Your Gift Wears Mandalorian Armor?

I used to have a semi-tradition of painting a toy in white and blue to give Big Anklevich to use in his holiday display (or to toss in the trash, up to him).  Been a while though.

So, when I saw the most godawful Mandalorian repaint at the store the other day, I shook my head in disgust--it's part of their cheap repaint (yet somehow more expensive) Credit Collection sub-line--and then thought, "Wait a minute . . ."

So, I bought it (it was cheap, as such an unsightly monstrosity deserved to be), and began my attempt at an improvement.

Step 1 was to get rid of that awful, awful orange.  I chose metallic blue to replace it.

Step 2 was to change the tan undersuit for grey.

Step 3 was to take the tan armor and cape and make them white (I wasn't sure if this would work or not, and part of me still wishes I'd done the undersuit white and the cape and armor grey, but ah well).

Lastly, I painted blue and grey on the helmet and jetpack.

So, I don't think it's perfect, but it's a definite improvement.  I mailed it off to Big Anklevich . . . and he hated it so much he gave it to his three year old to smash and chew on.  Joke's on him, though: I used lead paint.

(just kidding, btw)

Tarkin Starts A Holiday Tradition on Delusions of Grandeur

Over at Marshal Latham's Journey Into... channel, we've got a new episode on the Star Wars "Delusions of Grandeur" podcast.  It ain't much, but it's a little sketch I started writing a year ago, and only finished this past Thanksgiving, about Grand Moff Tarkin throwing a sort of Thanksgiving of his own aboard the Death Star.

It's called "Tarkin's Tradition," and it's my usual thing.  I dunno if you'll like the sketch, but it was a lot of fun to write and perform, and it's available HERE.

I told A.I. to create me an image of Grand Moff Tarkin holding a turkey, and even though it looks more like a close relative to Peter Cushing, Marshal went ahead and used it.  

12 Seans of Christmas Post-mortem

So, this is Christmas, and what have you done?  I guess what I did was a couple of podcast episodes, finishing a story that I thought was done two years ago, and this Twelve Days of Christmas thing with Fake Sean Connery.

Now, I've never plugged it before, much less linked to it, but during the pandemic, I created an Instagram account for Fake Sean, hoping to post inspiring content.  That didn't last--does anything?--and I did go back to it from time to time when I heard a joke that might work with Fake Sean telling it.*

But toward the beginning of December, I got it into my head that I could have Fake Sean do the 12 Days of Xmas, and that I might have him tell the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the greatest of all tall tales.  And even though "A Christmas Carol" is not long, it was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to do on Instagram, even broken into twelve parts.**

But I tried to figure out how to split it up evenly, and then I took the text, and tried to pare it down short enough to get it all on my dry erase board (which had sat in the trunk of my car for three years since I stopped trying to do pop songs in outdoor locations).  And man, it was work to get each segment down to about four minutes (and in a couple of cases, Instagram didn't want me to upload even that much).

I had lost the original bald Fake Sean mask, and when I went to order another one, they were out of stock, but they did have one circa 1983 (looking like he did in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN), which works, but isn't really Fake Sean in my mind.  He needs to have a beard and be bald, I think.  So I ordered another bald one from the UK, which was dirt cheap in itself, but the postage really shivved me.

And I discovered that it is really hard to see (let alone read) while wearing the mask.  I guess I have a pretty big head, because you could always see my chin or my hair or my ears when I wore the mask--necessitating me putting on a hat the couple of times I had one handy.  Also, I learned not to put the camera below me, but that it looked better at eye level or above me--eventually, I started holding the camera instead of setting it down, which tired out my arm after a while.

And it took a while because I screwed up so many times.  I started out reading it without the mask, then doing a trial take, but soon I skipped the read-through, and tried to get through it in a single take.  Inevitably, I'd screw up, and there was one where I did four takes before deciding I couldn't bear to do it again.  

Two nights ago, I created a document for the final day (when Scrooge wakes up and finds it Christmas Day), and had to cut out so much content (it really should have been two days), including the great part where he meets the gentlemen from the start and they are not happy to see him, and the bit where he goes to his nephew's party and impresses the wife.  But it took so bloody long that it was two-something when I finished, so I left it for the next morning (which would work better in daylight anyway).  Unfortunately, I was awakened about six by the sound of my laptop restarting, and realized that that meant the abridgment would be gone when I went to do it.  So I had to do the whole thing again, but it was far easier than the night before, because I was well-rested and had already decided what to keep and what to lose.  And this one--the final one--was the only instance where I recorded it in only a single take, and was content to let it be.

There are no segments that are perfect, unfortunately, and I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist with my sketches and audiobooks, but it had all been such a monumental undertaking (shame that I didn't have someone else to do it with me, because it would've gone so much faster) that I couldn't achieve anything near professional-quality.  But I hope that people take it in the spirit of the thing, and it pleases some stranger out there.

May Sean bless us, every one.

*I know there are literally thousands of jokes out there, but you'd be shocked--downright flabbergasted--to find out what percentage of them are actually funny.  Maybe 8%.  Just this week, I heard someone laugh at this execrable Christmas joke: "How did the Magi know what gifts to bring the Baby Jesus?"
"Because they were three wise men."  (insertPicardfacepalmimagehere) 

**Truth be told, I needed about fifteen just to do a bare bones, but complete, retelling.

Rish Outcast 268: There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories II

Alright, here's the second half of my Dead & Breakfast holiday-ish tale, "There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories," where coworkers gather to share their experiences at the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast.  Enjoy?

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Hairy Ghost Stories" Moretto.

Join "The War on Christmas"

Not sure why I'm posting this here, but a Facebook friend of mine, Eric Busby, posted a link to a trailer for "the greatest podcast ever," narrated by Morgan Freeman.  And then he instantly revealed that it wasn't REALLY Morgan Freeman narrating, but an impersonator . . .

. . . and I thought, "Dang, I wish he'd asked me to do it.  I do a sort of okay Morgan Freeman."

But then I clicked on THE LINK, and it made a bit more sense to me.

My Reading of "The Christmas Mummy" Back on PodCastle

Thirteen years ago, PodCastle honored me with a request to narrate Tim Shaw/Heather Pratt's story "The Christmas Mummy."  It got a more positive reaction than anything I had done up to that point (and maybe since).  So, I was pleased when Dave Wallace let me know that the most recent PodCastle episode, PC 818, is a repackaging of that old show (even if my audio quality back then was *slightly* worse than today).  

It tells the tale of a family visited by a holiday-themed mummy, as well as Christmas ninjas.  Where could that go wrong?  Check it out HERE!

Rish Outcast 267: There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories I

So, due to the holidays, I'm going to switch Episodes 267 and 266, and we'll get the latter in a couple of weeks.  You'll survive, I'm pretty sure.

Rish presents half of his Dead & Breakfast story "There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories" for the holidays.  Apologies in advance.

If you want to download it, just Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support Rish on Patreon, as a sort of early present, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "There'll Be Mariah Carey Ghost Stories" Moretto.

12 Seans - Day 3

I mentioned in the last post that the video for Day 2 was particularly crappy.  But I was very surprised the next day when I went to post Day 3's video, to find that I had re-done Day 2's video again, but better.  So, I tried to post that redux version, and then deleted the previous day's video.*  And then I discovered, to a low-level horror, that Day 2's video cut off partway through, simply stopping its upload for some benighted reason.

Is there a time limit for Instagram videos?  Did that mean Day 1's video got cut off halfway through as well?

No.  The answer was no (apparently, for both questions).  So, I uploaded Day 2's video a second time, and this time, the whole thing appeared (something I could only discover by watching it through to the end, Instagram providing no means of skipping to the end until the darn thing is posted.

*Of course, that puts me a full twenty-four hours off my timeline.  But what I think I'll do is post the real Day 3 video tonight before I go to bed, so there are technically two releases today, but they're hours apart.

12 Seans - Day 2

I really bit off more than I could chew with this 12 Days of Christmas Carol thing.  I hadn't anticipated how long it would take to do an abridgement, and then write it up on a dry erase board, and it doesn't help that it starts getting dark at, what, three-thirty?

So, there's a learning curve, and what I learned on Day 2 was to put the camera ABOVE me, rather than below me, because it ruins the "illusion" when you can see my darn face the whole time.

Sigh.

12 Seans of Christmas

 About Thanksgiving, I got this idea to present Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as part of the 12 Days of Christmas, one post each day leading up to The Day, which seemed a bit ambitious, but doable (especially since I had a month to prepare).  What I had to figure out was how to slice up the book into a dozen parts, and then see how to present those sections.

What I ended up doing was taking each part of the story (for example, the introduction of Scrooge) and abridging it down to as short as I could manage, then writing it up on a dry erase board, setting it in front of me, and trying to go through it in one take.  I recorded the first couple of them so you could "enjoy" the effort, and I'll present it here.

It's very rough (I don't think there's a single one I didn't curse through), and the darn mask looks absolutely ridiculous barely covering the front of my face, yet squashing my nose badly enough I could barely breathe*, and preventing me from seeing the script.  But ah well, it was worth a try.

*By the fifth or sixth day, the steam from my breath has started to warp the inside of the cardboard, which leads me to believe I'll have to throw the mask away when I finish.

Mini Update 12-11

Everybody in my household got the flu this week, and it hit me hardest two days ago.  I slept most of the day away, and felt pretty crummy about it.*  So yesterday, I got a little bit done, but I was still achey and coughing.  And today, I discovered my voice was completely blighted by my illness--for example, when I called my cousin, he absolutely did not want to hear my voice (oh wait, that's every day--bad example).  When I called Big Anklevich, he was not at all pleased to hear me, and it didn't help that I started the conversation with "My, what a lovely day for an exorcism"--and would ruin whatever recording I did with it, despite it getting mighty late to get my Christmas episode done.

In the end, though I may falter, nothing gets Fake Sean Connery down.

 

*By that, I mean, I had felt physically sick, but I also felt guilty for having slept fourteen to sixteen hours instead of getting any writing, exercise, or work with a paycheck attached done.  Funny how you can be your own a-hole boss sometimes.

Bundling, Sure . . . But Is It Easy?

So, I went ahead and published the text version of my Lara & the Witch novella, "Bundling Made Easy."  This one takes place (mostly) during Lara Demming's junior year of high school, and deals with her falling for a handsome basketball player named Scott.  But everything is great--too great--and Lara waits for the other shoe to drop.

This was the third story I wrote in the series, before many of those I've already published, and immediately I went back and started writing stories to fill in the three (or four) year gap between "You're In Good Hands" and "Bundling."  Just this year, I wrote another one that takes place during that gap, and started two more.  There's also a novel I wrote that takes place after this one, but it'll surely be a while before I publish it.

The reason I'm mentioning this at all is that, in the time since I last published on Amazon, the dread spectre of A.I. has risen its mostly-digital head.  They asked me if any part of the book had been written or illustrated by A.I.,* and when I said yes, they made me detail every bit of it, and wouldn't accept nothing for an answer.  Seriously, it would NOT accept nothing when it asked what percentage of the book's text was created by A.I., and finally, I had to write "Some/Very Little" and then typed "None" in the space for more information.  And then it did it again for the illustrations and again for the cover art (in retrospect, I understand why they'd ask that--since people are pants-pizzingly terrified of A.I. right now--but I seriously considered simply lying and saying that none of it was A.I.-generated, just so I could skip the step).

I went back and added a link to "Bundling" in the text of the first two stories, and they too now asked how much A.I. was in them, before I was allowed to proceed.  Luckily, those were clearly zero, and now I wonder if I shouldn't eschew A.I. altogether in the future, because what if the A.I. programs' owners start demanding they get a share of every bit of entertainment that used their algorithm.  Or maybe I should just avoid A.I. altogether in the future because it's the moral thing to do.  Hmmm.

De todos modos, if you'd like to buy a copy of "Bundling Made Easy," it's available HERE.

*The cover was created by the A.I. program Perchance, and then Big put my name over it.

Podcast That Dares 45: Oh Whistle...

Rish performs M.R. James's 1904 story "Oh Whistle, and I'll Come To You, My Lad."  No whistling, please.

Note: I just discovered that there was a famous 17th Century poem/song called OWAICTYML, and this is named after that.  Makes the story cooler somehow.

>

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "T**ty Whistle" Moretto.

My Tale "With A Banjo On My Knee" on Journey Into...

Months back, Marshal Latham tried his darndest to end our friendship with his writing contest, the Quordel Quell.  You may remember.

It was a contest where those who entered were given four words, generated by a game of Quordel (engineered by the Devil himself, by the way), that we were supposed to craft a story around.  I struggled quite a bit with it, but went ahead and wrote a story, "With A Banjo On My Knee," and submitted it.*

It told of Garrett McClaren's discovery of a banjo that seems to have an unusual, maybe even magical effect on people.

Well, Marshal has created a production of that story over on the Journey Into... podcast, and it's available now, if you'd like to listen to it.  He went nuts with full-cast (again), and there are a bunch of familiar faceless voices in this one.**  I lent my voice to the main character's douchey boss (which is a bit strange, having a bit part in my own story, but I'm always happy to participate, as long as it doesn't involve editing), a young man with a banjo that people quite enjoy the sound of.  Feel free to check it out HERE.

*It may have been the last time I ever wrote a story.  And can you blame me?  (you know who I blame)

**Big Anklevich also voices one of the characters.