Here are the Lair, we’ve been re-watching Star Wars in the Machete order – the first two of the original trilogy, the second two of the “prequels” as an extended flashback, and finally Return of the Jedi – before seeing the new film.

We just watched Revenge of the Sith, which I’d never seen. Attack of the Clones was it for me, when they first came out – I was done.

And… as everyone said, Sith is by far the least bad of the prequel trilogy. I was expecting that. And I was going along with it, letting some of the dumbest shit go, and seeing how some things actually kind of worked kind of okay, even if other things often didn’t, and then, we’re getting seriously into the meat of the film, and…

…I swear to the gods I was not expecting this…

…there is a moment of cinema. Actual, honest, sincere, working cinema. No dialogue, nearly no action, just camera, just actors being allowed – for once! – to act, and it is beautiful.

And it punched me in the gut. Hard. Partly because for the first time, I felt some kind of emotional connection to these characters. Woah, Not Expecting That, as they say. Partly because a critical relationship is sold to me, for the only time. Partly because bad decisions are being made that will create the situation we see later, and I buy that, too. But mostly…

…mostly because, goddammit, it showed, it showed through, it showed clear, that somewhere, somehow, lost inside that pompous egomaniac, that delusional businessman hooked on his own legend, that raving CGI-set addict who couldn’t direct actors to find lunch…

…there is still a filmmaker. It hurts. I started yelling, no, really, I did, at Anna, going, “WHAT THE HELL? WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED? THAT WAS CINEMA, WHAT? HOW? WHAT IS IT DOING IN THIS MESS?”

And it’s just such a goddamn shame there’s no Luke Skywalker around to make him realise that.

Revenge of the Sith is still not a good film. One precious moment of genuine art does not salvage what otherwise succeeds merely by virtue of not being wretched. There are several moments of competence, and several near-misses – and this time, there really are enough bones to make a good film. You can tell. You really can see it, in this one – partly, I think, because for one, brief moment, it actually is a good film.

Which makes the rest even harder to take.

Goddammit, George. Gods dammit.

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Remember that video I mentioned shooting a part for? It’s up! This is Mary Crowell, or more specifically Doctor Mary Crowell who didn’t go to Evil Medical School for all those years to be called “Misses, doing a jazz cover of “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.” Enjoy:

It’s funny how an afternoon’s shoot gets distilled. 1:13-1:18, and 2:52-3:01, if you’re curious. But watch the whole thing, particularly for Zombie Chef and Zombie 10th Doctor, they’re both pretty great. 😀

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Actual winter solstice is in a few hours. It’s longestnight.

I made the candle myself, out of cheese rind and cotton thread. See you in the morning.

Check this printed toy out. It doesn’t look like all that much for the first minute but the thing actually moves.

Recorded “scratch tracks” for “Supervillain For I Love You” yesterday, prep work for the big show at Conflikt in January. It’s basically so the other people who will be in the band for that show can learn it.

Also comped the bass tracks for “Thirteen.” This time bass tracks doesn’t mean multiple bass lines, tho’ you certainly know I’ve done that before. This time, it means one “dry” (no-effects) track and one “wet” (effects) track, which I then mix together in a ratio.

Normally the “wet” and “dry” are in one track, generated live via plugins. But in this case it’s actually two separate performances, because the effects I’m using – a really crunchy bass amp, an overdrive box, a little bit of old-school chorusing – are all external to my computer. So I’m treating the recording of that external-effected performance as an effect in and of itself, putting it in a separate recording track, and mixing with the “dry” bass guitar recording.

One neat side-benefit is that since once they’re both in the DAW they’re basically just two recordings, I can edit how long it takes each individual note’s instance of the “effect” to show up. It’s kind of like being able to set the pre-delay on a per note basis. I’m not doing much of that because in practice it’d be weird to do so, but there are a couple of places where it makes aural sense to loosen and tighten up the crunch timing. So hey, extra work, but bonus nonetheless!

Best part of this bass line tho’ is – well, there are two things. One: first recording of the Godin A5 Fretless that Anna got me for Bassmas last year. Two: crunky as fuck. Okay, so, three. Three things. Three: So goddamn deep. I am using all of this fifth string. Seriously, this entire bass line is being played on the bottom two strings of a five.

aw yeah. deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep bassing.

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Waiting on hold to arrange some engineering issues, and George beside me started snoring. So enjoy some video. (Hosted on Tumblr.)

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Philips just instituted DRM restrictions on light bulbs and fixtures.

I am impressed. Not as impressed as I was by Keurig doing it on coffee, but impressed. That’s evil!

eta: Oh, hey, they totally reversed themselves! Hilarious.

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I mean, of course it goes without saying I’m not the only supervillain with computers. One was DDOSing our mail server for about 36 hours Sunday and Monday, which is kind of hilarious since we were down a big chunk of that time already for necessary upgrades/replacements. It was a decent-sized fleet – I blocked 26,000-ish bots before deciding eh, good enough for now.

It all abruptly stopped yesterday at 6:04pm. I apologise if you were downwind. Aheh.

Meanwhile, Kaye on Facebook requested more pictures of George. Here’s one! It’s from a few days ago, he was helping with my nap. He’s such a good kitty.

eta: Oh, they’re back. Around 100,000 machines this time. I wonder why? Ah, well, it’s not like I don’t have firing solutions ready.

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I called the photo “comping zouk” but NO it’s comping OCTAVE MANDOLIN! But octave mandolin like few people have heard it before. I’m not going to say nobody, but not many people, because this is not how this instrument is played. I’m driving this thing so downtuned and so hard that it’s a trial keeping it from slipping out of tune by the end of the song.

Part of that problem is that these strings are at the end of their life and I need to change them out, and I would’ve have already done, but I’m afraid I’ll lose the special sound quality I’ve managed to get the last few sessions.

And partly that slippage, the wearing, that’s also intentional, because the song’s about a coming apart of life, an overdriving of everything when faced with that, a place where all engines are running at 120% rated output and everything’s still firing but at the same time everything is absolutely tearing itself to pieces as a result and there is nothing you can do about it, and it’s necessary, but… you still know.

Because, see, this is a straight-up Doctor Who song, it’s based on a Vixy & Tony song called “Thirteen,” and it’s forthrightly about the Doctor dealing with whelp this is it, this is the last go, after a 12th regeneration, facing mortality right in the face, which was super-current when I wrote it, which meant for about six weeks, THANKS A LOT MOFFAT.

But even if it’s a period piece now, which it is, I still think it’s good, and while I’ve only played it out a couple of times so far, even audiences which know and love Vixy & Tony’s original – and their fans are loyal – have been all, “wow. …that works.” So I’m recording it for Conflikt, and it’ll be on the Conflikt convention CD.

And, pleasantly, it’s proving a good warm-up for getting back into the studio for Din of Thieves. I do often like being in the studio. Sometimes, I forget that.

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I pulled out my ancient copy of Fallout 2 a while ago and found no sign of the manual, but decided, eh, I’ll figure it out. Which is how I got reminded of things like “90s games don’t autosave across levels” and “90s games don’t autosave when you level up.” SO LONG, PROGRESS!

The PDF of the manual was on the Fallout wiki, and that was fine for reading on a tablet. But no, I decided NO I WILL HAVE THE BOOK GODDAMMIT, even if the pages in the PDF are arranged impossibly for proper double-sided-pages book printing.

So I printed out everything, physically cut and reassembled it back into correct signatures, scanned and duplex-printed all those new signatures, recut all of them, and bound it using perfect-binding techniques with carpenter’s glue and fabric. Because I’m just that kind of obsessive.

I thought about trimming the excess glue but realised quickly that no, that’s really kind of thematically appropriate. As would be adding some radioactive material, but I’m only so much into thematic accuracy.

And then I mentioned this online and lj:flashfire demanded gifs or it didn’t happen. So see above, and below.

I’m unironically really pleased with the cloth binding

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Courtesy dw:vatine, here’s Hedningarna, which is not metal, but which is, to quote vatine, “rock, but starting from 15th century Swedish trad music, instead of swing.” Here’s a playlist of their tunes, and here’s one to get you started:

Enjoy!

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