Jonathan Coulton

I’ve gotten a few emails about this as the promos have begun their heavy rotation: the G4 television network has a new show called “Code Monkeys” about some programmers at a game company that’s animated in the style of an 8-bit computer game, and they’re using my song as the theme (I mean, how could they not really?). To answer your questions, yes I do know about it, and yes they got permission, and yes a certain amount of money changed hands, so it’s all official: I have sold out.

Please begin the backlash…

Apparently the “computing machines” in Oklahoma that are responsible for making flight plans and distributing them to, erm, I guess flights, had a little trouble today. As a result, my 12:30 flight to Toronto was stuck for a couple hours on the runway and then cancelled altogether. They sent out all the luggage except for my guitar, which they kept hanging around somewhere secret for another couple hours while several luggage helper people attempted to locate it and I wept quietly into my inflatable travel pillow. When it was found, I hopped a cab to La Guardia for a 5:30 flight, which I have just learned is delayed as well (and may eventually be cancelled for all I know).

Long story short, there will be no 9 PM JoCo show at The Reverb tonight in Toronto. I am hopeful that I’ll get there in time for tomorrow afternoon’s interview with me as DIY/Artist 2.0 Poster Boy. I’m sorry if you’ve bought tickets or changed plans or anything to make tonight’s show. And to think I was worried that I had waited too long to publicize my appearance – if I had waited just a little longer, that would have been a smart decision instead of just bad planning.

In a related story, the Ms. Pacman machine (why are NY airports filled with Ms. Pacman machines?) I played had a hinky joystick that only went up SOME of the time, so I didn’t even make it through the apple screen.

I’m going to have a drink now.

I didn’t have the time to post this yesterday, but Len drew a visual response to this song while he was listening to me record it. And he captured it all on video, which he then edited and put the finished song behind it. Crazy world.

I keep forgetting to mention this, and I have yet to get the mailing list set up on the new server here, so probably nobody will be there. Nice work, jackass! Still, I’m going to Toronto tomorrow to participate in NXNE. I’ll be doing a show on Friday night at 9 PM at The Reverb, and then Clive Thompson, author of a certain recent New York Times Magazine article, will do an onstage interview with me on Saturday at 4:30 PM.

There are various ticket options, from single event covers to fancy badges, all detailed on this page. Tell all your Toronto friends…

Those of you who have been watching the live stream of me recording this song over the last week or so have already heard it plenty I’m sure, but for the rest of you, here’s a new song. It’s the first public thing I’ve written since the end of Thing a Week in September of last year, and it feels good.

My daughter went through a phase where she asked constantly for this YouTube video (which, incidentally, is a blatant violation of copyright) of a National Geographic show about octopuses. In the opening sequence, the unassuming and literally spineless octopus takes out a shark like it’s no big thing – the shark is just minding his own business when all of a sudden, bam! Eight arms, baby. If you are a sea creature that an octopus wants to eat, God help you, because it’s definitely going to eat you, and it’s going to hurt a lot. So for a while I went around singing “Octopus, some kind of octopus,” in my head and thinking about an octopus just tearing things to pieces, mostly crabs. Naturally, this became a nice metaphor for a breakup song (as long as I avoided using the word “sucker”).

Here it is for your listening pleasure. Feel free to actually buy it if you like it, but at the very least I hope you will pass it around:

Octopus