning, I set that thought aside and began to walk down into the valley through the waving grasses and under the blazing, wonderful sun.


Will, pick a loop
Steve, grab a bass
I'm gonna cruise all over the place
Will, turn on your guitar and make your intervals known
Steve: keep rockin' the basstrophone

One to the two to the three to the one
Skip the two to the three, skip the one to the two
Skip the one and the two to the three
Skip the one and the two and the three to the one
and we're done

flip flop and you don't start stoppin'
hug your friends, let the beat keep droppin
grab your refreshment, grab your girl
anytime, anyplace, anywhere in the world

So step outside, feel the sun
Pull out your phone, tell everyone
If you're here in town, come on by
If not, then consider that I told you hi.

Zombie Folk Song

(setup)
He came from nowhere, the only son of nobody
With a saphire mine claim that he'd won back in town
And she was a city girl, the deputy's daughter
She'd ride past his house when he wasn't around

In the twilight one evening he was comin home early
And he met her on the trail as the day was erased
He reached for his pistol when he noticed a stranger
But when she whispered his name he was frozen in place

(chorus)
Her eyes they went through him like starlight through water
His heart it melted and floated away
The world upside down with the Earth up above him
They lay down into it and promised to stay

Their love was a bottle of fine wine mixed with moonshine
As they blazed amid the sweet pines
A sweaty symphony in the sunshine
Hot stones within a cold mine
As they rode out the days

And each day seemed sweeter
When he'd come back to meet her
In the pasture or the garden
This life they were starting

(chorus)
Her eyes they went through him like starlight through water
His heart it melted and floated away
The world upside down with the Earth up above him
They lay down into it and promised to stay

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the sun beat down
When the shamblin' horde came ridin' to town
She had gone to the store to buy something for the baby she would tell him was coming today
But in a few horrible moments, the future was over
The killin' began as they tore up the place

When the dust had all settled, she was shamblin' on the way home.
Her eyes, a pair of tombstones.
He met her on the trail, so empty, so pale.
He knew in an instant, he'd seen this before.

He knew she would kill him, and he made up his mind.
He led her away, to the cold saphire mine
And deep in the darkness, he let her come to him
As he sparked up a match and ignited the fuse
And he smiled one last time, as she slowly reached for him
He was out of good options, but at least he could choose.

(chorus)
Her eyes they went through him like starlight through water
His heart it melted and floated away
The world upside down with the Earth up above him
They lay down into it and there they would stay

HappyGirl42

hey again. sorry so long no post. this is gonna sound pathetic but iv just been having too much fun in real life to post. xmas was the usual disaster of getting everything i wanted and being loved and stuff. sometimes i just feel like the food my mom makes could not be any better, and it just makes me want to cry and blog and not go outside and then go outside just to be cold (you guessed it: White Christmas). sry... is that mean? uhoh. brb.
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omw
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kay i'm back. my dad found some presents we missed way back behind the xmas tree in the lv rm. (the one in the kitchen is only for food presents and clothes). gottago.

luvz - hg42

haiku #4 - The End Of A Haiku Series

I promise that I
shall from where the sun now stands
write no more haiku

haiku #3 - structure

pentasyllabic
then the middle part, go nuts
wrap it up real smart

haiku #2 - Movie Idea

a ship in the night
wrapped in darkness and cliche
can you say "sequel"?

haiku #1

locusts in a field
beautiful creatures in flight
they taste like toenail

Why Stuff Sucks

Most people don't know this, but stuff that sucks sucks because of sucky people. That's the root cause, but in order to make this article longer, let's look at the distinct ways in which sucky people bring suckiness to the world:

1) Sucky people don't know what sucks, so they choose stuff that sucks when they buy stuff or get married, and therefore make stuff that sucks seem popular. Businesses then cater to the perceived need for suckitude and produce more stuff that sucks. This is known as "The Circle Of Suckiness" (not to be confused with the the Circle of Suck, which is a social phenomenon that occurs in primarily in musical instrument retail outlets, generally in the drum section).

2) Sucky people take stuff that's good and make it suck. The examples in the entertainment industry are too obvious (the decline of cartoons, movie {pre/se}quels and how they suck, the ultra-suck news on TV) so here's one that maybe you hadn't thought of: toy trucks and stuff used to be made out of metal. Now they are made out of plastic, and they have to make all the parts thicker in order for it not to fall apart, so they look and feel lame. You can barely even knock a sibling unconscious with a Tonka truck nowadays. The people responsible for this change suck.

3) Sucky people have babies that suck.

4) Sucky babies are a pain in the ass.

5) If everything around you sucks, then something that sucks has the appearance of not sucking simply by virtue of sucking less than the sucky items immediately surrounding it. Then you think "hey, that doesn't suck... let's make some more sequels and be sure to get Mr T. to do a cameo. That guy is a laugh riot!". Then you remember that Mr. T is dead. Poor Mrs. T...

Well that about wraps it up. In closing: try not to suck.

Commutron

Our hero steps from the shower. He pauses for a moment to consider checking himself out in the mirror, then thinks better of it.

Teeth:brushed, deodorant: applied, hair: ignored... it would probably take care of itself. Clothing: selected and applied, coffee: brewed and consumed, breakfast: prepared and eaten.

Wallet in left pocket. Keys in right pocket. Cell phone in breast pocket of jacket.

He steps to the rear of his home and climbs the small black-painted ladder that rises the wall into a narrow metal pipe leading to the surface, its interior just wide enough for him to climb. At the top, he unscrews the portal covering the top unconsciously with his right hand while his left arm braces him upright. He pushed the portal open and emerges into a bare concrete garage. There is nothing at all in the room but a car, our hero's car. There is no roof or door on the garage, just three bare concrete walls. The floor is wet.

He removes his keys from his right pocket and presses a button on a smooth brass key fob on his chain. There is a quiet kechunk as the door of the car unlocks. He opens the door and pauses for a moment, breathing deeply and evenly, then he grabs firmly onto the edge of the roof above the open door and swings his body into the car. He has to spread his knees to either side of the steering wheel in order to fit his body into the seat. His knees press hard into the dash as he wedges himself into the car. His head is bent forward so that his chin touches his chest in order to fit beneath the roof. He grips the wheel and pulls his knees harder into the dash, slightly lowering his body such that his head is upright enough to see out the windshield.

He wedges his right knee to the side just enough to insert the key, and turns. The car starts immediately. He wraps his right arm around his right leg and grasps the parking brake. Releasing the brake allows his right leg to relax slightly to the side. He finds the stick and wiggles it very slightly to verify that the car is not in gear. He shifts his left leg, finds the clutch with the toe of his shoe, and without moving his knee he presses the clutch by bending his ankle and pointing his toe. He begins to perform the same maneuver to press the gas, then pauses with his toe just barely off the pedal. The pedal begins to glow with heat. A hot machine smell permeates the inside of the car. He breathes. The car idles patiently. He gently applies his toe to the gas pedal. There is a hissing sound as the water on his shoe is steamed away by the pedal. The windshield fogs briefly. He presses more surely and the engine revs. He smoothly lowers his right toe and raises his left, engaging the clutch and dragging the car out of the garage to the street.

His shoe begins to smolder, and a nearly invisible smoke fills the car with the smell of burning leather . He wedges his hand left down between the door and his body in order to reach the controls that will roll down the window. The window opens obligingly, and he continues to drive.