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In my laboratorium I have determined that a moderately hardcore frame of high-definition CGI costs about 2.5 minutes of rendering time, once you factor in the effects, colour correction and compositing passes. (The frame will then weigh approximately 6 megabytes.)
Precisely 29.97 such frames are required to create one second of motion in the Progressive HDTV format. (That's 179.82 MB/s, for those of you following along closely.)
My task is to simulate depth, however. So double every number, because I'm rendering in stereo. (That's 5 minutes for a 12 megabyte frame set which, when weighed in groups of 29.97, scores in at over 350 megabytes for each second of motion.)
From a certain point of view it can therefore be said that I must come up with over a hundred gigabytes of beautiful data by September; I need to fit in about 700 hours of rendering time in the next five weeks (840 hours). I will need to store and move around upwards of half a terabyte of source data.
My total live storage capacity as it now stands: 0.2 TB.
My all-inclusive inventory of HDTV video equipment: zero.
My complete experience with stereo production: none.
Gulp.
How do I get myself into this shit?
Fucking Country Club
Okay, so the Government called. They were inquiring about the bazillion dollars or so outstanding on my tax bill. I had run out of dodges, so together we made a friendly little plan -- a plan that it is understood defaulting upon would cause unspeakable horrors to be visited upon my financial self. No one outlined the unspeakable horrors to me, because they were unspeakable. A lot of polite suggestions were made, to which I had no choice but to humbly assent.
Fucking Canada. Fucking country club.
They're all smiles until they realise you haven't paid your dues. Then they're all smiles too, but the smiles become like scissors.
It should be understood that I do owe them the money. I mean, I do live here and all. I do expect the infrastructure of civilisation to keep on keepin' on, so I guess it's only fair to put my two bits into the hat.
But, still. C'mon. It hurts. My wheels squeak for want of grease as it is.
What I really need to know is this: is there a way to justify my new Star Trek laser water-heating system as a business expense? I'd call my accountant and ask him but I'm late paying my bill so I'd be too embarrassed to take up his time.
Maple Leaf Fornever
I still haven't got my maple tree, either. It's only a few hundred bucks, but it keeps sliding down the priority list. (But isn't that what we're all really asking? Where's my maple tree? (You already used your Christmas and birthday presents for your peach tree, and you never even play with that anymore.))
Ahem.
I Renounce My Cottage
We're selling the cottage. Thankfully, everyone's finally agreed. (I hope it sells for a bazillion dollars. I need at least a golythousand, to stopper all the leaks of life.) First the cottage must be made pretty, and that's everyone's job but mine because, as I've mentioned, I'm busy whoring for the Tokyo Automotive Cabaret from now til autumn sunset.
When we were looking to buy a cottage we stood on the shore there on Jacks Lake and LittleStar noticed how there was a small, sandy wading area beside the rocks the dock was built upon. "Why would you want a wading pool?" asked Slozo, my brother-in-law.
"For when we have kids," explained LittleStar.
"Kids?" scoffed her older brother. "That's, like, years away."
"I'm a woman," LittleStar pointed out patiently. "My years run out."
"Still..." argued Slozo.
Still -- it's three years later and our daughter is one and half years old. The wading pool will be her summer pleasure only briefly. "Wa-wa," she says with authority. "Wa-tuh," she might say, if she's feeling grown up and sophisticated.
Grandpa Who
Our favourite toddler Popsicle talked to my father on the telephone the other day, which was a bit awkward only because he kept identifying himself as "Grandpa" which confused the hell out of her. He didn't sound like the guy she thinks of as her Grandpa (my step-father). "Ampa?" she asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously. She had nothing further to say to him, and handed the phone back to me. "Back," she said as she did so.
I don't talk to my father and step-mother much anymore, though I do call now and again. They seldom call, and fail to drop by when they're in my part of the province. They're just not as interested in my life since I don't work with them anymore.
(Have I told you that before? I used to work for my Pop. I thought it was alright, but he was bummed out when it developed that I didn't want to inherit the family business. He's never fully become, uh, bummed in again.)
Delicious Dog Foot
Something bit the dog, and his foot turned into a balloon. It was grotesque. The vet prescribed lots of medicine, and the foot began to return to normal proportions. But the dog started to eat his foot. He ate all of the fur. He ate a hole clear through his skin to the quivering ropes of musculature underneath. It was disgusting. Now his foot dressings need to be changed once a day with a special cream and he's wearing a plastic lampshade around his head which he crashes into everything with.
Fish died. Fish replaced.
The arrival of the two new kittens has been delayed. It may not be until next week. All reports are that they are very cute. They are young enough that their tails still stick straight up. The new kittens are cousins to Clem.
Clem will teach them to catch little black bats and star-nosed moles -- the critters he leaves us a gift of on the doorstep each morning. (We don't fetch the morning paper at my house -- we fetch the morning carcass.)
Schrodinger will teach them nothing, except how to get stuck on a schoolhouse roof, crying like a baby until LittleStar and CheeseburgerBrown have to crawl out Popsicle's skylight and lean halfway to their deaths to drag your sorry ass back inside.
Kaija is now almost as big as Persephone. (Yeah, I know Kaija's page is a 404 -- I haven't gotten around to making it yet. Shut up. When I do, the link will work. Don't be so critical. How timely are your pets' webpages?) They are ponies. They gallop around the yard and play. They growl like daemons whenever anyone approaches the fence. They drink stagnant water from the wild corner of our land, and throw up in the laundry room.
I try to do my part. I shovelled a wagon-full of fill out of the pile and chugged it over to the reedy, wet grass. I hefted my payload of dirt and stones out into the wet, and a layer of sawdust to boot. I sweated under the sunny day sun and grunted to myself, "Hard work is hard! Isn't there some kind of a robot that can be designed to do this for me?"
Turns out: yes.
We paid my brother-in-law fifteen bucks and hour to take care of the remaining twenty-seven loads of fill. (I don't know how many terabytes that is, but I bet it's a lot on account of the nature and all.) So now I have less money but fewer dogs who throw up and need expensive medications. If everyone would just stop consuming their own feet we'd be golden.
Error: Volume Not Found
The distribution of Syntax Error's new CD 2's Complement has been delayed, because my brother's musical partner, TheJaff, failed to put aside his promised slice of the production money from his McDonald's paycheque. My brother came up with his share, and StoryZoo Studios came up with LittleStar's share. So, there will be a month's delay before anyone can get a copy.
Which is fine. Because I haven't finished the inside jacket art yet.
And the fucker forgot to give me sauce for my nuggets.
My Telephone
One day my telephone line started making a funny humming, crackling noise. Since we have line maintenance on the account LittleStar called up and asked about having it fixed. A few days later an aging nerd with poor social skills showed up and "fixed" it. Now half of our incoming calls are dumped in a garble of static. We called again, for more and better maintenance.
This time when the nerd showed up I grabbed his wire-cutters and sliced off a length of twisted telephone copper. I pushed it past it teeth and down his throat, finally fishing the end out of his ass. Then, using my foot on his sternum as a fulcrum, I violently flossed him back and forth along the length of the wire bundle and called him names.
Some parts of previous paragraphs may have been enhanced with synthetic truth. It's not my fault. Reality has left me dissatisfied in this regard.
Bottom line is my telephone still doesn't work. When I pick it up my clients think I'm in the Arctic. They ask me to bring them back one of those little soapstone sculptures, or some blubber, or a curvy Eskimo chick they can hook on H and sell as a fuck-slave in the mean streets of a big city.
I'm An Art Whore
I'm an art whore and I'm okay.
I work all night and I work all day.
I click and scroll, select and type,
And rotoscope bad keys.
On Sundays I work slowly,
Charging lots of extra fees.
O, I'm an art whore and I'm okay.
I work all night and I work all day.
I fudge the world for barons' gains,
Bringing bad ideas to life.
So idiots can get a raise and buy
Another trophy wife.
Yes, I'm an art whore and I'm okay.
I work all night and I work all day.
A hard day's work I'll outsource,
A real job I'll eschew,
I'd get more grants if I were blacker,
Or at least a quarter Jew.
Hey, I'm an art whore and I'm okay.
I work all night and I work all day.
The Great Tokyo Cavalcade
The Great Tokyo Plutocratic Calvalcade of Rich, Creamery Excess trundles on. Everything is delayed. Scripts aren't written, guide tracks aren't laid down. It rained last week so the boys from LA are still up here, stretching the shoot schedule into this week. I hope they don't come back at me with 120 requests for sky replacement.
I am researching Ikebana flower arrangement, and trying to arrange my virtual environments according to Sogetsu principles. Everything is built of overlapping layers of loose, wet sumi-e brush-strokes. It's a place I'd like to meditate. It's a place from inside my mind.
My immediate superior on the project is a man with a very small penis who is afraid of me.
The executive producer has a mustache like a walrus.
Coming Soon
Coming soon: nothing at all.
Fans of the cheeseburgertastic past will have to get along with nothing but missives from the cheeseburgertronic present while I concentrate on making my every hour billable. I don't think I have the gumption to write stories amid the shitstorms of Stereo August.
I'll still be hanging around the Scooposphere, though. The more stressed I am the more my comments with become snarky, cruel or obscene, the more my ratings with reflect adolescent appetites. I'll try to use dupes, where appropriate.
I'm battening down the hatches. I am screwing down the bolts. This is the time that separates the inspired geeks from the mere frenzied nerd. I'm going to make my deadlines, I'm going to render it all. I'm going to pull seven hundred rendering hours out of my ass if I have to borrow the Macintosh of every person I know. (I will do it by sheer force of will, if need be.)
I will rise to the occasion.
(This may not be true, but it is what I am forced to believe. It is the faith I must keep burning if I'm to live by my wits. (You can't do impossible things without a little cheerleading.) Don't ask me what's real, but you can ask me what works. CheeseburgerBrown may suck eggs, but the last people I want to find out about it are my clients or myself. We live happily in the dark, believing what we believe.)
The Living Moment
I am drinking a cold beer. The bottle sweats. It's a Beck's, from Bremen. The fans in my laboratorium swivel in cycles, cool air sweeping across me. The blinds sway. All around me, computer monitors displaying partial frames, rendering in progress. One of the drives in the AV array chortles as a finished frame is written.
LittleStar brings me a plate of nachos and dip. She's smiling and it makes her full cheeks fuller. She's wearing a white tank top and I admire the slow, inertial dance of her bosom tailing her movements. I tell her she's pretty, and she looks down and smiles because she thinks I'm sweet but incorrect. She's eating a nacho and I touch her breast. "Hey!" she says. "That's mine."
"I rent to own," I explain.
She wants me to go to the store to buy bon-bons. Who am I to refuse? A kiss seals the deal. I scoot to the Gilford General. There's a fat girl behind the counter who never looks happy so I'm extra nice to her. I check the mail but nobody's sent me a cheque. Bastards.
It's a wet summer. The village is very green. Everyone's grass is very long, no matter how often they cut it. Thunder rumbles and low clouds loom, leaning heavily and densely over the cornfields and lilacs.
The world is grey and green.
If I Were Homosexual
If I were homosexual I think I'd like to date Ewan McGregor. What does the Scoopoqueer say? Hot or not?
If I Were Mechanosexual
If I were mechanosexual I think I'd like to date R2-D2. What does the machinefuck fetish crowd think? Oily or abrasive? I mean, he's no Jander Parnell* but he's got spirit, you know?
* If you get this reference you are a big nerd.
Spider-Man/911
It was cool when Spidey burned all of the Terrorists at the stake, and made them recite the U.S. Constitution as they died in a fervoured prayer for mercy from a God they didn't buy stuff about. The giant city-eating golden calf at the end looked kinda fake, but I did really liked the motion capturing they did from the great giant city-eating golden calf. It was key to an accurate portrayal, and I really appreciate it when filmmakers do their homework like that.
Fahrenreit 2
I was less excited by Fahrenheit 2. I can't believe M.J. made out with Michael Moore. Like many people in the theatre, I lost my lunch.
Close with a Joke
A farmer has fallen on hard times, and after many desperate measures he is left with no option but to sell his prize mare. The farmer scrapes together his last pennies for an ad in the local paper, but hard times have hit many in the village and there is no one rich enough to buy a horse before bread.
Until one day a midget comes to town.
The farmer watches him approach the farm-house, peeking out from behind his dead wife's lacy curtains. He is slow to answer the door when the midget knocks. When he does open the door the midget is all smiles. "Are you the fewwow with the mare for thale?" drawls the midget in a hail of sputtering spittle.
"Ayuh," says the farmer, wiping the spray from his shirt. "She's a-this way."
They walk to the barn together. The midget is immediately impressed. "My, theeth weawy thomething! My oh my!"
"So," says the farmer, "you wanna buy her?"
"Well," says the midget, "the ith a wonderfuw spethimen. But, would you mind picking me up?"
"What do you mean, a-picking you up?" squints the farmer, frowning.
"I thimply want to have a wook in the horth'th mouth, if you don't mind," explains the little man.
So, the farmer picks the midget up so that he can look in the mare's mouth. He clucks and nods and makes very approving noises. "A wonderfuw spethimen!" he cooes as the farmer puts him down.
"Do we have us a deal?" asks the farmer. "...Sir?"
"Permit me thith one more thmall favouw," says the midget, holding up a hand. "Wiw you pick me up again, tho that I can wook at the horth'th eyth?"
Hungry to make the sale but with his patience sorely tested, the farmer picks up the little man again, thrusting him at one side of the horse's head and then the other. He puts the midget down a little roughly.
"So?" snaps the farmer.
"The ith a truwy beautifuw animaw," lisps the midget, nodding. "But I don't think we can tawk about pwice until I've theen the horth'th twat."
"Pardon me?" says the farmer, blinking.
"I say I'll need to thee the horth'th twat, if you'll obwige me."
"Her twat?"
"Yes."
Patience expended, the farmer picks up the midget and inserts him vaginally into the mare.
Sputtering and coughing, the little man drops out of the mare and wipes clear his eyes. "Heaventh!" cries the lisping midget. "Perhapth I thould have athked to thee the horth'th gawwop."
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