収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

I can’t figure out whether this crazy quintuple-star system is from Nightfall, the Colonies of Battlestar Galactica, or the Verse from Firefly.

WHAT SAY YOU?

Which scenario does this real life star system best fit?

• [ ] Isaac Asimov's Nightfall
• [ ] Battlestar Galactica's Colonies
• [ ] Firefly's "the Verse"
• [ ] Another system (vote in comments)
• [ ] ADDED: The world of The Dark Crystal

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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Yesterday’s post about a groupnoun (apparently “collective noun”) for microphones generated a lot of suggestions – 28! – for alternates to “silly,” so we’ve made a poll! Pick your preference.

Each suggestion is followed by the name(s) of the person or persons who suggested it, and where they made the suggestion – LJ means Livejournal, DW means Dreamdwidth, G+ is Google Plus, FB is Facebook.

Pretty much the only places sitting this out were Twitter and Tumblr.

The question of a groupnoun for a collective noun of microphones – which would be applicable here – is left as an exercise for the reader. I might suggest a “redundancy.” XD

A Groupnoun of Collective Nouns for Microphones
(You have to vote at the band site, because reasons; no account needed)

• [ ] A Boom of Microphones (Pauline, band site)
• [ ] A Bouquet of Microphones (Kensaro, LJ)
• [ ] A Feedback of Microphones (Corvi & Jessie C, DW; Clemtaur, LJ; Susan Davis, FB)
• [ ] A Garden of Microphones (oh6, LJ)
• [ ] A Heard of Microphones (Josh K, Russ, Susan Davis, FB)
• [ ] An Impedance of Microphones (Scott, band site)
• [ ] An Isthisthingon of Microphones (cmcmck, LJ)
• [ ] A Myriad of Microphones (Erik, FB)
• [ ] A Silly of Microphones (Me, band site/original post)
• [ ] A Sputtering of Microphones (Russ, FB)
• [ ] A Stand of Microphones (Pauline, band site)
• [ ] A Vibratery of Microphones (Geoff Gill, Google+)
• [ ] One of the Excluded: Audience, Captivation, Clamour, Clip, Coil, Compression, Condensation, Crowd, Element, Gearslut, Influx, Interference, Neumann, Pattern, Screening, Shureness, Stance (Various)
• [ ] One not in this poll (but will be specified in comments)

[ VOTE HERE ]

We Are Waiting

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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Hey, check this shit out – a progrock concept album about the fall of Princess Luna and the rise of Nightmare Moon. It is epic. Also, another reminder: Leannan Sidhe’s album kickstarter closes on Friday. Best go now while good backer rewards are available. :D

We got some suggestions in various places (Livejournal, Facebook) about new names for the local hardware store which has decided it needs a liquor license. Pick y’r favourite!

Finally, here, have this awesome NASA video of the Venus transit. I watched a few live feeds at once, because I could! HI THE FUTURE!

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I don’t feel like much, so let’s settle an important question:

<input ... >

let's settle this

• [  ] herp
• [  ] derp
• [  ] pamcakes

[[CLICK HERE TO GO VOTE]]

Also, leave comments with awesome things. Or links to awesome things. This has been one of those weeks when to be honestly I really don’t feel like I’m cut out for this, because, like fiction writing, trying to do music is mostly about successfully managing rejection. So I’m calling a KLYTUS I’M BORED and demanding playthings.

An obscure body in the SK system, perhaps. That sounds fun. Hot hail, anyone? XD

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NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Kräken-Röhl, CRIME and the Forces of Evil, and Leannan Sidhe, Live at B-Side Music, January 27th! Doors 6pm, shows start 7pm, more info on the show page and after that to come! :D

NOW IT HAS BEEN FORGOT: Over on Twitter, Attoparsec‘s Matthew Dockery mentioned clearing out the old CRT computer monitors, and being glad of it. I replied that it’s funny how CRT monitors have no loyalists or preservationists, certainly not of any scale, unlike computers themselves, and vinyl LPs, and to a lesser extent CDs, the like.

It’s me, too; I have a couple of old Amiga CRTs I’ve held onto just in case, and even I want to get rid of them.

And that got us talking about old technologies without fandoms. Examples include CRT computer monitors, and those wretched devices, the FAX machine. So we’re wondering: what other dead tech lacks a fandom?

The polling software I have doesn’t allow fill-in-the-blank answers, but I’m going to start a poll anyway. Add other suggestions in comments!

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First house tour is a wrap! Friday night I played my last show of this first set, out on Bainbridge Island, at Ann Lovejoy’s house, arranged by her son, Peter, and hosted by both.

And their cat

Every show this tour has been a great time and every one has had its own separate highlight – guesting with Leannan Sidhe and drawing a two-show encore, being all creepy and shit at Spooky Action at a Distance, enjoying the hospitality of the first official House Concert qua House Concert at Sidhehaven.

Bainbridge Island, tho’ – this one got a public review. Check this shit out:

Last night, Solarbird came over and did a House Concert out here, and totally rocked the house. And I mean rocked. It took me a long time to come down enough to drift off to sleep, with Stars still running through my head, and I’m still bouncing from it this morning… this was kind of in the same ballpark as having Lemmy or someone show up and do a set in the living room. It was awesome.

That kind of explodes my brain – with AWESOME! 😀 Thank you again, Peter and Ann, and I’m so happy that I did not disappoint. And thanks again to everybody, really; this was all new to me and I thank all of you for taking a chance on this.

I’m still in a bit of a daze, putting things back together and looking over video and inventorying what worked and what didn’t, working on my repair/new equipment checklist and and and that’s not important, I want to do this again! Now! Or in February, which seems reasonably possible. Anybody willing to host and invite people? Pleeeeease?

I’ve also been told that I should do conventions – anybody have an in, anywhere? Let me on a stage, I’ll play it. 😀

I’ll probably be too busy to post on Wednesday because of Second Thanksgiving. But maybe not, we’ll see. I still haven’t had time to pull the audio off the recorder yet, even! And next week is allll shopping and cooking. But here:

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Finally, have some photos:

Bye, Seattle!

I love ferries <3

Hi, Winslow

Hi, Boats!

Have a good week!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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Hey, guys!

I want to make some little quote stickers as freebies at shows, snippets pulled out of songs for the merch table. Does that sound like a good idea? I know that SJ Tucker does that and people seem to like it.

I’ve drawn up a little list of bits I like, but if you have any snippets that you think would be cool on a sticker, let me know!

I was kind of surprised Quatermass and the Pit fared so well in last week’s poll. That’s kinda awesome. I like it too, so I’m happy. The Carpenter film you liked best turned out to be Prince of Darkness, and all I can say about that is that you guys have really good taste in Carpenter films – it’s totally my favourite. And since Battle Royale and Paranormal Activity tied for first, I’ll bring ‘em both in, why not?

The rest are Universal Horror Classics. Well, most of them are. I’m going to cheat, and add one: White Zombie, 1932. I love that film. Yeah, it’s a bit slow, even for the era, and it’s kind of weird in that we’re-still-figuring-out-how-to-make-movies kind of way, but it’s moody like mood is going out of style, Bela Lugosi is in fine form, and, most of all, it has the single creepiest scene I have ever seen in any film to this day.

Creeps me out just thinking about it. No lie.

This is a pretty good set of films, really. If you wanted a viewing list for your Halloween pleasure – one that doesn’t include robots and Gizmonic Institute employees – you could do a lot worse.

Pick your favourite of this lucky 13:

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First! The winners of our last poll: in Cascadia, blackberry is the leader of our four horseplants of the botanical apocalypse; outside Cascadia, in North America at large, kudzu is our winner.

And based on total votes, let’s hear it our all-star continental dream team of planty death: blackberry, horsetail, kudzu, and English ivy! Well strangled, all around.

Let’s all just hope there’s never zombie virus variant for plants, shall we?

It’s October! And I literally 20 minutes ago returned from a preview showing of The Thing, the prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing, which is, in turn, a remake of the 1951 The Thing from Another World, based on John Campbell’s rather excellent 1938 novella, “Who Goes There?”

It’s getting pretty damn meta at this point, because this film covers the events in the Norwegian research base, and we see the end of those events at the start of the 1982 movie, and earlier moments from it through the 1982 film, and all of those were in that movie because the ’82 film used footage from the ’51 film to show events from that base!

Also, the pronouns are getting a mite tricky.

All in all, they did a pretty good job of capturing the atmosphere of Carpenter’s take, and not just in set design. They made one pretty significant change to the events seen or implied in the ’82 film, and from a film standpoint, I can see why you’d do that, tho’ I’m still not convinced it’s necessary. A good skiffy horror romp; not groundbreaking, but fun.

But that brings us to this week’s poll! It’s October, Halloween month, so we’re going to have a series of horror polls! Since we’re starting the month off with a skiffy horror flick, we’ll start with a skiffy horror poll – a roll call of skiffy horrors so terrible, so rampant, so utterly indescribable, that they can only be known by their pronouns! Or, in some cases, their indefinite nouns.

As usual, if an answer you want isn’t available, comment, I’ll add it, and you can come back and vote for it.

EVERYONE! PICK YOUR TERRORS!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

…ME! For being at VCON this past weekend! It’s a smallish F&SF convention, but it’s been going a long time and this year was just lovely. I had all kinds of fun meeting people I know, people I knew from only the net, meeting a bunch of people I had not previously known at all, getting to act out like a crazy person on performance panels (TURKEY READINGS so funny XD ), lolling at Godzilla field research, seeing the single best art show I’ve ever seen at an F&SF convention, explaining away wretched science in classic SF, and generally kicking around like a crazy person on speedmetal. And they put up with it!

Okay, so maybe they had to call in reinforcements.

Guys, you’re great! Let’s do that again next year. Shaddyr, keep this up, f’srs. Garth, Karl, Foxipher, all you lot, it was great meeting or re-meeting you. And I’ve left so many people out it’s just stupid! I’m sorry!

Also, I have cider, bagels of the gods, new reading material, and GREEN AND BLACK KITTY EARS!

Kitty ears are, apparently, the fast-track to good behaviour dealing with US customs. I’ve never been treated half that nicely before. ph33r th3 cut3 0n3s, guys. ph33r th3m.

not one of the cut3 0n3s. ph33r it anyway.

Oh, fine, I’ll stop now. WE HAVE A CONTEST WINNER! For those new, we do occasional polls here at the Blog of Evil, on various geeky topics. They usually appear on Wednesdays, but I make no promises. A couple of weeks ago, we asked about your apocalypse engine of choice, and “Rain of jaguars” was our unexpected winner, and that prompted readers to talking about how Apocalypse Jaguar makes a great band name, and people started coming up with album titles.

So I said, “Okay, I can do that XD” and made a contest out of reader entries, submitter of the winning entry to get an autographed copy of Dick Tracy Must Die.

AND OUR WINNER IS:

Rialian’s entry, 2012, Mother Maya Metampomp Up the Volume

…an entry submitted on the blog, in comments. Congratulations, Rialian! Everybody, bow before them! DO IT! Don’t make me use the kitty ears. I’m just looking for excuses. XD

Rialian, I’ll a physical mailing address – I’ll email you about that, assuming the registration email works. If it doesn’t, email me through the contact page.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations again to our winner!

I’ve got an idea for a poll for Wednesday. It probably doesn’t involve hornets. Probably.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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There are enough entries, yay! We have eight so far. So tomorrow we start the Apocalypse Jaguar contest!

If you have no idea what I’m on about, click here – you can still add entries if you want. I’ll put the voting post up around midnight Cascadian/Pacific time tonight, so if you want to enter, do it before then.

(Do it do it do it do it you know you wanna )

(APOCALYPSE JAGUARS RAR! XD )

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!