Head Cheese

THE GROUND WAS LITTERED WITH HOOF FILINGS. Anthony Nathanson swept the ones in his direct vicinity away with his heel, considering the large caltrop-like clippings littering the ground, and recalling what little he knew about cattle. Ungulates walk on what to humans would be toenails, yes, and paring these down could be done in swathes. These lay here, thick and crusty, against the spongy brown, sun-dried ground of the caked layered manure. The part of the barn he'd entered at must have been a medical area of some sort.

The dusty sky was a pale golden yellow, tinged with red like an egg yolk that had had a blood vessel burst in it. Nathanson shielded himself with his hand against the sun, and surveyed the killing field before him, recessed about 20 feet into the ground at a sloped curve. He stood at the top of a cement ramp down into the pit, slick with dust and decorated with the odd plops of manure. Before him the large field was populated with toy-figure-sized workers and cattle, as well as odd-shaped lumps, nearly cattle shaped but just off enough to be disconcerting. No wonder why this place has been flagged as a safety violation, he thought. 

Four people had gone missing, without a trace, and he'd been sent to investigate. People drowned in manure pits all the time, he'd read- sure enough, to the west left of him, he could make out the lagoon-like silage pits. He would have been able to smell it from here, but the whole place smelled like that. A digestive tract, the whole place, with no difference between any one part of the alimentary canal. It was all the same here. What difference was it, then, to have the sewage entering your nose and mouth, making its way down to your lungs?

As Anthony pondered these things, he heard someone approach behind him. He turned. A well-tanned man with leathery skin and light tan coveralls humped up the incline from the pit, up the hard dirt ground to the right of the ramp, and walked amiably toward Anthony, right hand thrust forward for a shake. He accepted it, over the railing that ran around the ramp. 

"Detective Nathanson?" the man asked, still shaking Anthony's hand.

Anthony nodded curtly and withdrew his hand. Hopping the railing, he made identity confirmation of his own. "Mr Fowler?" 

"Call me Iggy," Fowler grinned. His teeth were small and evenly spaced. "I'm afraid we're going to have to walk-and-talk. Shall we go down?"

They descended, Anthony following Fowler. Anthony steadied himself with his left hand on the rail at his side, but Fowler needed no such handicap. As they walked into the sun-baked pit full of cattle and workers, Iggy describing the process in an unmodulated tone, audible above the thrumming din of the activity below.

"This here facility is what we like to call a holistic ranch. That means whole, as in, um, Whole Foods. You know the old uu--uu--uuhh--hh American Indian, Native American, um, process, proverb of using the whole buffalo?" Anthony waved his free hand. "Not sure if that's true. Saw a Far Side cartoon once- well anyway, that's what we do here at least. Leather, milk, bones, and meat. Meat especially. Intestinal skin is washed out and goes onto become sausage casings. These processes can be done with the corpses of any mammalian animal. Cattle are used because that's the animal that people are most comfortable with," Iggy explained. "We eat them all the time, drink their milk, and that's the only function they serve in society." 

They slowed as they reached the place where the plane leveled out. "You have any leads, in regards to what happened to those men?"

Anthony shrugged. "Figure they drowned in liquid fertilizer. Any idea if they'd have any reason to be over there?"

Iggy did the scratch-and-shrug, a classic sign of someone pretending to think. "We're not so sure that's it. If you're positive that that's what happened, we can rake the silage pit, but my bet is on the methane harvesters. Cattle produce an asston of methane, and we harvest that here. Squeeze out their guts like squeezing air from under a, laminated, bit of lamination. It's automated, mostly, but accessible. Breathe in a little of that an' you're toast."

Anthony nodded, doing the scratch-and-shrug himself. "But the fourth man who disappeared was an OSHA worker. You figure he'd know the protocols for entering a methane-rich environment. And it still doesn't explain what happened to the bodies."

Iggy, who had made as if he were going to walk on, turned back at this. "You do know what happens when methane catches fire, though, right?" 

Anthony was silent at this, so Iggy continued.

"It's a pit, a big, pit. Like a nuclear silo, you know? Blows up all the time. There's so much methane that comes through here. So much methane. I'm not sure why those three men only disappeared recently, with the OSHA guy come tumbling after, but smart money is, look there. DNA test the soot on the walls. I don't know."

Anthony nodded, Iggy seemed to relax, and they recommenced walking. They went further, closer to the workfield, where workers herded cattle through a complex maze of rails, gates, and open areas. Those workers, their faces curiously white, were still in the distance somewhat. Before them lay the almost-cow-shaped lumps that Anthony had seen from above. And as they walked forward, all at once, the identity of the lumps revealed itself.

The lumps were cow-shaped because they were cattle, or had been. The cattle had been split in half, bones all been popped out. Iggy led Anthony through, and they wove around the corpses: hollowed-out shells of cows, split in half like pistachios, the interiors emptied out leaving only the stiff felt-textured leather. The shells were far too thick to be just the leather- looking closer the meat itself was also intact, but molded over with brown fuzz, like the leather was a culture that grew to encompass the entirety of the corpse. Tawed, Iggy explained. Injected with salt or alum as a preservative. And then just left out in the sun, in the very fields they'd been slaughtered in. There was nothing intrinsically unhygienic about it.

The bones would go on to be ground up and made into gelatin; the rest of the shells, in this area at least, was dried out and turned into something that could function as both or either leather or jerky. Iggy gave a name for it, which Anthony tried to hold onto, though with frustration he found a few minutes later that he'd forgotten it. Leathermaking as a process, Iggy explained, usually involves stretching out the hide in the sun, applying a caustic agent and scraping the fat and meat off; this was an experimental process delivering good results. It all seemed rather strange to Nathanson, but the way Fowler carried on about it seemed to chide him that he wasn't the expert here.

Still, something seemed off. Something was nagging at him. Instead of turning to go back up to the sewage-methane area, Nathanson hung doggedly to Iggy's side as he went to oversee more work, walking to a new area, with swarms of workers. And things got stranger and stranger.

Here the workers themselves wore masks resembling bulls' skulls, the peaked nosey bits sticking out in the front like the beaked masks of renaissance-age plague doctors. Their coveralls here were dark, coarse, assembled from odd cuts of leather, as opposed to the denim coveralls Nathanson had seen the workers above wear. Their movement was odder, here, too. These were the men who slaughtered on a regular basis. As a detective Anthony saw death all the time, but how must it affect you, he thought, to see that much death, not only see it but participate in it, as a job? He looked back up to the workers' masked faces and shuddered in the Arizona heat. Those weren't masks, he realized. Those were real cattle skulls.

Something moved in the midst of the workers, as it traveled through the maze of rails. The workers prodded it along in the right direction, into one of the open areas right before where Nathanson and Fowler were standing. Something was odd about the way the bull moved. Blindly, drunkenly, stumbling this way and that, dancing like a puppet on strings to the zaps of the cattle prods on all sides of it. It entered a pen in front of a gate into the open area, and at first, for half of a second, Nathanson mistook it for one of the workers. All at once he realized what it was and why it had been moving so oddly.

"Its face is gone?" Nathanson asked, with as even a voice as he could muster.

"You ever hear of head cheese?" Iggy asked, a slight smirk to his tone.

Nathanson said nothing at this. "But why before death, why not wait till after you kill it?"

This time it was Fowler who said nothing. Fowler talked too much, usually. Didn't allow for any lulls in conversation. Nervous? Garrulous by nature? But now he was silent. Nathanson decided, from the way that he shied back when prodded about certain subjects, that he must have been hiding something. Methane explosion my a--

The bull burst the gates open, and charged forward blindly, and Nathanson could see it more clearly as it got closer. The face had been peeled off cleanly, bloodlessly, leaving only the white skull beneath, and ragged strips of flesh around the face. The only blood on the face pooled out from the eye sockets, where some meat still remained, mostly congealed and crusted over- the eyes themselves were gone, also taken out, and the sockets hollowed out like balled melons, leaving only their deepest recesses meaty. Blinded and faceless, the beast could only sway its head back and forth as it listened to its surroundings, flinching back and twitching at any brush against it. The white-skulled workers repositioned themselves around it.

What must it be thinking, Nathanson thought, staring hard at what was going on before him. What must that feel like. He should have been repulsed, but by this point he was numb.

The workers, working in tandem and in one swoop, lowered down a simple mechanical apparatus around the bull's head. Deftly, not touching any sides of the head until the sides touched the sides of the neck equally on both sides. Like a giant grotesque game of Operation. The apparatus looked like a giant cigar guillotine, with white red-stained plastic covering on the far part, and the cutting blade and metal exposed. The bull felt as its sides clamped around its neck, and threw its head up and down violently, flinging spittle-like flecks of blood from its sightless sockets and thick mucusy saliva from the open hole in its skull, above the mouth where the nose cartilage would have been.

A second later, it was all over- one of the workers flipped a release on his handlebar, and the blade sliced silently through the bull's thick neck. The guillotine lifted up and out with the same motion, and the bull fell with only a soft groan and a few spurts of curiously clear blood.

The head, still living, twitched with what little it had- the jaw clattered together as though cold, and the large rough tongue protruded thickly through the gap in the skull where the nose cartilage would have been, licking the caked dust of the velvety ground. With a final spasm, the jaw fell open and the tongue came to rest lolling out of the skull, empty eye sockets staring forward at nothing.

Further white-skulled workers, previously waiting out of the side, came with hooked poles, each pole manned by two workers, each pole grabbing a foot with its hooks. The corpse was lifted, rear legs higher into the air, the remainder of the blood drained out into a recessed basin at the side. Nathanson looked on all this with impassivity that surprised him; it was just too surreal to affect him beyond a slight pressure at the inside corners of his eyes.

He had to get out of here. Clear his head. He looked back up at the workers again, their thoughts impenetrable behind the empty eye sockets of their bulls' skulls. Amet, the Egyptian god of death. Had a bull's head. Or at least, that's how Anthony thought the myth went. How must it affect you, he thought again. How must it affect you.

He asked for the break room, and made his way to the area that the white-skulled workers indicated, a wide grey building made out of cinder blocks. He navigated through the halls until he found a place to rest.

Drained, Anthony slumped at a counter, and mentally reviewed the facts of the case. Three workers disappear, followed by the OSHA worker sent to investigate. No traces of where they went, or what happened to them. Fowler had suggested something about the methane pits, but there would have been no way that wouldn't have left any trace. Unless...

No part of the animal is wasted, Nathanson recalled. Every part is used, eaten up... without a trace. Nathanson jerked to sobriety as the full implication of the idea hit him. These processes can be done with the corpses of any mammalian animal. 

No. He had to get out of there. As soon as he'd started to panic, though, Anthony heard an alarm sound, somewhere distant. Great. They must have been watching him, knew he was onto them. The way they must have done to the OSHA worker.

He knew why they'd kill and butcher the OSHA worker, for having realized what was going on, but what had the first three workers done to deserve the fate? Nathanson tried to reason it out as he ran. Not out that door, they'd be expecting that. He turned a corner. There must have been some accident, Nathanson decided, that they tried to cover up, and--

Bursting through the exit, Nathanson shrunk back. Before him, a few yards away and walking in his direction, were three workers, one leading the others. At first it looked like their faces had been peeled off and turned into head cheese like the bull's face had been, but Nathanson realized the truth as soon as he thought about it. Instead of wearing cow skulls like masks, they were wearing the front halves of human skulls. And instead of dark strips of leather, their coveralls were made of tan strips. 

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Anthony recognized the gait and body dimensions of the lead figure as being Iggy Fowler's. The figures continued to approach him.

No. Anthony slammed the door shut, desperately scrambling to lock the door, but the lights turned off behind him, sending the world into pitch blackness. There were three figures out there, Anthony realized, and four people missing. He felt something grab his shoulders roughly. Fingers wrap around his neck. He tried to struggle as his windpipe was squeezed shut, but he felt himself grow weaker and weaker. Until he lost consciousness entirely.

...

Anthony woke up. But as he tried opening his eyes, he felt no eyes to open. It was like a bad dream, or being awake while still under sleep paralysis, but Anthony suspected the real reason. He stumbled out over the ground, blinded, rough electrical shocks prodding him on from both sides. No. No, no, no. He reached up to his face- rough and slimy, and further in than it should have been. A face that didn't feel back. A face that wasn't there. Hands trembling, he reached his fingers up to his eyes, and into his sockets. He could feel the squishy parts of the backs of what were once his eyes. Feel a slight pressure there. No no no NO no no no. He felt around, realized he had been led into a pen of some sort. Realized the gate was in front of him. Realized what was about to happen next. No. Found the latch to open the gate. Flipped it. Ran. 

But he felt something snag around his ankle, and the something around each of his wrists. And then around his head, and down to his neck.

And, as the apparatus closed around his neck, but before the blade came slicing through it, a strange thought passed through Anthony's mind. The first coherent thought ever since his coming to. His last thought at all.

So, Anthony thought. This is what this feels like.

Hallowpost

I needed a few hours to polish off my story (oh man it's gross and gory and creepy and awesome) but the Treehouse of Horror marathon on FXX is STILL GOING ON like seriously they've been doing it for almost thirty years so I've just been watching TV for 15 straight hours (though it's not the only thing I've been doing) and also I haven't had nearly enough candy today like all I had was one Reese's three Snickers three Whoppers a mini cookies n' creme Hershey's and that's it; I can remember all the candy I've eaten today off the top of my head and it's like so disappointing, and, candy, man.

So I'll be posting up my Halloween short story tomorrow? And also since I'm writing tomorrow a bit anyway, I'll guess I'll make the announcement now that I will be attempting NaNoWriMo finally this year; this does prevent me from that Other//half preparation and launch that I'd planned... Maybe I'll reset the deadline to the next Avengers movie, instead of the Justice League movie? Or, you know, the Avengers movie after that... I don't know when I'll be ready for anything. Though I think I'm ready to start a novel now.

Also I've got a page up, archiving in one convenient place all my Halloween shorts so far:

http://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/p/spooky-short-story-archive.html

Spooky Story 2017

I don't get nightmares. I fear very little in this world-- being trapped out on the open ocean, being lost in a pitch-black cave, my own inadequacies, and sometimes there are caves in my dreams, and sometimes there are inadequacies in my dreams-- but I've only ever had one nightmare in my life, back when I was around 3 or 4 years old, still in my trundle bed with the cowboy-themed bedsheets.

It consisted of a giant boxen Power Ranger, or Zord of some sort, standing in front of a moody atmospheric sky, and very very slowly making poses.

That's it, that's the entire dream; for some reason it was terrifying-- but that's the only nightmare I've had in my life.

I get scared in my dreams sometimes, but not really terrified, not enough to classify them as nightmares. 

About halfway through the month this month, still uncertain of what my scary short story for Halloween would be this year, I had a dream. 

And it terrified me.

I hope you're up for it. You probably aren't. Either way, it's called, HEAD CHEESE.

Six List

1. We'd planned to shoot some Tony Boi this evening, but Ben, our lead, only arrived right when it was getting too dark to shoot. We snapped some photos for posters and promos instead. Got some really really dope images out of that, with the dark blue of the sky and the red and the green of the neon in the alley. They look great. Tony Boi has yet to have any official social media presence, as we're building up such promotional materials, is apparently what we're doing.

2. Making a tattoo for Wednesday art night (we're designing and printing temporary tattoos for each other.) The designs are actually due by Monday, so that they can all be printed by then; here's mine:

3. Had a dream the night before last, Dad told me to get a girlfriend. ??? So okay then. I'm only going to be here one and a half more semesters, so no long-term pressures or anything. I'mma just be axin ladies out right and left, takin em to go see the My Little Pony movie, and covering the popcorn and soda myself going out to get the refills because I've already seen it.

4. I wrote the day before yesterday about holding myself back or whatever, and I didn't really write about the intended follow-up. I don't need to work some office job or at any restaurants; I've applied for such jobs and never got a word back, so it's time to take a back door, and freelance at something I'm actually good at. There was a Sunday school lesson at church today about genealogy and how important family history is, but then a Sunday school lesson about giving and not expecting anything in return, so I'm kind of torn; I had been going to go around offering my services as a family historian or something, posting up flyers on church bulletin boards around, charging by the hour like I've done before...

5. Listened to last week's Writing Excuses, Serialized Storytelling, this afternoon- there's a lot of writing advice out there, truly really helpful and everything, on how to structure novels and self-contained works, but I've been trying to find out how to structure my webcomic (and man I'm not sure I'm ready, my writing process is very percolative, I can't rush plot points I just can't); the podcast today being on exactly what I've been trying to figure out, was extremely helpful.

6. And then I refreshed the page, and the latest Writing Excuses is there: this week's episode is a primer on NaNoWriMo, and, man I'd forgotten that was coming up, it's right here on our doorstep, 50,000 words in 30 days, maybe I'll actually do that this year, maybe I'm ready to get through TTDECBA this year finally, I've been meaning to post there lately...

7. EDIT: Seventh thing I just remembered; usually Fall semester has Fandomonium[!] on Halloween, but it looks like Fandomonium[!] isn't going on at all this year, as nobody stepped up to lead it or something. Shame; I've been really meaning to have a booth showing off all my Zootopia swag, and this semester was the perfect opportunity to do so...

Why Not a Horse? (PretzelsVlog no 8)

New vlog up, which I shot yesterday and compiled today. It's a little funny, a little boring. Really should have music in the backgrounds of these; there is a way to add in music after the video's already up, and I think I'll look into that for this one.

When I explain more about videos on my Wordpress blog, that's usually about technical details, behind-the-scenes making of the video itself. But how to describe the emotion behind the words? I think I can talk about that a bit here...

Only three viewings in and the My Little Pony movie is becoming part of my soul in a way that Zootopia never could. Like I said. At least part of the appeal of McKenna was, I admit, the fact that my foot in the doorway with her was going to see Zootopia together as a first date.

I think it's the music.

I could do a whole video on why come the music's so good...

Caught the showing of Dracula tonight; the standby line was surprisingly short, everyone could get in, and I was near the beginning anyway. Script by Hamilton Deane and John L Balderston; it's the 1927 adaptation that made Bella Lugosi famous before he brought the role to the screen as well. 

Way good special effects, they had actual bats and rats play the bats and rats, an actual mirror playing itself, and used actual magicians' secrets to achieve some of the effects. (Apparently there was also a burst of flames at one point, every other night but tonight, and they just forgot to change out the flame burst thing.) 

It was a good adaptation, with just about the right amount of comedic relief; I was really wondering how they'd handle the book's trans-European setting, and, setting it entirely within the sanatorium in Purley, England, apparently? As revealed in the after-performance Q&A, they only changed two lines: one, excising a reference to fondling children, because that doesn't mean the same thing anymore; and two, changing the line they say when they kill Dracula to the line they have in the book, because it's just so much cooler than what the scriptwriters came up with.

Also the script updated the book's setting from turn-of-the-century to "present," with the invention of the aeroplane being an explicit plot point (also incidentally somewhat justifying the setting being exclusively in England.)

And now I really really want to play Fury of Dracula...

Brandon Avalanche (of Emotions)

There's a line in the prologue of Warbreaker (finished it a couple of days ago) that I'd overlooked, but which turns out to be vitally important to the ending, and everything about Vasher's character. He could, of course, achieve up to the Fifth Heightening any time he chose, but that required Vasher to make certain sacrifices that he... shoot I forget the rest.

Vasher could, of course, have up to the Fifth Heightening at any time, if he wished. That would require certain sacrifices he wasn’t willing to make. 

So close. 

I finished up Calamity, as well, last night; I did not expect the storylines to be able to wrap up in time, but they all did. Frigging Brandon Sanderson, pulling those left turns out of nowhere but everywhere at the same time. Guess the Brandon Avalanche is alive and well. But (spoilers-ish for the first two Reckoners books but not as much the last one) Prof's weakness, his fear that keeps Calamity at bay when he faces it, it not being what they thought; finally explaining it, what it was and means, it was like being Bastian reading the Neverending Story, and I suspect it was like that for a lot of people.

I'd have to spoil some very very good twists in order to explain what I mean by any of this, but if you know the twists then you can work it out or whatever. The Vasher thing relies less on the identity of what's being held back so much as it's being held back in the first place though. Can't explain how that ties to the Prof thing, but if you know the secret then it ties itself in.

Anyway there was an art seminar yesterday featuring printmaker and collage artist Wayne Kimball, followed by an artist reception with an exhibit of his work opening, and this morning there was a workshop with him which was awesome. He's...

http://www.byui.edu/spori-gallery/current-exhibit

He's awesome. And it was fun.

<$350

So AWU (pronounced "Awoo!" of course) is this weekend, down in Salt Lake City? It's, Anthro Week Utah, is what the letters stand for, and it's one of the newer cons, meaning, this is the first AWU ever. 

And frick man I want to go so badly.

https://anthroweekendutah.org/about-us/

It's a three and a half hour drive, which isn't too bad, and it's only $45 for a full two-day pass, which is great, and even if I'd buy things that's still, round-trip, less than the "awoo" penalty; but I wouldn't have anywhere to stay and I'd need a ride in the first place, and by this point it's like, whatever, maybe if I'd heard about it sooner. Maybe one of these days I'll actually get to attend a furry convention, ever. Is what it's like.

I checked for any near or in Alaska next summer, but VancouFur is in spring, and if there are any furry conventions within Alaska itself, there aren't any scheduled for next year, or at least not yet. Like the Alaska thing is even settled.

(Going on an art tour is an either/or thing with an internship being the alternative, and maybe there'd be an internship up in Alaska as well; I'd just figured that since I'm not even going into graphic design anyway-- even though I chose that as my degree-- because I'm an idiot-- an art tour would be a lot easier and more in line with, not graphic design.) I... I think that you can graduate before you officially begin your internship... as long as it's lined up?

YARGLE ARGLE BLARGLE FARGLE. 

Essss!

I played like 5 games of League in a row today. Pretty short ones, Twisted Treeline all, my team getting our cookies handed to us each time (Twisted Treeline is 3v3 instead of 5v5, with only two lanes instead of three.) 

I told you about how I wanted Blitzcrank, and then I told you about how I purchased him, but I never told you how my first game with him in so long, after I purchased him, was terrible and I was terrible and I didn't pick him from that point on, until today. 

http://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/champions/blitzcrank/

I was experimenting with different champions today, trying them out, some which I own some which I do not, figuring oh well if I'm bad at this guy surely my team will have enough skill to carry us. Which was ehhh, like I'm pretty sure that at least twice at least one of my teammates was a bot and not a well-programmed one at that, but anyway. Those five games, it was pretty sad and pretty pathetic, but in the end my persistence was all worth it. The last champ I decided to play was one I owned; I main Rumble but I've been playing Garen often enough lately that he's my page's default background image, and I've been doing well as Bard but Twisted Treeline isn't much a place for support characters I don't think?

So I dusted off Blitzcrank.

And we destroyed the enemy team.

I got an S today. Sweet.

Recently played list is listed most to least recent, with the last 20 games shown; that's the win at the top.

After it happened I ran around outside for a bit excitedly, still barefoot, waving my arms around like a David Lewandowski animation and whispering "esss!" over and over again. It was around 6:30, with comic book workshop and art night both starting at 7:00. 

So that wasn't the only thing that happened today.

Step Story

It's best to take walks throughout the day. My Fitbit reminds me when it's time, and sometimes I'm preemptive on it, getting in 250 steps before ten-'til when it would otherwise buzz me and remind me to get in my steps for the hour. It kind of reminds me of Nightblood, begging to destroy evil. Kind of.

This evening, having gotten in less than half of my recommended 10,000 steps a day, and realizing it'll take at least another day to finish editing my vlog (I'm discovering the shape of it in the process,) I decided to go to the movies. Tickets are cheap on Tuesdays, and it's a 5,000-step round trip between the apartment and Fat Cats 6. And I hadn't seen a movie in practically three days.

So I stepped out, not certain what I was going to go see. Maybe Flatliners (it's not supposed to be that good but I've decided that I can't trust critics,*) though I didn't really want to see that (just because I don't trust critics doesn't mean that I feel like watching every movie that's supposed to be bad.) It had been the film that I'd looked up the time for, and Ellen Page really is a treasure,** but the more I walked the more dissatisfied I grew with the choice.

If only there were some kind of, Zootopia-like, movie out right now...

Oh. Right.

I went to go see My Little Pony again and it was even better the second time and it got out at 11:35 which left barely enough time to get in the remainder of my steps for the day but I was too slow and I failed. Teh'nd.

And they act like failure allows you to learn but they never tell you that even after you fail and learn you could still very well wind up failing, and for often no reason. Jerks.

Things That Make Me 😻

Editing my vlog for the month. Using Premiere Pro. It's taking a bit to get the hang of, but just a little one. The video preview is so much faster than AfterEffects'; I don't think there's any lag at all. I guess I miss how AfterEffects defaults every clip to its own layer, but working with Premiere Pro where it can go either way, different layer or the same, is just ohh so nice; you can group related clips together onto the same layer, and even sort of squish them if you want to crossfade edit. 

Or at least, so I've heard, in my video production class back in high school. Premiere was like the mondo, Baron Nashor of the editing softwares we could use, and now I'm editing using it. Barely using it, because like there's so much functionality I have yet to explore, but I am using it. 

The Tony Boi bump that I'm in is finished. I'm not sure if it's up yet, but the idea is we're going to put it on socials medias. I saw it on Friday (the producers attended the International Cinema night and saw me sitting a couple of rows ahead of them) and it looks great. It doesn't use some of the gnarly locations that we found just scooting around, which is too bad, but it's short and punchy and, I don't know, groovy? I'm only reporting on it now because I saw three movies on Friday and had to talk about the other two first, but

Nocturna is a dope dope film and it's sad you've never heard of it.

Friggin' also. I'm going to be (Prince Pretzels is that is) featured in the background of the next page of Furry Experience. I didn't think it would be this exciting but it's psyching me out of my mind for some reason. It's almost like I'm a real furry now. 

:# oops hold on 

:3 there you go

Moustaches n' Stuff

Not doing any filming yet; the filmmakers wish to gain a bit more experience behind the camera before filming the more plot-important scenes in which I play feature. Which is fine by me; still growing out my moustache. For some reason it looks a lot lighter than it actually is; it's all salt-and-pepper if you look closely, when it should be a darker brown. Trying to track down photos of me the last time I grew out a moustache, but I'm fairly sure I'm right.

Mostly been reading, like, a lot, to keep my story tanks brimmed. Gearing up for Other//half; not sure how I'm doing. Geostorm was too near-future; I was really expecting to get some nice sf worldbuilding elements. Stranger Things season 2 comes out, 27th, I haven't even seen the first season yet, like I've even got time for television, but I have been reading Stephen King (my annual Halloween short story is going to be like absolutely the most horrifying thing ever.)

Ref sheet for a friend (unrelated):

Storm King

Ho man, did I enjoy Geostorm. It actually has very little to do with the obscure 1983 flick Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, which I'd kind of thought it might early on just hearing that it was a movie coming out? I mean, they do have a few vague similarities. Sci-fi setting, family dynamic, 3D release, the word "storm" in the title somehow... Though Metalstorm's scifi setting is generic space opera and Geostorm's is very near future; Metalstorm's family dynamic is father-son both antagonists while Geostorm's is brother-brother both protagonists; Metalstorm was shot in 3-D and Geostorm was converted 3-D... The "storm" thing in the title, I don't think Metalstorm at any point has any storms, metal or otherwise? So yeah, I guess the only thing they've got in common is their titles, and even that's probably just a coincidence, because you know who's heard of Metalstorm is friggin' nobody.

Actually, though, come to think of it the guy who directed Metalstorm also directed The Gingerdead Man, which had Jonathan Chase in it, who was also in Gamer, starring Gerard Butler, who's also the star of Geostorm... so yeah, they basically are the same movie.

Oh! And Geostorm is directed by Dean Devlin, who created Leverage, which had Jonathan Chase in one episode. Double Illuminati, right there...

Ahem.

Anyway yeah I really really really enjoyed it. Head and shoulders, by far, the best destruction movie I've seen, in my life. It's actually more of a conspiracy thriller; the extreme weather stuff isn't the focus of the film as much, and is horrifying instead of fun to watch. Which is, y'know, the way it should be? So yeah I loved the movie, loads and loads. I walked out of the theater after it finished, shocked and awed, muttering the word "dang" to myself over and over. 

Getting more distance on it, though, it wasn't flawless or anything, and I'm less inclined to forgive those after a good night's sleep (which I actually did not get, so huh.) There's a lot about it that now to me is all, did that really happen?, because seriously there's a big old ticking clock there at the end, AND the problem is solved with literal seconds to spare, AND meanwhile everything's exploding, AND they manage to escape the explosion in time, AND the dog lives, AND the dog showed up for that scene just so that it could live. BUT... it works. Everything works. We could totally suspend our disbelief throughout all of that. Even the fact that the storms magically go away by themselves, mere seconds before they would have snowballed together into the titular world-ending "Geostorm." Guess the Geostorm point is when the storms become self-sustaining? Wasn't exactly how they described it but that makes enough sense.

There's a scene, quiet scene between brothers, at the end, at the climax, where the timer's still ticking down and they're just talking, working out some stuff while thousands of people are drowning/freezing/catching on fire/getting crushed by bus-sized hail/getting exploded by lightnings/etc down on earth. And it's like, people are dying and you two are just chatting, but nope the movie's too smart for that, they were having the heart-to-heart while the killcode was uploading, and they get right back to work right as it's time to get back to work (maybe the movie could have made it clearer that there would have been that upload time, but maybe they did say something about it, or maybe they wouldn't need to because it would take that long in real life.)

And there's a scene where it's all, oh crap things are going to explode, why did you program the space station to explode, and it turns out that there is a good in-universe explanation for that, and stuff like it. I mean, I was convinced.

The film's portrayal of space is... well, there's sound up there, apparently. I'm actually totally willing to forgive that though because as far as I could tell the vacuum scenes do not at any point ignore Newton's first law of motion, which not even Gravity managed to do consistently. (Some would say the accuracy there makes the sound in space more egregious, but I still think hey maybe they just added it in post.)

Also the space stations in this movie would be large even if they were just normal earthside constructions. Like, some dang big conference rooms up there in the ISS, who knew.

And don't get me started on how satellites were depicted...

But it's a greeeat movie, or, at least, I think so.

My, um, Little, um, Review?? Seriously I'd meant it to be bigger, but have to go soon, and so, man I did not even want to make that pun...

The My Little Pony movie finally opened at Fatcats today (film releases being what they are, opening in a certain number of cinemas and expanding that or retracting that based on regional demand and success so far and all those factors.) It was soo good. Didn't really get good till about 15 minutes in, when the villains showed up and bein' all grr arrgh we're villainous, but the ending was everything it needed to be, and got surprisingly, twisty or whatever there. Low points in that film=super low. Not the best movie I've seen all year, but it deserves at least twice its metacritic metascore of 39. I've got like, just no idea why people have such crap taste in films.

The color palette was pretty weird, everything was pastel and everything but for some reason not as bright as it should have been, not much value contrast making everything seem sort of muddy gray. Up till the villains arrive, once again; they inject some nice darks in there and provide some adequate contrast. Maybe it was just the screen I was watching it on?

I had one more thing to say, but it slips my mind now. Maybe it had to do with how Sia songs always make me cry...

You know what other new movie has a 6.5 on IMDb? Geostorm. Gonna go see that now. Would have caught it today already, but the showtimes didn't line up for me to be able to do a back-to-back the way I did catching Huntsman: Winter's War off of watching Zootopia for the 13th time, so I just had to go (artist workshops on Fridays, they covered effects animation today.) Huntsman: Winter's War is a really good movie with an even lower IMDb score than 6.5 and metascore than 39, so I'm not worried that Geostorm is going to suck because it won't.

She said no. In the nicest possible way, of course...

She said no. In the nicest possible way, of course. A week under a month after I emailed dreamygirl mcloveinterest, wondering if she'd reciprocate my interest in her and knowing I'm probably never going to see her again, and... I'm not sure the story on her side, the decision process for her or if she's been thinking about it this whole time, but she got back to me yesterday, and said no.

And for some reason I'm not sad about that.

For some reason, this news rather has me walking on air. Not quite as high up as I was walking home after our date together, going to Zootopia together and getting ice cream afterwards, but still floating off the ground some feet.

I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I don't have to worry about it anymore. There'd been this chance, but then it was maybe too late, but still a close call, and now I don't have to worry about it, at all, because it is too late, so whatever. That's just a theory though. But no, I'm not torn about it at all.

And it's another song, coincidentally also from 1981, playing in my head this time.

<*Yellow Tulips*>

Past Present and Future Each

1
"Arks, Bards, and Horseshoes, Yordles and Blue Moons, Premiere Pro and Dovetails, and Wonderful x2." Probably the best title I've ever come up with, and I'm trying to follow-up on that somehow? (GET IT? Because LUCKY CHARMS.) So I'm holding off on telling you about the chili cook-off or anything, because I still haven't thought up a good name for the whole thing; thinking of some other jingle but nothing's really fitting. Also hardly matters anymore, the events occurring that day being ultimately so trivial, but still, the name thing.

Yesterday's post I'd just called, Ranked Songs, at first, but then looking at tor.com a few minutes later and seeing if the next chapters of Oathbreaker were in yet (it being Tuesday already,) there was an article about artwork inspired by the Hobbit, and that included the Rankin-Bass animated production. And it was all, hey wait a minute. I immediately went back in, de-published the post, and re-published it under its new name, because awesomely punned titles are Serious Business. There's this whole, process, of trying to combine elements within the post, seeing if anything works together and maybe linking to some third thing. Creative process and everything. Sometimes coming up with a good post name is the hardest part of writing these.

2
Cast and crew of TONY BOI had a meeting this evening, getting a feel for one another, doing a readthrough of the script. There'll be some shooting this weekend, me and the title character together. What's really important, though, is that I got to take a whole box of doughnuts home. All right.

3
O/h. I've got exactly one month till the deadline. Still looking for a web host- I'd mentioned using a Wordpress plugin, before, but looking at the pricing options now it'd cost $300 a year to have a plan offering all the features I'd need, which isn't much in the scheme of things but is kind of daunting when I'm not sure if I'm going to land the latest job I've applied for, and especially if I'm not even sure Wordpress would be the best platform.

I'd been afraid of not being ready, and I'm still not, not by a long shot, but I had a major breakthrough in the story today that's breathtaking and heartbreaking and oh man I'm itching to begin so badly, so things balance out.

Rankin' Bass (and the Other Instruments Too)

Saw a three-legged dog today. Those are pretty rare. Not as rare as like a three-legged person or anything, but still pretty rare...

It was the back left leg if you must know.

In the yard in the house next to the, garage sale. Grabbed a handful of books, and I was good for them, but they said just to take them. Guess the sale part is over.

Didn't tell you about the garage sale in the first place- it was Friday the 6th, that whole day with all the stuff I didn't tell you about, with Cry Cry Cry and the chili cook-off and everything, having a sore throat but not quite yet being in the thick of sickness? Sort of on the way to Albertson's, but down the way a bit. There'd been signs for it, and I got some good stuff on the way back after groceries (swinging by before shopping to check it out, shopping and getting cash back, and swinging by again coming back.) Swung by on the way back from Albertsons again today.

Which makes the dog like the snake come to think of it. Which I also didn't tell you about.

So speaking of Cry Cry Cry, I'm considering doing this thing (and already started composition on the basic bones of the order of everything) making a list of my favorite Wolf Parade songs, all their songs ranked in order, like how Alex has the list of t.ø.p. songs on his blog. I'm really not a big fan of At Mount Zoomer though; it's not like I like all their songs. (I keep thinking, At Mount Zoomer has Dinner Bells though, that's a pretty good song, but nope Dinner Bells is actually from Apologies to the Queen Mary and just feels like it would fit on At Mount Zoomer for some reason. Call It a Ritual and Language City, those are good ones from At Mount Zoomer, but compared to how good their other albums are I'm kind of let down anyway. It's their most popular album individual tracks downloaded-wise, according to the iTunes list of their most popular tracks, so maybe it's just me.) That list would thus be kinda tough to compile anyway.

Maybe making a list of all my favorite U2 songs in order would be more appropriate. Their having been around since the 70s, though, and having approximately a grajillion deep cuts and b-sides, kind of makes that task even more daunting than the Wolf Parade thing. One of the books from the garage not-sale was about the stories behind each U2 song up till Pop, so that's useful, and I've already started an Excel sheet of that too. 

Songs of Experience is coming out this December, so maybe I should hold off on that list till then...

The Moti(vati)on of the Ocean

I just, lack motivation to do absolutely anything right now. Things I should do: fill out that job application, fill out next semester's housing contract. Maybe in the morning. Wish I were motivated to sleep though, even.

Got in contact with Ocean Quigley on Thursday. He's an artist; does concept art for video games. You know the Sims? He did that. 

There was this painting, and it was like, on the TV Tropes forums, what video game is this? but it was just a side project he was doing while he was doing the Sims, he says. 

But speaking of the You Know That Show? forum, I've got another thing I can't remember the name of, which maybe somebody might have more information about before I try taking it to them.

Computer game, art program. Orly’s Draw a Story-era, possibly from the same developer (Broderbund) but I can't find anything like it on a list of software they produced. If it was Kid Pix it would have to be like some way obscure rerelease or something.

The mascot was this funky blue dude who looked almost cubist. Took place in like his house or something? There was this font you could use which looked like Jokerman at first glance but if you looked closer it turned out that the letters had that little guy hidden somewhere in each letterform.

On Timelines

Probably going to have to look into it further, but it looks like the European humanities tours are actually in the spring instead of the fall? There's still time to sign up, but the whole point of doing it after next summer's job was because, you know, I'd have the munny by then after having worked a job all summer.

I analyzed the timeline of Spider-Man: Homecoming as I watched it last night, and thought about how the timelines are so compressed in fiction. Same night that Peter finds out about the alien weaponry in use and the bodega explodes, Ned discovers Peter's secret, kind of deal. In fact, I watched the credits to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center today, and well first of all that's a very well-cast film they've got some true gems of stars in there, but second of all, instead of the disclaimer that the work is fictional and any similarities to reality are coincidental, this being based on a true story there's rather a disclaimer that "certain actions and characters have been dramatized," which ends with this sentence: "similarly, the timeline of events has been compressed and edited to accommodate the motion picture format." Like it's an inherent part of the format, a feature of the medium itself, that timelines get compressed and edited.

Only, it's totally the same way in real life too. In real life, all the plot points happen conveniently spaced together, as well. It's something I noticed yesterday, writing the post, and really realized today. I have to link to previous posts to explain the context for what I'm referring to in what's going on in my life, but 9x/10 I only need to link to one post to explain multiple things I'd thought were unrelated. Check out this post which I'd been going to link to last night- but didn't need to, because all the beats had already been explained in the other post I linked to instead. It even talks about looking forward to the Justice League movie in that one, just like all the stuff from last night! This whole saga, playing out in only a few posts instead of many.

Kind of disconcerting to realize, on one hand, like, most of your life is just non-plot-relevant filler, but on the other hand, hey, maybe you're so important that they will make a movie of your life, or that your life is already, and everything's all helpfully plotted conveniently for them.

Anyway, timelines in movies are no joke very fascinating things to pay attention to. For real. Like, the timeline of the third act of Captain America: Civil War makes almost zero sense, unless you pretend that the quinjet must be very, very, very, very slow to get to Siberia? Maybe they had to stop several times on the way there and gas up, I don't know....

JUSTICE LISTS

This trailer just makes me feel many things. It played before Spider-Man: Homecoming today, finally in Paramount 5 after spending three straight months still playing at Fatcats, and this evening's 7:30 showing (coincidentally the one I'd decided to attend) was free (we'll get to that later.) 

I've seen the trailer before, but this time felt more than

1. There is no way that this movie won't be awesome.
2. Furthermore, this trailer itself is just, like, a great one.

Its position in front of Homecoming cemented further feelings:

1. I am now looking forward to this film more than Ragnarok (the, movie, not the eschatological event.) The irony of this is highlighted by its placement in front of Spider-Man, because initially I was looking forward to Ragnarok more than I was Homecoming.
2. This is not only a great trailer but now one of my favorite trailers of all time.

And its position in front of this specific Homecoming, free screening, felt me up this way:

1. This movie is going to be great, but when it comes out I'll need to have Other//half up. Not sure how I feel about that bit. How anyone would feel about the future, I suppose.

This screening. At one point, in the collection of thoughts that is now the addendum to yesterday's post, I wanted to interrupt myself and say, screw it I'm not giving this up. I have this chance with this wonderful girl, and as much as I try to convince myself that, because I see her face in the female half of every passing stranger couple, such girls are a dime a dozen, I don't believe it, and I don't believe this situation has to be that of ships passing in the night. And so, this screening.

It was free because it was presented (paid for) by Princess Cruises and Holland America Line, and the price of admission was to watch a spiel (given before the trailers started) about working up in Alaska for them, next summer. Mostly driving tour buses. But it pays pretty decently and sounds amazing:

1. Alaska.
2. A job there.
3. Pays pretty decently.
4. Alaska.
5. A job.
6. Also Princess Cruises was the line my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles used when they did an Alaskan cruise for my grandparents' anniversary a handful of years back.

My Alaskan roommate, as I write these words, just saw the brochure I'd collected, sitting on the couch out there in the living room, and recommended it to his roommate- "this is what I was telling you about," something about spending the summer up in Alaska with him. So the competition is obviously there, and um, though they do train you (paid training) to get a commercial license, I, um, don't even have a normal license.

But did I mention the Alaska part? And it's only, mostly driving tour buses. I don't know. 

I had been thinking, this would have been perfect this year dang it another course of action perfectly laid out for me that I muffed, but actually, next year would work too. The end game is to get a job at Laika via Bro Keller's contacts (note to self: still need to follow-up with him regarding what they'd look for in a portfolio) but if this works the timeline would work like this:

1. October: continue prepping for O/h.
2. November: Launch O/h.
3. December: continue that.
4. Jan-May: take one class, train at job, have time left over still to work on O/h because it's just one class and a part-time job.
5. May-September: Instead of taking that art history tour and getting it over with, work up in Alaska. (Ever since last month, with my identity being uprooted and my questioning my staying in Rexburg in the first place, I'd been thinking of randomly moving there anyway because I can. This just gives me a job there anyway.) Continue cranking out O/h throughout all this and everything as well of course, including presumably building my portfolio to work at Laika.
6. September-October: Maybe for the art tour credit go on that European one I'd been too late to sign up for this semester and don't currently have the money for anyway. I'd have the money by then, what with the job and everything. Capstone the Alaskan excursion with a European one?
7. November: See if McKenna's taking classes, though dang it now I'd be graduation-ready so I'm not sure if that would work out; ideally we'd go on the art tour together which would be a great opportunity to get to know each other better and everything, but I'm not sure if she'd be up for (read: have the money at that point for) Europe.
8. December?: Actually, postponing the art tour till a year from now would mean that I'd be graduating past Class of Fall '18 and would need that Portfolio Capstone class I'm so far getting a bye on.
9. Graduation: graduate.
10. Whenever: finally get Bro Keller to pull his strings to land me somewhere entry-level at the third-greatest animation company currently in the business (behind WDAS and WAG, but still ahead of even Pixar.) He also has contact(s?) at the church's film company (he did the sets for the Life of Christ bible videos) so that's another terrific alternative.

It's... well, the whole plan I conjured up, or possibly came to me fully formed, watching that Justice League trailer. Like I said, it's now one of my all-time favorites.

Of course, I need to follow-up on this plan, say, bring it up to the academic advisory center, meanwhile applying for the European art tour in advance and the Alaskan job as well, deal with the ramifications of those, but for now: man this might actually work, and I might not screw my future up for a change...