The Aviary

Continued listening to The Magnus Archive on my lunchbreak and have come to a potentially disturbing realization about myself, to wit:

If, in the course of my day, I found a garbage bag full of human teeth, my first thought would not be, "Oh gross!" or "I should probably report this to the police," but "...can I take this home with me?"

I mean, I probably wouldn't for reasons of hygiene and would probably stumble on the idea of reporting it to somebody eventually but the desire to own a garbage bag full of human teeth would still be there.

graveexcitement asked for favorite podcasts or podcast recs. This post got so long, I'm sorry.

Look, no one needs me to tell them about the McElroy family of products, so although I listen to a lot of them, I'm going to assume that you know what you need to know there. (If not, The Adventure Zone is a super fun actual play show, My Brother My Brother and Me is a lot of fun, Sawbones is a great show about medical history, and you should try them out. Sawbones is my I-want-to-be-entertained-but-don't-want-to-feel-feelings show.) So instead, I will tell you about the other two podcasts I'm super into. Both of them are actual play podcasts, because that is how I roll.

( First, Friends at the Table. )

( Second, Campaign. )

Other shows I'm into, though not as much as the ones above: The Broadswords (cool ladies playing D&D!), One Shot (the podcast Campaign spun out of - please listen to the Feng Shui episodes), Autonomic (where the other cast members from Campaign went after the Star Wars version ended - I've only listened a few episodes so far but it's pretty adorable and the setting is neat), and The Thrilling Adventure Hour (not an actual play but instead an homage to old time radio - Beyond Belief seems like the fandom's favorite but I personally love the Sparks Nevada episodes best).

So, lo these many years ago*, I decided that it would be a good idea to make my own for-my-own-consumption-only unabridged audiobooks of The Lord of the Rings. Because the available options for unabridged recordings of LotR are...not good, and I enjoy reading aloud. This was obviously a ridiculous undertaking because I am terrible about completing long-term projects in anything like a timely manner, as is evidenced by the fact that is 2018, I haven't done any recording at all this year, and the last time I worked on it, I had only hit the beginning of The Two Towers.

However.

On a whim, I decided to listen to some of it while I knitted on my dinner break and you guys, it's pretty good. I mean, it's not in any way professional quality, but I read pretty well**. I have a long vacation coming up and may have to start working on this thing again, so that I can then listen to it.***








*That is, in 2015.

**I am also fortunate in that I'm not weirded out by the sound of my own voice most of the time.

***The problem with reading The Two Towers is that I have listened to the BBC radio version so many times that I'm not sure I can read the same lines without mimicking the inflections used in that recording.
It's going to be an issue.

Things of lately:

- I am over my terrible cold (mostly) and my Dad is back from Taiwan. He was there for a month, that is entirely too long.

- This past weekend, I went to see Assassins in Seattle, which was SO GOOD, OMG. I'm so glad I decided to do the ridiculous thing and buy myself two tickets, because I need to see it again. I just - I have a lot of feelings about that show. It's possible that Assassins is my favorite musical, and if that's not true, it's at least in the top five. The ACT's production is really great, if you're in Seattle and can get tickets you really should, and I'm super happy that I'm going again in April.

- I have finished reading Wizard and Glass and have started Wind Through the Keyhole. I always think I don't like Wizard much until I'm reading it and then I remember that it's actually really good and that I do actually sorta kinda care about Roland and Susan's doomed romance. Plus, Cuthbert. Wind Through the Keyhole is entirely new to me, which is exciting.

- Vaguely relatedly, I decided I needed something new to listen to after getting through a large portion of Saga Thing, so I spun the dial of "Things Sara is Interested In" and ended up with old time radio westerns. So I am listening to Gunsmoke. There is a huge amount of it, it's really quite good, and the episodes are almost exactly the length of my daily commute, so I can do exactly two a day if I want. I remain astounded and immensely pleased at the sheer amount of old time radio the internet wants to give me for free.

- We are now about a week and half out from the day the Kingston library closes for three weeks so that we can move into our new building! I'm super excited about the new place, but also weirdly excited about the closure. I mean, I'll still be working, but I'll be working in a library that's closed so all the really annoying people won't be there to bother me. My least favorite patron (who only comes in when he has a hold to pick up, but has a lot of holds so that's nearly every day) came in yesterday to suspend all of his holds till after we reopen (because he refuses to go to the next closest library which is 10 minutes away), so I don't have to see him for a month! I like most of our patrons, but it's still nice to have a break now and then.

When I opened this, I was going to make another crabby complaining post*, but that's boring. So instead, I am going to make a list of things that are currently making me happy:

- My dumb DC superhero shows are all back, hooray! And The Flash is doing ridiculous multiverse stuff and there's Jay and his goofy hat and I'm so happy.

- I got to write stuff today with my favorite pen, it is always such a joy. Seriously, this is my advice for people who are insecure about their handwriting: get a pen with a 1.1 italic nib. (I like the Pilot Plumix - it's cheap and comes in purple and you can buy a converter to make it use prettier ink. Mine currently has Diamine's Ancient Copper, which is gorgeous.) The italic nib makes basically anything look prettier.

- I ordered new tea from the internet yesterday and it shipped this morning. I love buying tea.

- Tomorrow, my mom, my sisters and I are having a crafternoon, where we each bring a different craft project to teach the other three. I am bringing a simple chain maille bracelet pattern I just learned and a bunch of multicolored jump rings. Very exciting.

- Because I am a giant nerd who can't get the songs from Hamilton out of her head, I started reading the Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow it's based on. Which is honestly pretty great - if you want to read an 800-page biography of Alexander Hamilton, I recommend it. (I say that with the caveat that, y'know, I haven't gotten to the end of the war yet. It is a long book.)

- I have a new podcast! It is Wolf 359 and it is full of pretty great space adventures and creepy space mysteries. (As a Trekkie, it does slightly confuse me every time they say the title, though, because they say three-fifty-nine and it just sounds wrong.) I am about 10 episodes in and I love everything about it.

- I am really looking forward to the grilled cheese sandwich I'm planning to make for dinner tonight. It's going to have Hawaiian bread and spices and it's going to be delicious. I love grilled cheese sandwiches.

So that is a short list of things that are making me happy today. What's making you guys happy today?









*OMG, lady, when I warn you that the library printer is broken and so you can't print, that is not something I'm doing to you maliciously to ruin your day, and it's not going to magically fix itself if you're mean to me. I'm sorry you came here just to print something and wasted a trip because that sucks, but it's not an excuse for you to act like that.

So, along with cooking things yesterday and watching about an hour's worth of Stephen Universe, I decided on a ridiculous plan. I decided that I was annoyed enough by the available options to make my own recording of The Lord of the Rings. And then, I recorded about two and a half hours of it.

This is clearly an absurd thing to do - the whole thing is over two days long, and I am infamous for starting large projects, getting half way through, and not finishing them. Plus, I occasionally get sidetracked trying to find out weird little things about the book that stop me recording*. But, you guys, this book is absurdly fun to read out loud! Plus sometimes I get to sing! So great!

Other the other hand, I have recorded two and half hours of it and am still in chapter three. We haven't even left the Shire yet. Guys, why is the beginning of Fellowship so long? (Probably that is someone's favorite thing, in which case I apologize for maligning it. But I have to admit that I usually start with the Council of Elrond, if I don't just read the Moria bits and then skip straight to The Two Towers.)

Maybe I will actually meet Tom Bombadil by the time I go to bed tonight.






*I spent about 15 minutes yesterday trying to figure out if Cirth runes have names, like Tengwar letters or Futhark runes. As far as I can tell, they don't, but if there are other Tolkien nerds out there who know otherwise, please let me know.

Things:

- This weekend, along with tea jelly, I also made an abacus bracelet. I'm always losing track of what row I'm on when I knit and now I have a bracelet that can count up to 99 and will remember for me. I'm very pleased with it. Also, it's a pretty bracelet. I might have to make another one just because. I am a little tempted to make it three strands so it will count to 1000 but I'm pretty sure that's silly.

- The thing about reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is that it has a very strong narrative voice that is very different from the way I usually speak and it gets into my brain and I start saying things like "I haven't any of those" and wanting to spell surprise with a z and I have to remind myself that I'm not an English person from 1811 and I shouldn't talk like one. I think I've kept it under wraps enough that no one around me has noticed but I feel like I'm being very obnoxious. Or possibly I just talk like a weirdo all the time and people around me don't think it's anything different.

( - This happens when I read Riddley Walker too, but that's somewhat more of a problem.)

- I started listening to the BBC radio Raffles series and it is entirely adorable. Fortunately, I am listening to them alone in my car and thus can pause the show for squeaky noises and shouting, "Oh you adorable little rabbit!" whenever it's necessary. (Spoilers: Bunny is a adorable rabbit all the time. I end up pausing a lot.)

- Yesterday was entirely too full of crying babies at the library. I am hoping very hard that is not the case today.


ETA - I knew I had another thing! I am looking for a good and singable version of Tam Lin. I like Anais Mitchell's version to sing, but it doesn't have the fairy queen in it. Fairport Convetion's is hard to sing without accompaniment, and the melody of Tricky Pixie's version gets a little monotonous without instruments. Do any of you have a favorite version?

Today, I have a cold. Which is unacceptable. I have plans this weekend! I do not want to be sick!

But instead of whining about that, I am going to talk about old time radio. You know what I really love about old time radio? (Well, one of the things I really love.) Everyone's accent. I love that weird, fake, Mid-Atlantic accent that no one actually had but all the players are doing. It's fun in movies, but I really love it on the radio, where all you get is the voice and so you end up really paying attention to it. I love 1940's Radio Announcer Voice, too. It sounds so wonderfully East Coast in a way that doesn't seem to exist anymore but you can still tell that's where they're from. (Even before they start doing the ads for Pennsylvania's finest anthracite.)

Also! I realized yesterday that I could find huge chunks of The Adventures of Superman online, which is amazing. The episodes are only about 15 minutes long which coincidentally, is almost exactly the length of my commute every day. It is a little weird for a modern comics fan (Superman came to earth as a grown man, what?) and so very set-in-the-40's (the first arc involves people trying to paralyze America's commerce by threatening the railway!), but they're honestly really fun to listen to. And there's so much of it! It's my first time listening to an old time radio serial - most of my listening has been to things that have stand-alone episodes. I'm really enjoying the continuing format.

Okay, here are some nifty things that happened today:

- The other day, I discovered a website called Graphic Audio, which produces (among other things) DC comics audiodrama. And then I downloaded a whole bunch of them. (I am really excited about the one about the Flash because it is Wally and has Linda in it and I miss them so much, you guys.) Right now, I am listening to a Batman one and enjoying it immensely. It's a little goofy - some of the writing is stilted and there's a lot more narration than I'm used to in an audiodrama - but it's still a lot of fun and allows me to indulge my comics obsession aurally. So now DC comics joins the ranks of fandoms like LotR and Doctor Who, where I can read, watch, or listen to them. Which is great. I'm hoping to get to the point with some of them that I can use them as bedtime listening.

- I am learning awesome things about geology! Awesome thing 1: tectonic plates that move under other plates melt down and get recycled into mountains! I guess I somehow always assumed that they stayed solid and just moved around - this is so much cooler. Awesome thing 2: the Atlantic Ocean is growing at a rate of about 2-3 inches per year and the Pacific is shrinking by the same amount, so the North American continent is slowly shifting west. Western Washington used to be islands in the Pacific that collided with North America and stuck there. Eventually the same thing will probably happen with other islands in the Pacific, including probably Japan. Awesome thing 3: when basalt lava erupts under the ocean, it cools into formations that look like sofa cushions, so geologists call them "basalt pillows". Awesome thing 4: geology is really surprisingly exciting. I'm really enjoying learning about it.

So today was a pretty good day.

The Saga of the Volsungs, chapters 23 through 31. It's early this week because I won't be at home this weekend.

In which we meet the Gjukungs (King Gjuki, his wife Grimhild, and their children Gunnar, Hogni, Guttorm, and Gudrun), there's a somewhat evil magic potion, some extremely casual shapeshifting, Sigurd and Brynhild both get married (but not to each other), magic stops working at an extremely inconvenient time, Gudrun and Brynhild kind of don't get along, and everything is terrible forever. This segment does not end on the triumphant note the last one did. Surprisingly, Odin does not appear even once in this section.

The Gjukungs are pretty my much favorites, you guys, especially Gudrun. Gudrun is awesome.

A few things that might need explaining:

- In chapter 24, we're told that Brynhild and Bekkhild have those names because of their personalities. The element "hild" in a name means "battle", so Brynhild's name means something like "byrnie-battle" while Bekkhild's is "bench-battle". Thus, Bekkhild is the one who stays at home, while Brynhild will totally stab you in the face.

- Atli, Bryhild's brother? That's kinda sorta maybe Attila the Hun. A bit.



Enjoy! (As always, previous segments can be found here.)

The Saga of the Volsungs, chapters 9 through 14.

In which Helgi has some adventures and then goes off to star in some lays in the Poetic Edda, there's a pretty cool senna*, we discover why you shouldn't try to date your stepmother's brother's girlfriend, Odin shows up at least two more times, Sigurd is finally born, and we learn his foster-father's tragic backstory (in which Loki guest stars). A dragon is mentioned, though he doesn't yet appear.

BTW, I'm assuming a certain level of familiarity with the various kinds of beings and happenings present in Norse mythology, but if there's ever anything in one of these that you want some clarification about, please feel free to ask. I am totally happy at any time to talk about weird Norse mythology things.

Part one of this saga is available here.






*Insult constest - an ancient Norse version of the Dozens.

So, I am starting a project. I love Icelandic sagas and I love audiobooks but, alas, these two loves are not often found combined. So I am making my own. I'm starting with the Volsungasaga because a) it's short, b) I have a copy, and c) it is awesome. (There is an audiobook available of the Volsungasaga but I don't much care for the translation they used or the way the narrator handles footnotes.) If all goes well, I'm planning to eventually record other sagas - I'd love to do Njal's saga, for example.

I mention this because I wondered if any of you out there in internetland would also be interested in audiobooks of sagas and thus want to listen to my recordings. I can't promise that my pronunciation of all the names will be exactly correct but, beyond that, I read aloud well, though I say it myself. 8) I have a fairly pleasing voice, I think, with a close-to-standard US accent (if that matters) and I don't do character voices. I also won't be including footnotes. If people are interested in listening to me read sagas, they would probably be uploaded in chunks between 15 and 30 minutes long, whenever I get one done and I'm happy with it, probably at least once a week. I'm using Jesse Byock's translation.

So. Anyone interested?