The original song about zombies writing memos, "Re: Your Brains," is by the esteemed Jonathan Coulton: for info on this song, including a link to the tab, see www.jonathancoulton.com/wiki/index.php/Re_Your_Brains

I've seen Mr. Coulton play that song live several times, and played and sang it many times myself but the idea for this re-imagining of the song was born when my wife Grace and I noticed Baby 3-year-old chasing around our Baby 1-year-old screaming "I'm going to eat your brains!" Parenting fail? We needed to have that awkward talk with the kids that all parents dread: about how, sometimes, when a zombie loves brains very much...

Anyway, we thought maybe we should change the lyrics to something a little less carnivorous. On a recent drive down to Ann Arbor, Grace and I hashed out these words. It started off as a cheap pun but kind of grew on us and she kept asking me if I was really going to record it. I had the day off work and the kids were out of the house, so...

The song is told from the perspective of a college student home on break, telling his mom that he's gone veggie -- with the evangelism of the recently converted.

Given my limited quiet time, I set myself the challenge of recording, editing, and mixing the whole thing (including the video) in one day. There are some things I'd change, but I'm still pretty happy with the way it came out. That's the version attached to the YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-64Nb0KJSTU)

This evening I put in a couple more hours of editing tracks, piecing together best takes, and tweaking the mix and effects. I didn't do any new recording, but there are still slight improvements. I'm calling this version final.

And no, I'm not technically a vegetarian, although I don't eat very much meat. I was a lacto-ovo-vegetarian for a couple of years, and a vegan (actually a fruitarian) for a few months... back in college. I didn't have this _exact_ conversation with my mom -- but I did make her and my stepfather vegetarian meals while I was home on breaks, with mixed results. But that's a story for another time.

Instruments: Peavey Firenza with P-90 pickups, Squier Venus, Steinberger Synapse fretless bass, shaker. The guitars went into an Edirol FA-66; the bass went into a Radial JD-V direct box and then into an Apogee Ensemble. The bass tone came out _terrible_ -- it was operator error, sorry; I had input levels set completely wrong, and that signal chain usually sounds much better. The microphone is an Oktava MK-219 large diaphragm condenser recorded with a Reflexion filter. Everything was put together in Apple Logic. The only 3rd-party plug-in is Izotope Ozone for mastering.