Jonathan Coulton

My strange obsession with monkeys continues with Thing Two of Thing a Week. I don’t know where to begin explaining this one. Here is what I know: The guy in the song has recently had an argument with someone he loves and is trying to apologize. He happens to have a pet monkey, more of a monkey butler actually, whose name is Brian Dennehy. He’s unable to talk directly about his own feelings (the singer I mean, not Brian Dennehy), so he’s projecting his emotional life onto the monkey, explaining how the monkey feels when this or that happens. It sounds like he does this a lot, and it’s probably indicative of a larger problem. It’s kind of a sparse arrangement, drum loop, guitar, bass, and then somewhere in the mix are a few wine glasses. I thought long and hard about the monkey chorus that comes between verses, but finally left it in. This song makes me feel sad and sentimental, despite the fact that it mentions Brian Dennehy (shout out to Dr. Smith, who really wishes he had a so-named monkey butler).

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Still trying to figure out if I should make this a separate podcast or just make this blog the podcast. I like the title “Thing a Week” and it’s certainly more catchy than “Jonathan Coulton” but I’m not sure it’s worth all the hassle of breaking it out, posting twice, etc. Right now WordPress is already creating enclosures for linked mp3s, so it should work as a podcast the way it is (and I’m experimenting with the WP-iCatter plug in to get the iTunes tags in there too). I suppose I could set up a separate feed for this post category using feedburner. Or I could just rename this blog to Thing a Week. Why is the internets so complicated!? If you all have any thoughts, let me know.

Well, you asked for it, or rather, I told you that you were going to get it. Here’s the debut thing of my Thing a Week series. It’s 48 seconds long, but I think it has a special kind of quirky charm. The lyrics are taken from a text message that a TV producer sent while having a difficult time on some sort of aquatic shoot, somewhere far away where it’s probably hot and dusty and hard to get around. I found them funny but also a little sinister – there is more than a touch of madness in them. They are sung by my mac (via Text Edit, via Audio Hijack) and mixed with loops in Soundtrack.

I will eventually set up a page as these things pile up, but for now:

download it here .