Jonathan Coulton

I don’t often pimp things here on this blog, but I will make an exception this time – mark it well. I do it not only because Darin Strauss is a good friend and a former member of the fantastic (not really) proto-JoCo band Supergroup, but because he is an exceptionally talented writer of fiction that you should read. Perhaps you have already enjoyed his previous novels: Chang and Eng which was about the original Siamese Twins, or The Real McCoy which was about con men. His new book, More Than it Hurts You, is 1) out today, 2) about Munchausen syndrome by proxy and a family in Long Island, and 3) awesome. I am not so eloquent when it comes to “describing books with words,” so I will not bother to string together a series of alliterative and superlative adjectives – other people smarter than me have already done that. So you know it’s good. Buy it today, won’t you?

The Song Fu challenge has bid adieu to Doc Hammer and several non-master contestants, and the rest of us are moving on to round 2. And I quote:

The following challenge applies to our Masters of Song Fu only. As Masters, it is expected that they have achieved a musical voice all their own – but does their mastery extend to assuming the voice of another artist? With that in mind, Each Master is tasked with writing a song in the style of their opponent. The Masters will be judged on how accurately they write a song in their opponent’s style without it becoming a simple parody. When listening to their entries, you must genuinely believe that they were written by the original Master. Got that? The Master’s songs must also be no shorter than 1m45s, and are due at 11:59pm EST on Tuesday, July 1st.

Paul and Storm have the obvious advantage here, which is that at the end of the day they will have a Jonathan Coulton song, and I will be stuck with a Paul and Storm song. Zing. Do you see what I did there? I am trash talking!

I already know exactly how my P+S song is going to end, even though I know nothing else about it…

Len sent in this Washy Ad Jeffy poster – Coolidge kind of looks like Hodgman, don’t you think? And check out the X’s in Harrison’s eyes…

In my continuing quest to do everything that Brad Sucks does, I’ve used all the lyrics from Thing a Week to create this most excellent word cloud at the even more most excellent site Wordle.

In the Wordle gallery I’ve also saved the clouds for the individual Thing a Week albums One, Two, Three, and Four.

And I fixed the apostrophe problem. Stupid smart quotes.

When I was a wee lad my father taught me the greatest mnemonic device in the history of mnemonic devices. It’s called “Washy Ad Jeffy” and it’s a little jingle/rhyme thingie that helps you remember the order of all the US presidents and how many terms (or partial terms) they served – the number of syllables in the nickname is the number of terms. My father learned it from Mrs. Govan, his 8th grade history teacher at Memorial Junior High School in Ohio. He believes she made it up, but he’s not entirely sure. At the time he learned it, and of course when he taught it to me, it only went up to Eisenhower. I have added to it over the years, so really it’s a collaboration between Mrs. Govan (maybe?) and me.

I’ve always wanted to set this to music, and with the recent intense primary season, it came back into my mind again. I added the little B section in which I tell all the little children that they can be president too someday, a possibility that has already become that much more possible for many kids, regardless of what happens in November. So yeah, this one’s for the Democrats: both of them.

Below is the video of me recording it – there’s no multi-tracking, it’s all live (I’m playing a tambourine and an empty kitty litter jug with my feet). And to save you the trouble of extracting the audio, I’ve made an mp3 as well:

Washy Ad Jeffy

You can get it for free or else pay for it, your choice.