The Aviary

Hey, northwesterly people! The HPLFF is not being held in Portland this year (alas!) but there is a smaller HPL film festival at the Seattle Art Museum this October!

And here is the schedule. I am already planning which movies I want to show up for.

(I am definitely going to Whisperer. And oh, Dunwich Horror, ahahaha, that movie is so awful. I would totally go to that. And pretty much all of Sunday looks good. I am so excited.)

So I'm reading this DS9 novel, right? It is Fallen Heroes and is pretty good - I'm enjoying it. And I'm reading along and, at one point, one of the characters thinks about having gone to see a production of The King in Yellow performed on the station.

And my immediate thoughts were 1) Doesn't the Federation have rules about maybe not performing plays that inevitably result in madness and destruction? and 2) that is why everything bad that has happened in this book has happened. I don't care what the actual reason turns out to be - the ultimate reason for all the bad things is that someone decided that it would be a good idea to summon the Tattered King.




(This is my favorite random shout out in a DS9 novel so far. Though I also really enjoyed the fleeting mention in one of the others about Ayvon of the Seven, a famous Bajoran freedom fighter.)

The problem with being in the grip of crafty fervor is that I have two knitting projects currently (as well as several crochet projects on the back burner) and yet my brain still tries to come up with more.

So, I'm working on these fingerless gloves, right? (Not the pair I finished or the other pair I mentioned before, because those were very fiddly so I'm taking a break by doing something on larger needles.) And these gloves have a sort of abstract tree-looking pattern on the back. It's very pretty and it's done just by purling on a background of knitting, so it's very easy. I'm quite pleased with how it's coming out. But apparently my knitting has thus far not been geeky enough because I keep thinking things like "Okay, you've knitted one and a half pairs of gloves now, you have a basic understanding of how knitted fingerless gloves work. Surely, it is time to make up your own pattern in order to make knitted fingerless gloves with the Elder Sign on them. You know how much you enjoy your crocheted pair."

The thing is, that is obviously a brilliant idea. Every craft project can only be improved by being either Bride of Frankenstein or Lovecraft themed. However. I have to finish at least one of the current knitting projects before I am allowed to find appropriate yarn for this idea, because three half-finished pairs of gloves is just ridiculous.

Today in What The Hell, How Is This My Brain, I Don't Even Know:

So, when I work on Sunday, it is a shelving day. That's pretty much all I do all day long - shelve books. It's cool though, because I like shelving to a certain degree and because I get to spend the time telling myself stories. These vary between things that I'd actually like to write down eventually and terribly indulgent mental fanfic. Sometimes, they continue for weeks and sometimes they're one-shots. I always enjoy them.

Today, I didn't have a continuing story I wanted to play with and had no new inspiration biting especially hard, so I did my normal thing and let my brain just sort of drift and shuffle through the pack of cards that is my favorite tropes and character types. And today, my brain settled on vaguely Innsmouth-inspired fish people. Cool, I thought. Fish people are great and I haven't done anything Lovecraftian for several months, since my brain stopped being All Re-Animator All the Time. And Innsmouth means that the fish people can be cultists, which is even better.

So I'm bopping along, thinking about fish people. And, since my stories are all about feeding into my personal story preferences, it eventually turned into creepy fish people romance. Because who doesn't want creepy fish people in love? Surely that has a universal appeal.

However, there comes a point when one realizes that one has been making up a story in which there are fish people performing eldritch rites naked in a river and eventually there is going to be fish people sex and one has spent the last few minutes considering the erotic possibilities of gill slits.* While shelving in the children's library.

At which point I started wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

Fortunately, fairly soon after that, I got to go home.







*I don't personally find gill slits to be particularly sexy but I imagine that fish people - and especially (as these were) the kind of latter-generation Innsmouth folk who sort of fetishize that which is more fishy than human - definitely would.

Things:

- The thing about spending years getting up at approximately quarter to seven is that even if I stay up later than usual and have no reason to get up at any particular time in the morning, my body still wakes me up at 6:47. I ignored it and went back to bed till 8.

- This thing, where I have a laptop now and thus can use my computer even when I'm travelling? Obvious revelation is obvious, but this is still pretty cool.

- So, hey, I'm at the Lovecraft film festival. (Well, not right now. Right now I'm in my hotel room in my pajamas. But still.) The thing about getting to the festival is, the first time I head towards the theater, I am wracked by two seperate and equally ridiculous anxieties. The firs is that I am going to be late. I am never late to anything but I still feel anxious about it, even though I am a ten minute bus ride from the theater, I'm on the bus at 6 and the movies don't even start till 7. The other anxiety is that I am going to be judged by the other festival-goers because I am a giant big nerd. ::facepalm:: And then, y'know, I get there and the doors haven't even opened yet and there's a huge line of people in dorky t-shirts and yeah, that one woman who dresses like Cthulhu. And, y'know, the anxiety is in no way fun but the huge rush of relief is pretty awesome.

- Movies! Last night, I watched The Burrowers, which you should see if you have ever wanted to watch a Lovecraftian Western. It's kinda slow and a lot of the characters are pretty hateful, but it has some fun moments. And Clancy Brown is in it, which is pretty cool. (I like Clancy Brown but I'll admit I have trouble watching things he's in because in my head, he is the voice of Lex Luthor and that's distracting.) Also, last night, there were shorts. I like the shorts, though they're a little hit-and-miss, sometimes. Last night, though, we didn't get anything egregiously bad, which was pretty cool. And there was one that was a filming of one of Robert Lloyd Parry's MR James performances, which I thought was pretty awesome. (I got to see him live two years ago and man, it was great.) So, that was cool.

- And now, I am hanging out until it is movie time again. Hurrah!

Things of lately:

- Went roaming around with Mom today. We went to Port Townsend and Glass Beach (to find beach glass, natch) and poked around in little shops and generally had a lovely time. Hurrah!

- Yesterday was the Celluloid Bainbridge film festival, which shows films made by local filmmakers. I caught the tail end because they were showing Zombies of Mass Destruction, which was shot in Port Gamble. Apparently, this is the first horror movie ever shown at this festival. About half the audience for that film was there because it was a zombie movie and the other half was there because they wanted to see local films and were willing to sit through all of them, so it made for an interesting culture clash. I'm pretty sure the woman sitting behind me had never seen a zombie movie in her life. She seemed to enjoy it, though. And nobody walked out, even during the icky parts, so good for them.

- As for the film itself, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not terribly scary, but it has an enjoyable level of gore and gutmunching and I found it to be pretty funny. And, ( spoilers )! Hurrah! It did recast Port Gamble as an island, which I'll admit I found somewhat confusing to begin with. It makes sense for the plot, of course, but I spent about 20 minutes going "What ferry are they getting off? There isn't a ferry to Port Gamble - you just drive there." This, of course, would not matter to people who don't live in Kitsap. All in all, a fun little film. I'd watch it again and I think I'd recommend it, if you like zombies and don't mind lower-budget movies.

- Somewhat relatedly (kinda): So, hey. I wrote a thing. It has no actual zombies, but off-screen zombieness is implied. Yeah.

- Tonight, we begin rehearsal for our summer session with choir. Which will be jazz music. I am excited about this because jazz is fun and a little nervous at the same time because, y'know, we are a choir that normally does not sing jazz and it requires different things. Still, it should be enjoyable.


Apparently, these lists are all I'm posting now. Maybe someday I will get back to more regular posting.

Today in dorky things I have done:

I may have crocheted myself a cuddly stuffed Cthulhu.

( pictures! )



And, in non-dorky things that I have done, here are the gloves I made for my help_haiti auction. They were won by gossymer and are currently traveling to her as we speak. I'm pretty proud of them, so I'm showing them off.

( more pictures! )

And those are my crafty things of late.

Things:

- Part One of the Bainbridge Chorale Christmas Concert is tonight! Whee! (And part two is tomorrow afternoon.) I think it's going to be a good show - we're doing some fun music and we always get a good turn out for the Christmas concert. There's going to be carol singing at the end, too, which should be lots of fun. We have a brass quintet and an organ and that's going to make the carols awesome. La familia is coming tonight, and people I know from the library and church are coming tomorrow. I hope they enjoy it.


- Rehearsal last night seemed like the longest rehearsal ever. It was only our second time this session practicing in the actual performance space and with all the instruments (rather than just a piano) and it just went on and on forever. I mean, it was a good rehearsal and, honestly, I enjoy rehearsing music a little bit more than performing it (just a little), but still.

Last night was also the first rehearsal with the actual risers in place, during which we did the thing we always do once the risers are up, which is realize that we do not actually fit into the space the way that we thought we would. That is stressful but also a little bit fun, in a mean-spirited kind of way. See, the first sopranos are really loosey-goosey about where we sit. We know who's in our section, we sit in that section, everything's fine. The second sopranos, on the other hand, are apparently really particular about where they sit and who they sit next to, even though we should all know by now that the way we're arranged in rehearsal is never going to be the way we're arranged when we perform. So it's kinda fun to stand a row back and watch them desperately try to shuffle themselves the way they want to stand in a space that doesn't allow it. (I ended up right smack against the bass section this time, which is awesome. I like being right next to another voice-part than my own.)


- In non-choir-related news, I have a new podcast thing I have been listening to. It is the Cthulhu podcast and it is really pretty awesome. As the name implies, they do readings of Lovecraft stories, which is neat, but they also read weird bits of history from the 1920's and play music from that period. And occasionally they read stories by contemporaries of Lovecraft, which is pretty nifty. Yesterday, I listened to The Yellow Sign and The Beast With Five Fingers, both of which were read very well. Mostly, I'm just delighted that there are people out there who apparently really want to read The King in Yellow to me. (I should see if they've done The Repairer of Reputations...)


- I don't have to work this weekend! I'm terribly pleased about that. Tomorrow is going to be full of church and choir but today, I am free till call at 6 o'clock. Hurrah!