Who has the job of coming up with random fake brand names for generic batteries and similar cheap miscellany? Who has this job? Because somebody has this job. I want to know who.

Powermax Superdeer. Really? Superdeer?

On a similar note, please enjoy Valium lightbulbs. The best part is how they’re marked 110v on one side of the box, and 130v on the top. But the valium lets us not worry about that sort of thing.

Now, even sedated, I have no idea how you even make lightbulbs out of diazepam, but clearly, Uncle Fester has been ahead of the rest of us.

Maybe it was his idea. Maybe he’s the one who…

…oh god. What I have I discovered?!

Forget the light bulbs. The light bulbs are unknowable. The light bulbs have never been known. You cannot have known about the light bulbs because no one has ever known about the light bulbs. We do not need them. We have the lights above above the Arby’s, the ones that rush by as we pretend to sleep, and that is all that we need to know, because…

Yes. Yes, we do.

I found these on Tumblr and edited them up to print resolution. 😀

Shatterdome Maintenance Level

The studio is actually on one of the upper levels of the Lair. The last thing you want to do is lose satellite signal when you’re aiming energy bolts at your enemies. It’s just sloppy. Besides, if we’re going to be launching jaegers, who wants to wait in elevators?

Particularly when we drop the bass

Extreme crush hazard. Extreme.

Sorry for the intense lag bout there – after getting back from Vancouver, Friday got swallowed whole by more cat problems and a mountain of paperwork. The weekend… yeah, mostly more cat pee cleanup. I tried to put my studio back together on Saturday, but had to take it apart again.

But I think I’ve found the last hidden spot in my studio which has been driving me insane for a week^*, at last, tonight.

BUT. ENOUGH ABOUT CAT PEE. Vancouver and the Great Big Sea show at the PNE was awesome. Geri and Robert let us crash at their place again – thanks! The Fair, by the way, has this:

Oh Jesus

…which is something I’m sure nobody needed to know. I did not partake, but I almost did. Instead, I bought alcohol and Siegel’s, which are now safely stashed in our pantry.

Of course, the show:

Setting the Stage
(More photos on my Flickr stream.)

GBS was good, as always, but the experience – I hate to say this, but I knew it would be true – paled against seeing them last year on their home turf. The crowd was into it, don’t get me wrong, but not on the same order of magnitude.

The funniest moment in the show was when Alan realised one of the giant mobile sculpture-like metal towers behind the audience (Revelation) was actually a ride and there “are people up there,” at which point he was all, “…what did you do?!”

He looked genuinely freaked out. It was hilarious.

Thursday was the last day of Mt. Pleasant/East Van icon Rhizome, which is a sad and terrible thing – they’re moving to Toronto, partly for family reasons, and re-opening there. DAMN YOU, EASTERN STANDARD TRIBE!

I stopped by for a last lunch and to hang out a bit, and ended up putting them back in contact with another person who moved from Vancouver to Toronto, and took a few pictures; this one is fitting:

Accidental Sepiatone

Accidental sepiatone actually was accidental, a mis-exposure and happy accident. I have a regular-colour shot too, but I like this one better. Anna and I also helped Robert move his old rear-projection TV to the recycle centre; a relaxed and lazy day before catching the train south.

Once back, at King Street Station, we walked by this beautiful beast:

Private Car

I asked the station employee in the photo what the deal was, and she told me it was a private car. I know about these, but hadn’t yet seen one; essentially, you can buy an old rail car and pay rail companies to haul them around for you – with cargo trains too, this isn’t just CascadiaRail or Amtrak – with you and yours in them. It’s like an RV, but for the rails.

I want one so much. 😀

So, that’s a bit of catching up. Today we’ll have another go at putting the studio back together sans remaining stink, and try to get back on proper track.

*: Honestly, you have no idea how disruptive this has been. He started while we were gone, and it went from never to 2-4 times a day, and there’s not a day I’m not spending at least a couple of hours cleaning cat pee or aftereffects thereof, just trying to catch up. It’s all I did for a solid week; at least it’s not all my time anymore. On top of that, everything is stacked up in fenced-off areas he can’t reach; it’s like we’re in the middle of packing for a move, and that includes my studio. I’m having anxiety nightmares. We have an action plan now, but… yeah.

I have to admit, it’s a tad breathtaking, in a good way, to get home on the train and walk into this station, after so many years of the horrible 60s “modernisation” and a decade of restoration.

It’s one hell of a first impression, I have to tell you.

Back from Vancouver. Bed now. More later. ^_^

Courtesy Criacow, this… this is beautiful.

My contribution, were I to make one, would possibly be:

#define fork sleep(1);fork

For once, do read the comments.

Tumblr doesn’t take long to put together an online convention. Jaegercon 2013 is go! No idea what we’re doing yet but it looks like I’ll be a webcast point for at least one panel. I’ll already fiddling around with song ideas, too.

I am thinking about my old Cascadian Mecha Militia stuff, tho’, and the Dance Dance Revolution Demonstration Team. (There was even merch – scroll down.)

Most of Monday was spent cleaning up after the cat. I wish I was joking about that; Fred has been having bladder issues. The only thing I did which wasn’t cleaning was improve to one of my gig bags:

Cascadia has a Queer Pride Flag, and I have a patch

Damn right.

Saw Pacific Rim on Sunday, and I can’t remember walking out of a theatre after a film, including Avatar, with my brain still going how did I just see that and how can I can see it again? I’ve been told this is how people felt coming out of Star Wars in 1977.

Let’s go to my post-film tweets, to be followed by one very minor spoiler:

Solarbirdy: JFC YOU GUYS WHY IS NOT EVERYONE AND EVERY BLOG NOT NOW ENTIRELY ABOUT PACIFIC RIM OMG #seriously #NOSERIOUSLY
Solarbirdy: I’M GONNA TWEET ALL CAPS FOR A WHILE BECAUSE THIS MOVIE IS THAT AWESOME I AM IN KIND OF A DAZE FROM AWESOME SO DEAL WITH IT
Solarbirdy: ALSO WHY HAS THIS MOVIE NOT MADE EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS
Solarbirdy: BECAUSE OH MY GOD
Solarbirdy: FUCK STAR WARS LET’S TALK KAIJU
Solarbirdy: HAVE YOU SEEN THE BATTLE OF HONG KONG? NO? WHY THE HELL NOT BECAUSE YOU NEED TO #obviously
Solarbirdy: ON THE BIGGEST SCREEN POSSIBLE. PERHAPS A LARGER ONE SHOUD BE MADE. I SUGGEST WE REPURPOSE NEBRASKA. #nobodysusingit
Solarbirdy: I WILL ALSO ACCEPT KANSAS IN A PINCH, IT HAS THE RIGHT RATIO FOR IMAX #sorta #oristhatcolorado #oneofthoserectangles
Solarbirdy: OH MY GOD WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME #iwasnotprepared
Solarbirdy: GIANT MECHA KATA I WAS LITERALLY DOING SQUEEFLAIL IN MY SEAT LIKE A QUARTER OF THE MOVIE #armworkout
Solarbirdy: WELL I AM NOW UP TO SPEED. <BASH FISTS TOGETHER>

Okay, one – rather clever – phrase going around is that it lacks character development in the same way that The English Patient lacks kaiju and giant robots. I dispute this. Rinko Kikuchi’s spectacularly-realised Mako Mori goes through the Hero’s Arc, and while that’s not unusual development, it’s one of the classic literary progressions of character. I would make different but important arguments for two other characters.

Further, it’s one of the most emotionally intelligent action films I’ve seen in I don’t even know how long. This Tumblr post does a great job of explaining how and why, and it’s spoilerriffic, so don’t click until you’ve seen the movie.

On the negative side, I’d grant that the call-to-action speech that always happens in these things is the only weak moment in Idris Elba’s otherwise lovely performance of Stacker Pentecost, and you can argue that the last 20 minutes doesn’t live up to the Battle of Y’KNOW WHAT NOBODY FUCKING CARES AND NONE OF THAT MATTERS BECAUSE THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME. WERE THERE PROBLEMS IN STAR WARS BEFORE LUCAS FUCKED IT UP? YES. AND NOBODY CARED. AND NOBODY SHOULD CARE ABOUT THESE BECAUSE THIS ENTIRE MOVIE IS MADE OF AWESOME.

Seriously, there are flaws, NOBODY CARES IT HAS TOO MUCH AWESOME FOR ANYONE TO CARE. If you aren’t squeeflailing uncontrollably through the Hong Kong sequences I don’t even want to know you. The more you know about kaiju and giant robot/jaeger film and anime of the past the more you’ll see, know, and love, about this. There’re nods to everything from NGE back to Ray Harryhausen, and you are in the hands of a genius who cares about all of it. Go watch this on IMAX, right now, while you still can.

eta: Oh, on a technical note: the IMAX 3D in this movie is so good that I forgot it was there. That’s never happened in a 3D movie either. I don’t know whether that’d be true in regular-theatre 3D, tho’.

So, I posted a brilliant bit of cosplay to Tumblr that I found originally over on Facebook (and I did link back and give source), on Tuesday. It got like six reblogs and a bunch of likes and I forgot about it.

And then on Wednesday morning my Tumblr dash was made entirely of reblog notes, and I looked at the post, and it said 3700 notes… and then jumped to 3800.. and 3900… and now it’s 81,463.

I’ve heard people talk about watching things go viral before, but I’ve never seen it from behind the dashboard? All I could think, really, was “… O.o …”

So, hi, some surprisingly large percentage of Tumblr! And hi, surprisingly large number of people who decided to follow my blog! Nice to meet you! I’m Solarbird, the Lightbringer; my band is Crime and the Forces of Evil; we’re supervillains turned musicians. Occasionally I cosplay, tho’ tbh my last big project was a few years ago; mostly I just fangirl right now. 😀 I run nwcMUSIC, the annual music festival at the Norwescon science fiction convention, and host The Geekmusic Podcast.

And that’s me. What about you?

So weerd1 and tereshkova2001 have started cosplaying at #virtualCC (Virtual ComicCon), and OKAY THEN here’s the handout for Kitting Out Cheap – how to assemble a recording kit on zero budget, #VirtualCC edition.

Further, my fully armed and operational podcasting studio is more than capable of actually holding this panel, live, say, tomorrow or Saturday, as long as it doesn’t conflict with Pacific Rim. Wanna do it?

Columbia sighted – floating city, ahoy! Action stations, action stations! Prepare for incoming…

…oh. Wait. Missouri? Never mind. Calm down, everyone, false alarm. Have a flower picture.

See the cool, soothing flower? Love it. LOVE IT.

(This message brought to you by too much Bioshock Infinite, Google Analytics, and trying to figure out what to do with a really messy desktop.)