Category: Feeble Excuse

  • Feeble Excuse Feebly Missing in Service

    I’m nto sure why, but Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse vanished from the SoulGeek server about a month ago. It might be due to some of the website tweaks they’ve been making. I’ll try to get the existing shows back up on the site as well as the interview I recorded with MC Frontalot a couple of months ago, but I may just roll Feeble into this site and keep it here instead. We’ll see.

    For those of you wanting updates on Jump Leads, the next issue should start soon. The Winter period is usually slower for us. The number of updates reduces due to JjAR’s other commitments, but we usually get back into full swing once the new year rolls around.

    Also, everybody keep your fingers crossed for my buddy Ray Friesen, who had a very successful pitch meeting on Thursday for a project that, if all goes well, I may be writing for. It’s an absolutely cracking project and I’d love to be attached to it in some way, even if it’s just getting the tea for the chaps in the recording studio.

  • Of Plums and Puddings

    Michelle recently told me that I use name-calling far too often on But, Sir…, which undermines the entire point of the blog. She is not wrong. It used to be that I would use insults sparingly, but recently I’ve been using them a lot. A lot of a lot, actually. It’s lazy, and I’m sure I could justify it all by saying “I’ve had it with these motherfucking morons on this motherfucking petitions site”, but if that were true why bother writing the blog at all? Why half-heartedly consider the possibility of putting a book together at some point in the next twelve months?

    This week Andrew and I had a lovely email conversation with a man who objected to me calling him a “fucking plum”, and then changed his position so that he’d only objected to me using the word “fucking”, and then threatened to call the Police. It highlighted two very important points – that there’s nothing wrong with name-calling, and that I really should tone it down a little. So I have done. I posted a bunch of petitions on But, Sir… today and there’s nary an insult amongst them. Considering one of those petitions came from recurring problem petitioner Keith Jones, I think I did rather well.

    Jump Leads is updating again, and I have to say it’s a bit of a relief. JjAR had taken a month off to try and work on becoming a freelance artist, but the work just isn’t out there in Russia so he’s stuck behind a desk still. I’m hoping I can pull from my exhaustive list of contacts to try and get him work on this side of the pond – maybe even a Work Visa. We’ll see what happens.

    There’ll be a new episode of Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse going up hopefully tomorrow featuring an awesome interview with the Grand Daddy of Nerdcore himself, MC Frontalot, and I’m once again collaborating on a project with Kill9 Studios that should be oodles of fun to write and shoot provided we don’t all get exterminated in the process.

  • Ben’s Boomer’s Day Off FAQ

    I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about Boomer’s Day Off lately. Has there been a resurgance in its popularity? I’ve no idea. Anyway, I tend to get asked the same questions over and over, and I’m going to go ahead and answer them here as best I can before I climb into bed.

    Will there be any more episodes?

    Honestly, I don’t know. Michelle seems to want to do another one, and I’d love to do one if we can come up with an idea that actually furthers the story of these characters. There’s a lot standing in the way of us doing another episode, though – it all depends on whether the cast want to do it. It’s a huge ordeal getting everybody together, getting the make-up ready and so forth.

    What would the fifth episode be about?

    We have’t yet hammered out a concrete idea. Michelle had some rough ideas. She reads the comments on YouTube and the feedback we get through Steam, and where possible she tries to give little nods to stuff the fans want. One of the things people really wanted to see was Frank the Tank, and she spent some time last month looking into how we could do that. I’m perhaps a little bit more skeptical as to whether or not we could pull off a Tank on our limited budget, but anything is possible.

    Can you give me Tim’s/Michelle’s/Ben Dunn’s contact details? He/she is so awesome.

    No. Sorry. Michelle and I made our Steam handles available on the videos, and our email addresses are both publicly available, but that’s about it. I’m not going to give you Ben Dunn’s address or Tim’s phone number. (Yes, people have asked. Creepy, creepy people.)

    Are you going to boycott Left 4 Dead 2?

    No bloody way. You know how utterly ridiculous the entire boycott is? People are complaining about how the game hasn’t had any serious content added to it, but you know what? We got an entirely new gameplay mode and a map to play it on. For free. We’ve had hundreds of hours of entertainment from a game that cost us $50. Compare that to some games, which offer only six or seven hours of gameplay for $40-60. Some people claim that the development of a sequel shows that Valve had no faith in the original, but they started development of L4D2 almost immediately after they finished development of L4D. You don’t jump straight into developing the sequel if you think the game isn’t going to sell in the first place.

    Left 4 Dead continues to be an utterly fantastic experience and in all honesty I don’t expect the sequel to be any less.

    Are Tim and Michelle a couple?

    Nope!

    Are you and Michelle a couple?

    Nope!

    Are you and Tim a couple?

    Nope! I just let him jump on me sometimes.

    What else are you working on?

    Kill9 have a few projects in store for later in the year, and I’m not going to be involved in writing any of those. Kill9 will be doing a musical, and I’m considering auditioning for that, but I’m not sure my voice is quite up to par. We’ll see.

    As for me, I continue to roll on with Jump Leads (we’ll be at Comic-Con this year, more details to come shortly) and But, Sir…, and today I launched a new podcast called Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse wherein I interview people I want to talk to just for the Hell of it. PodWarp 1999 is more or less done but we may be doing a reunion special in the near future. And I’ve started drawing again, so there’s a chance I may launch a second webcomic – one I’ll be drawing myself.

    I think that pretty much covers every question I’ve been asked so far. I’ll update this list as time goes by, assuming anyone asks me anything that isn’t “wen r u doin part 5????”

  • Presenting a new project: Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse

    I’m rather pleased to announce that after weeks of planning, (which themselves followed months of “Is this a good idea? Can I make it work? Will people be interested?”) I’m ready to lift the curtain on a project that will be going live next month:

    The premise for Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse is so simple it may actually leave you feeling insulted. Each week I will be interviewing someone who I admire or who has inspired me – an actor, a musician, a programmer, an artist, or perhaps someone you’ve never even heard of before – just because I want to. I’ll be chatting with them about what they do, and asking the sort of questions I haven’t heard answers to yet.

    One of the aims is to have a weekly podcast about 30 to 45 minutes in length that is hopefully a lot of fun to listen to. But the key aim, as implied by the title, is just to get a chance to chat with people I want to chat with.

    The show will be launching at the end of June and while I can’t reveal a full roster of interviewees for the first season just yet, I’m quite pleased to announce that the first episode will feature an interview with Jonathan Coulton. Why? Well, because I’ve wanted to talk to him for ages about, ooh, lots of things.

    The podcast is very kindly being sponsored by SoulGeek.com, who have politely asked me not to talk about the bodies they keep under the basement in their corporate headqu– oh, DAMMIT!