Emergency Banana Productions

Greetings proud Omnomnomnians! I, the Somewhat Almighty God of Pie, demand feedback on my English Extension 2 Major Work!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the NSW English syllabus, the basic idea is that you spend the whole damn year working on one bloody great story, play, essay, whatever. And this is mine. I thought that in order to get a broader range of perspectives, I’d try to get it on the internet and see what people there said. After spending an hour shouting at DeviantArt, I called Mechlord and learned how to store files in the FTP. I’m not going to tell you anything about the play for the sheer fun of secrecy. You’ll have to read it and find out what it is. I promise that the file is 100% safe for work and for your computer.

The file is here

Leave feedback either in the “comments” section, or on this thread in the Übercharged.net forums.

What I’m asking for is five points of feedback;

1. What did you think of the play?
2. Are there any improvements you can suggest?
3. Did it remind you of anything?
4. What did you think that it was actually about?
5. How the hell do I get word documents onto DeviantArt?

Cheers.

In my daily internet-trawling, I came across the following map. It is a detailed analysis of the three silliest nations in the world. And look! The U.S.A. is there! What a surprise!

Now, why are these people so silly? Well, it’s simple. Instead of choosing a simple and logical measurement system where 1000 grams make a kilogram and 1000 metres make a kilometre, they have instead chosen an archaic and silly system where fourteen pounds make a stone, twelve inches make a foot and twenty-nine Knuts make a Sickle. We people in the grey nations often wonder how on Earth you can keep all those numbers in your head.

Americans claim that they keep the Imperial system, along with such other oddities as optional suffrage and driving on the right, because it makes them unique. Well, when the only other nations not to accept logic are Liberia, which has 70% unemployment, $500 GDP per capita and 3.43% arable land, and Burma, which is ruled by a quite frankly insane military junta…

I’d say you were in pretty good company.

Map from Wikipedia, linked from Sheldon Comics; geographical facts from the CIA World Factbook.

Me and God of Pie have reached an almost telepathic consensus that this here website needs some serious improvements, which will take place over the next sqwumpteen weeks or so. I will handle comic-related issues, while God of Pie will poke Mechlord until he does something about an update to Wordpress 2.7.1. Expect eventual changes to the website design as well.

Meanwhile, don’t expect anything much comic-wise in the next ~3 weeks, because I’ll be studying for me end-of-semester exams, and then doing them. It’s not easy, you know.

See ya nincompoops around,

azarov98

My dad bought this album when it came out about a month ago. I have been listening to it continuously ever since. It is, hands down, the best pop album that I’ve ever heard. As such, this is less a review and more a raving fan letter, but you’re reading it now, so you’d best make the most of it.

The official site explains the story of the album way better than I could, but here’s a brief summary. David Byrne has a fantastic singing voice and excellent lyric-writing abilities, but no actual musical talent. As such, the songs he sings (he was the lead singer of the band Talking Heads, and he was on The Simpsons once) are generally based on backing tracks written by other people, to which he improvises lyrics and a melody, eventually cementing the work. Byrne had in the past worked together with Brian Eno, whose musical skills were many but who had little lyric-writing ability. Brian mentioned that he had some backing tracks that he’d written over the years waiting on his computer, David said he would like to see them, and the rest is history. Except for 2x = 10, which is algebra.

The album is really, really hard to describe genre-wise. David describes it in the cover notes (reproduced on the official site) as “folk-electronic-gospel,” as good an eclectic mixture of genres as any. Musically, it sounds at first like very easy-listening stuff, as in you can listen to it and be contented with it without paying too much attention, but listening to the actual tracks reveals many hidden depths in both lyrics and accompaniment. Byrne’s lyrics are simply fantastic. They offset the apparent simplicity of the songs themselves by showing a bizzare and sinister undercurrent at every turn. As with the best poetry, you could analyse these for years without coming to a conclusion — and the best part is, there’s no conclusion to come to. David made them up.

Special note also has to be made for the cover-notes booklet. It’s filled with all the information on the background of the album, it contains the full and accurate lyrics (which I always like to see in a cover booklet) and the art is fantastic. Like the lyrics and music, the simple domestic art belies the hidden depths of the detail. At first glance, it looks like exterior and interior views happy little house; one expects The Sims to jump out at every turn. However, every single picture contains various disturbing elements, ranging from the petrol tank and the empty bottles in the kitchen to the hidden grave in the backyard and the shadowy figure watching from the windows. One of the pictures even bears an uncanny resemblance to the final moments of Portal, although this could be my inner nerd speaking.

In order to fill space, I will now go through the album, track by track, and describe it in something vaguely resembling brief.

1. Home — the first track on the album sets good expectations for what is to come. It’s a very nice reflection of the remainder of the album, with simple chords melody and lyrics belying hidden depths. It’s also of a very good length for a song, clocking in at 5 minutes. I like my pop songs to have some substance to them.
2. My Big Nurse — the best example of the “sinister lyrics to simple melody” theme of the album. It’s got an accompaniment based almost exclusively around chords I and IV of the scale, but the lyrics… oh, they’re gorgeous. And so, so sinister. I cannot describe them on my own. You must read them now.
3. I Feel My Stuff — remember what I said about the sinister lyrics being overlaid over simple melodies? This is the exception to the rule. It’s also my favourite track on the album, and the longest at 6:30. It’s a gorgeous exploration of paranoia in modern society, laid over a sinister backing track with much use of modal harmony. The climax is enormous, and it would be totally exhilarating to see it performed live. I would love to see a music video of this one, too.
4. Everything that Happens will Happen Today — the titular track, of course, and a relatively unremarkable. Nice and slow and simple — exactly what we need to wind down after I Feel My Stuff.
5. Life is Long — a nice little moderately fast piece with good energy to it. The lyrics are relatively optimistic compared to the sinister tone of the rest of the album.
6. The River — probably my least favourite track on the album. It’s much simplet than the others, and that’s saying something. It consists almost exclusively of chords I and V repeated and laid over a very simple melody figure, repeated continuously for 2 and a half minutes. Don’t hold your breath.
7. Strange Overtones — a lovely piece of ironic lyric writing, with David recalling his 1980’s musical roots. Everything in this song sounds 80’s. Special mention to the distortion guitar solo.
8. Wanted for Life — this rather odd depiction of the legal system is halfway between I Feel My Stuff and the rest of the songs. Musically very simple but rather lyrically and melodically interesting.
9. One Fine Day — another representative work of the whole album. I don’t like it quite as much as Home, but it’s a much-of-a-muchness thing.
10. Poor Boy — vaguely I Feel My Stuff-ish, but musically more so and lyrically less. It’s very disjointed and much more difficult to listen to compared to the rest of the album. Still good though.
11. The Lighthouse — in my opinion, a bad choice for the last track of the album. It’s not bad, just slow and rather dull. Oh well.

My one gripe with the album is that it’s too short. It weighs in at well under an hour, and it could certainly have done with another two or three songs. David Byrne’s albums are usually quite short and also often end with an underwhelming track, so it’s presumably a policy of his, but I don’t have to agree with it. On the other hand, it’s so fantastic that I could listen to it on a continuous loop, so length really isn’t an issue.

Of course, since my taste in music is weird to say the least, you are right to doubt me. So don’t listen to me; listen to David. He has allowed the entire album to be streamed on the internet. That’s right, you can listen to the whole damn thing for free. What’s more you can even embed it on your blog, like this;

Isn’t that nice?

On Tuesday, I had my last chemistry prac for this semester. Do you know what that means?

That means I had to make a polyiodide salt, crystallise it (pretty metallic-bluey-green flakes) and analytically determine the number of iodine atoms in the molecular formula. We did the redox titration with sodium thiosulfate and starch as the indicator. Sounds like fun? Well, it was more like a delirium - I overshot the mark on the 50mL volumetric flask and had to do the weighing of the crystals again - with half an hour left. I managed to get only 3 titrations done - luckily, two of them were 0.1mL apart (concordant). And then we had to do the washing up and the calculations - on a sheet stained all over with brown iodine solution. Yuck.

Good thing I finished. The formula of my compound turned out to be N(CH3)4I(I2)2. Smashing.

And we got to use methanol. Exciting.

Smells.

Smells are awesome.

I learned a fun reaction today;

Acid that smells like cheese + Alcohol that smells like alcohol <=> Stuff that smells like Pineapple + Burning.

It wasn’t meant to smell like burning, but I held my nose right up to it. In retrospect this was NOT A GOOD DECISION.

Lots of it.

It’s been a fair while since our last comic posting. Azarov promised one on Sunday. You can tell what happens next, can’t you?

Actually, the comic is already being drawn. It’s just that BOTH his computers have failed.

So no comic.

The end.

I must now praise the unseen hero of Jeff’s Pie Shop; Akismet. It is thanks to Akismet that we have a free-commenting website (admittedly, one with no comments on it, but even so…). And today, we recieved a monumental boon from the Akismet gods;

Akismet has protected your site from 1,000 spam comments already, but there’s nothing in your spam queue at the moment.

Good on ‘em eh?

If there’s anyone at all reading this webcommiec besides Alpieghty God and Mechlord, I apologise for the standstill Jeff’s Pie Shop is in now. It’s just that my university studies are taking up much of my time. I should theoretically still have time to do the comic, but that would only be if I was reasonably organised, which I’m not. :-[

As for PieGod - thank you for not pestering me. I aim to have comic 13 up by the weekend after the next.