We got a couple of 7-month-old kittens today.  They are red tabby girls, and we haven’t figured out what their names should be yet, though I’m really liking “Zugzwang” for the more stubborn and taciturn one.

Here are a few pictures.

Answer:

Norsemen, abasement, advertisement, advisement, amusement, appeasement, basemen, basement, casement, chastisement,debasement, disbursement, disenfranchisement, disfranchisement, endorsement, enfranchisement, horsemen, reimbursement, semen, subbasement.

Conclusion:

You can’t spell Norsemen without “semen”, amirite.

Inpsiration:

There are 41 results for a search for “semen” on the official McDonalds question-and-answer site, but a portion of those are questions about advertisements.

Then again, a lot of them really are about semen.

If you’re feeling daring, give a listen to this thing I just put together:

Kill Me Now, Queen

It’s isolated vocals from Killer Queen, with the tempo (more or less) normalized to 117 bmp and fed into Microsoft SongSmith.  Here’s a bit more detail on how I made it.

If you’ve missed the SongSmith boat so far and are wondering what the deal is with this abomination you’re listening to, see here.  And then see here, and also my original composition using same, Harmonica Odyssey.  And so on.

Because sometimes you need more happy.

You’ll either find this exciting or you won’t, so I’ll get right down to it:

Markov-generated Super Mario Brother levels.

An example.  There are more at the main link.

Get this thing fleshed out and dump the output to an emulator-ready ROM and you have created pure stochastic sexiness, my friend.  Godspeed.

One of the things that I sometimes think I don’t do enough of with my blog is make tiny posts just to say things like, you know:

Check out this Beatles cover because it has a really great fucking keytar solo.

I didn’t record enough music last year, and I hope to do better this year.  But I did do some recording, and I’ve decided to just round it all up right here.  Maybe this should be a yearly thing?

• Fidelity, a Regina Spektor cover.
• Take On Me, a ridiculous and terrible a capella cover.
• Bad First Song, a Garageband + internal macbook mic test.
• True Love Will Find You In the End, a Daniel Johnston cover.
• Young Devin Funck, to lyrics by Astro Zombie.
• Mansion on the Hill v4, my contribution to an ad hoc collaborative songwriting effort.
• The Dangers of Buying an Older House, a moody instrumental composition — unusual for me.
• Stay the Fuck in Line, an election song.
• Wheel in the Sky, a bluegrass/oldtimey cover of the Journey song.
• I’ll Stab You, a parodic take on a Stevie Wonder song.  Words by robocop is bleeding.
• Next Year’s Gotta Be Better Than This One, a NYE rocker lament.

Eleven songs isn’t terible, but it isn’t much.  More music this year.  Covers are fun, but I need to get back to focusing on original music, too; only four of those are from-scratch originals.

I’m a better musician and songwriter than I was when I was 18, but the songs sure came easier back then.