Category: Uncategorized

a wizard did it

I have deleted my SoundCloud account. It was little used in the past few years, and apparently they’ve just decided to use everyone’s content for AI training, without bothering to ask the permission of anyone who already created an account.

Most of my listens on SoundCloud were gear demos of the E370, Plaits, Beads etc. There was lesser interest in my actual music, and as far as I can tell, people browsing music on SoundCloud rarely head over to some other site to search for more of that artist’s music. (I’ve only tried that a couple of times myself, and one of them simply didn’t have any other music to find.)

Sistersong builds up a bit slowly, but it builds up to a very intense moment. As I thought, while simple jealousy was the main driver of events in the ballad, it was not even the main motive in the novel. The situation was complicated, outside forces were at work, tempers were high, neither sister was innocent.

The thing I wrote about it being a horror tale comes from wondering why, if you were wandering along and found a young woman’s corpse, you’d think “this will be perfect for that harp I was planning to build.” The novel gives a reason. But where the ballad tends to a brief and detached “he made strings from her long yellow hair” sort of thing and the horror of it really only hits later, the novel very much emphasizes the gruesomeness of taking apart a human body and building something else from it.

Myrdhin/Mori did the Gandalf thing of disappearing and reappearing in the story at various key moments. In Tolkien’s stories, it was to get the overpowered archangel out of the way so the mortals could get some XP, or something to that effect. 😉 Obviously we were meant to identify more with the hobbits, the common folk; although Aragorn and Galadriel were both really compelling characters as well, but Gandalf just wasn’t so much. But in Sistersong, I feel like I was shown a super intriguing character that I wanted to read more about, who then was set aside to slowly build up less interesting ones. Maybe some of that feeling of slowness was due to the parallel development of the three siblings so we couldn’t just concentrate on one point of view. But all three of them got somewhere eventually.

I disagree with the reviewer who said the trans sibling and the characters with disabilities were just tokens. The middle sibling didn’t hold a place in the murder ballad, but the novel was really two intertwined stories, and his got actually more of the focus. He found respect and triumph even while the other story was tragic and macabre. Frankly I thought the representation was better here than The Story of Silence, although that one does have its sort of postmodern triumph at the end as well.

Superbooth started yesterday and if I thought the flow of new gear announcements was strong before, it became a flood. One has to do a kind of triage to decide what to pay attention to.

Korg Phase 8 fascinated me in previous Superbooth showings. But now it just seems like a fancy expensive kalimba with a sequencer. One could do neat things with it I’m sure. But what I was imagining was sustained tones, manipulation of harmonics, perhaps processing external audio as a resonator… actual synthesis in a Helmholzian sort of way. This is not that.

The new Moog thing is… eh. It seems very much like the feature set of the Arturia Minibrute 2, except with 6 patch points instead of 48, for almost twice as much money. (Or 4x as much if you get a good deal on a used one like I did.)

What has my attention the most is another Make Noise NUSS entry, this time just a prototype so far. The Polimaths is an 8-channel triggered function generator, sort of like Just Friends or Tides 2018, but with additional oscillation imposed on that kind of like Auza Wave Packets. Like Tides it has a single trigger input, but rather than always triggering all channels together, the trigger is CV-addressable or round-robin with a CVable amount to advance. Compared to OG Maths, it seems to lack an analog input for slew purposes, and there are no EOR/EOC outputs — which are both vital features for some patches. There’s some other stuff that hasn’t been explained yet, but there’ll be more info later in the summer when it’s ready to release. My guess is, I won’t be convinced to replace any of my stuff for this one, but we’ll see.

mblerju

On the drive home from work yesterday, I got the idea for my next album project.

Odd tracks: no FM synthesis.
Even tracks: only FM synthesis, and totally dry (as in, no delay or reverb).

The theme/name is “Amphibious” because of how it goes between wet and dry. (Which brings to mind the “amphibious” Popeye cartoons where he’s doing the gender trickster thing.)

The “all dry” idea intimidated me too much, but somehow combining that with “FM only” makes it seem easier… and interspersing them with wet tracks (with no FM!) also makes it easier, I think. It might make for interesting contrast when listening, as well. I know I said I wasn’t going to give myself any creative limits after the last one, but… I like this idea.

Yesterday was New Module Day, with the Make Noise Jumbler. I temporarily shelved Katowice to make room, because that was a convenient choice.

I had some preconceptions about Jumble — I was thinking in terms of stereo, and both circular panning (as Silhouette does) and linear placement (as Nearness does). But it’s not a stereo module, it’s 6-in 6-out. Also, getting exactly 360 degrees of rotation using a ramp LFO, without glitches or gaps, seems to be quite difficult.

That absolutely doesn’t mean it’s not useful, fun and cool. Just that my thinking quickly changed and I began appreciating it more for what it is. I found that Nearness is still quite useful with it, and feedback patching between it and Silhouette can be awesome. Though I also found that both in feedback patching and in stacking those outputs, it’s easy to clip, so levels need to be watched. (I found myself kind of wishing Jumbler had a master level knob to attenuate everything together.)

I feel like maybe Katowice should come back in for a trial — EQ is always welcome in feedback patches. Probably the Doepfer switch and Legio are what I will switch out instead. Also, Nearness directly on Jumbler’s left side is bad modular Feng Shui — they’re visually too similar and it’s Jumbler’s right-side jacks that are more likely to want to go to Nearness. I’ll work that out.

Sistersong, it turns out, is not a particularly straightfoward retelling of “Two Sisters.” (Spoilers ahead.) It is a total coincidence that I find myself reading two books in a row with nonbinary characters, set in Cornwall, and with both Cador and Merlin. Although this one is set in the early 5th century just after Rome abandoned Britain, rather than generic medieval Arthurian Christian knights-and-castles times.

The first third of the book is mostly about the culture clash between these Cornish folk — and their worship of a mishmash of Irish and continental Celtic gods plus the Anglo-Saxon Woden — and Christianity. There are three siblings rather than two, though one turns out to be a trans man. Myrdhin is not just a wizard/druid/bard but also the witch Mori, presenting as one or the other according to the needs of the situation, and even telling some conflicting stories depending on the audience. At the point I’ve reached, we have just seen the first stirring of jealousy between the two sisters. I get the feeling it’s going to take more conflict than that to turn one against the other to the point of actual murder, though.

A review I skimmed over says the book presents transphobia and ableism and past trauma, but not in a useful light, more sort of tokenism that does more harm that good. I’m not seeing that yet, but it’s still kind of early to judge yet. I’m intrigued by Myrdhin/Mori at least, while the other characters are just now figuring things out.

is silence golden?

Yesterday I finished reading The Story of Silence by Alex Myers. It’s a novelization of a medieval lyrical poem. The cover blurb says “the tale of a nonbinary knight finding the courage to be who they are,” but of course in 13th century France the understanding of gender was a wee bit different.

I have very mixed feelings about this one. The author (a trans man) chose to stick closely to the poem in some respects and depart from it in others, and I’m really not sure about those choices. I need to quickly go through the plot here though to talk about it.

A knight named Cador is given the earldom of Cornwall to hold in trust for his firstborn — but the king had recently decreed that women cannot inherit (even to pass their holdings to a husband). And so when Cador’s firstborn is a girl, he, his wife and a nurse announce the birth of a boy, who is sickly and needs to be raised in a remote lodge well away from court.

Silence is raised as a boy and identifies as one, but he bears the burden of guilt for “deceiving” people about his “Nature”. (In the original poem, Nature, Nurture and Reason are personified and argue about gender issues; in the book the nurse teaches Silence that his Nature is to be a girl but his Nurture makes him a man.)

Silence ends up running off and having adventures that lead to knighthood in France, and then a return to England to aid in a siege. He is the hero of the day, but his father the Earl is killed in battle. So the king promotes him, but has him stick around the royal court for a few months to get the education he needs for the role. And this is where the queen tries to seduce Silence.

Silence is chaste and honest, and even more to the point doesn’t want to be discovered. So he rebuffs the queen, and this pisses her off. She ends up accusing him of attempted rape, and tears her one clothing and hair and slams her face into a bedpost to make it look real. It all seems very unlikely — everyone knows Silence’s reputation, but the men don’t think a woman is capable of hurting herself to sell the lie. So the king decrees that Silence must go find Merlin and bring him back to determine the truth, which many believe is equivalent to a sentence of exile. (Merlin has been cursed, and has been wandering around naked in the woods as a madman for many years eating grass and mushrooms, unable to use human language most of the time; there is a legend that says only a maiden can break Merlin’s curse.)

Silence meets this weird goatherd — in a dense, enchanted forest, not exactly good grazing land — who instructs him how Merlin could be caught and tricked into drinking himself into a stupor. (Of course the goatherd is Merlin, who wanted to be caught to break the curse, and also gets a good meal and wine in the process.) Merlin sees the truth in everything and it’s all extremely hilarious to him. Back in the court — still naked and unwashed, because he convinces Silence this will be more convincing — he announces that there are two deceivers present.

And here’s where things get super problematic.

The first deceiver is the nun who has been hanging around with the queen — a man wearing a habit, the lover with whom the queen has been cheating on the king. That’s right, it’s the transphobic “man in a dress” trope, in what is supposed to be a trans/nonbinary story, written by a trans man. And it’s some random one-off character we have never seen before, we will never see again, has no bearing on Silence’s life and could 100% have been left out.

The second deceiver, Merlin says, of course, is Silence. (Not the queen, who has been cheating on the king and literally tried to get Silence killed with false accusations…!)

Now, by this point Silence — who previously swore on a holy relic to always be true to himself, and who has had some talks with Merlin about gender and about how magic is a thing of in-between spaces — has been starting to think of himself in ways approaching a modern nonbinary understanding, rather than “girl pretending to be a boy and feeling guilty about it.” And despite Merlin being extremely rude with this, he’s determined to air the truth about everything. So he ends up taking off his clothes (with Merlin muttering “see, public nudity isn’t that bad”) and showing everyone his, uh, “Nature.”

The king sentences the queen and the “nun” to death… and says he will marry Silence because “she” is beautiful. In the original poem, this is the happy ending; Silence stops pretending and is a woman again and everyone lived happily ever after (well, the survivors did).

In the novel: Silence starts getting they pronouns. They tell the king: no. They explain that they are both what society made them — a knight, a man — and what nature made them — a woman — and that they cannot choose to be half a person. Silence gives up becoming the queen, gives up their knighthood and earldom, and chooses to be themself.

All of this tale was framed as Silence telling their story to a bard. The bard, enthralled by the whole tale, nevertheless decides it needs a “proper” ending and writes the one from the poem, with Silence embracing “her” “Nature” and marrying the king.

So really, the story felt like it was about a transmasculine character, with the very problematic trope of “deception.” It was only at the end that it became something else. Is that enough to make it a nonbinary story? I think so, maybe?

In the afterword, the author talks about the false rape accusation and says he thought about dropping it from the story, because of the seriousness of rape and the fact that it’s still FAR more common for them to be unreported than for false claims to be made. But there is no note about the nun disguise and the trope that trans people are deceivers.

I have all kinds of thoughts about the parents’ actions here. I cannot find that “forcing” Silence to be raised as a boy was abusive, because very few children even today give their consent to being gendered one way or another. In some sense, Silence did have more freedom as a boy than they would have as a girl, but of course it came with the burden of maintaining secrecy. The real abuse, IMHO, was the fact that Silence’s parents did not care about them as a person, merely as a legal token.

So yeah, mixed feelings. I did like the crazy trickster Merlin here though. It made me wonder what kind of character Merlin really was meant to be in most of the stories. The impression I always had of Merlin — through admittedly not really focusing much on Arthurian stuff but you can’t not be exposed to some of it — has been bland, very little personality. This Merlin was kind of a dick, but also a hoot. He also spoke and watched through ravens, which is totally an Odin thing so… yeah hmmm.

Next up I will read Lucy Holland’s Sistersong, a novelization of Child Ballad #10, the famous murder ballad called “Two Sisters,” “Cruel Sister,” “Dreadful Wind and Rain,” “The Bonny Swans,” “The Miller and the King’s Daughter,” “The Singing Bone,” “Binnorie,” “A’ Bhean Eudach,” “Der boede en Mand ved Sønderbro,” “Hörpu kvæði,” “De två systrarna,” “Gosli iz človeškega telesa izdajo umo,” “Ой, світив місяць ще й дві зорі”…

…you know, the one where a young woman (often royal) drowns her sister out of jealousy over a man. Optionally, the corpse floats downriver to a miller’s pond, and is mistaken at first for a swan. Usually, someone comes along, and decides that making a harp or fiddle from the body of a dead girl is a totally normal thing to do. Then the sound of the instrument accuses or curses the murderer.

I have four versions of this song in my MP3, collection and I actually think Loreena McKennit’s is the weakest of them (but not bad). Crooked Still’s is beautiful. Garmarna’s sounds great, and has Maria Franz from Heilung as a guest vocalist. Pentangle’s version, the first I heard, is probably the most coherent as a story, and is absolutely haunting.

I have often thought this would make a great horror tale. I imagine this musician feeling a compulsion, horrified but unable to stop himself from cutting bits off the corpse and building this cursed musical instrument, and then to play it for the king. If this is the “Wind and Rain” version, the only song that the fiddle will play is “Wind and Rain”, making it recursive, and thus the poor fiddler might have to relive the whole awful experience…

Anyway I’m very curious to see where this version goes.

It’s time for reviews of my Bandcamp Friday picks. For some reason, I still tend to choose a number of albums easily divisible by 2 or 3 to make a nice tidy rectangle for presenting the cover art in a post. I laughed at myself yesterday for still doing that, even though I don’t post them on Instagram anymore, while still intentionally choosing six albums.

Music of the modular ambient/”bleeps and bloops” variety on the Make Noise Shared System. I have had Vol. IV for quite some time and it’s among my favorite albums (keeping in mind that I have a lot of favorites). I chose this one based on a short listen to the start of a couple of tracks, and… it’s okay, but I think I can recommend IV much more strongly.

Abul Mogard does some absolutely gorgeous, warm blankety, kind of dark, slow but deep ambient music. From a forum thread this album seems to be many peoples’ favorite. I listened a little to one of the other favorites and greatly preferred this one. You can fall alseep to it or just listen and enjoy it.

Cujo was Amon Tobin’s first of many psuedonyms. This is a reissue of his only release under that name. For the most part, it’s jazzy breakbeats, often with a bit of Future Sound of London chillout vibe to them. Two or three of the tracks were familiar to me from a compilation or the old mp3.com days — certainly “Cat People” is a classic. A few songs have TV/movie vocal samples that I wish had been omitted because they kind of kill the vibe, but there’s some great stuff here.

There’s a sort of subgenre that is sort of adjacent to synthwave, associated with 1970s-ish “unexplained phenomena,” horror movies and low-budget British TV shows. (Oddly, this is not what people mean when they say “hauntology,” nor is it “Witch House.”) I am into this more than the neon sunsets and Ferraris and early computers vibe of actual synthwave, and I think The Night Monitor might be the best at that. This album is an absolute delight within that context. There are no samples from documentaries at all but none are needed. Just the right kind of composition with just the right kind of warbling, echoing, tape-distorted analog synth sound (or a close enough digital emulation) to carry the vibe.

More from nonbinary techno producer and game developer Zvrra. This album is not straight up techno all the way through, but all manner of things and they’re all good… sometimes lopsided polyrhythmic techno, sometimes no beats at all and I kind of want to say “ambient” or “soundscape” but it doesn’t have that vibe, it’s just… fresh and creative. I like this, a lot.

I have been waiting for another release from Belief Defect since the first one, but the pandemic and other factors delayed things. It was worth the wait. This sounds a bit different but as the album description says, we live in a different world now. It’s still deep and dark and heavy though. There are some live drum parts, and guest vocals/spoken words from activists Cornel West and Chris Hedges as well as an especially badass song with guest vocalist Ana Gartner. Here’s hoping that their next release will come in less than six years!

That Mesmer character in Guild Wars 2 is doing great now. With the staff, damage is gradual and tends to build up over time; meanwhile you’re shielding and dodging. It’s fairly survivable as long as you don’t get paralyzed. But as soon as you unlock Mirage Cloak, your damage gets a big boost, especially with some other synergies, and unless you get locked down even harder you can usually teleport, cloak or shield yourself somehow. The small fights become much smaller and the big ones are also smaller.

So between the Scourge (Necromancer), Scrapper (Engineer), and Mirage (Mesmer) I’m actually not sure which I like more.

I’m at 24 Black Lion Statuettes now and my goal was 25 for the crossbow pistol. I have still gotten exactly ZERO keys on this character from finishing 8 zones. According to a probability calculator there is a < 5% chance of this happening, so I have to wonder if there’s a bug or unannounced change… or if I’ve just been really unlucky.

jumbletron

I decided to go ahead and order Jumbler. Even if I decide it can’t replace Silhouette, there are other ways to make it fit — lots of utilities it can perform, if not quite to the same extent as those other modules. There’s also Katowice, Legio, and Univer Inter that could be set aside. However, I’ll make sure to leave plenty of time for deliberation before selling off anything. (Katowice for instance might be great in feedback loops with Jumbler. If I want to do a JF/Multimod patch with the A-130-8, Jumbler could rearrange the assignments… and so on.)

I did consider just saying “that’s a cool module but I don’t need it” — that would absolutely have been a valid call. But I decided to go ahead and indulge that curiosity. Jumbler is just such a chameleon. The most obvious thing may be routing several modulators to several destinations and then changing them up. But it can act like Nearness; it can rotate stuff circularly in stereo; you can use it as a switch, scanner/crossfader, waveshaper/distortion, even just a single VCA. It’s a matrix mixer but with macro control. Very likely, feedback patching will be rewarding.

The album is ready to go tomorrow morning. I’m pretty happy with it, and also eager to take off those creative restrictions and just play.

There have been a couple of more thoughtful than usual threads lately at MW, even in the midst of pre-Superbooth announcement excitement. One is “Have you ever experienced magic with your modular?” Why yes. The other is “A philosophical question,” which is about the idea of choosing modular over other synthesis methods to have more control. Most of us agree that’s not what we’re looking for — there’s a certain relinquishment of control, a collaboration with the machine’s behavior and a de-emphasis of perfectionism that seems to come along with embracing modular, at least as a mindset. Modular does allow more control in the sense of taking off the training wheels and safety nets, freedom from the restrictions of MIDI and plugin/host architecture etc… but it’s also just kind of inherently messy. Noisy, imprecise, a Wild West.

a jumble

WorldFest was a bit of a letdown, at least in the food and shopping department. The shopping was… maybe okay if you like handmade soap or crocheted crafts, but was pretty much lacking in the “international” part. There was one Guatemalan food truck and very little else — apparently other food trucks had bailed at the last minute, possibly thinking that the morning drizzle would keep customers away. They were wrong and the Guatemalan truck had a long line and sold out of some stuff. I would say it was good but not amazing; I’d try some of their other stuff sometime. But we missed the bellydance group while waiting in line for it in a chilly drizzle.

Some of the performers that we did see weren’t really ready for a public performance. The Mexican guy with the guitar was definitely good, but it’s just not my thing. But we came for the taiko, and they didn’t disappoint. The director, Andrew, spotted me and a couple of other former members in the crowd and gave us shout outs. I’m invited back anytime… but as fun as taiko can be, it requires a huge effort and a significant time commitment that just doesn’t leave enough for my own music.

Quick review of the most recent order of shaving stuff:

  • Taconic Shave, Tequila Lime shave cream: not a hard soap but sort of a meringue-like texture, where a smallish amount easily whips into an impressive lather. Smells absolutely delicious like it’s something I’d really want to drink or a tasty dessert. Works very well and I got a super smooth shave from it. This is definitely in the running for a favorite.
  • Catie’s Bubbles, Irish Coffee shave soap: it does smell quite a bit like Irish coffee, but also a little bit like coffee candy. I knew when I ordered it, this might or might not be a good idea for a scent. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either… I think. It deserves another try at least. I’m not entirely sure there isn’t a sort of off next-day smell, but I could have been picking up something else; sometimes my sense of smell is weirdly sensitive to certain things.
  • Catie’s Bubbles, Retreat shave soap: the description of this one is “Dreamy sandalwood holding up a kiss of citruses and neroli. Frankincense, rockrose, patchouli, and elemi round everything off.” I’m not a big patchouli fan, but as expected it’s a subtle part of the blend. I definitely get sandalwood — mild rather than sharp and spicy — and a little hint of frankincense and the citrus. It’s definitely pleasant, but I think I would put it a little bit behind Midnight Dreary.
  • Southern Witchcrafts, Druantia aftershave splash: oh my this is good. I used this first on the same day that I used the Tequila Lime, and maybe they worked together just perfectly or maybe it was the amount I used or the dampness/dryness of my face when I applied it… or maybe just my perceptions. But that first experience with it was magical. Euphoric even. And it lingered the next day; I could still smell it while eating those chicken nachos. It is complex; sometimes I get the mossy thing, sometimes woody, sometimes spicy or powdery. I ordered a second bottle since there won’t be any more made. It was not as impressive the next couple of times, but it was still quite pleasant. The GFT Coral Skin Food has been set aside (and I may just toss it out).

After mentioning key farming in GW2, I’m making another attempt at a level 80 build to see what I think. I’m going back to one of my earliest builds, a staff-wielding Mesmer, but with a build that’s supposed to be one of the easiest, highly effective soloing builds right now. It’s kind of a slow burn; condition damage that builds up over time. You don’t kill off normal enemies very quickly, but the big ones (so far) seem to go down probably a little faster than average. It’s not tanky, but mobile and distracts enemies with illusions. But this character has had very little luck with keys — that 33% chance to get a key on map completion has given me 0 keys in 8 zones so far.

I’m putting the game on the back burner a little bit though, because I hope to release the new album this Bandcamp Friday. At this point I just have two more songs to master, and the webpage to write up.

Make Noise made a surprise noise announcement Monday: Jumbler, the second in their NUSS (New Universal Synthesizer System) line. It’s a 6 in, 6 out routing module… sort of a variation on a switch, crossfader, or even a matrix mixer with minimal controls. Rotate assigns the inputs to different outputs, while Radiate ranges from switch-like behavior where one input goes to one output, to a crossfade between adjacent inputs, to mixing all the inputs together. This is an all-analog module, requiring a whopping 36 VCAs.

It does share a little with Silhouette — which takes 6 inputs, but then scans them to a single output and also to stereo outputs, with some additional effects. That one has a sort of dual-purpose design: to place sounds in a space, and as an experimental toolset. Jumbler is just raw abstract function though, in a highly versatile design.

I’m pondering whether to pick this up, see how it behave either with Silhouette, or in place of it. There are more videos coming though and I’m waiting on that. I have a concern that Jumbler might not be quite as good at the continuous circular rotation that Silhouette does.

after Easter

Random rhetorical question: why does Microsoft Outlook 365 bother to save a draft, if you click “New Mail” but then close it without entering anything in any of the fields?

One more song left to record for the next album, which finally has a name. (It’s not a catchy name but it does have a certain lame sense of humor, I guess.)

On the weekend we had an Easter lunch with my parents, and also stayed for dinner. Monday was my dad’s birthday, and we took him to Creve Coeur Lake for a picnic. The weather was great, there were rowing teams practicing in the lake and this waterfall nearby, so my dad took a ton of photos.

(Kids kept climbing this thing, and their parents kept letting them despite the warning signs. Those rocks are wet and slippery, and the total height is maybe 25-30 feet. At one point a park ranger came over and told a little girl to (carefully) get back down, then chewed out her dad.)

This Sunday is Worldfest, which includes a performance by St Louis Osuwa Taiko, so we might go to that. I had to do a little internet sleuthing to find more up-to-date information about the event, and the schedule is a 404 anyway.

I don’t mean to keep obsessing over shaving products, but… I had been ready to order a couple of Southern Witchcrafts varieties but they were “on vacation” for a few days. As of last night this changed to “we have closed our business.” Supposedly their remaining stock was available at Maggard’s Razors, but that stock was already pretty well wiped out. I managed to get a bottle of Druantia aftershave at least, along with a couple of things from other brands to try out.

If I’m willing to branch out of vegan shave soaps there are a lot of intriguing scent options I’m missing. I haven’t been vegetarian since the mid-90s, but the idea of beef tallow on my face is unappealing somehow. I guess I’ll see what I think of these other soaps.

I’m still not sure about that GFT Coral Skin Food. The rose-based scent is inoffensive if I use a TINY amount, but at that point I’m uncertain it’s enough to do anything useful. It contains menthol, which on my skin feels hot, not cool and soothing — this apparently is rare but not unheard of — and I also feel sometimes like it’s drying out my face rather than moisturizing. While my face is happy the next morning, that is likely due to the other things I’m using — so I’m going to skip this stuff for a while and see what I think.

In Guild Wars 2, I’ve been key farming — that is, starting a new character every week, running the level 10 personal story and a couple of zones. A little bit more in a few cases. This gives me random chances at some rare loot, eventual unlocking of the crossbow pistol I was wanting, and (thanks to Weaponmaster Training and bloodbound weapons) a kind of fun way to try lots of different play styles while also completing some daily/weekly tasks for the Wizard’s Vault stuff. It’s been a fun alternative to sticking with one or two main characters.

Also, a big update for Soulstone Survivors just dropped. A fun new game mode and a new class, with all the attendant extra skills and runes, as well as some graphics and UI tweaks. They are aiming for, finally, an official 1.0 release this summer. So much has changed in the game since I originally picked it up; it’s recognizable but much shinier, faster, and with a lot more going on than it used to have. Honestly at this point it might be a little overwhelming to a new character.

I feel like this is the way games are now — if you get in at first release or even early access, they are generally comprehensible. Over time, so much more stuff gets added that it’s information overload. Trying to enter a well-established MMO, in particular, is often confusing as hell. There’s six million things vying for your attention — many of them advertisments for add-on content of some kind or special events — and you don’t have the context to sort out the small amount of important stuff from the massive amount of things you might (or might not) care about later. It’s rare to just be shown basic gameplay. There’s some attempt at tutorial-like content, but it’s almost always inadequate (and often tedious, especially for seasoned players, and frequently irrelevant).

It’s like deciding in 2025 that you want to read X-Men comics — even the guides advising you where to start are going to present you with a bewildering list of choices.

The protagonist of I Wish You All The Best is a nonbinary high school senior, who comes out to their parents and gets kicked out. The rest of the story is them dealing with their trauma and falling in love with a guy who is (very obviously to the reader) queer but nobody in the story seems to fully realize it for quite some time. Aside from the parents, the book is almost too innocent and pure and warm-hearted. (It’s a small-town high school and nobody is homophobic? Riiiight.) But I still kind of enjoyed it.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is the opposite of that. It’s not YA, is quite explicit, and sometimes pretty gross. The protagonist is an omnisexual (and always horny, always looking for some new experience) sort-of-shapeshifter. He ends up going to the (infamously TERFy) Michigan Womyn’s Festival in 1993 as a lesbian, falls in love with a girl, and realizes there’s some stuff about his gender. At least so far, he has stuck with masculine pronouns and done a surprisingly little amount of on-page reflection on this. He’s also shown a shocking lack of curiosity about the origin and limitations of his shapeshifting ability, and not that much in a stranger he encountered who also seems to share that gift — which combined with the myth?/backstory? of a twin sister, is particularly intriguing — and less interest in his girlfriend’s uncanny communication with animals than it deserves.

Obviously, shapeshifting has clear significance for trans, nonbinary, and gender non-confirming folks, drag, etc. But an observation I’ve had is that Paul is almost never honestly himself, always hiding who he is and what he wants/likes in some way, in order to fit in, attract people or please people. The arc of trans/enby stories is more normally becoming more genuinely oneself and/or allowing that self to be seen.

The book was written before “nonbinary” was in usage, and set before “genderqueer” was seen outside of a couple of zines, but I still keep expecting Paul, dullard that he can be, to have a big realization. But I also want to know more about those mysteries than his sordid sex life — this is really frustrating me. Maybe it’ll get resolved, but really I don’t think this book is my style.

assorted mixed nuts

J.K. Rowling, you bigoted, lying, smug sack of moldering dog shit, I hope you choke on your stupid fucking cigar, and may everything you eat and drink taste like ashes for the rest of your miserable life. You had the rare chance to bring joy to a lot of people as an author… and then you turned your life to bigotry and the denial of other peoples’ dignity. Does it make you happy to know that you have caused suffering, that you have increased the suicide rate of teens and young adults? That you’re now congratulating yourself on helping to have oppressed one of the most vulnerable minorities? You are, frankly, more of a one-dimensional villain than the ones you wrote; your motive makes zero sense, will not enrich you or enhance your reputation in any way, and seems to be simply evil for the sake of evil. You could have gone down in history as “beloved author of fantasy novels for children and young adults” but you instead chose “weirdly bigoted scumbag who condemned herself to irrelevance.”

Now that that’s out of my system…

A couple of things that are in my system now are Nudistort, a weird distortion-plus plugin that one really has to try for oneself to properly appreciate it, and Circa, a 6-layer looper plugin from Audio Damage.

Nudistort came out some time ago and I didn’t try it then. I just sort of dismissed it as “okay, it’s an extreme distortion that makes stuff sound weird, what else is new?” Many such plugins just don’t do it for me. But it got a mention over on Lines, and I took it for a spin — just playing plain sines with MPE pressure using Aalto — and oh wow, it’s fun stuff. Honestly now I wish I’d tried this first, I’d have skipped over Dawesome Hate.

Circa is not AD’s first looper. Enso leaned much more into tape emulation, which sounded great, but many people (including me) found it awkward and frustrating to work with, so it just sat unused. Circa has introduced some improvements, though a few aspects of the workflow are still a little unintuitive. It’s also designed more for freeform experimentation, in other words, my kind of thing.

It has a bit of anti-click going on but it’s far from perfect, especially (it seems) when you start using multiple layers that aren’t 100% synced to each other. Sometimes instead of clicks you get… let’s call them “fuzzy sound floofs” which are far more difficult to clean up. And though it’s meant to sound like a (semi-?)modern digital looper, the artifacts from slowing the replay speed aren’t as pleasant as on something like Jroo Loop or Phonogene. Still, I can work with its limitations, and just in a few short hours of demoing it I’ve had fun and made three different things I want to use in my music.

Previously, Audio Damage was one of the rare plugin developers that did not offer free demos. Instead, they had a no-questions-asked return policy. It was a hassle for everyone involved, as far as I’m concerned, and always made me reluctant. At this point I would absolutely not have bought Circa just to try it, so I’m glad they finally changed positions on this. Demos sell plugins.

I’ve just read Life Isn’t Binary, which as it turns out is less specifically about nonbinary gender and more about social binaries in general. In fact it begins with sexuality, and the erasure of bisexuality, asexuality and other things that… I’m not 100% convinced are really “sexual” as such but not entirely unrelated. Gender is next (considering not just male/female but cis/trans and even binary/nonbinary); relationships, bodies, mental health, conflicts and thinking itself are also covered.

Basically every social binary has emerged from there being a privileged group and a “lesser” group, or an “us” and a “them” or “normal” and “abnormal.” A sort of caste system if you will, where to question the binary is to question privilege, and to be outside that binary is to make one’s life inherently political (like it or not).

all in all

Here’s a progress photo of the lower wall, from Wednesday afternoon:

Construction was finished on Friday afternoon. Sunday, we put in some edge bricks along the top to divide where the wildflowers and grass are going to go; Monday the wall company sent someone to put back our stepping stones on the top tier, spread a straw mulch/grass seed mix where there’s supposed to be grass, and collect the check.

Here it is as of Monday afternoon:

A couple of neighborhood folks have complimented how good it looks. Really, almost anything would have been an improvement over the crumbling walls and rampant weeds and honeysuckle we had before. But it’ll be much nicer once the grass and plants grow in!

We weren’t entirely sure what that protruding pipe thing is next to the sidewalk, but a little internet sleuthing tells me it’s probably a water shutoff valve. Once upon a time, there was a bit of gravel between the sidewalk and old wall so it didn’t stick out so much. Now there’s no lid on the top and it’s kind of full of dirt, but apparently this isn’t a real problem. I’m more worried about someone tripping over it, or parking on it if they get a bit overzealous with the sidewalk parking, particularly in the snow. So maybe we can protect it a bit or flag it/make it more visible.

I had to remind myself again: Trump = brain poison. I have backed out of some threads I was reading on a couple of forums, and I’m happier. But Musk really seems to be circling the drain, so memes mocking him, the Swasticar, Tesla stock prices etc. are pretty funny.

Superbooth 2025 is… wait, it’s still almost a month away? You wouldn’t necessarily know that from following Eurorack forums where the anticipation and pre-event release announcements have already begun. I hope to be able to blissfully ignore them and make no more changes to my rig. So far so good.

Every once in a while on synth forums you’ll see someone say “I’ve been out of the scene for 5 years, catch me up!” There is a new one of those today, and I had to laugh.

We’re talking 6500 or more new Eurorack modules on the market since then; if one assumes that only 1% of them are interesting, that’s still a lot to look into. Some modules will take a lot of research to begin to understand (and really, some things can’t even properly be appreciated until you use them). Some big players in the market have closed for business, and some new lines/platforms have been introduced. Among my favorites, Make Noise and Noise Engineering have been especially busy.

As of right now, about half my modules are < 5 years old (in terms of release date, not purchase date). Out of my own curiosity, here’s the number of modules I have sold (or traded for something else) per year. All of these have been replaced by a “new to me” module (not necessarily newly developed or newly built).

(A bit of what I credited to 2018 might have been 2017; my records were unclear. 2019 was the year I consolidated to one case, sold a lot of stuff off to get an ER-301 and then reversed course. Some of what I sold in 2024 was holdovers that I set aside from 2023, and in 2025 4 of those 5 were holdovers from 2024. But you see the trend toward more stability.)

The “E” album — whatever I end up naming it — is now at 6 tracks, 35 minutes. Moving along.

I may end up creating a separate page just to track my mini-reviews of shaving/skin stuff, as well as one for flavored coffees… and maybe kitty litter if I have to keep shopping around. For now:

  • Southern Witchcrafts Autumn Ash smells exactly like roasting greasy sausages over a campfire… in a Michael’s with Halloween approaching. The main thing that’s spooky about it is how precisely it smells like that. It is not for me.
  • Southern Witchcrafts Lycanthropy has a strong jasmine scent, but with a bit of complexity lurking, reminding me a little of a random cologne I got as a gift in my late teens or early 20s… which may not even be a real memory. Anyway, it’s pretty pleasant and I’d gladly get more of it.
  • I am trying Geo. F. Trumper’s Coral Skin Food for post-shave. There are lime and sandalwood varieties, but those didn’t receive the kinds of rave reviews this one did. It’s got a very strong rose scene, not my favorite floral but not too bad given how little of it you’re supposed to use. I’ll keep it up, but it may be redundant with my favorite nighttime moisturizer (Cetaphil Redness Relieving).

One thing about my updated routine is that the skin of my face, particularly around the chin that was so used to having a goatee for so long, tends to feel warm. Not literally warm to the touch, but internally, if that makes sense. This doesn’t seem to be related to what products I am using, how aggressively smoothly I try to shave, time of day etc. — I think it’s not skin irritation, but an odd sensory thing, I’m just surprised I haven’t gotten used to it yet.

(On coffee? Cameron’s Highlander Grog, and New England Coffee’s Witch’s Potion, Coconut Almond Candy Bar, and Chocolate Hazelnut are the favorites so far. I have three new ones waiting to try once I’ve used my current stash of the Potion though.)

(And on litter? So far my vote goes to Pidan Tofu & Recycled Coffee Grounds. It also contains a small amount of bentonite clay, which helps it to clump and fills in gaps between the small noodle-shaped pellets. I like it because it tracks VERY little compared to everything else we have tried, has practically no dust and seems competent at odor control. It’s pricey, and like most tofu-based litter it’s from China, which means it may be even more pricey next time I have to order some. Possibly still worth it, not to feel like we’re sleeping on gravel — Tidy Cats Clean Paws is supposed to be low-tracking but in our experience was the absolute worst.)

now you’re NOT cooking with gas

Some excitement yesterday as the construction crew hit our gas line.

The first I was aware of it was when firefighters knocked on the door to ask to check our basement. (It was okay.) This was a little bit after 4 PM.

Then Spire, the gas company, came. They bashed the sidewalk open with an excavator, then had to also tear a hole in the street.

Apparently the markings for the gas line had been wrong — the contractor said they’re supposed to go up the hill like they did with the water line. Since the markings for the gas main were on the sidewalk rather than the street where they made the connection, I suspect that might also have been incorrect. Perhaps there was an old inactive line. (He said in 26 years of business, this is the 5th time they’ve hit a gas line, and every time it was due to incorrect markings.)

The gas company has been upgrading everyones’ copper lines (which were only supposed to last 20 years!) to PE, but the wall contractor said they had something like 600,000 homes to do so it had been taking several years. So they took the opportunity to replace ours.

The sun set. They barely had any light to work with, a couple of headlamps and flashlights, but they kept going. I wound up going upstairs to read myself to sleep, but started hearing weird noises coming through the AC vents. Then the heater kicked in and I figured we’d gotten the OK to turn the furnace back on. Then there was a lot of clanging and banging and bright lights at the front (our bedroom windows are on the back of the house) as they started piling stuff back into the holes they’d dug, and covered over the big hole in the street with a metal plate.

Here’s the view this morning. Not shown: a UCIS pickup truck off to the right, presumably trying to figure out how they went wrong with the markings, or perhaps marking the location of the new line as if it isn’t really obvious now.

I really dislike those street plates. I know they’re great for a quick fix but they wind up sitting there for ages before being properly patched. But then, St. Louis county increasingly seems to be behind on road maintenance and has some really low-quality patch jobs on some major roads. There’s one section of Page that was freshly paved only a couple of years ago, but it has long stripes of deep potholes running uninterrupted through the entire length. So our street, which probably should have been resurfaced about 5 years ago, is probably going to have that stupid plate for quite a while.

One of the weird things about this is, nobody from the gas company came to talk to us until they were done. The only information I got was from the firefighters, and from the contractor when I went outside to look around and ask about stuff while the gas company was getting ready to tear up the sidewalk.