Music Roundup Monday: 8/31/15, "Mostly Songs About Exes, I Guess?"

Someday I'll get good at writing these little intro snippets. Not today though. Today I'm going to go eat sketchy Chinese food. This week's theme appears to be songs about exes and breakups, which is weird, because I've never had a bad breakup or seven evil exes or anything. I dunno.

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Every Day I'm Spirographin'"

Another week, another batch of interesting stuff from around the internet. <Note to self: Insert more text here.>

The possibility exists we might see another series of Blackadder, one of the best British comedy shows ever. If this doesn't excite you, you've clearly never watched Blackadder. Go do so now.

Cracked.com repurposes bad True Detective dialogue for humorous purpose.

A look at what people associate with various colors of shirts. Yeah. That's pretty specific.

A.V. Club breaks down ten of the most-sampled drum beats in history.

Online spirograph! I haven't played with one of these in years, spent a couple hours on it the other day.

Backlog Blitz: Super Nintendo, Week One, "Aero the AcroBatman"

Wow. It's on to the Super Nintendo games, huh? That's scary. I'm running out of buffer here, to be honest. When my computer was being fixed, I fell massively behind on playing old games. Or any games. So yeah. I gotta get back on that. 

OverAnalyzed: Ireland Belongs to the Dead

“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I’ve always been ashamed when Shane McGowan asks, “Have you ever walked the lonesome hills, or heard the curlews cry, or seen the raven black as night upon the wind-swept sky?” For years, my answer was no. And I was ashamed. And now my answer is yes, I have done these things, Shane, and I wish it weren’t so. The curlew’s shrill keening holds only loneliness. A black-winged raven wheeling in widening blue-grey gyres brings only sorrow. Ireland belongs to the dead.

Short Story: The Cattle Raid of Rio Cherche

Cattle die,

Kindred die,

We ourselves also die;

But the fair fame

Never dies

Of him who has earned it.

Cattle die,

Kindred die,

We ourselves also die;

But I know one thing

That never dies,

Judgment on each one dead.

--"Havamal," The Codex Regius

To my eyes the stranger didn’t look much like a gunslinger, but Pa seemed glad to have another hand. Guess it didn’t matter any, so long as I didn’t have to share my food. Beans and biscuits weren’t much but they were MY beans and biscuits. Manwel’d say nothing in life’s ours—it all belongs to Haysoos. He says it funny, Mexico-style. Manwel’s pa’s hired hand.

Pa and the stranger were riding point, with Manwel at t’back. I rode circuit, keeping the cattle from straying. Almost a hundred head, all dumb instinct and nerves. Riding circuit’s important, so Pa trusting me stiffened up my backbone with pride. This’d be my first cattle drive and I didn’t intend to let Pa down. He’d given me a rifle an’ everything. This trip meant a lot to him. Meant a lot to us all. We didn’t turn a profit, we lost the ranch. 

Saturday Morning Warfare (On Wednesdays!): Week Two, "Arm Choppin'!"

In 2012, I took my first steps into the world of pen and paper role-playing-games. Which wasn't really pen and paper, but rather, Skype and a PDF. But whatever. This is the story of those games. Some of the character names have been lost to time and Skype kerfuffle, so I've done my best to replace them. I've also tried to make the Skype format into a more readable experience.  As with last week, I removed some extraneous ("Is it my turn?" kind of chatter, while trying to leave the more "unique" and/or in-character remarks.)

This is the session where the slow slide into insanity really began. None of our characters were exactly stable to begin with (such is life in the 41st Millennium), but by the end of this session we'd hit a tipping point.

Poem: "Battle Hymn of the Trench Soldier"

I've been listening Dan Carlin's series about WWI, so one evening I just started hearing this in my head, set to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

I’ve seen the maggots writhing in a mortar-shattered head,
I’ve seen the crows a’circling as we gather up our dead,
I’ve seen young lads start weeping as they bravely fought and bled:
This war has seared our souls.

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Lovecraft and Language Theory"

I finally got my computer back, after almost two weeks of nail-biting. Now I can play Fallout: New Vegas again! And write, I guess. While my Precious was away, I still managed to collect some interesting stuff from around the interwebz. Let's check it out, shall we?

She Walks In Shadows, an anthology of Lovecraftian short stories centered on female characters, will be releasing soon. It sounds like a really interesting concept--a story from the perspective of Mother Hydra? Yes please!--and the cover art is awesome.