I have fallen way, way behind on the journaling thing—I'm starting to miss it. You know I had to serve on a jury last month, and I just didn't write about it? (I'm not going to, it was a pretty downer outcome to the case, not fun at all.) I've bought so many cool toys this past month, for me and for others, I still wanna recount my adventures in Quake II, I've got my feelings about the end of 2024 to write about!

As happened last year, I'll be doing some daily, ideally smaller updates with the journal to catch back up. We still have one bit of unfinished business from November to write about—all the packages! The rest of the group (and even some people outside of it) received some CDs recently, personalized CD copies of the anniversary reissue of Last Summer, the mtlx EP that I wrote back in the fall of last year, and a mix CD of songs that I loved and have given me funny feelings since getting back into discovering new music post-lockdowns. Now that Connor and Savannah have gotten theirs, I can finally recount putting it all together.

Here's what a year of on-and-off arts and crafts will get ya...

Last Summer: Special Anniversary Edition

I overdo projects a lot. Some of it is innocent—I just think it's cool to have something feel super official and fully complete, but I'm sure some of it is just my weird issues as well. In the case of the Last Summer set, I wanted to have this disc feel like an official, major label CD, nicer than some of my mass-produced indie label CDs even. I wanted a glossy booklet, I wanted a back inlay, and I wanted bonus tracks.

On the music itself, I tweaked some of the melodies and mixes on a few tracks and suffixed the final EP with four early demos of the songs, most from 2020 but one from mid-recording (when "Siestas" was faster and I was still trying to track it with percussion). Honestly, it's really cool listening back to these now that they truly are demos. I remember not knowing what to do with them back then, and Caby's since told me she didn't really get 'em either, but now, with the context of the final release, you can hear where certain song parts got expanded on and where sounds got carried over from my initial experimentation. (I also mixed in subtly variable flavors of tape hiss, like they came from different old late 90s cassettes. Someday, I'll do an actual run of Last Summer cassettes for funsies.) I'm very happy they have a proper home now that isn't just in the Scratchpad's archives.

This adventure started not long after I finished the album—January was when I made my first test copy, which was only a few days after I got the test prints. At the time, I still worked at Staples, and all my time spent doing Amazon returns in the Print Center exposed me to the wonders of 80lb gloss, which feels almost exactly like CD booklet paper. I did up a back inlay and an eight page booklet (and thus a front cover) in Paint.NET, got the test copy printed, adjusted it a bit further, and sent in a print order for 22 copies of each page on 80lb gloss. This all cost me roughly $70, and while the Staples printers aren't meant for graphics, I really like how it all came out, just that little bit scrungly, but still really official feeling. (The copies are all numbered, out of twenty total. We're up to 9/20! I'm pleased at how much of the pile I've been able to give away. I'll list them on my Bandcamp probably in January.)

I intended to put it together over the slow February nights, using their guillotine slicer and long stapler over in Print on my lunches or days off, but getting the unceremonious "quit or we'll eventually fire you" in January put a damper on that. Even after getting back from Wales in March, I was more focused on settling back in, losing weight, and finding another job than putting together elaborate CD packaging at my former workplace. August came, I'd waited long enough, and while the faces had changed a decent amount (turns out the store basically imploded after I left, mwah, the drama, magnifique), enough remained from when I was there that they let me behind the counter to access all their sharp objects. Three or four hours later, phase one of the Last Summer reissue was completed.

But then the project got bigger—I wanted to personalize each copy. I figured this could double as my Christmas card for the year, and I wanted to draw people stuff they'd be really excited about, and that meant OCs over sonas like would've been easy for me (because again, I have a bad habit of overdoing it). dcb got his Neopet lad Cedrus, Caby got her perturbed Caerpinwyd greengrocer skunk Azurite, Connor got a kittyfied Moritani (I was apparently the first to do anything with his hatred of lettuce :omegalul:), and Savannah got a goat version of her witch boy Micah, because humans are scary. I was also shipping one of these out to Mr. Midwestern Dirt in Chicago, and I wanted to include a note in with his like I included for all the Somnolians, so he got a Colton in his jewel case. These were done digitally and then printed out on my home inkjet on nice blue and pink cardstock on the same template as the booklets were done on, and then slotted in behind the booklet as you open the case.

This is really what made the packages take so long. Not one of these characters, I'd drawn before, so the nerves about getting them right were there, and while I love how they all came out (Cedrus is probably my favorite of the lot and one of my favorites of the year, if I'm honest) and while it was all completely worth it—well, it was a lot of work. A lot of weeks of me hinting at things to people, because I'm terrible at keeping secrets.

Here's the full-sized digital versions, if you're curious (obviously click the thumbnails, doof):

marf's mix 2024

Mailing out mix CDs has been something we've been talking about in the group since Devon was still around. As I mentioned, during the lockdowns, my desire for any music that wasn't the warm, comfy, familiar confines of licensed video game soundtracks from the mid-2000s about disappeared completely, so my mixes didn't come out very good (least, not that I remember). 2023 and 2024 have been killer for my discovery though, and instead of writing out some long post about the music I loved this year or something, I figured I'd make it a mix CD. Let me not tell you about this song I love, let me let you listen to it.

Truth be told, it's probably the project this year that's felt the least like work. I already get into the weeds of music sequencing, mastering, lyrical content, and the like when I'm just casually enjoying a record, so it was just fun to pick out all the songs that spoke to me the loudest this year and arrange them in a proper running order. I remember really trying to dig for songs that got me emotional, or songs I've fantasized to. I really got into the details, normalizing song volumes, trimming silences, creating seamless segues, interludes (two of 'em to separate out the two halves of the mixtape, courtesy of The Conet Project), and even trimming one song slightly to make a sort of unofficial radio edit. Seriously, I wanted this thing to play as its own piece, even if it was other people's music I was using to paint.

On song choice, this frankly could've just been 15 Superdrag songs in a row. I lived in Regretfully Yours for months, the droning, desperate infatuation of "Truest Love", "Carried"'s angular, anthemic low self-confidence, "Destination Ursa Major"'s ode to drunken abandon. It only got better when I discovered The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag, with a lot of the same lyrical focuses but with an even grubbier, growlier, low-end sound. "Sugar" would be the opener to my mix CD for 2024.

The rest of the songs all came from CDs and digital albums I've bought in the past two years. The Raconteurs, two songs from Adwaith, Matchbox Twenty (I am just ready for my Rob Thomas arc, yes), Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Ted Leo, Built to Spill, Ash, Remy fucking Zero—a mix I enjoy quite a lot. The vast majority were bought in Wales with Caby standing next to me, which makes it especially odd when one of them reminds me of her. I guess it is a little strange to have such strong, personal emotions (not exclusively for her—"As Sure as the Sun" was more me thinking about people who left the group more than anything) wrapped up in songs that got mailed to the people they make me think of, but consider it more like a time capsule of my own neurosis more than anything about them. I'm just an insane person on the Internet.

On a positive note, there are plenty of optimistic and more lovey songs on the disc, and I'm happy to have embraced my love of Brad Sucks again, especially his newer material that just didn't really interest me during the lockdowns, of which two songs feature.

But this all begat another leg of the project! I needed cover art for the mix CD! Initially, I was gonna do another character illustration (just of Cammy, possibly including marf), but after doing five of those already on a similar canvas, none of the ideas I had were all that interesting to me, so I cleared out my head by digitally painting for the first time instead. I took a screenshot of the Minecraft Alpha world I was playing a lot at the timeand tried to paint out a weird, dreamy, sunset version of it, kinda paradise but also kinda isolated and lonely. It isn't very good, but the fun thing about indie rock is that bad and amateurish art is a staple of the genre's entire look, so somehow, it all worked out.

What worked out slightly less was that this was the moment I figured out my cheap shitty Canon inkjet can't do duplex (double-sided) printing, not even manually—the print won't line up! I gave up on the nice, decorative, typed insert design I had in mind and simply handwrote the tracklist in very tiny scribble on the back of the cardstock prints five times, pen mistakes and all. Boo-womp. (But that's its own vibe, I suppose, so no big deal.)

Shipping and handling

Then came mailing it all out! I got a pack of bubble mailers one night and reinforced them on both sides with sliced up cardboard from my current job. (If the boxes there are good enough to transport beer and glass in one piece, my CDs will make it there just fine.) dcb got a whole box of CDs from me, a signed Shaimus CD I ordered for him years ago and never passed on (sorry lad), a few duplicates from my collection I figured he'd like, half my print copies of the spring 2024 SomnolZine, the mix CD, and of course the Last Summer CD he helped springboard in the first place. Everyone got something a little different! Discounting the personalization, I gave more copies of the zine to Caby because she spilled coffee on hers, Mr. Midwestern Dirt didn't get the mix CD because I figured he wouldn't be into all the 90s pop/alt stuff I had on it, and there was another guy in Virginia on Reddit who wanted to do a mix CD trade, so he got the mix CD and an unpersonalized copy of Last Summer. Lots to keep track of! Addresses!

Shipping in total cost me roughly $100. (You see why I wanted to include the mix CD with the Last Summer stuff now?) I had all the customs forms printed out, fixed to the envelopes, dcb's box was all packed up nice—now the last leg of the journey was just hoping it all got there! dcb, Patrick, and the Reddit guy in Virginia all got theirs within a week, makes sense, none of those are too far from here. Caby got hers within two weeks, big excellent, international shipping is iffy sometimes.

Savannah and Connor got theirs December 19 and 20, respectively. Canada Post's Christmas-nuking strike caused the packages to stop right where they stood three days after I mailed them out. Thankfully, that's most of the way from Somnolescent HQ to Ontario, so they got them a day and two after the strike ended, but the fact that I could've hand-delivered theirs in an evening as opposed to waiting almost forty days to not only see their reactions to what I drew, but also to be able to write this very post and put some closure on the whole project, definitely derailed the end of the year vibes for a bit. On the bright side, Christmas miracle!

Oh yeah, and the reactions were absolutely worth it. Hope you guys don't mind me posting these here for posterity:

Closure

I realized halfway through all of this that this was an absurd amount of work, and in a way, I put more into it in return. It feels like a nice tribute to my tendency towards excess. Like seriously, just handmaking a CD, or doing up a mix CD for friends, or mailing out six different packages at once, would be quite the undertaking—and I did all of those at the same time.

I've obviously learned to trim it back next time, but thankfully, I've also learned a lot about prints and CD artwork to expedite the process. (Basically, print it at Staples if it needs to be double-sided, and a booklet, while cool, is overkill and a simple two-sided insert is more than enough.) This was an adventure in handmade CD-R releases, and it came out fucking cool, and I am glad I did it and everyone loved it. I'm also glad, especially given that this definitely won't be the last CDs I ever send to people, that I know now to make it a lot more manageable for myself.