The computer is up and running and I got two of the projects turned in. The other two are in process and ought to be finished in a relatively timely fashion.

Meanwhile, I’m itching to write something new. It took me a surprising amount of time to realize that the urge didn’t generate from anything more than the fact that I’ve gotten enough sleep for an entire week. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be rested. It’s fascinating and I highly recommend it.

I’m too fatigued to generate content today, though I still have lovely photos of the dead dog process. Meanwhile, listen to this podcast of The Moon by Jodi Eichelberger and Mark LaPierre.

I thought I wasn’t going to blog about her legs, because the process is the same as her arms. But, wouldn’t you know it, not only am I going to blog about it, but it’ll wind up spanning more than one entry.

For the past couple of days I’ve been reading My New Leg, which is a blog about the process of ordering a new prosthesis. This is wonderfully written, up-close-and-personal, and utterly fascinating. I’ve linked to the first post on the blog.

I just added making dog ears to my plate. This is also a project for Mabou Mines, though this time I’ve been hired by the incandescent Emily DeCola. (I built monkeys with her back in February.)

I forgot to take process shots yesterday, but I’ll do it when I go into the Puppet Kitchen again.

I finished painting the largest wall of the dining room Venetian Red. We’ve moved the bookshelves back into place and have begun the process of unpacking books. It is quite clear that we have more books than we have space. We’re discussing were the additional shelves will go–clearly, we can’t get rid of any of these books. Don’t even suggest it.

Okay, first of all, I have to say that you people are so impatient. Sheesh! Second, here are the photos.

The Apartment in Process

I’ve started putting the kitchen together, but have to hold off a bit until we mop the floor so we can put the pie safe in there. Right now it’s hanging out in the door between the living room and dining room.

Last night we went out for dinner at an asian fusion restaurant. This morning, we returned the truck, and walked back home through Central Park. It was very nice. There are sections were the traffic noise is no more noticeable than at Woodthrush Woods. My. It feels really good to be done with the truck. Arriving at home, we ate breakfast in the apartment–bagel for Rob and cereal for me. We still don’t have a clear table to sit at, but that should come soon. I’m hoping to have the dining room clear by this evening.

I’m looking forward to the point when I can write something.

I got a call from the fellow with whom we are doing the house swap. The management company is proceeding with the process of making things difficult by giving him an obstacle course of hoops to jump through. He says the worst case scenario is that the move can’t happen until the end of June.

I’m glad we haven’t packed the kitchen yet.

When Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press asked me to read Kage Baker’s Rude Mechanicals, I was delighted, because I love the Company stories. I was delighted until I started reading the manuscript and realized that the point of view character was male. I skimmed forward, just looking at dialogue. Most of the characters were male.

I don’t mind doing some cross-gender voicing, but generally avoid it with the POV character, because I think it is confusing for most listeners. I agonized and then emailed Bill and told him that I thought he should hire a male voice artist, because that would serve the story better. He disagreed, and since I really wanted to read it, not much arm twisting was needed.

As I read the entire manuscript, instead of skimming, I realized why he wanted a female narrator. Ms. Baker uses direct address to the audience in a couple of places, so while the narrator stays with Lewis, it is clearly a separate narrative voice as opposed to an extension of Lewis. Know what I mean? So choice number one, was to have a female narrator.

This left me the freedom to pitch the narrator up, above my natural speaking voice. I also chose to make it very feminine to contrast with all the boys running around.

For Lewis and Joseph’s voices, I ran into some trouble. Joseph has more speaking time in some scenes than the narrator. Now, in the stories, Joseph is described as a bass baritone. Clearly, I wasn’t going to achieve that naturally, so we had to look at compromises.

Lewis was the less vocally dynamic of the two, so placing him at the bottom end of my range was easy; I didn’t need a lot of room to hit his emotional levels since he’s a steadier character. Joseph, our bass, on the other hand is very volatile and he talks a lot. I found that I could either nail the character or the pitch, but not both. When I pitched him down, he wound up sounding angry and dangerous, because of the audible effort involved in keeping my voice low. It doesn’t sound strained as if I were going to hurt myself, but the strain is nevertheless present as a tension that was inappropriate to the character. Most troubling, he wasn’t funny. Joseph is very funny in Ms. Baker’s story.

So after recording a test chapter with a lower Joseph, we decided to go back to the higher one because, aside from the pitch, that voicing was truer to the character.

It is true that we could have pitch-shifted my voice to get it to the right range. The software to do that now is good enough that if the voice is heard out of context, it’ll pass as real. However, in the context of the other voices I was generating, the pitch shift was obvious. Why? Because there’s this thing your brain does with a familiar voice, called psycho-acoustics, which basically waves a flag saying “Wrong! Something is wrong!” It’s a complex series of things that involve overtones, positioning, and other technical things that you have no idea that you are processing, you just know that it’s wrong.

To demonstrate, I have three clips for you.

The final Joseph choice.

Me, lowering Joseph naturally.

Joseph, pitch-shifted down 10% from the first clip.

See, even down 10% he doesn’t sound like a bass, but he sounds weird. The weirdness is even more apparent if it’s in the context of an entire chapter of natural voices.

The pitch-shifted Joseph, in context.

With all the other voices that are obviously generated by me, pitch-shifted Joseph sounds like someone else and is jarring. Given those choices, we went with the first voicing, feeling that the characterization was stronger there.

At some point, in a reading, you’ll probably have to face a similar choice and I think that you should go for the voice which will give you the most emotional range and be truest to the personality, even if you have to sacrifice some of the physicality.

So, the fellow that we are doing the houseswap with just called.  He said that his landlord has told him that he has gone about the process wrong and that he can’t let us have the apartment.  They are sending him additional forms, which will hopefully resolve the issues.   Hopefully. Meanwhile, there is a definite sensation in the air that the whole thing might fall through.

We recorded Chapter 9 and 10 today, so my part of the process is over for the moment. Rob will edit it together, and then we’ll see if I need to do any pick-up lines.

So, after getting back from building monkeys, I had to go online to try to cancel an eFax service. Here is the transcript of the account. Oh. And monkey socks that Jenny Rae gave me for my birthday. No reason to show those, I just like them.

{Amy R.} Hello, Mary. Welcome to online support. I am Amy, your online Live Support Representative. How may I assist you?

{Mary} I want to cancel my account.

{Amy R.} I am sorry to hear that you wish to cancel. Please give me a moment while I go through your records. In the meantime, please type the number corresponding to your reason for cancellation:

1) Moving to another provider
2) Bought a Fax machine
3) Business or role changed
4) Short term project completed
5) Financial reasons
6) Problems with Faxing or Billing
7) Dissatisfied with Quality of service
8 ) Too Costly

{Mary} 4

{Amy R.} Appreciate your feedback. Please give me a moment.
{Amy R.} Thank you for waiting.
{Amy R.} Mary, I can understand that currently you do not need the service however, it is always good to have a alternative faxing service as you may not know when the need for faxing may arise.
{Amy R.} In the current scenario, as a special consideration and goodwill gesture, your eFax account will be credited with $25.90 so that you may utilize our services without being billed our monthly fee for the next two billing cycles.
{Amy R.} Since you will not be charged any monthly fee for the next two months you may keep the account till then. If however, you still feel that you do not have any use for our services by the end of the two months credit period, then you can always contact us back anytime.

{Mary} I do not want the account. I have kept it open, just in case and have not used it for about a year. Cancel my account, please.

{Amy R.} Mary, I can completely understand your wish to discontinue, as you will not be charged any monthly fee for the next 2 billing cycles, you can retain this number at least till the end of two months credit offer.
{Amy R.} I would also provide you with an additional gift balance of $10.00 with which you can send up to 100 pages of faxes for free (per page per minute within US & Canada) along with the monthly credit.
{Amy R.} At the end of 2 months credit period, if you feel that the fax number does not serve your purpose, you can contact back to us anytime to process your request. We will just crediting your eFax account with $25.90 and $10.00 as gift balance for which you will not be charged any monthly fee for the next two months.

{Mary} No, thank you. Cancel my account now.

{Amy R.} Okay, I understand and respect your decision for cancellation. I will cancel your account with us immediately.

Actually, I only had to say it three times, so I guess that’s not too bad, as far as dealing with trained monkeys goes.

If you’re interested in the design process, I’d suggest clicking over to Miss Emily DeCola’s website where you can see the design process for the monkeys we are building. It’s interesting stuff and the monkeys are so cute it’s painful.

I mean look at their little haircuts! They come like that naturally. How can you withstand such cuteness?

While we are on the subject of very cool bug, -e- sent me a link to The Zymoglyphic Museum Curator’s Web Log: “Designer” Jewelry with Insect Larvae which features the art collaboration of Hubert Duprat and a caddis fly. The caddis fly larvae create a wearable tube out of the materials in their natural environment. Mr. Duprat plays with the process by giving the bugs gold dust and gems stones to make their shells.