Blog 4/27 & 4/28

Note: I've been quite lax in putting these out this month, so I'm going to try doing two or three days at a time, to catch up (is "lax" short for lackadaisical, or laxative?).

4/27

I had some more paid voicework I had to get finished today.  There were four male characters, three of which were in the same room, talking to each other, and one of them was an eighty year old black Blues guitarist.  Hmm.

Well, I went above and to the moon, Alice, on that part, and it totally ripped up my throat, causing me to have to edit out several coughs and one prayer to Shiva not to let the evil of Kali take me.  

4/28

I'm here at the library again.  That makes four days in a row.  And the first thing I did once I logged into this computer, was to look at something online that I absolutely HAD to check out, despite only having 45 minutes on this computer, and coming here specifically to write.  THAT, Your Honor, is why I'm never going to amount to anything in this life.  Better luck next one.

In my daily podcasting earlier in the year, I mentioned an escaped mental patient that I see here at the library from time to time, who called me "fucking lizard face."  It disturbed me enough that I did a lil episode about it.

Well, I saw him again today, and as soon as he saw me, he said, "Two more just came in,"* stood up, and headed for the exit, leaving his coat at the desk where he'd been working ("working?").  I gritted my teeth, logged in to the computer, and put him out of my mind. 

A few minutes later, he came back in, grabbed his coat, and went quickly toward the stairs again.

In this book I've been writing, the main character of Alec (I don't believe I've come up with a last name for him, but he goes by Alec Ewell) is highly empathetic toward others, much to the disgust of his more pragmatic grandfather.  Alec sees everyone as a person, one with an inner life, and suffers if they're suffering, even if they're strangers, he cares about them.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that I'm not like Alec.  The crazy mumbling dude at the library disturbs me, and I don't like him.

Perhaps I should write a scene where Alec encounters him, though, and see what he would do.

*He said this to himself, or to whomever he imagined was nearby.

4/27 Half-Week In Review

4/24

Guess I have to start over with these (not that I was particularly thrilled about writing them the first time).

About a year back, a bunch of a-holes on TikTok came up with this viral game where you were hot shit if you went into a store and yanked the head off the LeBron James SPACE JAM 2 toy, filming it with your phone.  After a while, though, they moved on to the next big thing.

But here we are, the end of April, and the remedial class of TikTok uploaders are still doing it.  Exhibit A at the local Target, Your Honor:

Exhibit B:

My nephew bought one of those Hoverboard machines today, and brought it out, then all of us were afraid to get on it (the eleven year old eventually got on and made it go back and forth, rather slowly, but better than the rest of us).  Finally, they got the idea to hook a seat to it (along with a third wheel) and turn it into a scooter, that way no one could get thrown violently off of it.

The fourteen year old zoomed down the road so impressively, making it look both safe and easy, that I said, "Okay, I'll try it."  I sat on it, started it moving forward, and only then said, "Wait, how do you brake and how do you accelera--"  At which point, the thing sped forward and stopped abruptly, throwing me violently off of it.  My knees hit the pavement, then both my palms, and I was once again reminded of my age and lifelong lack of coordination.  The funny thing is, I sat in the street for a full minute, because I just couldn't get my legs to lift me up, and my eleven year old nephew came over and helped me to stand.

Don't ever get old, kids.  Check out in your twenties.

4/25

My knee was particularly sore today from my spill on the hoverboard yesterday.  But nobody MADE me get on it, you know? I'm at 32,893 words on "Balms & Sears," but that includes the middle part where I wrote out which scenes I hadn't gotten to yet (only one of which I subsequently have).  I've decided that what I have is what I've got, so everything I've not incorporated from my earlier writing will have to be re-written.  It's not optimal, but it gives me an idea of what I'm up against.

In entertainment news, I'm back to as heavy as I've ever been, due (in part) to eating ice cream late at night while I watch TV.  I'm not exactly proud of this, but it does taste good.  As far as television goes, "Better Call Saul" started up again, for its final season.  It's a show that I really, really admire, even though every episode has a twenty-five minute story stretched to an hour, paced like the famed TV cut of 1978's SUPERMAN.

So, that picture I posted of the disgusting toilet yesterday was actually just when I emptied the wet vacuum tank into the toilet, after having sucked up a bunch of dirt and sand from the carpet.  Still, it looked pretty revolting, which are what the TikTok toy head thieves are.  Yeah, I said it.  See you in Hell.

 4/26

My knee still hurts, but stairs are easier, which is nice because the library has an awful lot of stairs.

Huh.  This blogging program suddenly started suggesting words to me today (for example, when I typed "for ex" it suggested "example"), and I hate it.  If anything, it's making me slower at blogging, and enjoying it less.

I feel like I failed today, at least as far as being productive.  I got work done, took my mom to the grocery store, took the four year old to watch the big machine break up the neighbor's driveway (it was a piledriver-type machine that shook the ground each time it came down), played a video game for about ninety minutes, and now I'm at the library to get some work done.  SOME.

I did push-ups this morning, which is nice, I suppose.

Now I'm going to get some writing done ("Balms & Sears" stands at 33,417 words).*

To my surprise, the Audible guys (or gals) seemed to have rushed out the release of my audio collection, because hey, it's available for purchase.  That's almost TOO soon, guys.

4/27

I finished another Rish Outcast episode edit, and began another one.  Taking a break, I started editing "Hatchling" audio files again.  It's been long enough I've started to feel like somebody else wrote it, and I'm surprised by how dumb I wrote Rick to be.  He's so utterly unlike me in practically every way (athletic, popular, blindly ignorant of the people around him, smooth with the ladies without lifting a finger) that I imagine that twenty years ago, I'll wonder if somebody else wrote this book.

Don't get me wrong, I like that about "Hatchling" (about the only thing I do like, amirite, folks?), but he's pretty slow on the uptake, no wonder he scores with lots of chicks.

I know I'm way behind the curve, but last night, I finally saw EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE.  I'd heard great things about it, but nobody had warned me how weird it was.

I've seen a lot of movies, but let's say I've seen a thousand.  Of the thousand movies I've watched, I'd say it was the number 1 weirdest movie I've ever seen.  I almost want to sit down and watch it again before it leaves theaters, so I can better understand it.

I highly suspect the dude I was sitting next to (who had seen it before and was bringing a friend of his to watch it with him) had gotten high right before seeing it, as a, you know, enhancement or something.

Anyway, I don't usually want to watch a movie again right after seeing it.  But this one seems to be one I would appreciate more a second time.  No weed necessary.

"Balms & Sears" is at 34,063 words now.

My buddy Big Anklevich is absolutely obsessed with buying toys right now.  I sound like I'm criticizing him, but I'm not.  It's just an interesting little phase he's in, kind of like when I was obsessed with exercising and writing every single day, as stupid as that makes me look in 2022.  But he keeps finding stuff and buying it, even though he probably shouldn't, and he knows his wife frowns on it.  But I think it fills a need, and both he and his wife work full-time, plus he's got two fewer mouths to feed at home, so I think he can afford it.

I saw an action figure of the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man today, and nearly followed Big down that path.

But I didn't.  I just couldn't justify it.  It was too expensive, and I wouldn't even dare open the figure.

But I'll let you in on a little secret: if Big had bought that same Wolf Man last week, I would have bought it too.  So, who's the bigger fool, as old Ben Kenobi asked?

*I said "some," I didn't say "a great deal."

4/23 Week In Review

 4/19

I've been sharing with you some of the spam messages I've been getting in my inbox.  The oddest one this week has the subject line "The brain inside your penis."  I've no effing idea what that means, so I went ahead and opened the email.

And it was blank.  Except for the line "To stop receiving messages, please visit here."  I copied and pasted that exactly as it was . . . with no link attached.  Weird stuff.

Over the last three days, I watched a movie I got from Netflix called THE VANISHING (2018).  It's a Psychological Thriller about three men maintaining a lighthouse, who discover a rowboat on the island, and eventually encounter murder and madness.  It's based on a true-life mystery from 1900 where three men simply disappeared from manning the Flanna Isles Lighthouse in Scotland.

It was an unpleasant movie, so I'm not recommending it to you and your fine family, but it was well made, and bummed me out, which I'm sure was the intention of the filmmakers.

4/20

It's four-twenty, so enjoy your doobie, pal.

I hurried over to the library before it closed, and now that I'm sitting here and logged onto the computer . . . my desire to write has completely fled from me.  That may be all the proof I need to know that the Devil is real.

4/21

Today is Earth Day.  I like the Earth.  I ought to do something nice to celebrate.  But I won't.

So, I've really let this blog thing go.  I got to the library, and I'm tempted to just sit down and go through each of my blog posts for the past week or so, check them for spelling, add some kind of stupid "Ah well" to each one of them, and publish them, instead of writing.

But I'm going to at least TRY to write a little on "Balms & Sears" today.  Wish me luck.

I have "Balms & Sears" in its own email, which I update every time I come here.  And it only has three words in the body of the email: "Keep it up!"  I like that, even if I don't always follow through.*  It sometimes makes me feel encouraged, and that's . . . well, something.

4/22

Last night, I remembered that I had an overdue Ray Bradbury short story collection (I remembered because I was sent an Overdue Notice email from the library), so I sat down to record an audio version of his most famous short story.**  I got about forty minutes into it before I looked down and realized that my memory had filled up and I was no longer recording.  So, I plugged in the device, looked for something to delete (there was nothing I hadn't already edited or released), and freed up just enough space to finish the story.

I got up to get a drink (butchering the Father of Modern Science Fiction is thirsty work), got distracted by various stuff, and came back to my room at about 1:25.  I didn't even consider finishing the recording, and the next day (today), I brought the book back and paid the late fees on it*** and it occurred to me that I have half a story recorded.  I'm not sure what I should do about that.

I have been complaining about my "Balms & Sears" book for weeks now, and today I decided that what I needed to do was create an outline for it, a point by point rundown of what happens in the book.  That way I could see which bits I have and which are lost or still need to be written.  I went all the way to the end, which I never had before, not in all the years I'd been writing it.  I'd been working up to a big emotional climax, and now, it would seem, there is a physical climax after that, at the end of the book.  Then it is over. 

I think it will really help me finish the story, now that I know where it's going (and going to end).  Stephen King would be disappointed in me, but deep down, he'd be more disappointed if I never finished the book at all.  Even though I got very little usable writing done today, I am happy with this progress, and will probably set another goal of getting it to 40K or 50 in May (my goal for April was 30K).  I don't know if the book is any good, but there are certainly some good parts in it, and that will have to be enough.

4/23

Over the last two days, I wrote a couple of blog posts on here (not yet publishing them), and then the darn computer wanted to restart.  I saved everything in my audio files, saved my text (just a story by another author I'll never get around to reading), and let the computer reboot.  When it came back up, I had no sound again, so I restarted three times, and then everything was fixed . . . except the blog posts were gone.

*For some reason, I was thinking of my outpost outbreak story, and how far along I got on it (tens of thousands of words, right?), and then just abandoned it.  And it made me pretty disappointed in myself.  Of course, I abandoned it in 2020, only to pick it up again ten or eleven months later, so that could happen again.  You never know.

**Or maybe second most famous.  Top three, for sure.

***You'll like this bit of trivia: young Ray Bradbury didn't own a typewriter, so he would go to the library where they had typewriters you could rent for ten cents every half hour.  It was there that he wrote the book that would become "Fahrenheit 451," and ended up paying the library nine dollars and eighty cents for the privilege. 

My Voice on HorrorAddicts

I do a voice on the spooky story "Maudaleen" by Kevin Ground.  It's part of the HorrorAddicts show, narrated by Emerian Rich.  

Basically, I say one word, over and over . . . and that's it.*  I really earned my pay on that one.

Check it out HERE.

*A slight exaggeration.

4/18 Week In Review

4/15

I'll admit two things.  One: I quite enjoy doing the daily blogging again.  And two, I haven't remembered to do it each and every day.

I thought I'd be pretty tired today, after the late night anoche, but it was really only an hour or ninety minutes less sleep than I'd normally get, but I was fine. 

I worked on the audiobook ("Almost there," as Red Leader said), and then, feeling like editing something, I opened up the reading I did of a short story called "The Gold Bug," a couple years ago for a contest Marshal Latham was doing.*  I recorded it a few months ago and never did anything with it, because I felt like it was super weak and lame.  But in editing it this afternoon, I surprised myself by kind of liking it.  

It's written from the point of view of an eleven year old boy who misinterprets something that happens while on a family vacation, and was based on an experience I had on a family trip back in the Eighties, where I saw a car in Redlands, California, then saw that same car the next day in Santa Monica, over an hour away (79 miles, according to Yahoo!).  

I also incorporated a time when somebody put beer bottles behind the back tires of my Uncle John's car, so they would slash the tires when he backed out (a memory that amused me, damn my very eyes).  The story is still not a great one, but I'll happily put it in the next collection as a sort of bonus.

I'm at the library now, and there are eight other patrons up here with me (that I see).  I predict that by the time I leave, it will be just me, as it always is every Friday.

I finished that Joe Hill story "Late Returns" that I was reading, and sent it to Jeff, who always wanted to work in a library.  He loved it . . . and told me he already had a copy.

4/16

Usually, I go to the library on Saturday afternoons, but we were pretty busy today.  There was a big toy trade in the capital that was starting at noon, but people began setting up at nine in the morning (or earlier), and customers started showing up at ten (or earlier).  I heard about this online, not knowing that it was supposed to rain in the afternoon, so they'd moved it to earlier in an attempt to avoid that.

On Facebook, collectors were already posting that they'd bought up all sorts of great junk, so I loaded my two older nephews into the car, and we took off.  The teenaged nephew has his own debit card, which he'd lost for several months, and we stopped off at his bank so he could withdraw some cash.  Only once we were standing in front of the ATM did he reveal that he didn't remember his PIN.

I texted his mother, my mother, and his father, hoping one of them would know the number, but they didn't respond.  So, we left empty-handed, with me pretty frustrated.  Then, just as we were approaching the parking lot sale, my nephew called his mom for the third time, and she picked up.  She knew his PIN, but we had left the bank ten minutes before.  We drove around, looking for another bank, and this time, the boy was able to withdraw plenty of cash.

Still, by the time we did arrive at the toy trade, it was surprisingly busy. There were, at a guess, thirty vendor booths in a parking lot, and there were many, many tempting items for sale, some for bargain prices.  I spent less money than I brought, but still way more than a sane person would spend.  But hey, that's cool.

Ironically, though, my nephew didn't end up buying much of anything, despite us arriving a half hour late to get him money (he bought some Pokemon cards and one action figure, but spent most of the time sitting in the car, looking at his phone and drinking my soda).  There was one guy who was selling Star Wars Black figures for five dollars each (they retailed, until 2022, for twenty bucks), and I bought a handful of them.  Then, when he was packing up, he said I could have all that were left for $25.00.

The wind began to blow, hard and cold, and boxes full of inventory started flying, as well as canopies and displays, so the toy show ended more abruptly than it was supposed to.  My eleven year old nephew bought a few figures, and we found a vendor who had a box of free items we pilfered to bring to the four year old.

I have, over the years, developed a sick fixation with Dewbacks (Star Wars lizards from the first movie).  I ended up buying five more, which I'll probably never do anything with.  

Oh, and speaking of fixations, Big Anklevich recently became obsessed with creating a spaceport display, complete with various droids and aliens, and I thought it would be fun to buy a bunch of R2-D2s and C-3POs, then paint them to look like different robots, so I was pleased to find a couple vendors selling Artoos and Threepios for a buck apiece (one vendor had 'em for fifty cents).  I'm not sure if I'll end up painting all of them, but it would be fun to try.

Because Big has been so interested in getting aliens and spacemen for his display, I should have been a real friend and picked up some toys to send him.  But everything was a bit too hectic, and in my defense, I did buy him the Star Wars toy he's been wanting for years and years now.**

4/17

Today is Sunday, and Easter, and this morning, I gave myself one hour to edit audio, then twenty minutes to blog, setting my phone alarm both times.  And both times, when the alarm went off, I jumped and exclaimed "Jesus!"  I'd like to think it counts as part of the Easter celebration.

I finally got all the files uploaded and approved for my audio collection.  The total was eight hours and two minutes.  Now all I have to do is upload a five minute sample (figure I'll just do part of the story "Who Can It Be Now?"), and it will be ready to submit.  And yes, it was a gigantic pain in the ass, comparable to the time I tried to do sit-ups with a hemorrhoid, but I suppose it's worth it, if just one person buys it.

Okay, eff that.  I hope a lot more than one person buys it.

As I mentioned yesterday, I grabbed some cheap Star Wars figures, and thought I'd start with the easiest project: turn C-3PO into the evil droid Nobot.  

I had an oversized kiddie toy I got for a buck, and I sprayed it over with primer (which looked pretty good, since it turned out the primer was black instead of the usual grey):

But Nobot is a beat-up grey robot, so I painted over it quick and messily, figuring the worse it looked, the better.***

Well, it ended up looking pretty darn bad, but that's okay, since this was just a practice.  The other paintjobs should be more painstaking and detailed.

4/18

I got my audio collection all uploaded to Audible, and we'll see what they say.  Since the last audiobook I put up for sale (in 2020), they now tell you to expect your title to go up for sale within ten days, barring any errors or inconsistencies they flag beforehand.  I remember them saying that they had hired a bunch of new employees during the pandemic, because people were suddenly listening to audiobooks more than ever before, and this is probably a result of that.

I didn't really feel like writing today, but I did get "Balms & Sears" to the 31K mark.  Just think, if I made a penny for every hundred words in the book . . . well, that's more than I'll actually make for it.  But ah well.

*Basically, the contest rules were, Write a short story with the same name as an Edgar Allan Poe story or poem.  I wrote mine, about a gold Volkswagen Beetle, and started on a second story about a pretty girl a lonely guy meets at a college party, named Anabelle Lee.  Never finished that second one, though (maybe one day Marshal will do the contest again and I will write it--it's the sort of story you could write from start to finish in a single sitting).

**Yes, it was that disgusting toy where it's Jar Jar's mouth, and there's a lollypop in the shape of his tongue that little kids were supposed to suck on.  They wouldn't even allow that thing at the Hustler store on Sunset Boulevard (believe me, I looked).

***I was just going to use it for a quick shot in a video, right?

Big Tells Marshal and Me About Galaxy's Edge

I finally got our conversation edited where Big Anklevich tells Marshal Latham and me about "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge" at Walt Disney World.  It's in the newest "Delusions of Grandeur" episode.

Check it out HERE.

Big talked about taking a selfie within the Millennium Falcon, and an employee told him to put his mask back up.

4/14 Half-Week In Review

 4/11

Because I still use my AOL email address from 1996, I get rectumloads of spam every single day.  It doesn't matter if I unsubscribe or block addresses, there's new ones every day, like hydra heads, Trump lies, or Instagram accounts that simply repost pictures of hot chicks from other Instagram accounts (or TikToks).  I delete them like crazy, but every once in a while (like the two the other day that had my password as their subject line), there will be an email that really catches my eye.

Today's was "Suffering from constant fatigue or death?"

I can't honestly imagine experiencing both, can you?

We got a big snowstorm today, with winds so strong it made me worry about my brother having to be out in it (he works as a lineman two towns over).  My nephew's full-sized basketball hoop fell over into the street, and it took two of us to pick it up and onto the lawn.  When I got up the next morning, one of my boxes out on the deck (I had meant to put it under the deck, but was too lazy) had blown over and twenty or so DC Multiverse figures had been covered in snow, which then froze.  I brought them inside and thawed them out, but the cardboard went soggy and fell apart.  It's not the end of the world or anything, just annoying.*

Having finished Abbie's book, it was time to move on to one of my own (as I've been saying for months now).  I emailed myself three files, "Pizza Triangle," "Winter Break," and "But Now I'm Found," figuring I could do one of those over the next few days.  The first two are probably not very good stories (and I doubt they're in a condition even Christopher Tolkien could've made presentable), so I opened the third one and started recording on it.**  Forty minutes later, I had finished the first chapter (I believe there are seven).  That ain't great, but hey, that's how it works.  I had also filled up my recorder, save thirteen minutes.  

One of my goals for the month was to get the "Delusions of Grandeur" we recorded in March edited.  It took me a minute, but I got that one done.  Now on to the Audio Collection Volume 4, which shouldn't take quite as long.

4/12

I started reading a short story by Joe Hill called "Late Returns," about a man who gets a job driving a Bookmobile, and some of the customers that show up are ghosts (it's from a collection called "Full Throttle").  It made me long to write a story (or stories) that move people, that people remember, that make folks say, "That was one solid story you made up, son."  I'm still trying.

I'm at the library again, for the first time since last Friday.  I opened up "Balms & Sears," and it's at 28,952 words.  My goal for April was to get it over 30K.  The thing is, I know I wrote more scenes that aren't here, and I'd hate to write them again, only to have them turn up in another notebook or on my laptop (I have tried the laptop and three notebooks).  The book is in such rough shape right now, but I had chalked that up to me writing it over an eight year period in a number of different places.  If the 28K of words that I currently have is all that I will recover, then I should just go through, from the beginning, and patch holes, until I get to the point where I left off in 2019: when Alec finds out what happened to his mother.  THEN, I could write three or four thousand more words, and the story would be ended.

It all sounds so easy, don't it?  But everything--say it with me, children--everything takes longer than you think that it will.

Take the audiobook for my fourth collection, for instance.  I actually published the text version last night, and when I had a few minutes this afternoon, I logged into the Audiobook Creation Exchange  (I have two accounts, one as a narrator and one as an author--the system must've been new enough in 2013 that they hadn't figured out someone could be both yet), and thought I'd at least upload the first couple of files for the audiobook.  But ACX couldn't find my book.  I did a search under my name, under the title of the book, under a combination of both, but nope.  Maybe it takes a little while for the database to update, I dunno.  I'll try again tomorrow.

I thought I could find the rest of my book "Balms & Sears" in one of my notebooks, and took two to the library on two different days.  One of the notebooks had none of it, though it had the "Ice Cream Droid" story I had started transcribing a few months ago and never finished (guess I never will).  The other did indeed have "Balms & Sears" in it (from back in 2014), but it was the beginning, which I typed up years ago.  It shocked me to discover I've been working on this story for nearly a decade now.

One thing that I found interesting (which you won't, though), was a note I had written on a random page was a character name that I thought I'd use one day.

Lorelei Skruggs ended up being the lady gunslinger that showed up in the second Ben Parks story, "A Sidekick's Journey."  I always wanted to write another story with her in it--somebody with a beautiful first name and a horrible last name--but I doubt I will.

4/13

So, I tried last night, around 2:30, to see if my book had shown up on the ACX site.  It hadn't.  But by today's afternoon, there it was.  Nice.

Now I'm uploading the files, one by one.  And just like last time I did this, I am IMMENSELY grateful that they tell you immediately what (they think) is wrong with each file--whether it has too much background hiss, has too long silent bits, or the volume is too quiet--something I had flagged on literally every other file.

It's a slow process, but it fills me with a sense of accomplishment, as the total length gets longer and longer (right now, it's at one hour and thirty-nine minutes).  It was frustrating, because some files I would turn the volume way up, but worried they were pegging (if that's the word I mean), and then paranoid the room tone would be too loud, so I'd remove that, only to find that Audible still though the file was too quiet.  

Well, I've spent nearly two hours on it (somehow), and have only gotten to Track 21.  But that equals three hours and fifty-three minutes, and that ain't nothing.

I got a casting call email looking for Caucasian men between the ages of 35 to 65 who can do a British accent.  They wanted a headshot and "a short video of yourself reciting something in your best British voice."  I hesitated about sending one in, but then read in the fine print they were especially looking for people with undersized nipples . . . so I feel I HAVE to try out.

Well, I dicked around at the library for a while, looking up songwriters on Wikipedia and finding out what else they wrote.  I then went down the rabbit hole, looking up various artists who were part of the "27 Club."  It was a thoroughly unproductive effort.

I did force myself to type hard and fast there at the end, and crossed the 30,000 word mark.

3/14

I got another one of those spam emails with an awful subject line.  This one is "Is 7 pounds of poop trapped in your belly?"  I don't dare open the email, in case the answer is not no.

I got the audio collection nearly complete (though I'm still missing one story, "The Key Collector," which I had audio of, but it was a low-quality version from an early Rish Outcast episode, complete with Kevin MacLeod music).  Got it to six hours and forty-one minutes, which I think, is a good day's work.  

I toyed with the idea of including author's notes with some (or all) of the stories, since I tend to write them for anything I finish now that isn't flash fiction.

I didn't know if that was unprofessional, or worse, uninteresting, so I created a little poll on my Patreon, asking people's opinions.  Every single person but one said I should include author's notes, and the outlier said I could if I wanted, since the listener could just skip it if they didn't want to hear it.  There was one vote for "Donkey Dung," but hey, there always is.

So, tomorrow I'll sit down and record two author's notes to pad out the audiobook's length--er, to make the book a more complete listen.

I wasted another ninety minutes uploading files to Audible today.  The frustrating thing is, I'd upload one, it would say the file was too quiet, so I'd increase the volume, it would say it was still too quiet, so I'd increase the volume again, upload a third time . . . and it would say the volume was too loud.  This happened no less than five times (and if you consider that each edit/upload takes three or four minutes, that explains where my afternoon disappeared to).

I'm taking one more break on this project.  The total length is seven hours forty-seven minutes.  I think eight hours is a reasonable goal.

Tonight, I'm working on another Christmas movie, so I might not have time to write.  Or, I might have several hours to write.  You never know.  

I feel like I ought to do a whole write-up on the movie, but they made us sign an NDA that said we would not talk about it or take pictures.  Of course, on the set, people were taking photos galore, and I even saw extras taking selfies with the actors.  So, I'll compromise, and talk about it on my Patreon address for May.***  Hope you're a supporter.

*If I had taken the container and put it under the deck a week or so back, they would've probably been fine.  Thanks, Captain Hindsight.

**Weirdly, I couldn't remember if I had finished it in 2021 or 2022, no matter how hard I tried, so I said both of them.  From the file date, it looks like it was November 2021.

***In fact, I already did, during the drive home.  Oops, all berries!

Rish Outcast 219: Message To My Girl

Rish shares his, uh, romantic story "Message To My Girl."  

Valentine's Day never ends, kids.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

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Logo by Gino "Massage To Your Girl" Moretto.

Gilbert Gottfried R.I.P.

Gilbert Gottfried died today.  He was sixty-seven.  

While best known as the voice of Iago in ALADDIN (whoops, I've got to put 1992 on there now, damn you, Disney), he had a pretty widespread career, from being a SNL cast member that terrible first year without Lorne Michaels, to having his own hit podcast just this past year.  I was surprised--still am, actually--to discover how many other people thought he was a hilarious comedian.  I tried, over the years, to do a Gottfried impression, and could never quite get it right.

His voice was so gross, and his little scrunched-up face was like an apple left out under a tree.   He got it right, though.  A funny, funny man.

I'd tried to find a picture of him doing "the voice."

His jokes were always so crass and so shocking (" I ran into Jackie Onassis at a party, and broke the ice by asking, 'Do you remember where you were when you heard JFK was shot?'") that you'd laugh twice.  His style was not for everyone, but hey, it was style. 

4/10 week in review (part 2)

4/6

I wrote a new scene on "Balms & Sears" this afternoon, bringing the total word count to 25,000 words.  Of course, I imagine I've written a lot more than that, and I'll have to look to see if there are still emails or notebooks with other scenes in them.  Such fun.

I've mentioned before how much my dad loved John Wayne (I think Wayne was for my dad how I'd feel if Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, and Harrison Ford were merged into one dude), and how I've never been able to stomach him.  There's a shrine to The Duke at the family cabin (which I fully intend to transform into a shrine to Darth Vader, piece by covert piece), and that keeps my antipathy for the man rather high.

Anyway, I'd heard a lot of good things about STAGECOACH, the John Ford 1939 Western that (apparently) made John Wayne a star.*

The library had a copy, and since I'm a fan of John Ford, I gave it a watch.

Anyway, it was really, really good, from beginning to end, and so was Wayne in it.  I really appreciated that every character had a personality that you get to see as they're all forced together on this perilous journey.

4/7
I did some more writing, and pasted in two scenes I had written in 2019 and emailed to myself.  It got the word count up to 27K.  My goal for April is to get it to thirty.

I got Abigail Hilton the final re-lines she requested for her book "Distraction," and she sent payment immediately.  She also said that the sound quality was much better than what she was used to with me, which is high praise, because I do not have a professional set-up, and almost feel like one of those Punk bands in the Seventies who sneer at those that do.

At the same time, during the pandemic, I focused a lot closer on getting my audiobooks to sound better (not perfect, that's not really possible without going to a studio and having someone whose job it is to monitor and mix everything), removing mouth sounds and breaths and chair noises and background hiss.  We'll see if Audible feels the same when I start uploading files to them in the next few days.

Oh, I had been worrying quite a bit lately about how sore my legs were, but today and yesterday, they were completely fine.  I think I may have just overworked them, forcing myself to the top of the trail on that hike Sunday, and doing my full run on Saturday and Monday.  That'll teach me to exercise, right, kids?

4/8

Every Friday night, I come to the library and stay until they kick me out.  And every Friday night, I am the only patron still upstairs when it closes.  I know that should make me feel terrible (like, Rish-Outfield-circa-1997 terrible), but it's just one of those things.

I discovered a reference to Nobot, the evil protocol droid in Lego Star Wars today, and I could not stop thinking about it.  He's a grey droid who appears for about one second in THE PHANTOM MENACE, and a fan created a twisted backstory for him that was considered canon until the Disney acquisition de-canonized all of that stuff.  But some clever programmer put Nobot in the new Lego game, and he's there to freak people out in one little corner of Tatooine.

I discovered YouTube videos discussing it, including one poor sod who was complaining about how scary it is for children, and more than anything, I wanted to make a YouTube video of my own, where I complain about Nobot and how he terrified me so much I crapped my pants.  And not just my pants, but it leaked out all over the chair and onto the carpet, and damn you Lucasfilm for doing this to me.  I told Big Anklevich that, if he still lived here, I'd want him to film it, and I'd see how worked up I could get in the video, about how wrong Nobot is, and then my four year old nephew would pop up, with a C-3PO figure I had modified into Nobot, and I would crap my pants again, right there in front of the camera.

It would've been so great.

There's a toy show next weekend, and I wished it were right now, so I could buy a C-3PO figure and turn it into Nobot anyway.  I even went to the local toy store, right before they closed, but they only have carded Star Wars figures, and who needs that?

Anyway, I'm still almost tempted to do it, just to see what kind of response it gets (not that anybody watches my videos, when I get around to putting them out).

4/9

My sister's family went camping (again) this weekend, so I had Friday and Saturday night to myself.  I could've watched whatever I liked (including that Adele concert I recorded a few weeks ago, but haven't watched because I wanted to be able to turn it up loud), but I was curious which episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" were available for streaming, and ended up watching four of those.  AHP is a show I watched the 1985 revival of, and rented the first two or three discs of the DVDs, but never particularly liked it.  The first episode was pretty darn good (with Vera Miles pointing out the man who raped her to her vengeful husband), but the others were just too formulaic and old-fashioned for me (Hitchcock's show predated "The Twilight Zone" by four years).

But this time, with so many options in front of me (the show went ten fudging seasons!), I had the internet choose for me, the episodes that were considered the best.

It was then that I realized that, for some reason, the most popular episodes, like "The Man from the South" and "Lamb to the Slaughter" were NOT available to stream, and I had to make do with the also-rans.  I watched "The Cuckoo Clock," "One More Mile To Go," "The Right Kind of House," and "The Glass Eye," which starred young Jessica Tandy, William Shatner, and Rosemary Harris.**

4/10

Today, I was at the store, and I saw a dude (a young guy) in a hoodie with the phrase "If God ain't real, then real isn't" on it.  It really vexed me.  I double-taked, even walking around the aisle at Walmart to read the shirt again, and then racked my brain to interpret its meaning.  Then real isn't what?

Surely there was a word missing.  But if not . . . then what did it mean?  If God is not real, then real is not.  Is it a sort of "Cogito, ergo sum" type of argument?

Turns out, those are lyrics to a song by RF, a rapper who, well, performs a song called "Real."

I also discovered that you can buy a hoodie just like it on the internet:

I am still vexed, and pretty much wish death on that guy with the hoodie on for taking me on this mental journey.  However, in looking for an image of the sweatshirt, I stumbled upon this image, with uncontestable proof that God must exist:

Oh, and I went running tonight . . . which was the whole point doing this blog again, not (admittedly-fine) stuff like the above.

*Or a household name at least.  I'm aware he was working even in the Silent era.

**Who you may remember as the real Aunt May from the Spider-man movies.

4/5 week in review (part 1)

4/3

I failed to go on a hike last month, and didn't really care about it.  But the weather is warmer now, and I knew that I didn't have rain or snow as an excuse.  So I did the traditional hike up the mountain here in town.  I'll admit that it was a bit of a bugger starting out (and my calves complained almost from the moment I started), but hey, I still managed.  What have you done, Derek?

Truth be told, I have been feeling out of shape and vaguely unwell for a while now.  So it does please me that I could manage the same hike that my uncle claimed would kill me in 2019.  I have to admit, though, that I did stop and rest about a third of the way through, going on YouTube and finding a video that talked for an hour about the top ten greatest rollercoasters in the world. 

It's getting to be springtime, with blossoms on the trees, and I really ought to start doing . . .  EVERYTHING again.

4/4

Boy, my legs were complaining today.  Sometimes it would take a few steps before I could even walk normally.  It reminded me of a post I saw on Facebook the other day that said, "To those of you in your thirties and forties, enjoy it while you can, because once you hit fifty, the Check Engine light will come on."

Every month, I record and edit an address to my Patreon supporters.  In it, I talk about what's going on in my little world, and try to share something interesting that happened to me.  This past week, I sat down five different times, trying my darndest to do just that (I also look at the goals I set for the previous month and set new ones for the month that's just beginning), and pretty much failed.  

I talked about a recent brush with eBay Horror I was experiencing, I sang the theme from "The Greatest American Hero" with Fake Sean, and tried desperately not to say anything about the Oscars.  All in all, I've got an hour and fourteen minutes of very little to say . . . AND it's the fourth of April already.

I wonder how other people with Patreon accounts do it.  I wonder if they feel a desperate need to be entertaining and/or insightful every month.

4/5

So, months and months ago, when the first trailer for MORBIUS came out (back when it was supposed to come out in July of 2020), my nephew leaned over and said, "Promise you'll take me to that when it comes out!"

Well, it got delayed, and then bumped, and then moved again* and finally came out last Friday . . . and boy oh boy, did it get pummeled by the critics and fans.  Right now, it has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that was enough for me to think I could give it a miss.

But my nephew remembered that I had said I would take him to it, so I arranged it with my cousin to go on Tuesday night (they have five dollar specials on Tuesdays), but because I was bringing my nephew, he felt justified in bringing his daughter, the one who calls everything "sick."

I knew it would mostly likely suck, and wondered if I was an idiot to go see it (I still remember Jeff's wife in 1997 after BATMAN & ROBIN got out complaining, "If you knew it was going to be bad, why did you go to see it?"  And then worse, shouting, "Why did you drag me to it then?"  But hey, people loved THE JOKER, and continue to love THE BATMAN, so I figured, if those folks hated MORBIUS, then I'm bound to like it.**

Well, it wasn't terrible, really.  By the halfway point, I was even thinking, "Hey, I'm enjoying this thing."  The special effects were really good, the vampire designs appropriately frightening, and Matt Smith is a cool bad guy.  Plus, unlike VENOM 2, the toned-down violence didn't detract from my appreciation of the film with confusing cut-aways and ham-handed TV edits.  But yeah, it falls pretty flat at the end, and sets up some kind of sequel/spin-off thing that, well, I have no reason to look forward to.

No, it wasn't great.  And the ending was the worst part (including their, what, three mid-credits sequences?), but hey, this is hardly the worst Marvel film, not by a long shot (not in a world where GHOST RIDER 2 and FAN4TASTIC exist).

*It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but it was supposed to be release July 2020, then March 19th 2021, then October 8th 2021, then January 21st 2022, then January 28th, then April 1st, 2022.

**A bunch of internet memes were going around saying that Jared Leto had the distinction of being in both the worst Marvel movie (MORBIUS) and worst DC movie (SUICIDE SQUAD).  But eff that noise.  First off, MORBIUS is hardly a Marvel movie.  And secondly, SUICIDE SQUAD doesn't even belong in the bottom ten worst DC movies (not if you can count STEEL and SUPERGIRL, SUPERMAN IV and JONAH HEX, BATMAN & ROBIN and GREEN LANTERN, and of course, CATWOMAN, directed by a guy named Pitoff).  So, put your childish exaggerations away, before I start ripping on the Prequels again.

My Voice on "The Deadbringer" Audio Drama

Last year, I voiced a character in the multi-part audio drama "The Deadbringer."  

It's a Fantasy/Horror serial written by E.M. Markoff about a boy with supernatural gifts, in a society where that sort of thing has to be hidden from the powers-that-be.  I play the main character's uncle, Eutau Vidal, who tries to shield the boy from his many enemies, and as you can guess, a dangerous situation involving the reanimated dead arises.

All of the episodes have been compiled in one impressively-long episode, that you can check out RIGHT HERE, or, if you prefer the path of YouTube, you can check it out here:

4/2 week in review

3/29

It was raining today, so I spent my free time editing audio.  It's slow-going, though.
I intended to hit the library and get at least a few words written, but it was my turn to take my nephew to his volleyball game, and afterward, I took him out to get tacos (I think I did last week too). 

It occurred to me that I could still salvage this, if I do sit-ups and/or push-ups tonight.  I did both for a full year, I can do them on a single night.

I did end up doing both push-ups and sit-ups at about quarter-to-three, just like I used to do.  And it wasn't pleasant, but it was hardly fatal.

3/30

So, I finished "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett.  Anticipating finishing it this week sometime, I had grabbed another audiobook from the library over a month ago, but I ended up having to return it, as somebody else reserved it.  So, I grabbed a Leigh Bardugo book off the shelf, and tried my best to get into it, but I couldn't access it (if that's the word I'm looking for), even unable to tell you the name of the main character.

Luckily, I had to return Follett's book today, so I strived to grab a replacement.  I'm sure there are a dozen books I have considered getting over the last months, but didn't because I had a giant epic on my hands, but today, I couldn't find anything I wanted.  Maybe "Lord of the Flies" by Golding (which I've already read, but really enjoyed).

I'm now sitting here typing this instead of writing, which is sad, since I didn't write a single word yesterday, and regretted it.

3/31

As an audiobook narrator, I don't have (much) say in the lines I'm given to read.  Just today, I was editing myself saying the line "Years and years of everyone dropping their piss and shit down into the Bay until they made them stop?  We're probably under ten tons of sewage, or worse."  That took a few takes, and I never did get it sounding natural.

I've mentioned before about "He hesitated" being a simple sentence I can never quite make sound right.

Also, in the book I'm recording for Abbie, I have many, many lines of dialogue prefaced with "Roup laughed" or "Halvery laughed uneasily."  Back when I first did the Dunesteef show, I would actually laugh after a direction like that, then deliver the line, but now, I try to incorporate the sound of amusement into my dialogue reading.  I'm not saying that's better, but it's what the work has evolved into.  Devolved?

 4/1

I finished Abbie's book proper and now have to just do relines, the author's notes, and the bonus story.  I thought, as a breather, I should do one of my own stories, so I'd have a fudgin' episode of my podcast in the near(ish) future.  So I picked (for future reasons) a story I wrote in 2008 called "I'm Wishing," which I believe was the last story swap Big and I did before we started podcasting.  I was a bit surprised to discover that it was written under a pseudonym, and didn't realize until later that that was because I was trying to write a nastier, less naive story involving crime and drugs.

I also didn't realize until I got near to the end that boy, it was just not a good story.  There was a reason I didn't dare stick my own name on this one.

I had planned on running "I'm Wishing" as an episode of the Outcast, because the premise is very similar to the most recent story(ies) I completed this year, which I also figured I would share.  But halfway through, I thought, "Huh, maybe I'll just include this for the Patreon supporters, since they're big enough fans not to rage-quit the show after a story like this."  But by the time I got to the end, I didn't think I should share it at all.

I did record the story, though, so I'll include it in the next collection (or the one after that), so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

I vaguely remember reading in that book about "The Twilight Zone" that Rod Serling had been trying to get the show made for some time, and hence had gathered quite a collection of stories and ideas and other people's tales that might make for good episodes.  Since, in those days, shows would run for thirty or more episodes a season, that was an awful lot of ideas.

I have ideas for stories literally every single week.  If I were a much, much cooler man, and wrote a story a week, it STILL wouldn't account for all the ideas that pop in my head.  Just today, Big Anklevich lost his cat, and his now-forty-five year old youngest son was distraught about it.*  So Big printed up some LOST CAT signs, including a photo and description of the cat, and went around the neighborhood, taping them up.

And he got to a bus stop, started to put up the Lost Cat sign . . . and discovered there already was a Lost Cat sign there.  It was for somebody else's cat, but the description was almost exactly the same.  What was worse, the photo was nearly identical to that of his own cat.  And for a moment there, Big thought, "IS this my cat?"

Anyway, I'll never write the story myself.  I don't have enough affection for cats to make it work**, but it was something I was thinking about quite a bit today.  Maybe, if I go for a run tonight, I'll think about it more.

4/2

Big's cat came back, not even a day later.

I haven't gotten much done today, but ah well.  I'm trying.

Last night, I went on my run even though I had done some writing, and today I think I'll do the same.

If it's quiet at home, I'll record the last bit of Abbie's book, and maybe another of my own stories, so I can have one ready for a future episode.  I was contacted by another podcast that was doing a series of audio dramas, and made the mistake of telling them, "I'll do as many parts as you want me to."  The result was about forty-six characters they want voices for, with a deadline for each one.  Of course, I CAN do it, and it'll sound fine (my bits, at least), it's just a bit overwhelming if you consider that each one is between seven and fifteen minutes of work.  But ah well.  Better than doing nothing on a Saturday night, right?

I finished the reading from last week where I messed up my voice so much I almost puked, and holy smoke, the story was SO GOOD it was worth the pain (again, my voice was so stressed I kept coughing, and eventually had to take a five minute break to get a drink and gargle a couple of staples and thumbtacks).  I think I'll have to find a third story by Edith Nesbit, and maybe record it tonight.

Her style is interesting (although it's from a century ago, so who knows what the norm was?), with gargantuan paragraphs that could fill an entire page, and a combination of obscure, hard-to-parse phrasing, and bits that sound completely modern and natural on my tongue.  Oh, it did include the main character calling his wife "Pussy" as an affectionate nickname, and that did not translate to the 21st Century, to be frank.

I found a collection of her stories online, and I picked one at random, and recorded it for (probably) a future episode).

*I think he's actually ten, but you know how it is.

**Though, what if the cat belonged to Lara Demming or Victoria Holcomb?  What if it's not just a cat, but a demonic familiar?  That could work.