Recently in Miscellaneous Category

Cover of the song by Randy Stonehill. One of his many classics. Chad reminded me of it the other night.

Cover of the song by the short-lived superband Chagall Guevara. Used a Les Paul Standard bridge model on the Variax in honor of the late great man himself.

I am selling a brand new, unopened, Logitech Driving Force GT steering wheel and a mostly new set of all five seasons of Babylon 5 on DVD.

As to the latter, it is "mostly new" because it was a replacement set because one of my discs -- the first disc in Season 5 -- was scratched. Amazon apparently didn't want the set back. It's been sitting in a corner of my closet since last year. It's in completely new condition except for that disc.

As to the former, I won it in the Logitech Challenge and I already have that wheel, so I figure I'll sell it.

If you're interested in either let me know.

I like to play Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on my PS3, and so I got a steering wheel for it: a Logitech Driving Force GT, designed for use with the game. Well several weeks ago, Logitech held an online contest and the fastest times got free steering wheels.

I didn't get one of the fastest times, but I won one of the weekly random drawings.

Hooray! A random (or pseudorandom) number generator picked me!

But I won the steering wheel I already own. Craigslist awaits ...

An original song I wrote today, inspired by the Tax Day Tea Parties.

MP3 version: http://pudge.net/tunes/tracks/Liberty%20Man.mp3

Lyrics:

I am alive
I have my freedom
I work my hands to the bone
And I, I build a home

Chorus:
Don't take what I have what I built away from me
Don't deny that I am a man with liberty
Don't stomp on a life that was created to make choices
To live free

I have my land
But you have power
And you will take what I have
Because you can

Chorus

Many cry out, "Power to the people"
I am a person,. so where is mine?

I watch my back
I watch my brother's
And I don't need to be told what to do

Chorus

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

My neck has been hurting recently when I wake up. I need a new pillow. I have no idea where to begin looking. Suggestions?

You can now log in to the Criterion Games Network outside of Burnout Paradise. In the game there's a number of icons to unlock. I have everything in the game, but a bunch of icons were still locked for me. I found them, and here they are. As you can see, they are mostly stuff for the Island, Party Pack, Toy Cars. I think the money bag is for cops and robbers. Then there's a few others. I wonder if "Criterion Games" is only for employees of the company?

And here's the one's I've already unlocked.

The classic song by Jackie Wilson.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

An original song I recorded tonight. My voice is kinda thrashed but I wanted to record it anyway.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

The great 80s song by Stephen Colbert and the Colberts. I am playing bass and singing on Expert in Rock Band 2. I got 100% on the bass. Maybe he'll hire me for his next tour.

I created a "Stephen" character to sing lead for me. He looks a lot like the real Stephen does in the original video, except here he's shirtless. Wooo.

(OK, it's not a Christmas song, but I couldn't resist.)

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Silent Night. By request.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Away in a Manger. By request.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Vince Guaraldi's classic from "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

Sung as a chipmunk.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Some of you have met Banjo. We got him around 1996. We're putting him down today. We have a few good pictures of him. He was a good'un.

Last year we lost George to cancer, and last winter we lost Fester. We have Tubbs, Fred, and Thornton (the latter being the only WA native) remaining.

This is an original arrangment of "Big Bottom" by Spinal Tap. It's sort of a jazz-blues -- or blues-jazz, really -- version, with layers upon layers of bass (as many as seven bass parts simultaneously).

I think this arrangement really captures the true soul of the original composition, expressing the theme as words never could; hence, the bass guitar does all of the singing.

Created using a BOSS RC-2 LoopStation pedal, Variax Bass, and PODxt Live. The guitar models used (in order) are MiniMoog synth, Fender Jazz, Fender Fretless Jazz, Hagstrom H8 8-string, and Hamer B12A 12-string.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

From the movie "Bob Roberts," here is a cover of the song "Complain." Lyrics below. Enjoy!

Some people must have
Some people have not
And they complain and complain and complain and complain and complain

Some people will work
Some simply will not
But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain

Like this:
It's society's fault
I don't have a job
It's society's fault
I am a slob
I got potential
No one can see
Give me welfare
Let me be me

Hey bud you're livin' in the land of the free
No one's gonna hand you opportunity

Some people must have
Some never will
But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain

Like this:
I don't have a house
I don't have a car
I spend all my time
Drunk in a bar
I wanna be rich
I don't have a brain
Give me a handout
While I complain

Or this:
I wanna stay in bed
And watch TV
And go out weekends in a limousine
And dance all night taking lots of drugs
And wake up
When I wanna

Hey bud you're livin' in the land of the free
No one's gonna hand you opportunity

Some people must have
Some never will
But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
Yeah they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

As a non-drummer, which drum set is better: Guitar Hero World Tour, or Rock Band 2? I'll probably get both games, so the question is not so much "which game is better?" but "which drum set is better?," and implied is also "which drum set is better for playing with either game?"

I know the Guitar Hero game's not out yet. And neither is Rock Band 2, since I am on PlayStation 3.

I am leaning toward Rock Band 2, because a. it looks like it will be better at making sure the pedal doesn't move, b. I think four pads is probably better for me than five. But GHWT's drums look more compact, and they have cool cymbals.

I'm watching the latest episode of The Office and I see the name of Michael Schur as a "co-executive producer." I enjoy Schur's writing at Fire Joe Morgan (as "Ken Tremendous") so it caught my eye.

Then I saw several other producers named after him. So I rewound.

I counted six "executive producers," eight "co-executive producers," two "consulting producers," one "producer," and one more person that the show was "produced by."

I have some experience adding by more than ones, so I say with confidence that the show had at least 18 producers in the credits.

I'm no Ben Silverman, or Greg Daniels, or Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant, or Howard Klein, or Paul Lieberstein, but that seems like a lot to me.

"The Merry Minuet" is a classic song by The Kingston Trio. Requested by nandorman.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Showing off a "Photosynth," which can put different photos together and create this pseudo-3D space, an MS spokesthing says on my TV, "it's not actually virtual reality, it IS reality that you're experiencing. It's not a video game, it's not an artificial playground in some sense, it's REALLY the things that you had visited in the real world, but reconstructed within the confines of the computer."

Um. Actually, just so we're clear, in fact:

It is NOT REALLY the things that I had visited, it IS virtual reality, it IS a video game, it IS an artificial playground in a very true sense.

I hope that clears things up.

My question, in part in song.

I played the GOP Debate Song at the Snohomish County picnic last weekend. You can see the original here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Dz0jc1mUs

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I had planned on seeing a movie based on the book Prince Caspian this morning.

Instead, I saw Disney's new movie, called Prince Caspian.

An overwhelming majority of the movie is all wrong. It has to be the least faithful movie to the book of any movie I've seen, that I've also read the book for. And that includes I, Robot. OK, not really. But close.

Three words: Susan, Caspian, Romance.

The plot is basically the same -- Caspian summons the children, children help Caspian defeat Miraz -- but almost all the details have changed. It has the same characters, but that's about it. It's quite annoying, really.

From the very beginning it's all wrong. Miraz is not yet King, Caspian is much older than he should be, the children vividly remembered Narnia even before they got pulled back, Trumpkin's personality is very different, the trees attack the Telmarines, and a huge water monster destroys the bridge at Beruna.

Even one of the most well-known lines in the movie was butchered. Aslan asks of Caspian, in the book, "Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?" "I--I don't think I do, Sir. I'm only a kid." "Good," said Aslan. "If you had felt yourself sufficient, if would have been proof that you were not." But in the movie, this is turned upside-down: now the fact that he doesn't feel himself sufficient is proof that he IS sufficient. By that logic, the idiot giant Wimbleweather would have been sufficient for kingship.

But don't misunderstand: the inconsistencies do not begin and end with these relatively minor elements. The battles in the movie never happened; major events happen in the wrong place and out of order; Aslan never appears to anyone but Lucy until the very end of the movie; Peter and Caspian have a conflict that nearly leads to blows; Peter is tempted by the White Witch ...

I don't mind all the changes. Making Sopespian and Glozelle larger parts of the story is fine, although I don't like what they did with them, for example. Even including Susan in more of the action isn't terribly offensive. But the whole story is just twisted inside out.

The movie is fairly decent on its own (although the sense of humor in it is quite poor ... why would Reepicheep say to Trumpkin, "I was expecting someone taller?" And who could not have predicted Trumpkin's response?). But as Prince Caspian it fails miserably because it is barely Prince Caspian at all.

An original love song to the Superdelegate.

Lyrics:

Chorus:
Superdelegate, I don't know you, but I love you
Superdelegate, you make me feel warm inside
Superdelegate, I didn't vote for you
But I really think you're super, Superdelegate

We can't trust ourselves to choose
'Coz we've got so much to lose
So we ask you, please
Protect us from ourselves

Chorus

I will use my voice
I will state my choice
I will stand up and be counted
But not as much as you

Chorus

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

A cover of I Want You To Want Me by Cheap Trick. Requested by daviebluff.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

This is the classic Bob Dylan song that was later popularized by Britney Spears.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

This is my own arrangement of the Disney classic. I've always thought this song to be pretty depressing, so, there it is. See my other video of the same song in the Responses.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Good Friday. Here's my favorite tune for my favorite day.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I'm back! I hope you enjoyed the first intermission.

To commemorate the last episode of "The Wire," here's my rendition of the theme song, which was written and originally performed by Tom Waits, though my song is sortof a cross between his version and Steve Earle's version with some vintage Randy Stonehill tossed in.

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I was checking out the story that the band REM is releasing 11 videos for its latest song under the Artistic License 2.0. Very neat. Check it all out on the song's web site.

Someone noted that they are not going all the way and offering the audio for free, but of course, it's in the video, so I looked at the audio of the downloaded files: 16 bits, 48 kHz. Slightly better quality than the 16 bits, 44.1 kHz of CDs. Also very neat.

But then on the first track, "Studio #1," I noticed some dropouts. I opened the audio file up and saw this:

There are four gaps at about 1:23 (only one shown). This goes on throughought the song (including more gaps later, such as at 2:20 and 2:30).

Each track has different audio, though it is all of the same song. Some of the other tracks with the studio audio are messed up in various ways. Some are totally overcranked. Track 11 might be hork-worthy. Maybe a little soft, but better than a little clipped (or, like track 10, almost completely clipped).

i wish the word "I" were spelled with more letters, so that i could shorten it to "i"

"A Few Words in Defense of Our Liberals" is a combination parody/response to Randy Newman's song, "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," performed at the keynote for Macworld Expo 2008.

Let me say up front that if you have a problem with anything in here, well, blame Randy, because nothing I said was any worse, or any less reasonable, than what he said.

I am not the musician he is, but hey, I get paid a lot less. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldToIF5ZGs for the original video for his song, from last January. The slightly different lyrics were posted in the NY Times that same month as an op-ed, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/opinion/24newman.html .

Enjoy! And laugh a little! Just because Randy's ticked off, doesn't mean we have to be, no matter what your political persuasion.

Lyrics:

I'd like to say a few words
In defense of our liberals
Our liberals ain't bad, nor are they mean
The liberal leaders they have
While they are pretty bad
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

Let's turn history's pages, shall we?

Take Mao, for example
Why, within the first few years of him
He had criminalized free speech
Ruled from the side of his Forbidden City swimming pool
And presided over the executions of millions of people

A few years later
He outlawed private food production, and millions more died
That's like, single-payer agriculture, or something
That's not a very good example right now, is it?

But here's one
The Eastern European Soviet occupation
Put people in a terrible position
I don't even like to think about it
Well, sometimes I like to think about it

Just a few words in defense of our liberals
Whose time at the top
Could be coming to an end
Now we don't want their love
And respect for their views is out of the question
But in times like these
We sure could use a friend

Hitler
Stalin
Liberals who need no introduction
Fidel Castro, that's right
Liberals think he's so great
Well he took control of Cuba
He jailed and killed thousands of people
Just for speaking their mind
Or being suspected of having one
But hey man, now Cubans are equal
And desperate

A president once said,
"A man has a property in his opinions"
Now you are required to agree to give your property to someone else
It's patriotic in fact, and compassionate
And if you don't play along?
There's the government men with the guns
That's what the Second Amendment is for, isn't it?
That's what it used to be for

The end of socialism is messy at best
And this plunderous state is ending
Like all the rest
Like French automobiles, engulfed on the streets
We're engulfed in the land of the brave
And the home of the free

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

My response to The Davos Question.

http://youtube.com/thedavosquestion

Here's a tour of my studio that some people have asked about. If you want to know the specifics of the hardware and software see the web page:

http://pudge.net/tunes/equipment.html

I finally got my Schrammie! For the complete story, see the original song, listen to the studio version, and watch Ken Schram give me my award. Then finally, watch my acceptance speech.

I wrote the song New Year many years ago, and break it around this time every year. You can listen to the studio version. Here's the lyrics:

It's a new year And it's been a long time It's been a long time since last year It's been a whole year

Well, it gets a guy to thinking
About the time that passes by
Lots of time in one year
365 and 1/4 days

And I can't go back
I can't go back to last year
'Coz there's one whole year between us

365 days
Or maybe 366
I can't remember
It's been a long year

12 months
365 days
8,760 hours
525,600 minutes
31,536,000 seconds
It's been a long year

And it's been a long time
It's been a long time
It's been a long time
It's been a long time
It's been a long time since last year
It's been a whole year

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I've gone and done it and set up my a new site, called <pudge/*> (pronounced "PudgeGlob").

I won't be fully retiring my other journal sites -- I'll still post Perl stuff on use Perl, for example -- but in general, I'll be using the new site for everything. When I do post something to my other journals -- or to Flickr, or YouTube -- it'll be mirrored there. I've already prepopulated it with thousands of posts from my other sites over the past 10 years.

At some point I will be more closely integrating PudgeTunes with <pudge/*> -- each song will have its own entry, and I'll generate podcast feeds directly from the new site -- but other than that, it's pretty much set.

This also means my "meta-feed" is going away. If you subscribed to pudge.net/feed.rss, it now just symlinks to pudge.net/glob/rss.xml.

So now you have one place to go for All Things Pudge. ;-)

Enjoy.

This is a great little Christmas song by Rich Mullins.

Sorry my voice is a bit thrashed. I have a cold and it hurts to sing. But the show must go on!

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

Christmas Must Be Tonight was originally recorded by The Band, though this version is heavily influenced by The Compassion International All-Star Band's version (sung by Randy Stonehill).

Sorry my voice is a bit thrashed. I have a cold and it hurts to sing. But the show must go on!

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I figured this was a good opportunity to try out my new Yamaha drum machine thingy.

Sorry my voice is a bit thrashed. I have a cold and it hurts to sing. But the show must go on!

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

The YouTube "community" has let me down.

Granted, there are some "leave jamie lynn alone" videos, but that is not as funny. She should never, ever, in the context of comedy, be called "Jamie Lynn." Her comedy name is "Britney's sister."

I knew little about The Golden Compass, but then something someone said about it triggered a fading memory, and I grepped my email for "Pullman," the story's author. Here is what I wrote about him two years ago here:

http://www.crlamppost.org/darkside.htm

The same guy, Philip Pullman, also noted (in the Washington Post, Feb 19, 2001, "The Last Word"; an article about how his trilogy for young adults ends in God's death) that in his stories "I'm trying to undermine Christian belief."

So cross Philip Pullman of the list of authors my children might read ...

So let's be clear. The author of The Golden Compass is, in his own exact words, "trying to undermine Christian belief." And he slams C.S. Lews and Narnia in this way:

One of the most vile moments in the whole of children's literature, to my mind, occurs at the end of The Last Battle, when Aslan reveals to the children that "The term is over: the holidays have begun" because "There was a real railway accident. Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead." To solve a narrative problem by killing one of your characters is something many authors have done at one time or another. To slaughter the lot of them, and then claim they're better off, is not honest storytelling: it's propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology.

He believes that believing in heaven as I, and millions of others, do is "hating life."

I will not see The Golden Compass. YMMV.

Video of a car thief stealing a "bait car" set up by the Bellevue police.

At the end, you can even see a bullet bounce inside the car. I think it grazed him. He tried to run over two bike cops, and a third cop shot at him in response.

These days a lot of movie ratings from the MPAA are accompanied by reasons. I was looking at the trailer for In The Shadow of the Moon and it is rated PG for, in part, "incidental smoking."

As if there is such a thing as non-incidental smoking? Smoking is an event and therefore always incidental! But I digress.

What's the dumbest movie rating reason you've seen, and for what movie?

I am ripped up and down on talk radio for the better part of two hours for my offensive song, "Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday."

KVI's The Commentators, September 11, 2007

"Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday" is played at the beginning of the third hour of the live Mystery Play Internet Radio broadcast.

MPIR Live 09-08-2007

"Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday" is played at the beginning of the third hour of the live Mystery Play Internet Radio broadcast.

MPIR Live 09-08-2007