8/31

Last day of the month, and it was my busiest day.  I didn't make it to the cabin until the sun was so low in the sky that birds were flying into it.

My mom asked me if I was still going to the cabin (she's going up this weekend and doesn't want to find that I left, I dunno, used toilet paper all over the place or something), and I told her I was, and she said, "Why?  It's so late."  And I tried to explain to her that I had this deadline on this book, and I HAD to edit, and she said, "But why all the way up there?  You can edit here," and I told her, No, I can't.  And I'll explain it to you like I explained it to her.  Editing audio is so mind-numbing, so exhaustingly dull and vampiric to the soul, that I will do literally anything to get out of it--like shoveling gravel, or reading, or eating junkfood, or removing photos from my phone, or washing dishes, or exercising--and the fewer distractions I have the more work I'll get done.

But you should see me try to edit: I tell myself, Okay, I'll do just till I have the first five minutes done--just five minutes.  And eventually, I can get to that point.  And then I go, okay, now try to go to ten minutes . . . or just eight, you can do eight, right?  So I set this tiny, pathetic, limp-wristed little goal, and I can usually work toward it, and then I reward myself with a break, even if it's just getting a drink of water or taking a whizz, sometimes as significant as watching fifteen minutes of a movie or reading a chapter in one of the five books I've brought up with me.  And then, with that all-too-short respite finished, I go back to the editing (this time trying to get to the ten or fifteen minute mark in the chapter).

Fledgling is one of my favorite words.  I first heard it in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and never really hear it anymore.  Has there ever been a movie or song called that?  I'd like to write a story called that.*

I still did the run on the dam, but was coughing and wheezing even a half hour later while editing audio, so maybe I should . . . I dunno, either not exercise at all, or exercise way more?  Tomorrow starts a new month.  I think I'll set an exercise goal, see if I can't, maybe, exercise nearly every day of September, giving myself, say, one day a week to forget or be lazy.  We'll see.

Well, I told you my goal for the month was to write 3000 words, and I managed it.  All in all, my word count for August is 12,018.  Which is pretty close to three thousand, in a way.

Arcove or Exercise: Both

*But I never will.

8/30

Five times I woke up during the night to use the bathroom.  Five.

You'd think I lost a bet or something.

Last week, I signed up myself and my eleven year old nephew to work on a Hallmark Christmas movie, but was never contacted, so I forgot about it.  But this afternoon, they called me, and said we were booked.  Unfortunately, that means they want us to drive up there to the set (about an hour away) to take COVID tests tomorrow, which is when I normally go to the cabin.  But also, school is now going, so my nephew will be in school until the afternoon, so I'll have to wait until he gets out, then drive up there, then drive him back, then drive to the cabin, if I still feel like it.  We'll see.

I've sat here for a few minutes, and even though I've got a few words (327), my attention is starting to sag.  After all, I'm blogging now instead of writing.

I got 1019 words, which is real good.  For me, for you, it's ten minutes ago.

Arcove or Exercise: Arcove (and Writing)

8-29

Chunder.

A few years ago, I read a fairly-infuriating article about a woman who decided to drink a gallon of water a day for a month, blogging about her daily experiences as she went.  It was very interesting, at least until the eleventh day, when she killed her husband and children (and her rabbi, who happened to be stopping by to return a Jello mold).*  The article made such an impression on me that in 2020, I wrote an entire story about woman who does the same thing (more of a parody than a story).

I always meant to send Julie Hoverson the story and ask if she'd record it for me, but I never dared.  I also considered recording it myself and adding it to an audio collection as a bonus track, but never got around to it.**

From time to time, I think about the lady's experiment, and how she claimed the water-drinking changed her life.  But I would never repeat her efforts--as Captain Solo said, "I ain't crazy."

Except today, I thought, "Okay, one time I'll try it."  So I filled a container with water, and told myself to drink it down by the end of the night.

I marked in RED

where the water line is in each picture.

It's not a lot of water to look at, especially when you're spacing it out during the day.  And we've all heard that a person is SUPPOSED to drink a gallon of water in the course of a day.  And you might remember that bit on the news, where Miles Teller boasted that he drinks three liters of orangutan urine a day for cardiovascular reasons.  So, doing it once should be easy.

I drank a little bit, then went out to lunch, where I drank thirty-six ounces of Diet Dr. Pepper.  But that doesn't count.

I'll admit that I forgot about the water in the afternoon, and mistakenly drank another twenty ounces of ice water while driving around in my car . . . but not from the large plastic container that I chose for the purpose.

When I came home, and looked in the fridge to see the water jug still 3/4ths full, I knew I was in trouble.  But I said I'd do it, and I was sitting down to record audio, so I made myself chug some every page or two, knocking the levels down quickly.  And just as quickly, I'd have to head to the bathroom, which I think I've done five times today.

Eventually, at about 1:40am, I finished the container, and took one last picture.  I drank well beyond a gallon today (I didn't even mention the apple juice I drank when I woke up this morning), and thusfar, I haven't felt any murderous impulses.  

After reading this blog, you may not be able to say the same.

I only managed 117 words today.  But since I didn't get to the library like I usually do, I won't sweat it.

Arcove or Exercise: Arcove (and Writing-ish)

*Of course, this is a lie.  Just checking to see you were paying attention.

**I finally got around to it . . . in March of 2024.

Blog 8-28

The sound went out on my laptop this morning, so I guess I'll blog instead.  And after that, it's time to record my Patreon address for September.  This should be a good one, because I'm going to talk about that trailer that so effed with my head.

I did the stairs AND recorded "Arcove's Bright Side" . . . three chapters.  Yeah, I'm doing this.*

I did record my address (at least the first part of it), and wouldn't you know, it wasn't a good one after all.

Arcove or Exercise: Both

*At the same time, Big texted me to let me know how much he was struggling with writing, and instead of calling him up and challenging him to write then and there (or at least encouraging him), I called him a bundle of sticks and sent him a picture of the guy from Maroon 5 with his arm around Big's teenaged daughter.  Now that I write it out . . . I'm thinking that might have been the wrong thing to do.

Rish Outcast 228: Aloha Hatchling, Aloha Dunesteef

Rish talks about his book "Hatchling," which just came out.  And the last episode of the Dunesteef, which just came out.

Download the episode at THIS LINK.

Support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "G'day Hatchling/Dunesteef" Moretto.

Do Kiwis say "G'day?"

8-26 & 8-27

I put more chapters of "Arcove's Bright Side" in the Dropbox, which brings my little meter to here:

8 / 52

Of course, what do I do when Abbie requests retakes?  Do I drop those off?  If so, this progress bar thing will lose a lot of its fun.

I managed 559 words at the library.  It's not a lot, but it's totally fine.  Heck, it IS a lot.  Next question.

I recorded the hardest chapter of the whole book tonight, which probably comes mid-way through, and even though it was difficult, maybe it'll be all downhill from this point on.

Arcove or Exercise: Arcove (and Writing)

8-27

I've been having a couple of sound problems while recording this past few days, and it turns out there's a short in the microphone cable where it's gotten frayed.  So I went to the store on Tuesday, looking for mic cables.  Then I went to another store.  No luck.  After that, I got online and ordered one from the web.  I didn't know how long I needed, but they ranged from thirty feet all the way to tiny, so I ordered a six foot one.

It came today, shipped in a little padded envelope.  But how could a six foot microphone cord fit in such a small envelope?  Well, it turns out that I ordered a six inch cable rather than six foot.  Fun.

I had an appointment at five-thirty today, so it meant I wouldn't be at the library when it closes at six, but I jetted over at four, just so I could work on something (this week, I'm organizing my story "The Case of the Missing Bracelet," which I wrote in September of last year, but I thought I'd include in a collection of Will Choner stories...and it's in rough shape.  It's about four thousand words long . . . and I think that's where it's supposed to be*).  I got almost no words, because I am undisciplined, but it occurred to me that I ought to count up all my words for the month (after all, I've been keeping track, if only to send them to Big each day), and see if I made my goal of 3000.

I did manage 379 words, which is not good, but technically doesn't qualify as bad either.

Also, I went for a run tonight, for the first time in a long while (I don't count the ones on Wednesday nights on the dam--those are just for self-punishment).

Arcove or Exercise or Writing: All Three

*It's also one of those stories that I don't really remember, except that I wrote it in Vegas, when we were there for my uncle's funeral.  There was a great deal of sitting around, waiting for the chance to be useful, and I filled it with this little inconsequential story.

Say Goodbye To The Dunesteef

Our final episode of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, recorded and edited when Obama was in the White House, is now out there to listen to.  We made it back when the show was airing regularly, with many generous volunteers, giving us their time and editing skills and music and voices.  One day in the future, we knew, SOMETHING would happen to keep us from the show (whether boredom, apathy, the dissolution of our friendship, or the cheery possibility of death), and we wanted to have a final goodbye on the shelf, for when that day came.  And that day is here.

So, go to THIS LINK, if you like, and hear our goodbyes, as well as topical references to a young Katy Perry, and a middle-aged Third Eye Blind.

The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine will live on in Big's solo podcast, my own various shows, and the odd episode of Clownpod, the only podcast entirely produced by mimes.  And don't forget, the Dunesteef isn't really dead, as long as we remember him.

8-24 & 8 -25 blog

8-24

I recorded Chapters 1 through 5 of "Arcove's Bright Side" on my regular Outcast SD card, and filled it up (each chapter usually takes close to a gig of memory in ultra-high quality audio), and started on one of the new cards Big gave me for my birthday, putting Chapters 7 through 16 on it.  When I finally finished editing the first five chapters, I . . . oh, go back and read the previous sentence again, and see if you can tell where I'm going with this.

You done?  Did you find it?  If not, don't worry about it, I'll explain.  There was no Chapter 6.  I finished editing Chapter 7, but realized I didn't have 6, so I went looking for the earlier SD card (assuming, logically, that I recorded six chapters on it, but only transferred off five).  I grabbed the SD card from the drawer where I found it looking for White-Out yesterday (yeah, I still use White-Out, every single day), and when I popped it into my laptop . . . it didn't have any "Arcove's Bright Side" recordings on it.  Instead, it had recordings from . . . 2020 and 2021.  What the heck?

I realized, in looking over those file names, that this was the SD card that I lost last year sometime, and being certain it was in my drawer, went searching for it, throwing out old ticket stubs and receipts, but not ever finding it.  It had indeed been in that drawer all the time.  It sucks that I lost it, but it was nice that I found it again.  And the first file that I transfered off it was the Rish Outcast episode I did last year, and then never was able to find, the one I dedicated to (the late) Big Anklevich, so that I could work on it in between chapters of Abbie's book up at the cabin.

And it gives me the chance to use my insanely culturally insensitive Short Round/Indy "Lost Episode" intro.  It's been a long time, offensive-to-today's-generation-but-totally-in-keeping-with-my-love-for-the-Eighties-character clip, it's been a long time.

I want to talk about the trailer for SMILE sometime, but not right now.  I also neglected to do my recording from the book from the library because once it got dark . . . it seemed like a foolish thing to do.  

In many ways, I feel a little bit like the Hulk (or more appropriately, like Bruce Banner), always having to be aware of my surroundings, lest I lose control and all hell breaks loose.  Well, maybe that's a bad analogy, but even without reading anything scary or talking about anything more frightening than mixing eggs with chili, I was envisioning silent, black-garbed figures standing in the cabin with me, or watching me from the other side of the window--you know, the usual overactive imagination junk, only a tiny bit stronger than it was last week or the week before.  Even as I type this, I can hear the wind blowing outside, and the sound it makes is way eerier than it ought to be.

I finally threw in a movie, and the one I chose (for some reason) was TRON 2.  I had never seen it.  Partly, it was because I had never particularly liked the first one (I saw it as an adult, and maybe that makes all the difference).  Also, I had heard that, except for Olivia Wilde, there was nothing good about TRON: GELACY, and I had already seen the horrific CG Jeff Bridges in the trailer, so I figured, why subject myself to that?

Well, the movie was pretty much exactly what I had been told.  The digital de-aging was absolutely the worst I've ever seen (even including the ghastly Princess Leia that ruins the ending of ROGUE ONE), and Olivia Wilde's face was perfectly symmetrical and even made that odd haircut look good.  

But it was both better than and worse than I expected it to be--the main actor, Garrett Headland, was so bland and unremarkable that I'd be surprised to hear he ever acted again (and I'll be sure to bring him up the next time somebody complains about the guy who played John Carter and Gambit [and the lead in BATTLESHIP]), and better--the music by Daft Punk was pretty darn cool, and the Jeff Bridges performance was nice, both in his human and unholy abomination roles.

Still, because I thought the 1982 TRON was so mediocre, it makes me wonder if I'd feel differently if I saw it again.  Uh oh.

Arcove or Exercise: Both

8-25

You may not believe it, but it's already started getting cool again up here.  It was in the sixties when I got here (despite being in the mid-nineties at home), and once the sun went down, when I drove to the dam to do my run, it was in the high fifties.  And at night, I actually considered building a fire (didn't do it, though).  

Once I realized it was in the forties outside and I had closed the one remaining open window, I decided I would make a fire.  Well, some things never change: I start a fire, and it went out almost immediately.  So, like the Russian space program that one-upped our million dollar zero-G pen, I simply put on a long-sleeved shirt--problem solved.

It is now three pm.  I've done a couple of menial tasks, eaten a dozen eggs (don't ask), and read another chapter in my super mediocre Houdini book while on the exercise bike, then took what was supposed to be a twenty minute nap (I even set an alarm), but wasn't.  And now I'm back to editing . . . and I realized I can't stand the sound of my voice.  Maybe that asshole "Bold Guys Sprint" writer was right in 2013.  Next week, my cousin is going to Disneyland with his family, so I could come up on Tuesday afternoon instead of Wednesday.  Maybe then I'll get a few more chapters done.*

I edited the last chapter of "But Now I'm Found," and it was eight minutes and fifty-four seconds.  The recording time on that chapter had been twenty-two minutes and forty-three seconds.  And I'm even more assiduous for Abbie's book.

Now it's raining again.  This summer started out with so much fear about droughts, and the hottest June on record . . . and now, every time I come up here, it's raining.  There was a ban on campfires way back at the start of the season, but when I passed the Fire Danger sign yesterday, it was all the way down to Light (down from Extreme, where it was a month ago).  And now the rain is pouring down fairly hard, with lots of fun thunder, which will prevent me from doing the recording I should have done yesterday.  But you can't predict these things.

Finished editing "But Now I'm Found," and all in all, it comes to two hours and forty minutes.  Not sure if that's good, but it is what it is.

Arcove or Exercise: Both

*Here's what producing audiobooks is like: You sit down with a good book, and perform it (at least until your voice gives out), and know that it's your calling, and you are truly alive--you are totally brilliant at doing this one thing, holy smoke, .  And then . . . you start to edit.  You hear every stammer, every mouth click, every time I shift in the chair, every time I get the words wrong, every time I can't say "Arcove hesitated" (which is a problem around fifty times), and soon, you realize that you are absolutely terrible at even this one thing, holy smoke.

8-23 Blog

In my audiobook reading, Abbie described one of Arcove's lines as being said, "in a voice like brooding thunder."  That took me a few takes, and then I decided I didn't know what it meant.  Sorry.  It's hard to decide how big to do some of these lines, especially when they are described as "exclaimed" or "growled" or "burst out."  But hey, hopefully my instincts are good.

I drove to the library in the next town, to check out the book that the story for the next Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name came from (I mentioned this the other day, but somehow, the edited version of the story became corrupted, and I had long since deleted the recording from back in November).  It was already checked out at the local library, but they had two copies at the next one, and I had been told that I could easily check out a book using my current library card (I had gotten a second library card in that town in 2007 or so, when I was working there, though I assumed--wrongly--that it had expired). 

There was a single librarian working (which just blows my mind, since there are usually three or four on duty at all times at mine), and she wouldn't take my hometown library card plus my driver's license as sufficient I.D. (she kept asking, "Do you have proof of address on your phone you could show me?" which I still can't quite get my head around).  What she wanted me to go back home, get a phone or utility bill, and bring it in to prove where I lived, and maybe I should have done that (I asked her if the envelope had to be unopened--I remember hearing that once from someone demanding proof of address--and she looked at me like I was being ridiculous), but instead, I went downstairs, got the book in question, and merely tore out the pages that I needed to do the recording.

Okay, that's a lie.  I just took pictures of those pages with my phone, but I still felt like I was committing some kind of espionage by doing so, hoping not to be seen by a teen library assistant or a security camera.

Later on, I went to my own library, and once again, my heart wasn't in my writing tonight.  I made the mistake of quoting a Jimi Hendrix song in my story, then went online to see if I'd gotten it right, then spent a while reading about the history of the song, then read about the songs he put out before that one.  Still, I had 515 words by the time the library wanted me to leave.*

For weeks, I'd been wanting to see Jordan Peele's new movie, NOPE, but things kept preventing it.  I told my cousin on Monday that I was going to go on Tuesday, so I didn't miss it, and to his credit, he said he'd go too (although I predicted we'd be the only two people in the audience, and it was still fairly full).  And even though I didn't like the movie (I'm not burying the lead, since I have so little time to blog tonight), I appreciated what Peele was doing, and that there was masterful skill involved.  But there were three stumbling blocks to my enjoying the movie:
1) There was a running 90's sitcom chimpanzee attack thread that I just couldn't understand (it was like it had been dropped in at random from another, unfinished movie),
2) I simply could not like the female lead, finding her loud and obnoxious and quite the opposite of sympathetic, and
3) there's a twist/conceit at the end of the film that just lost me, that I was unable to accept** or get past.  But ah well.

Arcove or Exercise or Writing: All Three

*Technically, they wanted me to leave from the first moment they saw me.  I need a haircut.

**His last movie, US, had a twist/conceit at the end too that I just found too ridiculous, and it lost me too, though not quite this badly; I was still able to enjoy US.

8-22

One of the saddest days of my life was . . . well, I guess it was when the fortune teller told me, "You will never marry, you will never have any children.  You will die, by your own hand . . . and soon," but a fairly sad day was when one of my listeners told me he'd found a bunch of errors in my audiobook on Audible, and (at that time), there was no way to take it down and fix them.*

As I start to give Abbie the finished audio, I'm well aware that nearly every chapter will have something (the chapters are just too long not to--except Chapters 6b and 7b, those were short) that I missed in it.

I finished a couple more today.  Which puts us at:

6 / 52

Wow, doesn't look like a lot, when you put it that way.

Today's another one of those days where I cannot, for the life of me, get myself to write anything.  I should be ashamed of myself.

But I'm not.  I'll see if I can manage 100 words.  If I can do that, it's still something.

Managed 209 words.  Then a few more.  When they kicked me out, I was at 621.  I'll take that.

Arcove or Exercise: Arcove (and Writing)

*There are now, but it's still a huge pain in the chonch. 

8-21

I woke up from a bad dream fairly early in the morning, which is interesting considering I didn't get to sleep last night until nearly five, and decided to do a load of laundry (my room smells like a homeless devil-worshiper's foulest sock) and get some "Arcove" editing done.  On Wednesday, I made a Macro in my editing program called Character Thought, that I can go to again and again (I wish there was a way to attach a keyboard shortcut to it), and it probably saves me, oh, a whole minute on each chapter.  That may not sound like much, but . . .

Come to think of it, it isn't much.  Darn.

I edited a bit with the line "proceeded to knead the air" and realized that in audio, I didn't really convey that it's "kneed" and not "need."  

Something Abbie does in this book is have character's remember things that others said to them earlier in the book, as part of their thoughts.  I need to not only put the Character Thought effect on them, but try to replicate how I said the line the first time.  I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but it's just part of doing something I know I'm good at, which means doing it right.  The audiobook I'm listening to now is so sub-par, where the narrator doesn't even distinguish between male and female voices, let alone Russian, American, and Chinese.

I did the stairs at the park again today, as well as jogging around the outside track.  When I got to the car, my face was bright red.  I must be doing something . . . right?

I have talked, in the past, about how one must be a real self-promoter in order to succeed in the creative arts (whether it's writing, acting, audiobook narrating, fingerpainting, or podcasting).  I met a dude the other day with a YouTube channel*, and he told me to check it out, sending me a Friend request on Facebook, then after I'd accepted, bombarded me with "Have you checked out my channel yet?" messages until I finally went there and watched him do his thing.  I think that kind of blatant disregard for tact and subtlety is what you need to get ahead in the arts, hence my complete lack of success in that arena.

Arcove or Exercise: Both

*He does John Leguizamo/Cthulu Mythos-related stop-motion clay animation with occasional funny digestive sound effects.