Jonathan Coulton

Code Monkey. Brain-eating zombie colleague. Murderous A.I. with a wry sense of humor. That Jonathan Coulton sure has some great songs on topics some people can identify with.

I first discovered Jonathan Coulton, or JoCo for short, on TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcast #133. I learned that JoCo was a successful niche marketer on the Internet. Leo Laporte mentioned Code Monkey as one of the more famous JoCo song. At the end, Leo put on the song Still Alive, which is sung at the end of the game Portal. It was a very nice tune and I decided to check out JoCo.

I finally went to JonathanCouton.com and what a treat that is. All his songs can be listened to online and there are many ways to buy them. As suspected, Code Monkey is about a computer programmer and what a sweet story it is, as he was infatuated with some girl in the office. Next, I smiled a few times as I listened to Re: Your Brain. Ah, just another day in cubicle-ville, with all the office lingo, except the need here is of one zombie colleague wanting to eat the brain of another. I already bought Code Monkey, Re: Your Brain and its French version, Re: Vos Cerveaux, and probably end up also buying A Laptop Like You ("I forgive your strange one-button mouse"... Hmm, which laptop has a one-button mouse?) and The Presidents (I love history.) I don't like the "cover" songs that JoCo made, especially when they are not as powerful as the original. Still he sure has some great tunes written for the cubicle-dwelling crowd and the geeky population out there. He even mentioned my favorite snack (Frito) and my favorite drink (Mountain Dew). Last but not least, he lives in Brooklyn! I'll keep an eye out for him on the subway from now on.