As a little kid balloons fascinated me. I wanted to both hold on as tight as I could to keep it from getting away and to let it go so I could watch it soar through the sky. Either choice ended in tears. If I held on to it it was deflated on the floor by the next morning. If I let it go I didn't have a balloon anymore.

As an adult balloons still fascinate me. I want to know where they go. But more importantly if something goes up instead of down is it still considered littering? Even if I tie something to the end of the string? Even if that something is a half eaten hot dog? What kind of park has both a balloon and hot dog vendor but no trash cans?

cravipat escaped the blue labyrinth long enough to write this.

1 adventurer found their way to the golden castle.

Words uncovered in the catacombs : oddities

While rummaging through my idea list for this week's material I thought this item might be a little too morbid, but after spending the weekend in the clutches of a foul malady I couldn't think of anything more fitting. So I give to you my list of possible tombstone epitaphs:

Husband, Father, Friend, Dead.

You didn't drop your keys in the casket did you?

I think I left the oven on.

Do not open until zombie apocalypse.

I stopped here because honestly I wasn't ever going to top that last one.

cravipat escaped the blue labyrinth long enough to write this.

1 adventurer found their way to the golden castle.

Words uncovered in the catacombs : oddities

I often contemplate the purpose of this site. On past sites I always tried to create lengthy posts since they were usually a week apart if not more. Left in the wake of this type of thinking was a bunch of unused thoughts and ideas that I didn't feel would work as a long post. Why make people wait a week for only a paragraph?

After a while enough short post material started gathering that I considered starting a new site. I was going to call it Monkey Nuggets; two words that I felt deserved to be combined. It would be haven for all the odd ideas that I felt didn't belong on my normal site. As I started thinking about site design ideas my name choice started to confuse me. What exactly was a monkey nugget? Are they nuggets made out of monkey meat or something even more disgusting? After spending a week contemplating the answer I lost interest in the whole thing. Plus some hacker gnomes stole all my material for their Gneet Gnome Gnews site.

So here we are once again. I'm working on getting this place running again and the crappy ideas are building up. Since the archives are already filled with short posts I'm dedicating next week to the revival of Monkey Nuggets. A week filled with post so short and ideas so dumb you'll wonder why I even bothered at all. It's better than nothing, right?

cravipat escaped the blue labyrinth long enough to write this.

2 adventurers found their way to the golden castle.

Words uncovered in the catacombs : announcements

Last week I mentioned a top secret project in the works. I'm sure you assumed it would never appear and I would never mention it again in hopes that you'd eventually forget all about it. Today is the day I prove you wrong. In a never-ending attempt at finding my niche in life I've decided to see how the title musician fits me.



I'll admit it's all very DIY at this point but it's a start. With the power of the internet anything could happen. If the right person happens to hear my stuff something bigger might come my way. To be honest though, I'm not really expecting much to come out of it other than the experience of trying.

I'm still working on getting some song samples together, but I wanted to get the track list out there and talk a bit about it to help build some anticipation. Look for the samples and probably a shameless self promoting myspace page sometime next week.



Before I get into talking about the tracks let me say my musical style is what you might call extremely experimental. It's probably less music and more performance art. I expect 90% of people to call it garbage and deem it not even worthy of using the CD as a coaster. So let me dedicate this to that other 10%.

but do not forget - The idea behind this track is what inspired me to put a whole album together. I was cleaning the basement when I came across my old Simon. Anything to get out of cleaning I started to play. After a while it hit me that this would make an interesting song. It took me a few play-throughs to find sequence that was musically interesting. The end result is a sort of a dueling banjos feel. Was I able to beat the machine? You'll have to listen to find out.

tears over old griefs - A lot of the tracks are a combination of simple melodies juxtaposed with spoke words or real life sounds. Here a sad tune is combined with sounds of water, from single drips building to trickling streams and culminating with a raging waterfall.

of its ugly side - I tried to experiment a bit with a kind of musical evolution. I would write two short pieces that were quite different and then try to work my way from one to the other. Here a pleasant uplifting piece devolves into something that grates the ears, but the change is slow and subtle that is put both pieces into a new light.

even in his silence - This is probably one of my favorite tracks. A friend and I sat down to hold a fake improvised interview. I then stripped out all of my friend's responses leaving only my questions and reactions. It's interesting how people interpret the silence.

acquaintance, or a stranger - Familiar songs played in unfamiliar ways. To say anymore would ruin the surprise.

exactly fits the newspaper - Some might tell you a crumpled newspaper is not an acceptable instrument. I say those people aren't trying hard enough.

enough to rule others - How far would people go if you said "Simon says" in front of all of your commands? Probably not as far as the things in this dark track, but the wartime march/propaganda tune is pretty catchy though.

you can do today - Another fun track. I headed to the nearby grocery store with a micro cassette recorder and asked people to recite some of the items off of their shopping list. I was surprised with the number of people that went along with the idea unfortunately one of the ones that didn't ratted me out and the manager who asked me to leave. Luckily I caught it on tape for the perfect ending to the track. The store's piped in muzak makes an interesting backdrop of sound.

facts are stupid things - A simple tune backs some neighborhood kids reading some of the more strange (and untrue) items from snopes.com, a great urban legend reference site.

thorns, don't go barefoot - Prickly is the best way to describe the music of this track, which is interspersed with friends and family giving me their most convincing "Ouch." Those that weren't convincing enough got pinched. They should have tried harder the first time. Papapishu!

larger experiences of life - Another evolutionary track. From birth to the grave I tried to capture the important moments in life. It's harder to do than you think in three minutes and forty-nine seconds.

come back from it - You won't be able to tell from listening to it, but I probably spent the most time on this track. I focused all my "talent" into creating the best song I could. Then I revered the whole thing. I probably should have listened to it reversed as I was putting it together but like everything else it was a learning experience.

So there you have my first step into a new world. The samples should be up shortly and soon after that I plan to have CDs available for purchase.

If you actually managed to read this far you're probably wondering if I've gone crazy. The answer is yes, but not the way you think. I'm sorry if it comes as a disappointment but I have no forthcoming album. I was actually taken by an internet meme, something I've managed to avoid all this time. The meme is to create a CD cover and the rules are simple.

1. The first article title on this page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quote on this page is the title of your album.
3. Finally, the third picture here, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. (Optional) Using the rule from #2 above, create a track list of 12 songs.

Once I got started I got a bit carried away and you can see the end result. After having written all this if I had any musical talent at all I'd actually consider making this into an actual album. Maybe I should anyway. I might be sitting on the next big internet hit.

cravipat escaped the blue labyrinth long enough to write this.

11 adventurers found their way to the golden castle.

Words uncovered in the catacombs : music