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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 2h

That's the typography equivalent of one of those 80s hairstyles that had no organizing principle and tried to do too many things at the same time.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 2h

Hmm. I suppose a cover song is fanmusic in a way.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 3h

This WIP Wednesday thing, is this solely a fic thing, or...?

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 4h

Look, I'm not saying one of the cats put 170 markers on the start of measure 23 of this music project I'm working on (which I have to manually delete one at a time), but I'm not not saying it either.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 5h

Gremlin's being all "let me see if I can trick the substitute teacher into giving me second breakfast."

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 16h

Gremlin spiciness update. He engaged in fisticuffs during shrimp cocktail hour earlier, but S said he shouldn't be prosecuted for that because, I dunno, that's The Purrge or something.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

Anyway, I just thought it was really cool that I have a much better idea of what to do with the chorus now because I just fell off a ledge and felt the world where it needs to be.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

Regardless, everything dropped out and I felt myself falling off a ledge. Not in a bad way. Falling into another realm. Letting go of one thing and embracing another and feeling free. And I was like, holy shit, I just fell off the ledge and entered this song's dream world. WHICH I NOW HAVE TO WRITE.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

I'm using my prechorus the same way and as I'm listening I'm feeling this buildup of emotion around this person who's gone, and then at the moment where all the music drops out, I experienced my cover not as mine but...from the inside? As something bigger than me? Not sure how to describe it.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

Important context is this song is about loss and loneliness and how only in one's dreams does one have this person they've lost. Verses are about the pain of being without this person, chorus is about having this person in their dreams.

Prechoruses in the original perform a build-up of emotion.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

So today I decided I'd make the prechorus build the intensity, drop everything out right before the chorus, and then see how I'm feeling about it at that point. I'd been tweaking and listening throughout the day and just now I listened from the top to experience the big picture.

And I FELT it.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

I just hadn't been able to really find the heart of my prechorus and chorus. But I hatched an idea last night: I should be an asshole. I should build up the prechorus like it's heading for a big chorus and then...nope. Complete anticlimactic chorus. Maybe even no drums. This is always a risky move.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 17h

The original of this song starts pretty bare in the verse and builds up to a big, melodramatic chorus. Originally I was gonna do that with my cover, but I roughed out a big chorus and...it just didn't fit the claustrophobic vibe I was doing in the verse. So I knew no big chorus, but beyond that...

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 18h

If you think this is weird, my quest for a sample pack with better shaker sounds to use on this song landed me on a page for a pack with a bunch of percussion samples.

Made with a ball-jointed doll.

Who's also a witch?

And a session player?

And a...psychotherapist?

I'm so confused.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 20h

No, self, you can't make Take Me Out To The Ball Game with bicycle horns.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 20h

What is this? The Purrge?

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 20h

All I remember of Dutch is hazelnoot, thanks to ice cream guy.

And Yellow Biafra, thanks to the anarchist squatter internet cafe guy.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 20h

Gave the cats their customary shrimp cocktail they get whenever I'm on cat duty. As usual they went feral as soon as they clocked what I was about to do. To which I replied, "please stay on the line, your paw is important to us."

Then Gigi and Gremlin got into a slap fight.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 20h

Speaking as someone who was there when it happened, fuck if I know. Sometimes I forget how...colorful my life was prior to my brain collapse and bipolar diagnosis.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 21h

It wasn't until I actually put the experience into words just now that I realized how weird it was that one time I was on a friend's porch where another friend put up his sex swing and sat in it while a DMB groupie straddled him and was very confused why we kept asking her if DMB ever pooped on her.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 21h

You know, the more I tell of this story...

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 21h

I have no clue where the DMB chick came from. She just sort of materialized and started talking about how much she loved that band and how she saw like 80 shows that year or whatever. She had never heard of poopgate and couldn't understand why M and I kept asking her if she encountered DMB's poop.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 21h

I think the same? This one stashed a bunch of his stuff at M's house while living out of town, then he came back to visit one night, found it in storage, set it up on M's porch, then we sat around and talked while some chick who wouldn't shut up about DMB straddled him on the swing.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 21h

There are so many interesting use cases for so many of these tools (I use an LLM/RAG assistant as an accessibility tool for web search, for instance, and it's help me surmount a TON of verbal processing barriers), but it's now almost impossible to talk about those.

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Len @lendot.bsky.social · 21h

"We've assembled things that let you put person/thing on person/thing!"

So have I. They're called tables, chairs, and sex swings*

"We created things that can do the work of humans!"

So have many of my friends. They're called children.

*Not my sex swing, I just helped J set his up on M's porch.

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