autographedcat

• Reading
  
  In recent years, I haven't been reading as much as I did in the past.   Or rather, I haven't been reading books, and particular fiction.  Part of that was that for a long time, a large part of our library was still in storage in Georgia, but we got that fixed back in May.  Mostly, it's just a matter of allocating my time so that sitting with a book rather than staring at a screen is what I'm doing.  So this year, I'm going to take myself up on one of those book challenges where I record the books I read and try to read at least 50 in the calendar year.   If I can get myself back in the habit, I should easily exceed that number.  (I once had to have my mother come with me to the public library to confirm that, yes, I had in fact read the entire stack of books I'd checked out just a few days earlier.)


• Creating
  
  I want to spend more time making art in various forms.  I want to write more songs.  I want to improve my guitar skills, and finally learn to play the bass guitar I bought.  I want to write more essays and fiction and film reviews.  And, importantly, I want to start podcasting again.  All of my previous podcasting projects went onto hiatus, and I've really been missing that outlet.  I have some ideas bubbling up, and in the meantime, I'm always available to guest if anyone needs someone to come on and run their mouth. :)


• Blogging
  
  One of the reasons I haven't been blogging more is because a lot of the things that used to make up a blog post have turned into Facebook fodder.  And I'm probably not going to stop writing on Facebook, but I want to make an effort to keep this forum engaged too, because the way I approach writing on this journal is substantially different to the way I approach writing on Facebook.  And I've found it very useful at times to go back and re-read the things I write here, because they keep me in touch with where I was at the time.

I’ve been meaning to start back up with some general blogging, but because I majored in Procrastination (with a doulbe minor in Blowing Things Off and Well Nevermind), I haven’t been.

Towards the notion of getting started again — along with making sure my website Songbook is up to date — I’m going to start posting things here that have previously been posted in other places (primarily Facebook) over the last little while.  So you may see things you saw earlier, or things you never saw but which are long divorced from their original context.  Just a heads up.  Hope it’s not annoying and stuff. 🙂

The Shining Wit
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Act Naturally” by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison

I’m gonna get myself a girlfriend
I’m gonna go make all these women see
That I’m a man who knows how to explain things
And all I gotta says is “Well, actually…”

I promise you that I know all about it
I’m quite an expert, you can surely tell
Don’t worry your pretty head about it
'Cause I can make it simple as well

I know you’ll nod and see that I am right, here.
And jump into my arms and softly squee
You’ll fall for me the moment that I step up
To interrupt you, saying, “Well, actually…”

Yet somehow I wind sad and lonely
It makes me so mad; I just cannot see
I know that I did nothing to deserve this
The only thing I said was “Well, actually…”

I promise you that I know all about it
I’m quite an expert, you can surely tell
Don’t worry your pretty head about it
'Cause I can make it simple as well

I guess that she was just another hater
But I will get a girl eventually
She will not be able to resist me
When I interrupt her saying “Well, actually…”

Many thanks to Twitter user David Ballard (@dvdbllrd) for the inspiration for this.

Inclement Weather Advisory
by Rob Wynne and Jeff Williams
TTTO: “A Kind Of Hush” by Herman’s Hermits


There’s a kind of slush
All over the road, today
All over the road you can hear the sound
Of fast-skidding cars
Watch out for that tree!

Let’s the two of us
Stay inside the house, today
I don’t want to go out and get in the way
of fast-skidding cars

Now listen very carefully
Come closer and see cars sliding into the ditch
Hey, ain’t that a bitch?

The only sound that you will hear
is when the cars begin to skid and career
Roll over and over

There’s a kind of slush
All over the road, today
All over the road you can hear the sound
Of fast-skidding cars

Fa la-la la-la la-la
Fa-la la-la la-la la-la
Fa-la-la-la-la Fa-la la-la-la
Fa la-la la-la

Now listen very carefully
Come closer and see cars sliding into the ditch
Hey, ain’t that a bitch?

The only sound that you will hear
is when the cars begin to skid and career
Roll over and over

There’s a kind of slush
All over the road, today
All over the road you can hear the sound
Of fast-skidding cars
Of fast-skidding cars
Of fast-skidding cars

Deadline for the 2014 Pegasus Nominating Ballot is 12:01AM PDT, July 27, 2014

Ballots should be filled out on line or submitted by mail to:

OVFF

3824 Patricia Drive

Columbus, OH, 43220

You may select five artists/songs per category. Need ideas? Check out the results of the Brainstorming Poll!

There’s a new episode of Tadpoolery!  In this episode, Rob and Bryan discuss

View from my airplane window…

()

In January of 2011, Scott Johnson and Brian Ibbott launched a podcast called “The Morning Stream“, a culmination of Scott’s long-time desire to do a morning-drive style radio program that reflected his particularly geeky sensibilities.  Like other shows he produced, TMS was live-streamed as it was recorded, and an active chat room interacted with the hosts.  Some of us started hanging out in that chatroom even when nothing was being broadcast, and a community began to coalesce.  The community was nicknamed “The Tadpool”, riffing off of the name of Scott’s studio, Frogpants Studios, and soon after that, a Facebook community was created to foster a less real-time (and more enduring) interaction between fans.

As time went on, we realised that a lot of very cool people were hanging out in this community, and a small group of us decided to start a show focused on the community, in order to better get to know people.  It was called “Tadpoolery”, and was hosted by Bryan Provost, Nick Nizzi, and myself, along with a rotating guest from the Tadpool that we would chat with about whatever sorts of things that person was primarily interested in.  Due to the random nature of our guests backgrounds, the episodes could cover a wide variety of of topics, and frequently would range so far afield that our tagline became “The tangent is the topic.”

The original incarnation of Tadpoolery ran for 36 episodes.  Towards the end of that run, we started to feel like the lack of structure was actually becoming a liability, and decided to take a brief hiatus to retool the show and get a better handle on what we wanted to do with it.  For a variety of reasons, we didn’t return from that hiatus as planned.

Two years later…

Bryan and I actually started talking about rebooting the show last year, just after Nerdtacular.  We wanted to keep the same vibe the original show had — it’s very much a product of the Tadpool — while giving it room to expand and evolve into something of wider and more general interest.  Around the end of last year, we did a test show, which went well but had some technical difficulties.  Once those were finally resolved and scheduling was worked out, we’ve now officially relaunched Tadpoolery and released our first new episodes.

Episode 37 is the test episode we recorded last year.  The topics include:

• Breaking Bad


• Dragon Age Heroes (android)


• World of Warcraft


• Kingdom of Amalur IP sale


• Fallout 4 hoax


• Stealth games


• Weird news: recreational marijuana dispensery names


• Weird news: The Slutcracker (Burlesque parody of the Nutcracker)


• Music: Marian Call, “Sketchbook”, Postmodern Jukebox

Episode 38 was recorded last week, where we discussed:

• Travel and Tadmeets (Tadpool Meetups)


• Nerdtacular is coming!


• Tattoos


• You Can’t Watch Everything (Josh Williams)


• Nerd Rage


• Star Wars and Star Wars


• Iconic Vs. Definitive Portrayals


• Summer of 1994 (Brian Duff)


• I love the 2000s


• NepoTuneism: Tom Smith, “307 Ale”


• Steam Summer Sale (Rocksmith, Skyrim)


• Catching Up ON Old Content (video games and TV, especially)

So as you can see, the tangent is still the topic.  You can subscribe to Tadpoolery on ITunes, or get episodes directly from our webpage.  New episodes will be released on Friday.

It’s good to finally have my show back on the air.  I’ve really missed making it, and I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Since we live just around the corner from the end point of the Seattle Pride Parade route, we sauntered over just a few minutes before it got there and were able to get a great spot to see everything go by.  I took an enormous number of photos, which Larissa then culled through them to remove all the really horrible shots, near-identical duplicates, and out of focus pictures.  There’s still over 600 in the set.

Many of these photos are NSFW, so use your own discretion.

Gallery of Seattle Pride Parade 2014 photos

Just a random excerpt of a conversation between me and a friend of a friend, on Facebook

Doug Williams Although I do agree Styrofoam is evil. Cardboard packaging is my nemesis.

Rob Wynne Doug: Really? “Cardboard Packaging” is my Malvina Reynolds cover band! #kickingitoldschool

Doug Williams With 3 kids the amount of cardboard packaging that comes through my house is ridiculous. Let’s just say they could probably name where forests used to be after my children.

Rob Wynne 

Mirrored from Home of the Autographed Cat.

Beautiful day

(Kinnear Park)

Mirrored from Home of the Autographed Cat.