Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Here is a blatant misuse of power, rescued only by the most tenuous of links. Jonathan Coulton, he who co-wrote Portal’s song, Still Alive, is taking part at a night of stand-up comedy for 826 Valencia, San Francisco, this Saturday.

826 is a project set up by Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Dave Eggers, that offers free one-to-one tuition for high school students and programmes to allow young people to get excited about writing. It’s a truly wonderful thing, popping up all over America (and soon in N Ireland), completely hilarious, and should be supported by everyone ever. With this tenuous videogaming link, should you live in SF you now know to attend, perhaps paying massively more than the ticket price. This year they have Bobby Lee, Tig Notaro, Al Madrigal, Jonathan Coulton, Ian Edwards, and Davy Rothbart (but sadly not Patton Oswalt who’s been along to the previous five annual events).

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Okay. We said it had got as silly as it could go. We suspect we’re only just getting started, as an Idea struck Alec and I after we both found this…

By Jeremy of Anonymous Lefty. And then we realised that Jonathan Coulton has posted the lyrics and the chords of Still Alive over at his blog. Cultural Object A + Cultural Object B = Idea C.

We think people should do their own cover versions of Portal and post them to Youtube. No, really.

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Valve have just announced that The Orange Box is to have one more disc inside. A single, written by the excellent geek-turned-geek-singer, Jonathan Coulton, and members of the Valve writing staff, is to accompany the five games already bulging its cardboardy edges. (Presumably those ordering through Steam will be given a download).

Maddeningly (for both you and me), I know what the song is, and I will be murdered if I say. And I also know that I thought only yesterday, “Valve really ought to release that song as a single.” So clearly my thoughts control Valve’s actions. Know this: it’s incredibly good.

I’m just off to think about Valve giving me a well-paid job on their writing staff now.