Electric Grandmother has this posted on her site and it looks like fun.

I would like everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions: no more, no less. Ask me anything you want. Anything! Doesn’t mean I’ll answer them in the way you expect. Then go to your journal, copy and paste this, allowing your friends (including me) to ask you anything.

Amoung other things, I’m curious how many people read this and it seems like a fun way to find out. Yes, you neo-luddites may ask questions even if you don’t have an online journal.

Take an oil lamp. Light it. This oil lamp can not be tilted in any direction or the flame will “jump.” Which means that oil will pour out of the lamp in a stream of fire. Hand it to a puppeteer to hold over the head of two other puppeteers.

Now make it leak.

On Tangent Online, Jason Sizemore just reviewed Shimmer, Summer 2006, #4

Shimmer Magazine is the type of publication that you’re proud of reading in front of your peers. It is journal-sized, with an attractive, simple front and back cover layout. The interior has a clean, professional design. The font is eye-grabbing and large enough for most eyes to read without hassle.

Go read the rest of the review

Things that are bad ideas, #1.

Take a rod puppet. Now put a cup in its hand. The cup is plastic, so you can’t pin it to the puppet’s hand. You must hold it in place with a complicated arrangement of thread and tape. Be warned though, that despite your best efforts the cup will shift positions every time the puppet moves.

Now, put fire in the cup.

Rob and I collect typewriters, and the Oliver, featured in this 1922 ad on Modern Mechanix is the prize of our collection. The visible action is beautiful and smooth. It’s so nice to see the original ad copy for it.

I’ve got my ticket back to Portland. I’ll be arriving at 1:06 on the afternoon of the October 27th. Then, I’ll be jetting off to Austin, TX for World Fantasy Convention on November 2nd, returning to Portland on November 5th.

Rob will come back in December, probably on the 15th. We’ll both be in the states until January 7th. We have not finished the complex negotiations about where we will be when we are both in the U.S. and yes, this means that if you ask me where we will be at Christmas, I won’t know.

Apparently this happens every year, because it happened when I worked here two years ago. After we wrapped, everyone went to Magnus’s house for a party and then on to the Studmenn concert. Last time I had been here for a week and a half so I was still fairly dazed.

This time, I was so excited to see everyone off the set and all dressed up. It was a nice change from our studio clothes. People kept looking at each other and saying, “You look really good,” with this sort of shock in their voices. It was very funny.

Rob and I didn’t stay long at the concert. We were both tired and probably would have passed but wanted to hear Stefán and Steina sing. They are both very good, which isn’t surprising. Rob and I cut out after Stefán’s first number. The band is good, it’s just not my scene. Loud and smoky with lots of drunk dancers… The rest of the evening was fun.

I use bloglines to keep track of other folks’ blogs and thought you might be interested in seeing the sites I visit regularly.

Cross-gender voices are a tricky business. Even if you can really do a convincing cross-gender voice–and I know folks who can–the fact is that in a live reading, people know there’s one person doing all the voices. There are two ways cross-gender voices can throw people out of listening. It’s really bad, and embarrassing, or it’s really good and shocking that a female voice is coming out of a man’s mouth. Either way, the listener drops the story for a moment.

This is like a turn of phrase that’s really stunning in a story. You stop reading for a moment and think, “Wow, that’s lovely.” That may be true, but the story has stopped, right there. Same thing with voicing. Any time you make the listener stop to think, you’ve injured your story.

The point of doing different voices is to make it clear who is speaking–it’s not to make it sound like there are fifty people sharing the stage with you. If you really want it to sound like there are completely different people, hire some actors.

Now, with that said, you also want to use your voice to enhance the character and to help paint a picture in your listener’s mind. Even when I’m doing same gender voices, I tend to “lighten” my voice a little to make it more feminine.

But, besides the “audio picture” I’m trying to paint, part of the reason I do that is so that when I do male voices, I’m altering my voice to a similar degree.

Let me use a visual analogy. If you are watching a cartoon, you don’t think about the fact that there is no texture in hair or clothing. But, as soon as the animated character wanders onto a digitally rendered lawn, the fact that you can see every blade of grass is jarring. It makes the grass look unreal, and the character look unreal. They don’t and shouldn’t live in the same universe.

With voicing, if you want your cross-gender voices to sound real they must live in the same universe. So if you’re a guy and you’ve got to do a female voice, then don’t use your “natural” voice for a male character. Color your male voices to the same degree that you color your women’s.

And remember that you can be subtle.

We had folks over for dinner after production today. It was just a light meal with conversation. I made a Roasted Cauliflower soup, which I love because it’s easy and you can do other things while it’s becoming tasty

I also made Mixed greens with feta, pinenuts and blueberries for the first time. Again, a very easy recipe and delicious. I used the Icelandic blueberry, which is smaller, crisper and slightly more bitter than the blueberries I grew up with. If you have…drat I can’t remember the name of the berry. -E- what is the berry that grows in your front yard that’s like a blueberry, but isn’t? Anyway, those are similar to the Icelandic ones.

1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon honey
1 5-ounce bag arugula greens
1 10 ounce bag spinach
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (about 2 1/2 ounces)
1 1/2-pint container blueberries
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted

Whisk vinegar, oil, and honey in small bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Combine greens, feta, and blueberries in large bowl. Add dressing; toss to coat. Sprinkle with pine nuts and serve.

One of our friends brought an almond lemon cake that I have to get the recipe for. Yummy.

Look! Now you can take the Advanced Southern Accent Test

I scored 43%, “barely out of Dixie” when I answered the way I say things.
When I answer the way I hear things back home, then I score 100% Dixie.

Rob is 6% Dixie.

Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk : Fiction by Ken Scholes

The simplest review I can give of this is, “Go read it. Now.”

While I don’t have a story in this, I know a lot of the writers in this anthology. If you are looking for some good horror, check it out.

To kind of shake things up a little, I thought I’d explain what these things mean this time.

Things said at work.

1. I need to get his head in my lap.
2. Will it be faster if we just take her arms off?
3. What kind of head do you want?
4. Our director said, “I need more red in the blue zone.”
5. Will you put the car on top of him?
6. I’m already looking under my own armpit.
7. He’s twitching. Is that normal?
8. Another puppeteer said, “The problem with going up his ass is where to put my head.”
9. I’ve done better balls than that.
10. “Head, head, head! Come on, squirt it. Now give me a good cherry.”

What things really mean.

1. In this shot I was doing live hands for a character and we were working on the floor. The only comfortable position was if the lead puppeteer used me as a cushion, but because we were between two set pieces it took a bit of wedging to get into place…that explanation doesn’t really improve things, does it?
2. We needed to change a puppet’s clothes, and the arms velcro in place. Because the puppet had rods in his hands, it looked like it would be easier to unvelcro.
3. The puppets have two types of head, one where the puppeteer enters through the neck and one where they enter through the back of the head.
4. I work there and I have no idea what this meant.
5. If a puppet is in a car, it means there’s a puppeteer under the car.
6. Frequently while performing with live hands, the only way to keep my head out of shot is to bend it as far forward and down as possible. With my hands over my head, this means that the easiest place to see a monitor is if it’s positioned so I am looking under my own arm.
7. There was a remote control puppet on set. Sometimes radio signals will override the control and cause a puppet to twitch.
8. The discussion was about a puppet sitting down on a bench, which means it would have legs and a seat, where the puppet normally truncates at the waist. So the puppeteer could get his hand inside the puppet but then his head would appear to be chopped off and on the bench next to him.
9. I was throwing balls, and it went wrong in a take. The ones before had been better.
10. This is what happens when puppets make cakes.

Today was gorgeous and warm. We walked down to the Kolaport for some groceries and then came back, ate lunch in the front yard and took a nap.

I also had a breakthrough on Ginger Stuyvesant and the Case of the Haunted Nursery which makes me very happy. It’s also 2000 words lighter, which is great.