Jonathan Coulton

First, I’m delighted to learn that GLaDOS has found her way into an xkcd comic today. Another honor I can cross of my list.

Second, I played this party last night to celebrate the opening of a new NYC office for Oasis, the very excellent company who manufactures my CDs. I played a set, and got to enjoy some great performances by Jen Chapin, Sean Altman, and Kenny White. But the best part was when Tom Brislin from the band Spiraling came up and introduced himself to me – I’m a big fan, and I’m afraid I geeked out just a little. He also gave me a super secret advanced copy of their new CD which I am devouring right now instead a bacon egg and cheese sandwich (it’s twice as delicious).

I’m hoping to get some recording done this afternoon, so check back if you’d like to watch. UPDATE: Having some technical problems with ustream – may not happen today. Stupid internet.

Wowie. This means it will be a full house, which is fantastic for me, and bad for you if you haven’t yet bought tickets. Thank you, mysterious 400 or so people. It’s going to be an awesome show, and it will live forever on Digital Video Disk.

I’m going to do some recording tomorrow I think (unless something stops me, which could very easily happen).

Well, that was fun. I appear to have poked a sleeping Balrog with the sharp stick of my wit, and now he’s awake and angry and thirsty for the blood of n00bs, LOL! Thank you for all your comments, constructive and otherwise – it was particularly nice talking with you, Anonymous.

In response to this whole thing, Joystiq has added a little “please don’t be mean” comment to their post, which was a thoughtful thing to do. Sure they were a little snarky about this video in their original post, but not really mean-spirited in my opinion – they at least recognize the earnest=awesome dynamic. Anyway you certainly can’t blame them for all the crazy hate comments. The whole thing is just weird. I hope that I didn’t make it worse by attracting more attention to it.

And now, back to business…

It’s so pointless to even talk about, but what’s with the people who actually take the time to write inane negative comments on amateur YouTube videos? I understand: you’re 13, you’re trying to be witty, and you forget that there’s some human on the other end. And you come up with just the right clever little thing to say, some zinger like “OMG? I want to kill you noob,” or perhaps “I hate you,” some really eloquent expression of your criticism, and you can’t resist. Congratulations: you’ve just become extremely boring.

I had seen this list of the top 12 “Still Alive” covers on Joystiq, but I wasn’t aware of the little comments scuffle going on over CupcakeAndTea’s contribution until someone pointed it out to me. And, just, sigh. Really? This is a good use of your time, to make someone you’ve never met feel bad just because they made an amateur fan video about something they really like? Where’s your thing that you made and put online for everyone to see, you chicken-shit cockhole?

My hope is that the rise of amateur content and all these channels dedicated to circulating it is creating a race of super humans who have extra thick skin. At least it’s a fluid enough medium that you can find your people as easily as you can find the haters – you can see Cupcake’s community/fans coming to her defense in the YouTube comments, and hopefully she takes enough pleasure from that to offset bad stuff. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there. Believe me, I know, I spent nine years in a day job because I was afraid to do it. So it drives me nuts to see people lobbing bullshit negativity into the crowd – if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. And if you don’t have a piece of yourself to contribute, keep quiet. The rest of us are working here.

Coffee Do Not Fail Me, originally uploaded by jcoulton.

Speaking of empty promises, don’t know if recording is going to happen again today – the kid is home sick, and it’s a little noisy and pukey around here. But we shall see…