Jonathan Coulton

OK rabid fan base, it’s time to download. Popular Science’s Future of the Body issue is out, and the songs are now posted on the website. There’s even some cover art you can print out and stick into a CD case if you want to burn and carry around a quaint little “compact disk” for any reason. Or maybe you just want to blow it up to poster size and hang it above your shrine to me, although honestly I think that’s a little creepy. Please tell all your friends, blog readers, podcast listeners, etc.

For those of you who haven’t been following this story very very closely, I will explain. As Contributing Troubadour for the magazine, I was commissioned to write a soundtrack for this issue. Each song is inspired by a particular article. As you might imagine, there is a lot of cyborg business in there, and for that I will not apologize.

R. Kelly has gone insane. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to listen to his “Trapped in the Closet” song cycle, because it is truly wonderful in the most awful way. I guess it’s a comedy of errors, or maybe some kind of sex romp farce thing involving a lot of sleeping around, strange unnatural dialog, and a little bit of gun play. I have a few complaints/things that I love about it:

1. I get the feeling that R. may have phoned it in on the music. Each of the five songs is exactly the same, just with different words. Maybe he is trying to comment on how boring infidelity is.

2. The lyrics sound like they were made up on the spot in the studio. By accident.

3. It’s called “Trapped in the Closet.”

4. There is an excruciating sex scene involving these phrases: “…baby we must slow down before I bust a vessel in my brain…” and “…Oh my goodness I’m about to climax…” Oh my goodness.

All of this really being an excuse to point you to these most excellent Cliff’s Notes. Damn I wish I’d thought of that. I think my favorite is essay question #2: In chapter four, what does Sylvester mean by “a tear fell up out my eye?”

Well, someone else has emailed me to point out a flaw in the Mandelbrot lyrics. For those of you using my song to write programs that generate the Mandelbrot Set, I urge you to consult another source for clarification. Here’s the problem:

I say, “Take a point called Z in the complex plane, let Z1 be Z^2 plus C…” What I really mean is, “Take a point called C in the complex plane (and by the way, set Z=0), let Z1 be Z^2 plus C…” Otherwise, when you look at my lyrics, what the hell is C supposed to be? Well, I guess it’s supposed to be Z. Or something. Anyway, you can kind of get there my way, or at least, if you know what the actual algorithm really is, you will still recognize a vague outline of it in my lyrics. And perhaps you will laugh.

All of this makes me think of the one guy who really needs to hear this song and tell me what I’ve done wrong, Dr. Professor M himself. I’ve always wanted for him to hear it, but I fear his corrections. Which is why I just emailed him the mp3. Hopefully he will not be offended by the line in which I joke that he is not dead (yet). Or by the above-described mathematical shortcomings. Or by the “too-much-rocking” that I put in there.