Eddie

Rap/Hip Hop is a very important part of French culture, the overwhelming majority of my friends back in France were listening to it, and it is one of the few kind of music that is solid in France as well as usually always sung in french. That's not the case for all french music, we have a decently big metal scene, but most bands sing in english. We are also wonderful at electronic music, house, electro and especially synthwave, but those usually don't have lyrics apart from samples (which are mostly in english). So when I was trying to get my wife to learn french — if not by traditionally learning — by osmosis, it made sense to have her listen to french rap. I started to play it in the house while we were cleaning or just hanging out. I don't listen to rap for reasons I listed in my very first article on the Print House, the main one being that I don't care about lyrics in music. I therefore had to search for a couple of artists, but my search was short-lived because I didn't really have a genuine interest in rap. That was a couple of years ago, today I am less picky when it comes to music, more curious and open-minded, but also more receptive to the social point usually brought up in rap. But I still needed a little push to really do a deep dive into rap, which was granted to me when Spenny released his article: “Ramblings 2: An Album I Could Have Liked”. I decided to roughly use the same process that Spenny describes in the chapter Detour One: Early Covid; try to listen to one album every few weeks and rate them. But why do it alone? That's why I'm bringing you along in this new series of articles, aiming for one every couple of months, presenting an album/artist per article. I'll be choosing a couple of songs that I like, and if there is material, introduce through them a topic relevant to french culture. I will then talk about the album overall.

L'école du micro d'argent – 1997

My search had begun, and I simply looked through a couple of forums with threads titled a variation of “best french rap album/artist” (but in french obviously). This one appeared at the top of a couple, so I thought I would start strong to keep me motivated at the beginning.

IAM is a group composed of Akhenaton & Shurik'n which are the rappers, with Khéops, Imhotep, Kephren and formerly Freeman handling music prod. They are from Marseille, the group was formed in 1988 and is still going today. We will be looking at their fourth and most popular album, starting with the title track.

L'école du micro d'argent

—>Music (youtube)

This song is all about hyping themselves up and propping up the rest of the album. They describe a war between two schools, the school of the silver mic and the school of the wooden one. They are part of the former; the school of the good rap. Shit is hype, the beat contains some bells, trumpets and horns which gives it an air of solemnity, and opens with a choir that builds up. The lyrics are epic and even if I still don't know a lot about rapping, I know that here it is phenomenal. It's technical, the text is rich and they are using fairly complex french language — using formal language is a way french rappers try to set themselves apart, it also allows them to craft much more intense and mellifluous lyrics. Akhenaton has a lisp and uses that to create more alliterations, which is cool to hear. Shurik'n lingers on some syllables or rushes through them, and emphasises some consonants or vowels which — even if it could hinder comprehension (french is pretty monotone and words aren't accentuated anywhere) — matches the song perfectly and adds a layer to the rhythm. After the opening, the beats become a bit simpler, but is still as effective, it compliments the voices well, and the voices are clearly defined above the mix. A simple-ish beat and well-defined voices will be a reoccurring thing for the rest of their songs. However, this song doesn't really showcase their social involvement, unlike the one we will look at next:

Nés sous la même étoile

—>Music video what are they doing with their arms?

This track is about a very popular subject in France, equality of opportunity or in french:

L'égalité des chances

For as long as I can remember when I was a kid I was taught about the equality of opportunity. How important it was to [insert current government] and how [current government] was doing everything that is possible to make sure this was not just an ideal, but a reality. This was very ingrained in french schools, or in the education policies, as equality of opportunity “started” there according to the government. Let's first define what is “l'égalité des chances”: it's that social status of an individual cannot be founded on moral, ethnic, cultural, economical or social of a person, but on their public utility. It's basically just meritocracy; everybody is equal and the only things that matters should be what value they produce/how hard they work.

School is mandatory and free in France for every child residing on the territory, from ages 3 to 16. The state has always confused equal access to equal opportunity. So they give students roughly the same access to information, with a standardised curriculum, national exams, try to put in place “orientation” seminar to guide students to jobs and studies starting early... Therefore in the state's eyes, every student is on the same level as any other — this is l'égalité des chances. Then, what matters regarding success is the effort that each student puts in; a convenient view that removes the government responsibility regarding inequalities after school. The many french governments have always thought of school as the perfect way to squash inequalities since — after the state graciously gives you access to education — you just have to work hard, then can get into a good school and get a good job and even if you started poor you end up rich. This is obviously not how it works, and school in France is a big vector of inequalities (I would need another whole article to get into that). This song is about all the other inequalities that arise before school even starts, and how they evolve:

Here Shrik'n and Akhenaton compare their upbringing, especially in the context of school, with a bourgeois' kid. They first note the hereditary nature of access to wealth, comparing what their dads do and how they get to work. Then the difference in access to extracurricular activities, vacations, food security. They also note that they don't have enough money to buy school supplies, that they had to stop going to school to help their parents make ends meet, that they are responsible for helping raise their siblings. They contrast that with the rich's kid, who doesn't have to worry about any of this, can focus on his studies and enjoy his youth, and who will be able to get into a good and expensive school. Where he will get a good job, they will have to beg for one. Other than the content of the text, the lyricism is amazing, there is a lot of use of “calembour” which is a sort of pun where you say one thing, but it sounds exactly the same as another and both have different — but relevant — meanings. Some of them are crazy and it's just when reading the lyrics that I realised it. The rhymes are also amazing. The instrumental is as usual simple-ish but very effective, complementing the rapping without eclipsing it. One of the member, Kheops, is a disk jockey and you can hear some record's effects, like rewinds and other, uh, DJ things (please excuse my ignorance) which, while the beat is simple, makes sure that it doesn't become repetitive, especially during the refrain.

Petit Frère

—>Music video

A bit of context is needed here, it will be also valid for the majority of french rap we will look at in this articles and the ones to come.

Les cités/banlieues/grand ensembles

The word banlieues (suburbs) has a wildly different connotation in french compared to english. As you know, suburbs in North America usually designate residential areas inhabited by white middle class people, safe, heavily subsidised by the local government as they generate next to no revenue. In France, banlieues usually refers to very low income high density part of city, outside of the city centre. To understand what they are, it can be interesting to see how they came to be. In the 1960s the effect of the post-war baby boom and the repatriation of the french colonisers from Algeria generates the need for more housing in a very short amount of time, on top of that a little thing called WW2 had destroyed a lot of housing, and the ones that were still standing were for the most part in awful conditions. Add to that, the american “all car” fad had taken over France and the government thought it would be a good idea to build all that necessary housing way outside the city, away from any amenities and only linked by roads and very little public transport if at all. What were built were “grand ensemble”; giant residential towers, think soviet style housing. They were at first not destined for low income people, but due to their undesirability they were deserted by anyone who could afford to not live there. They slowly become inhabited by low to very low income people and immigrants; groups of people that the bourgeois at the head of the municipalities actively don't care about — they became abandoned by local and federal government. With no money and their usual distance to the city centre, they became isolated socially, economically and culturally. They began to act as sort of socio-cultural enclaves within french cities, with nothing to do, as they are overwhelmingly residential. Economic conditions there are worse of than in the rest of the french territory; 50% live under the poverty threshold, unemployment being thrice the national average and education being also way below the national average. Mix no money with no opportunities, no jobs, no entertainment and general abandonment, and you get crime. Crime became rampant in the banlieues and the state responded with over-policing, which results in casualties every year. Those casualties cause violent riots within the cités after which the government will pretend to care for a couple of weeks, creating task forces tasked with creating reports to create plans to solve everything; they are usually abandoned, don't reach goals, or only try to fix things in the surface without addressing the root of the issue. None of them have worked and life there is extremely tough and generally not a great place to be raised in.

This song is about the “petit frère”, the little bro and how, in part, being raised there affects him. They lament how little bro wants to grow up too fast. As young as 10 already fighting, acting tough, watching porn, and they compare to what their youth looked like. They then blame it on violent video games and the news becoming more sensationalist... They really focus on that last one being one of the main cause which is kinda of a miss imo, focusing on it for a whole verse, especially when at one point they say “back in our days, violence in schools was the norm but it wasn't reported therefore it didn't cause an increase in violence”. I'm no psychologist but this makes very little sense. Apart from that (and blaming video games lmao) they also blame themselves and the environment they created: the little bro must be imitating them too. The little bro starts smoking early, wants drink alcohol just like the grown-ups, and all of this is costing him his education and causing him to forget their roots/culture. He becomes obsessed with materialism and money turning to crime to obtain what he wants. Just like the rest of the songs we looked at, the rapping is phenomenal. So many alliterations, the flow of the text is incredible, with the rhymes keeping it interesting. The instrumental effective, if a bit more complex here, there are like three melodies calling back and responding to each other on top of the base (bass) beat. The song has even a cover art:

​ This album consists of 16 songs, no intro, outro, interludes; it's way too many in my opinion. If you read my very first article, you would know I'm one of those weirdos that listen to music an album at a time, from beginning to end — even my spotify wrap gives me flack for it. A whole hour and fifteen minutes takes me three commutes to listen to fully. Nevertheless, I find myself listening to it over and over again, I started this article around August/September and this has made its way into the rotation on a weekly basis. Even as I was listening to other albums for new articles, I kept coming back to this. The instrumentals, however simple, are very effective, the text is great, rapping is technical and clear — shit slaps. The duo (voices) also works very well together, the song “Elle donne son corps avant son nom” is a prime example. There are however, a few songs that I care little for, and one that I skip every time. When it's great it's phenomenal, when it's “bad” (literally only 10% of the album) it's just a cut above average. As a side note, anglophones (all of you) will probably enjoy the track titled “La Saga” as half of it is in english; it features Sunz of Man. Rating of the album: 18/20

Another project has begun, on top of the 5 thousand other I have. I have a list as long as my arm of goated albums that I missed out on — whether it was because I had the audacity of not having been born, or I wasn't listening to rap at the time. One good part about arriving late to the party is that time has helped sift through the garbage. But this is a double edge sword; there might have been some cool underground stuff that has been lost to time. No time to get fomo now through. I hope that the context and insight I have provided into the french culture, when it comes to rap, was useful. Feel free to ask about any other topic that came up in the songs that you had issues with or questions about, and I might add some context in subsequent articles. Or even something related to french rap that you don't understand. A side note on my choice of albums: I will most likely try to stick with the OG stuff in the beginning, to get better context and history on french rap. Later, I will probably try some more experimental stuff and some stuff that the kids these days listen to. Once I am more secure in my knowledge of french rap, I might even comment on some meme rap that existed when I was growing up. In any case, you can expect the next article around March.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

I had not done a single full gym session since Covid. Three years ago. As a student I was a low-key meathead, participating in multiple disciplines at a time and training on my own for more than 12h a week, doing the same movements again and again. (Why does that sound familiar?). What made me stop? Saying Covid had a small part to play in it would be a euphemism, but it is not the whole picture. Covid restrictions have been gone for a little while now and I've only started going back this month (June 2023). Between Covid and now I have moved twice and gone were the days of being within walking distance of a decent gym. Car-centric city planning struck again. It didn't matter that I moved to Toronto which is supposed to be one of the most walkable cities in Canada, decent gyms were out of reach. It was only when I moved to the (obviously superior) city of Mississauga that luck would start to come. A gym was going to open at a nearby plaza next to my house; just had to walk for 5min to an overpass, walk above the highway, walk two more minutes and I was there. Just had to wait a couple of months for the gym to open its doors. During those months, the overpass was destroyed to be upgraded; it will only be built back up in August (edit: we're in November now and the pillars are not even up lol). So I got a bike, and despite needing to go around the highway, it was still only a 15min bike ride to the gym. The gym opened and my wife took a look at it; a bike and treadmill farm. It goes without saying that I was not going to bike to the gym to bike on stationary bikes after that. But the bike opened up new gym possibilities, so we looked for anything within a 10-15min bike ride distance from our house and we finally found something. Shit's a bit expensive (read very) but it is an investment I am willing to make. The price is sorta justified though (i'm coping), there are a couple of floors with two in particular that are dedicated to machines and free weights, including squat racks. There is also a very full schedule of classes, each being accessible to us with our membership (edit: actually no :/). From those only boxing might be of interest to me. In any case, I started training again.

Training

Training is an undeniably important part of gaining strength or muscles. I had not kept up with the advancements in training philosophy since I stopped, but I assumed the gist of it was the same. So I took a former plan I used to have and was gonna make changes along the way. But I had kind of an existential crisis; were my goals the same? Do I want to do the same thing I wanted to do then? Using this plan, which I then crafted for past specific goals, to achieve my new goals made no sense. So I sat down with myself and considered what I did in the past and what I wanted to do now. That previous plan was made at a time when two things mattered to me; powerlifting and armwrestling. I was competing in armwrestling and was planning to compete in powerlifting once I met the requirements for my weight class. I was also partially interested in strongman. Looking at my situation now, armwrestling is out of the picture, and so is competing in powerlifting. I also do not have that strong of an interest in strongman anymore. I am still very interested in getting strong but not so much in competing, and not just in the three powerlifting movements. So what do I want? The more I mature, and the more I identify with greek philosophers, I want a cultured and astute mind in an aesthetic and powerful body. I cannot have the former so I will get the latter. It looks like I want bodybuilding.

Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding has gotten a pretty bad rep in the last two-ish decades, and is now mostly associated with steroid abuse, 1000 different necessary supplements (trust me bro), influencers, fake natties (overlap with the aforementioned), being loud and obnoxious... The old heads are keeping superstitious stereotypes alive and generally giving bad info to noobies. On the other side, the newcomers, if not subjugated by the oldheads, use a “science-based” approach (spoiler it's not really science based); you need to do this exercise with super high volume and those 300 accessory lifts and those 15-step compound lifts and don't forget this 50min warmup. The fitness influencer market is saturated to the gills and the only way to carve your space in the landscape is to trow out the wildest claims and make clickbait. It is very hard to find good information out there, and you will get drowned under the 5 000 cookie cutter programs sold here and there by such and such, and the “EXERCISE EVERYONE SHOULD DO” coupled with the “[BLANK] IS KILLING YOUR GAINS !!!1!1111!“. Ironically there is usually an overlap in the exercise from those videos. The couple of curated youtube channels I used to watch either do not capture my interest anymore (armwrestling channels and such) or have devolved in purely entertainment. All? Well, not entirely... Some small channels of indomitable lifters hold out against the influencerisation. I took a look at those for portions of my new training plan. A big one was Alan Thrall from the eponymous youtube channel Alan Thrall. Coincidentally, he too decided to switch from his former discipline, strongman, to bodybuilding almost at the same time as I was going back to the gym. He was always more of an old-head follower but has wisened up a lot as of late and has lost a bit of his edginess, which is a pleasure to see. He usually combats misinformation, myths and gives some pretty solid advice, explained rationally or talks about his experience. He also has a very small ego and is always genuine and honest. I've used his channel more for the overall structure of my plan and workouts and also for some exercise selection. The second one would be Zac Telander, he mildly falls into the “mostly entertainment” category, but he has some interesting rants, and he also probably is kinda sorta maybe going insane, there is a sort of unhinged “I understand myself and I don't care if anyone can, or if I'm even intelligible” qualities from some of his rants which is appreciable. I am using his advice about the squats and it honestly has made a big difference. The last channel I looked at for my training would be Colin Murray, he does sub-10-minute videos that are very to-the-point about things that worked for him. That's pretty much it. He'll also give some exercise recommendation. I've used him for more of work area (on my body) selection as well as some exercise selection. I've also very briefly looked at Renaissance Periodization, the dude is very calm, has a PhD in exercise science and gives reasons why such and such is not optimal for hypertrophy, while this and that might yield better results. (I'm in the middle of a deep dive now — I have to talk more about it in an update article). One resource I did not have access to while I was training before covid, because I had not succumbed, was tiktok (i know, i know). There is a plethora of fitness-focused content creators on the platform/re-upload of short clips of longer youtube videos. Among those JPG and TNF are part of the science-based group (actually science-based this time) and I take in some of their advice for exercise selection and also execution. Another one out of the left field is Sam Sulek, I really enjoy his no-nonsense approach, and as a very young lifter (21 years old) he makes oldheads seethe because he is not training/bulking/cutting optimally in their opinion, but is thriving nonetheless. He has a very humble and laid-back vibe to him and is sort of a walking meme. He also has an interesting mindset about training.

What the plans came out to be

Mixing all of this I settled on the plan below:

Training Session	Exercise	Sets x Reps	Weight (lb)	Rest	Notes
Chest + Legs #2	Bench Press	5x5	115	2:30	widen grip?
1	Leg Curls	5x8	90	1:30	Seated, lean forward
1	Incline Dumbbell Press	5x7	30	1:30
1	Front Squat	5x5	135	2:30	ATG Paused add more reps —>7-8
1	Machine Incline Press	5x8	180	1:30
1	Lunges with Dumbbells	5x walking to the trash can and back	40->35	2:00	8-9 reps x2
Back #1 + Triceps	Deadlift	5x5	235	2:30	Use straps on last set
2	Close grip Bench Press	5x5	105	2:30	widen grip to be able to touch chest
2	Lat pulldown	5x8	160	1:30
2	Dips	5x8	-40	1:30
2	Unilateral Seated Machine row	5x7	?	1:30	Extra set on left arm
2	Cable Triceps Extension	5x7	225	1:30	Straight bar and last set dropset
Legs #1 + Biceps	Squats	5x5	155	2:30	ATG Paused
3	Ez bar preacher curl	5x5	bar+40	2:30
3	Hip Thrusts	5x12	90+Machine	1:30	Replace with RDL?
3	Hammer Curl	5x6	30	1:30
3	Farmer's Walk	4xWalk to the wall and back	70	1:30	Straps
3	Cable Curl	5x8	180	1:30	Rope, dropset at the end
Back #2 + Shoulders	Barbell Row	5x5	115	2:30
4	Military Press	5x5	80	2:30	Switch to push press after failure
4	Pullups	5x5	-30	1:30
4	Lateral Raises	5x10	40	1:30
4	Unilateral Lat Cable Pulldown	5x8	?	1:30	JPG style Extra set on left arm Focus on stretch
4	Face Pulls	5x10	160	1:30	Focus on eccentric part

All the above is not accurate anymore, but the vibe kinda matches still — see conclusion

I chose to divide my plan into four sessions, as it and its structure came to me in a dream. Back is really an area I want to improve on, as even at my peak in university, I looked a bit two-dimensional. I really don't need to improve on legs — it's actually one of the strong points of my physique — but I really enjoy working them so here we are. I nevertheless tried to get exercises that would also work other areas besides the legs in the leg portion (farmer's walk, hip thrusts...). Another area I need to work on to get more of a 3D body is the chest, so on top of the chest day, I have a couple of exercises that also hit the chest in my triceps workout (close grip bench, dips...). I have no “core” workout as I hate working it, and I hope it will just come by osmosis with the rest of my body. I am not used to working in high rep ranges, but this is something I will change, as higher rep ranges are more favourable for hypertrophy. I will most likely will do high rep for isolation movements and accessory lifts. Overall I have lots to learn still, but I have to time to figure shit out and experiment. I keep my rest times consistent (yes I carry a timer to the gym), that way I can adjust the weight more precisely each session. Once one weight feels too easy (i.e. I do not reach failure on the last rep or so), I'll increase the weight or number of reps for the subsequent sessions — progressive overload baby. I have a little notebook that I fill in every time I come back from the gym, with my thoughts about each exercise; did it feel too easy/hard, anything else to report... That is one side of my tracking my progress, the other one is checking myself in the mirror at the gym before a session, during a session, after a session at work in the washroom out of the washroom at home before a shower after a shower when I wake up when I have to dress when I have to undress when I'm just hanging around when I'm busy when I'm bored when I'm hyper when I'm tired when I feel like it to flex on my cat to flex on my wife to flex at my frog to flex at myself to flex at god

Eat like a big boi to become the big boi

It goes without saying that to become big, you need to eat big. This is unfortunately one of the things I've had the most trouble with over the years. There is very little help out there when it comes to gaining weight as the main weight change associated with fitness is usually loss. From advice to recipes, there is a plethora of weight loss tips, but us little boiz we are not eating good. Even resources dedicated to gaining weight, like the gainit subreddit, are an absolute joke. If someone ask for tips on how to eat more, usually the answer is “tHeRE iS no SEcrEt; YoU jUsT nEEd TO EaT mORE”. Then they also give horrendous advice, like to do GOMAD (Gallon Of Milk A Day), or circlejerk on obviously fake stories about the biggest guy in the gym bringing the noobie to the alley behind the gym and telling him to order a pizza with everything on it and dunk a litre of olive oil on it, eat all of it and do that everyday and that would prove he's serious about gaining, otherwise he's just a little whining bitch. “People having trouble gaining weight are whiny and making excuses instead of eating” is also a reoccurring theme on there.

With the ranting now over, let's begin with the basics; to gain weight you do need to eat more, i.e. increase the calories you consume. “How to gain weight?” is never the question that beginners ask, they almost always mean: “How to eat more?” Without further a-do here are Edouard's Tried and Approved Tips:

• Eat more often, for people with small appetites it's easier to eat a bunch of small meals rather than a few huge ones.
• Drink your water after a meal, you want to keep all the space in your stomach for food.
• Make it easy for yourself, try to always keep food within reach that takes little to no preparation.
• Have a couple of go-to recipes that are super easy to do and that you don't mind eating often; it will take the burden of having to decide what you eat off your shoulders.
• Piggy-backing off that last one; do some meal prep, you minimise the time cooking while maximising your food output. It also ties in to tip #3.
• Start eating earlier and finish eating later in your day; it's easier to spread out all the meals you want to have over 15h rather than 10h.
• Prioritise calorically dense food; they take less space in your stomach while maximising the calories you ingest.
• Chewing tricks your brain into making you less hungry; eating soft foods, or even drinking your food makes it easier to eat more.
• Protein shakes can be an easy way to get both proteins and calories into your system. Don't bother with mass gainers, they most often are just pure sugar and have a misleading calorie count. Just add peanut butter to your shake (100g=~600cals!).
• For the love of god, please season your food; if you enjoy what you are eating it will be infinitely easier to eat more of it.
• Don't count calories for every meal, make a meal plan that you know the calories of and stick to it. Count them once in a while for a full day to get a reality check and adjust your food intake accordingly. Also you don't have to be extremely precise; food packaging isn't.
• Don't use one weight measurement for tracking; bodyweight yoyos throughout the day/week so weighting once might not be an accurate representation of your weight gain/loss. An average over the week is more representative of your actual weight gain/loss.
• Don't wait until you're hungry to eat, just try to eat every few hours. However...
• DO NOT FORCE-FEED; this is the quickest way to either give up, develop eating disorders or both. Don't do it.
• Take your time; you're not gonna jump from eating 1500cals/day to 3200cals/day in a day, it might take months for you to get comfortable eating more. Don't worry about it, there is only so much muscle you can build in a year anyway.

This is it for the tips, I usually apply most of them, although it can be a bit tough with a 9-5 (mine is actually an 8-4) but at least it keeps my schedule consistent. I usually eat my breakfast (~9am), which is comprised of a tiny costco chocky milk and the holy grail: Big Daddy Chocolate Chip Cookie. They're easy to carry and eat, tasty. Carbs, fat, sugar and surprisingly protein, they have everything I need to start the day without mentioning they are a solid 420cals, which brings my breakfast to around 560cals. For lunch (~12-13h) I either eat what I prepared, most often Korean beef bowl (credits to Spenny), leftover whatever or some focaccia/bread that I made. I try to get at least 1000-1200cals with my lunch. If I haven't prepared anything, it's usually two Wendy's Daves' single, no onion (~1150cals). After that, I'll have some snacks if needed to survive until 4 (nuts, yogurt, Halloween candy...). When I come home at 5, I usually have one cup of uncooked rice (cooked), with a shit ton of butter and whatever seasoning I fancy, which comes about to probably close to 900-1000cals. I might have a protein shake around 9, comprised of 90g of peanut butter, 2 scoops of protein powder and about 400ml of 3.25% milk and of course 5g of creatine. That clocks in at about 1000cals. Or I might eat whatever else, if I have some leftovers, if we order food... In that latter case, before bed, I will drink the costco fairlife chocolate protein shake to which I add 5g of creatine. This brings my day to a total of 3100-3400cals, and roughly enough protein. I do not keep close track of my macros, even protein, because I can't be bothered. How to know if it's working? Well, I'm gaining weight at a satisfying pace, getting stronger and not putting on too much fat. Is it optimal? No, but it's easy.

Rest grows the muscle

Another thing that lifters often underestimate for muscle growth is rest. Muscle is not built in the gym, nor in the kitchen, but in the bedroom. Consistently getting a good night's sleep is essential to become a big boi. This is not something I struggle with; I take sleeping very seriously and always cut out at least 8h for sleep, often more. I am also able to fall asleep blazingly fast, sparking jealousy from Tetyana (my wife). I also don't really struggle with overworking my muscles. I try to go to the gym 3-4 times a week maximum (not exceeding that, i.e. not going to the gym, is really not hard) to give myself and my muscles enough rest days to recuperate. In the same optic, I try to stay at the gym for shorter amounts of time, typically 1h30. This is a big cut down from 2h30-3h in university per session, and I also went to the gym around 5 times a week in uni. But I was young, full of energy and had loads of time — not even mentioning the gym was a short 8min walk from my house — so it was never a hassle to train. Also, Tetyana would not put up with anything past 1h30 nowadays.

Motivation to go to the gym

I'm like everyone else, and after my 9-5 I sometimes have very little will to go to the gym. Maybe I had a long day, maybe I had a short night, maybe there was a shit ton of wind on the bike ride back from the station and my legs are shot. If I go to the gym, I'll have 2 fewer hours of free time at night, and I already have too little... Those are all things I used to say, but I've tried to have a mind shift on working out that boosted my motivation: Ok, I'm tired, my legs are shot or whatever, but having a sub-optimal workout is better than no workout at all. I'm not getting 2 fewer hours of free time by going to the gym, I'm just using my free time to do something I enjoy. That change in mindset has allowed me to be generally happier with my gym-going habits, and to push myself harder. Another way I keep myself motivated is just seeing the progress every day; I can lift more, I can do so while being less tired and with better technique. I also look bigger and all my jeans are getting tight. Seeing and experiencing that progress really encourages me to keep going at it. The last big motivator for me is my gym crush that I see 90% of the times I go to the gym (90% of the times I go to the gym with Tetyana).

Conclusion

This article was originally drafted in June, then abandoned, then reworked back in September, then abandoned again and finally picked back up now. A bunch of things have changed, especially for my actual training plan, but things change all the time, and if it had to be 100% accurate, this article would never see the light of day. I have learned to let go and therefore decided to release it, I'll make another article once all the changes have been consolidated.

Update article coming when I'm big (with picture — password protected and only Spenny will get the password)

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used *fictitiously*. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

Have you and your friends started a podcast? Are you lost trying to get everyone to talk louder/softer, trying to mix everything during the recording and ultimately having significant volume level disparity? Do not despair, everything can be saved with a little bit of audio processing. Just follow this quick guide and you'll be able to level out your audio in less than 5 minutes.

For this, we will use Audacity, which is free and open-source. We will work on an example that will showcase the usual pitfalls of home recording in less-than-ideal situations. That example comes from a random podcast on the internet, no need to look too closely at it.

Tiny bit of physics and a crash course for Audacity

Sounds are represented by waveforms:

The x-axis is time and the y-axis can be a number of things, but we will use decibels (dB). dB is the measure of the sound's level, i.e. how loud it is. When manipulating audio, usually we have the scale start at -infinity and end at 0, where 0 is the max dB before clipping. Here is the same drawing with the axis labeled and an example of what clipping does to a waveform:

Here is what it looks like in Audacity:

The left and right channels are stacked on top of each other, that's why there are two waveforms

This is with a different timescale, not milliseconds but seconds

Pretty similar no? (You might want to right-click on the scale on the left and select “linear (dB)”). There is a lot of extra info and other things, but worry not. Apart from the main track, there is only one other thing you should pay attention to, and that is the playback level bar at the top right-hand corner.

The green bar is your current audio level. The blue line is the max level your audio reached, the green line is the max level your audio reached in the last 3 seconds.

And that is literally all you need to know.

Unprocessed sound

Here is what we are working with:

Yikes, as you can see most of the talking portions are between the ranges of -24 to -18 dB, almost inaudible. Then you get random peaks that reach 0 dB, potentially clipping. Usually for podcasts, a small dynamic range — the sound level difference between your average quietest and average loudest sound — is preferred. Having everything and everyone between -6 to 0 dB is ideal. A listener doing something or walking somewhere does not want to have to adjust the level every 5 sec, if at all. Side note, there is no saving a clipping sound, that is honestly the only thing you you need to look out for when recording.

To improve this audio, we want to bring down the loud sounds to about the same level as the quiet ones and then bring everything up. If someone speaks very loudly, we want them to be at the same level as someone speaking softly, and then increase the gain to make everyone loud. Let's first take care of those peaks, we will have to be stern with them, therefore we will use a limiter with a hard limit. This will make sure no sound goes above the set limit. To set our limit, we'll choose the loudest sound that doesn't look like a peak; we only want to destroy those peaks, we'll be much softer on the loud voices. Here it is at around the hour mark.

Looking at the Playback level bar, it is between -6 and -12dB, let's say -9dB to be safe. So we select the whole track (Ctrl+A) go to Effect>Volume and Compression>Limiter... at the top. Here we make sure to select hard limit, set the limit to -9dB and apply makeup gain. This last option will bring up everything at the end, so that the loudest sound after limiting is 0 dB. We get this:

Much better, now we can almost hear things, but there are still big differences in level between parts of the recording; probably one person sounding quieter than another. We want to fix that too but we want to be more gentle. If we were to just use a limit, it would make the recording sound very unnatural. We will therefore use compression. With compression, you set a threshold, and every sound going above it will be reduced by a certain ratio. Those are the two parameters we really want to look at, the rest, attack release... are not very important to us as we are only dealing with voices. To find a suitable threshold, let's look for a more stable quiet part of the recording, this one looks good:

It 's around the 35min mark, and hovering a bit below -18 dB, let's say -20dB. We'll choose this as our threshold, this way, all the loud parts will come down past that lower level. Let's go to Effect>Volume and Compression> Compressor... and set it there. Usually, you want to use a threshold just below what the average level of the quiet part is, our guestimate works just fine in this case. For the ratio, it depends on how much you want to reduce your dynamic range by; 5:1 always works well for me. 2:1 barely does anything for us and 10:1 might sound a bit too artificial. For the attack and release, just set it to the lowest possible, no need to worry about those for our use case. Make sure to tick the “Make up gain for 0dB after compression”, that will make sure that, after compression, our recording's max level reaches 0dB.

Look at that beautiful waveform, thick, consistent. This will offer the most comfortable listening experience, which should be your goal, unless you hate your audience (based). If you find the result lacking in your own test, mess around with the threshold or the ratio, or be more aggressive with the limiter if you have nasty peaks. In any case, you now have the tools to either start your own podcast featuring decent audio, or even fix a podcast you started 11 episodes ago.

Part I:

For the typed version, click here: https://printhouse.codemonkey.cafe/appendices/fountain-pens-part-i-typed

Part II: My collection

When I started this article, I only had a modest collection of cheap pens — not that you need more than that — with the exception of one. However, during my travels back to my homeland, I stole two pens from my parents and bought two others.

My collection before my travels

The old pen I found was a very entry-level waterman pen, which cost less than 5 euros when I bought it for school. I do not use it much (read: at all) because it is a bit shit and I immediately went on to find another pen I would be satisfied with.

Both of my parents have “endgame” fountain pens, but due to the configuration of their office back at home, I remembered my mother's one the best. It was still a pretty blurry memory, but the one thing I remembered vividly was that it had an inlaid nib. Recently I was able to examine her pen and found that it was the gorgeous Waterman Edson Sapphire, pictured below:

So I was dead set on getting an inlaid nib, and after some research landed on the Sheaffer Targa 1007 with a medium nib, mine being pictured below:

I was and am extremely happy with my purchase even if the pen is a bit wet, forcing me to completely change the notebooks and notepads I was using. It is one of the smoothest pens I have in my collection and it made me permanently switch to fountain pens. On top of it all it is gorgeous, it has a “70's cocaine-fuelled stock broker pen” vibe to it that I love.

I then remembered an old roller pen I was gifted for uni and simply changed the end to convert it from a roller to a fountain pen. There I had my second pen: the Faber Castell E-motion with a medium nib. I really like this nib, the design and colour are impeccable, and it is very smooth. The barrel is nice and thick and the pen feels heavy in the hand without being cumbersome; it is very comfortable. The texture is also great. See for yourselves:

With those two I was set for a few more months, but I needed a pen with a bit bolder ink colour. So I got the Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib — which had the benefit of being both very cheap and well-regarded by the fountain pen community — and filled it with red ink. It's nothing to write home about, but it's a solid pen in all the areas that matter. It is pictured here:

Alas! They were all three medium nibs which isn't ideal for my writing; it is excessively small and for that, fine or extra-fine nibs are recommended. Instead of buying new nibs for the three pens I had, I just bought cheap and well-regarded pens, namely the Lamy Safari in extra-fine and the Lamy Al-Star in fine. I was not extremely satisfied with those, I found Lamy's extra-fine nib to be too fine and stiff, and the fine to be too wet. The material of both pens feels very cheap, especially the Al-Star, and I am very much not a fan of the design. At least due to the price and my general displease with those pens, I would not be saddened if I were to lose them and they became my travel pens. They are both pictured below:

Travel Additions

As some of you might know, I went on a three-week honeymoon in July, and I had to add to my collection while visiting Paris and Amsterdam. In Paris, after looking at a couple of pens in a specialised section of a mall, I settled on the Parker IM Monochrome Blue with a fine nib — being at a very reasonable price — which I decided to fill with a quicky colour. The pen is gorgeous, and very comfortable if a bit thin. The nib is very smooth all around: very forgiving of inconsistent angles. It is also very short — look at that choadie! This makes it great for drawing; being closer to the page gives you better control over your lines.

In Amsterdam, I went to a dedicated pen shop and saw a 50% off shelf; I tried all of them and bought my favourite which was the Pelikan M150 with an extra-fine nib. I am very satisfied with this pen, the thickness of the nib is exactly what I am looking for; small enough so that my writing is not messy, but thick enough to take the edge off of some lines. This is the pen I bring with me to work and write most of my notes with, when reading a book for the bookclub or a future article, or when doing some ukrainian exercises from my textbook. I also love that Pelikan pens have a cartridge converter built-in, no need to buy one, and the ink fills the whole barrel. The only complaint I would have about it is that it is ever so slightly too small. It would be my favourite pen if I had not acquired the last pen I will showcase. This was also my first pen with a “specialer” nib: it is plated gold.

Coming back to France I simply asked my parents if they had any fountain pens they had bought over the years that they did not use anymore, apart from their endgame personal ones of course. This is how I acquired the Pilot Vanishing Point Blue Carbonesque: my very first full gold nib. This one is an 18k gold nib plated in rhodium i.e. it is a “white gold” nib. The pen has a funny little quirk; the nib is retractable! The pen looks great and the retraction mechanism is very satisfying to click. The nib is a pilot medium which is not as broad as an average European medium (pilot is a japanese company). It is also not too wet which is appreciable. Not sure if here gold brings anything tangible to the table. The ergonomics are not great however, and I don't see myself writing with this pen for extended periods of time. My main gripes are that the grip is too rounded, the material too smooth, and the clip gets in the way. I do love the gimmick of the retractable nib, but I'll have to spend more time with the pen to form a definitive opinion on it.

After reviewing my travel additions I jokingly asked my father if I could add his endgame pen to them, which to my surprise he acquiesced. He hadn't used it in a long, long while, so if the pen was to be of use to me, it would have been better in my care he said. Behold, the Pelikan Souverän M1000:

After purple, green is probably my favourite colour, so I am very fond of the barrel design, and the gold accents only add to my fondness. The nib is incredible, it is 18K gold with some parts rhodium plated, which gives the two tones that you can see in the picture. I had to include a picture just of the nib, this particular one is not from my pen. Both the pen and the nib are comically large, dwarfing my E-motion which is already considered chunky, but it somehow manages to be decently comfortable to write with. And to come back to the nib, this is the smoothest writing experience that any pen in my collection can deliver, by far. It is a fine nib, but honestly, it is way closer to an average European medium. It is a vintage pen and was not really cared for properly; it has some scuffs and scratches but it's part of the charm.

I think that is enough pens for a lifetime, and I am now sated; the will to own more has left my body. I might have one or two pens too much to have a balanced collection, but overall I can give almost all of my pens enough time. I am under no delusion; my collection has to downsize a bit, now that I have figured out what I like, to a solid 4-5 pens tops. But for now, I'm just enjoying the variety.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

---

As a bonus, here is a pic of the draft of this article, and a pic of the “article station” I built myself:

I had not read a single book for my own enjoyment since 2018. Five years ago. As a kid I was a bookworm, devouring multiple books a week, re-reading book series again and again. I really enjoyed reading and it was my escape from the real world. Back in my days (imitating a disgruntled old man) I had no computer, no console and no cable TV. As I grew older, I had access to video games and youtube, however I kept reading, albeit a bit less arduously. As I grew even older, I started having mandated readings in french class that were absolutely atrocious. We were forced to read antiquated theatre pieces, books in old french, and indigestible garbage from the 1800s that are considered “classics”. This, coupled with the fact that I had access to other forms of entertainment, really took its toll on my willingness to read for my own enjoyment. The nail in the coffin was when I reached university and had to read math and physics textbooks and papers. Mix together very high-level science material, english from the late 1900s, and abysmal writing and you get your average physics paper/textbook. From that point on, my vision of reading had completely shifted from a fun activity to something unbearable but unfortunately necessary to acquire knowledge. The only non-mandated books/texts I read from this point on were purely for practical purposes; language textbooks, bass textbooks, reviews of future purchases... Those were for the most part also not enjoyable to read as the act of reading was not their primary purpose, but the conveyance of knowledge. In the year of our Lord 2023, I joined the Printhouse, and apart from being emboldened by everyone's passion for reading, I also wrote my first article here, which made me realize two things. First, even if writing had taken the same path in my mind as reading, I found it fun now. Second, my writing was shit and it took me more than a whole month to produce a passable first article. Since my goal was to write an article or more a month, I had to improve. The most obvious way of improving my writing was to write more, read good writing and try to emulate it. So I started reading again.

I did not want to go down the same path that had led me to give up on reading; I was going to KISS (Keep It Simple Shithead Silly). At first, I was going to choose small books that I had read before and that I remembered liking. I was going to keep it low-pressure by not setting deadlines for myself. I also was going to keep it easy by starting with books in my maternal language, french. Lastly, since I really can't focus on reading ebooks, I was going to stick to paper format. But I'm also filthy poor; books I already had in my possession had to fit the bill. Fortunately, since I stopped reading right during the time I was partially still living in France, the only books I have here in Canada are the ones that fit the bill. I started with a sci-fi classic that I remembered really enjoying: Roadside Picnic (aka Stalker).

Roadside Picnic

One other reason I chose this book first is that I played the first two STALKER games back last December. The games are very loosely based on the concept first introduced in Roadside Picnic. In any case, I was going to start with that novel, written by the Strougatski brothers. Before bed, I opened it up, skipped the preface and got directly to the meat of the book. Here is a very brief synopsis: Aliens have suddenly landed on Earth and left as promptly as they arrived. On their landing sites, things start to act strange: laws of physics don't seem to hold up, and enigmatic artifacts with various reality-defying properties are also left. The book begins years after, in a town where the aliens briefly stopped. Their landing area here is called the Zone. Military and science complexes have been created there to study the Zone and send in expeditions to retrieve artifacts and conduct experiments. They are not the only ones going into the Zone, Stalkers sneak into the Zone to illegally retrieve the artifacts and sell them to the highest bidder. Here we follow the life of Redrick Souhart, a Stalker. It only took me about three reading sessions to finish it, each one being about 30-45min; it is a pretty short book. I really enjoyed it and found it an easy read, especially for an older sci-fi classic. Nothing seems lost in translation in the french version; the original is in russian. I wouldn't call the writing style traditional or basic, it is very far from that, but it was still very engaging in my opinion. A couple of things that could confuse the reader, like the jumps in time and change of POV were handled fairly well, even if what happened in those time jumps is for you to fill in. The style is very authentic and honest, if that makes sense. The book is composed only of snippets of Redrick's life at a point in time; when the next chapter starts, a few years usually have gone by. All chapters but one are through Redrick's POV, which might make it a bit strange, but I think it was necessary for world-building. If that information had been there in his POV, it would have been hard to reconcile it with the character. My favorite part of the book comes during that change of POV, when we follow Richard Nounane and listen in on his conversation with an eminent physicist. It is refreshingly human instead of trying to be science-y. On the content of the novel, as said before the premise is truly original and the way we see it through Redrick's eyes is really interesting and keeps the whole mystery of the Zone intact. The dangers of the Zone are not explained fully, but it is implicit that the Zone is not the antagonist in the novel, it just exists. There is no antagonist in the story, the stalkers are on one side, the military on another, and the scientist and industrial in the middle. None of them have a clear moral high ground, and there is no one to root for. All the characters are extremely flawed and feel very human, which I really liked. The relations between the people are interesting there although they are not always super fleshed out. To come back to the Zone, the passages about it are tense and even if they are always really short, you can feel the excruciatingly slow pace of each expedition through the page. The Zone itself is surrounded by mystery and none of it gets explained, and the way it is described, extremely vaguely, reinforces that. Overall, I would recommend it, especially if you like SF.

Planet of the Apes

Monke. Continuing on my sci-fi binge, I decided to pick up the french classic “La planète des singes” (Planet of the Apes) from Pierre Boulle. I also read this one in french, since it is its original language; there would be no translation approximations here. The story goes as follows: Professor Antelle has designed a ship capable of interstellar travel, and wishes to explore the cosmos. He assembles a crew comprised of himself, Ulysse Merou and Arthur Levain, our protagonist, and they set out to the Betelgeuse star system, on a three-century-long journey in Earth time, but only two years for them (because light-speed, special relativity, time dilations and such). The journey goes without trouble and they even find a habitable planet in that star system, which they investigate. Air is breathable there, there is flora and fauna similar to Earth, and before landing they see cities! Stepping out of the ship, they meet their first humans; although they don't look primitive, they are in their birthing suits and it doesn't seem like they can speak at all. They have no time to ponder on their discovery; they are being hunted, alongside those humans, by apes. This was also a very enjoyable reading. It is also very short, I devoured it in two nights, and it's an easy read, contrary to some SF novels, even easier than Roadside Picnic. The book is divided into two parts, the first half has almost no dialogue but is yet not filled to the brim with descriptions, which I am grateful for. It is very fast-paced and there is a couple of time jumps even during events that one could have been curious about. This however doesn't take away anything from the story, which I found very consistent and coherent. Without revealing too much, I found it interesting to see humans through the eyes of a simian society, and how they flipped the script on human/apes relations, even if sometimes a bit overt, it is done well. There is an overarching mystery that develops pretty naturally, except for one part which I think the author put there for additional background; in my eyes, it could have been omitted. It also solely relies on the concept of genetic memory which has been completely disproven. Another little thing, this is a story within a story type of thing (some people found a manuscript with the main story), and there is a second end plot twist. This could also have been omitted. Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend it.

Dragon teeth

This book, and the little investigation it lead me to will get its own post.

La Passe-Mirroir: Les fiancés de l' hiver & Les Disparus du Clairedelune

Ophélie is a regular young lady in this fantastique world, whose whole routine is about to change; she is getting married to a stranger from another floating island. Upon meeting, this stranger does nothing to gain her heart, quite the contrary, almost as if he is also a victim of that forced marriage. But they have no say in it, it is a deal between the Family Spirits, immortal being that preside over the affairs of their respective floating Arches. The Arch of her future husband is very different from her own, there, the society is organized in a court which head is the Family Spirit. It is a cutthroat world where no blow is low enough to ascertain the power of your family or gain the favors of the Family Spirit. Her presence at the court has to be kept secret; many are the people that would rather see her or her husband dead, than married. Put that shit straight into my veins. It took me only two and a half days to completely annihilate those two books, which are both over 550 pages each. I was completely entranced and every waking moment I had during those two days would be spent longing for a time I could continue my reading. Those are the first two books in a series of four, and if I had the other two on hand, I would have read them too right this second. As you can tell from the title of the books, I've read them in french, but the author (Christelle Dabos) is also french and her writing style is amazing, despite this being her first book. She carefully balances action, descriptions, internal monologue and dialogue in a way that flows so well under the eyes. Content-wise, everything is also great, the characters are great; the hero, Ophélie, is great at her job, smart but has some obvious weaknesses that she will have to overcome, and some emotional growth to do. We love to see a balanced character and not an OP mess. It is interesting to discover the characters through Ophélie; they are at first depicted in a one-dimensional almost caricatural manner, but as she gets to know them, much more nuance is introduced. The dynamics between the character are also similar to that, and go through plenty of development. My favorite one is between Ophélie and her future husband (what can I say I'm a romantic), which is full of twists, turns, and questioning. The setting is really original and described in great detail without being excessive. Seeing it and the world being discovered by the hero at the same time as us really makes it digestible. I can not recommend this series enough, although I can not yet gauge the quality of the english version. Seriously, if you must only read one thing from the books presented in this article, it's those ones. I would recommend reading both at once, treating them as the same book, as they only form a satisfactory story together. Much of the character development (for most characters) only comes together in the second book. Also, don't go on Goodreads; I don't know what book they read but one of the most popular reviews, which is extremely incendiary, is completely ridden with inaccuracies and cherry-picking.

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I was not expecting to be able to go back into reading that easily; from struggling to read an entire paragraph to devouring a book in a couple of nights. It is a big relief for me, who thought I had become iliterate (yliterate?,hilliterate?); who thought he couldn't read anymore. The trick was to just keep it light and fun, only read things that I wanted to read, wouldn't provoke any thought or teach me anything. This fooled my brain into being able to focus on reading more than a sentence at a time. This activity is now an integral part of my day, away from screens and constant stimuli. The only thing I wasn't able to change is my inability to focus on reading anything on a support other than paper. But I still have a bunch of books in my library, here in Canada, to read, so that's not an issue. I actually had a specific order of books to read and talk to you about, but the third book I read, “Dragon Teeth” by Michael Crichton derailed my plan. Not only was it not what I remembered, but my adult mind could also see something that my 18-year-old self couldn't: it's not that good. This is from the guy who wrote Jurassic Park, which alongside some of his other work, has raving reviews; what could've happened? Stay tuned...

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

Contrary to many people, I did not start making bread during the pandemic. I started about three months ago, not because of boredom, but because of dire need. As some of you might know, I am a proud frenchman, and bread is engrained in french culture; we buy and consume great bread daily. This is not an option in Canada for a couple of reasons. Car-centric city planning makes walking down to your local bakery impossible. If you're lucky enough to have a grocery store within walking distance, your only bread option is most likely the typical north-american bread; an ungodly abomination. This abomination will also run you 4$ with taxes and the local bakery's bread is even more expensive.

One day, I decided I had enough and it was time for me to suppress my needs no more; I was gonna make bread, and eat it too. I have limited experience baking bread, pastries and such, so I chose to make a simple french traditional baguette. It can only consist of flour, yeast, salt and water. This is when my first hurdle came; bread needs to be cooked at a certain temperature and with specific-ish moisture in the air to turn out decently. The first is not a problem for most ovens but the latter is, as most consumer ovens do not have moisture control. This can be circumvented by baking your loaf in a dutch oven, which I possess! But this also meant that I would be restricted shape-wise to only round or oval bread (obviously vastly inferior to the chad long stick shape). This was a compromise I was willing to make, but my troubles didn't end there, I still had to find good flour. A quick note on flours in France, we have many variations of buyable flours regrouped under the T-system. Flours are graded from T-45 to T-150. Lower T numbers have less “ash content” (what remains from the wheat after it has been heated up), and higher, well, have more. Great, we can just try to match the ash content of french flour to a canadian one and we should be good, is what I would say if I was naive about us french's deceiving ways. See, ash content/T-number only matters partially, there are other factors that play a role in the taste, stretch, and stickiness of the dough. It means that I don't need to find the one flour used to make baguettes, but I can grab something that roughly matches it. I settled on regular north-american all-purpose non-bleached flour, akin to a T-55/T-65. So, was I finally ready to bake? Well no, I had to grab a recipe somewhere, adapt it to my supplies and needs, and slowly perfect it. This is where I encountered more trouble; I made a loaf daily, but for that first week, they all failed to rise. I experimented with more moisture, less flour, more yeast, more rise time... to no avail, my dough remained flat. I first was defeated, but ultimately determined to succeed. I went back to the drawing board, testing all manners of things, isolating them one by one, which could have caused my demise. I discovered that my yeast was dead, which was not surprising as the expiration date was two years ago. Whoops. Getting some actual live yeast yielded much better results (shocking), and I continued making a loaf a day, each time tweaking my recipe. To this day, there is only one thing that I still have to perfect. The vertical shape of the resulting bread, most likely related to the folding of the dough. I have scaled down my production of bread to two-three times a week due to time constraints, as it takes me around 5h to make the bread, which is too much. I will consider in the future making a big batch of dough on the weekend, taking some of it out and baking it during the week. This should reduce my daily prep time to only 1-2h tops. I will probably have to do some research into how to preserve dough in the fridge without it becoming inert and probably also tweak my recipe, invest in more equipment...

In any case, you are probably not reading this to catch my thinking about breadmaking, but for the bread. So here is the recipe, with relevant photos sprinkled around. This recipe is for two/three people, and incorporates a leaven; a small bit of dough that we prepare in advance. I like to start mine around 12-18h before making the main dough, so it has time to ferment; greatly improving the flavor of the bread. For this leaven you will need: 100g of flour, ~1.5g of yeast, 100ml of cold water. For mine, I also add a pinch of sugar (no more than 0.5g), which aids fermentation. Toss them all in a bowl, and mix them together for a couple of minutes. Cover it with a damp cloth for the duration you want it to ferment, I would advise at least 10h. This is what you should get after this time:

Now, when the leaven is done fermenting, you can start making your main dough, which consists of: 245g of flour, 4g of yeast, 150ml of warm water and 5g of salt. Those are not set in stone; you can adjust them to your needs. I would advise increasing the flour amount if you find your dough a bit too runny, and salt if the bread is not salty enough. You can compensate the yeast amount with more/less rise time. Be careful with the flour amount; too much or too little and your dough will have trouble rising, with too much also producing a very dense bread. This is why my recipe is a bit lower in flour/water ratio, to get an airier inside. Enough chitter chatter, let's get to baking. To start, toss all the ingredients, including the leaven in a bowl and stir vigorously for at least 5min. I like to use a wooden spoon, and it's a real workout on the arms. When you're done stirring, put a damp cloth on the bowl and let it rest for 30-40min.

You are now ready to knead the dough, fun! There are different techniques for kneading, which you can research online. Mine is very simple. After dusting a bit of flour on a big wooden cutting board, wetting my fingers, I simply fold the dough on the board, then merge it back together with my palms and repeat. At this stage, I don't really stretch the dough too hard because it would make it stickier and hard to work with. Make sure not to add too much flour when you are kneading; the dough with be somewhat sticky and it's normal. It took me, a lot of tries to get comfortable kneading.

When it's done, I grab a bigger bowl, toss the dough in it and cover it back up with a damp cloth, for the bulk rising portion of the recipe, which will last a total of three hours. Halfway through, I like to check on my dough and start the folding process; while still in the bowl, stretch the dough out and fold it on itself a couple of times. After three hours, I will fold it more outside of the bowl and give it its final shape (which you will choose). On my part, I do a letter-ish fold, taking a third of the dough and folding it in the middle and doing the same on the other side. Then I take my thumb and fold/roll it on itself lengthwise a couple of times.

Once the bread is shaped, bathe it in flour, toss it in your dutch oven and without covering it wait for until it doubles in size (for me it takes about 40min). This is to have the dough rise and be nice and airy in the end, and have it develop a “skin”. Before the 40min (or whatever it takes for you) are up, preheat the oven to 215C (or 420F). Once it's grown a skin, take a razor blade and score it.

When the oven is ready, dutch oven in your oven with the lid on for ~20min. Then remove the lid and leave it in the oven until the crust is nice and dark golden. You are then ready to take it out of the oven, let it rest for 10-15min and enjoy.

Congratulations, you've made bread! Don't fret it if it's garbage, my first 5-7 attempts, even after fixing the yeast, were not that great. If it turns out bad, just go back to the drawing board.

Result from the recipe

And what's inside

Above is my best-looking bread to date

As I said previously, there is still a couple of stuff that I need to get right. The main one is doing bulk batches preparations, let's say twice a week and enjoy fresh bread all week long. The first experiment with preparing the dough in advance was a success. I only had to shape it again after the dough had gone back to room temperature. This whole process, from taking the dough out of the fridge, waiting until it warmer up, shaping, rising and baking... Only took 2h30min, most of the time being spent waiting, which is way better than 5h. My bread-making journey is only starting; first of all, it is fun so I want to keep doing it, but I also have a ton of stuff to experiment with: I wanna make some garlic bread, some olive focaccia, my fiancée wants me to do sourdough bread... So expect to hear more from me on bread-related matters. In the meantime:

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

The second ever CD I bought was from Ghost. As a young metal enjoyer and having never heard of them before, the artwork (disseminated throughout this article), is what drew me to CD. At that time, I had very little knowledge of metal as neither my father, friends, and family in general was involved in the scene and you could definitely not expect to hear anything metal related on the radio or through mainstream media, especially in France. And although online forums existed, the most popular ones were english which I didn't speak at the time. In retrospect, I think it was for the better as it allowed me to form my own, admittedly sometimes weird, music taste.

The ritual I developed due to the aforementioned was the following: go to the metal section of the “Espace Culturel” (big french store with comics, CDs movies, books...) peruse until an album art, band name or album title caught my eye, google the reviews of that particular album and check was subgenre it was. If the ratings were satisfactory, and after comparing a couple of them, I would buy a single one with my allowance. This would not be a regular thing: CDs did cost a lot and I lived far from the Espace Culturel. I would then rip the CD onto my phone and listen to it in one sitting when I had the time. This ritual led me to some amazing discoveries that I immediately fell in love with, others that were more of a slow burner but that definitely shaped my music taste and expanded my horizons, but also catastrophic and regrettable wastes of money (I'm looking at you Battles from In Flames). Ghost's third album Meliora falls in that first category. And deviating from the ritual, I started listening to it on the 30min ride home, mind you my whole family except my father, which might have been the most receptive to the album, was in the car. Needless to say, they were not impressed. I was though, and the car ride not being long enough to listen to the full album, I rushed into my bedroom to finish it, starting of course not where I/we left off, but from the beginning. I was hooked and I had to listen to more. It goes without saying that on the next outing at l'Espace Cuturel, I picked up Ghost's second album (their first wasn't available), without even looking at anything else. That was in 2015, those two albums lasted me until Popestar came out, an EP, released at the end of 2016. Although a very big departure from the two albums I had listened to countless times, I still enjoyed its more fun and pop atmosphere.

However, things seemed to take a turn with their fourth album, Prequelle. I stumbled upon it literally the day of release in 2018 and obviously grabbed it. But this time I didn't immediately love it front to back. The latter half of it (actually just tracks 6, 7 and 8) was not really to my liking, initially, but also after many listens. I didn't really think much of it at the time, and I continued to survive off of those four albums, skipping the end of the fourth one. Things kept turning as when I listened to Impera, their fifth album, when it was released in March last year, I liked none of it.

What happened, why does this blog post exist, and why this title? For the latter question, the answer is simply I like dramatization. As for the second, apart from the fact that my fiancée refused to hear any more rambling from me on that subject, is that I finally have an outlet for all that pent-up rambling. And as for the first question, let's first see what Ghost is.

Ghost is a Swedish “doom” metal band (their specific style is pretty hard to pin down, hence the quotes), whose whole spiel is being a religious ministry controlled by a satanic clergy. Their names are never divulgated, and all members wear masks on stage. The band is composed of The Nameless Ghouls that are led by a Pope-like figure, which changes for each period (which can last one or more albums). Under the masks, the band members change all the time and only the Popes/singer (Papa Emeritus I through IV) remain the same person, who is the creator of the band and most songs (lyrics and instrumentals), while the Nameless Ghouls are the performers. There is a decent amount of lore for the band and each album has its own story surrounding it. They have produced five “sacred psalms” (albums), three “minor psalms” (extended plays) and one “ceremonic ritual” (live recording). Each album has its theme, the first album foreshadows impending doom, and at the end of it the Anti-Christ is born, the second album is about the presence of the Anti-Christ and the Devil on Earth and how men deal with it. The third album is about how God is abandoning men and leaving them without guidance and help, and what fills that void. The Plague is the main theme of the fourth album along with human's mortality and survival. There is no official lore for their last album, but it could be seen as the rise of a golden age after the desolation of the Plague. Fun stuff! As you can gather from this, Ghost has been a fairly underground band when it comes to mainstream attention outside of the metal scene. Within that scene I would say it is now a fairly well-known band. Their music however was never really tailored to appeal to the average metal fan, if such a thing exists, and a pretty significant portion of the more gatekeeping part of the metal community spits on anyone that calls them metal. It is in part for that reason they are not super mainstream even in the metal community, but also because their music focused more on the melodic aspect of songs, and on the voice of the singer, which is usually not a bit focus in metal. So their target audience was understandably never the mainstream audiences, even the metal mainstream audiences.

It now seems appropriate to take a look at their music, going through each of their albums, and some EPs one by one in chronological order, to understand the shift in the target audience. We won't take a look at each of the tracks individually, but rather flow through the album, pointing out the vibe and also noteworthy things along the way.

• Opus Eponymus This is Ghost's first album, and before doing research for this blog post I did not remember why it wasn't in my Ghost album rotation although I had listened to it previously. Well, actually sitting down and listening to it shines a light on that (unconscious?) decision. I will walk you through my thoughts when I listened to the album. It begins with a one-minute-long intro, played only on an organ, seemingly setting the tone for the album. Very dark, slow and atmospheric, my hopes were high. The second track opens with a short intro on the bass, being actually audible, which is a rarity if you a familiar with metal. However, as soon as the rest of the instruments join, all hell breaks loose. The reason for the bass being audible wasn't good mixing, it was poor dynamics; everything is compressed on the same level. The guitar tone is heavily distorted, dark, muddy, and the guitars themselves are way too forward in the mix, worsening everything to a point where it is difficult to focus on any instruments even with decently detailed headphones. It's a mess, and the lack of dynamics makes it sound a bit dull. Despite all of this, with each passing song, you can see more and more of the rough sketch of what Ghost will become. The ethereal voice of the singer, the themes in the songs, the over-the-top (on purpose) satanic lyrics. Some of those are quite catching, which will become a regular thing for Ghost, and I caught myself whistling Rituals. Despite the over-dramatization on my part, this first album is not as atrocious as I made it out to be, and I will probably add it to my rotation, but only listen to it on speakers, where the bad mixing is less jarring. The first album definitely has its identity, and if I wasn't such an audio snob, I could even find the lo-fi nature of the album charming. It was extremely well received at the time, the target audience was as mentioned above, a subset of metal/hard rock fans who care a bit more about the melodic aspect of songs.

• Infestissumam That second album also begins with a one-minute-long intro. A Capella chants in latin, very sober and atmospheric. Then after ten seconds the drums loudly join; alleluia, dynamics! The bass also joins, being actually distinguishable in the mix. Soon after the guitars too and the tone is much improved with a present top end, still distorted but sitting where they should in the mix. The second track begins and all of it wasn't a fluke. Those first few tracks are much more progressive in their approach to music, really contrasting with the musical simplicity of their first album. They go further in their approach to everything, the voice is more ethereal, the texts are even more over-the-top satanic (some of it is sung in latin), the instrumentals sound airy and out of this world. This album for me seems like it is the one that really forged and solidified their identity. They focused on one of the strong points of the first album and of the band; the voice. Incredibly catchy lyrics in this album, it looks like they really paid attention to that. A ton of bangers on this one, track 5 to 9 are incredible, especially 5. Not much else to say, it is just a very solid album overall, and it was also extremely well-received, even better than the last one. I would say the target audience remains more or less the same, but maybe with people who appreciate progressive music more in mind.

• Meliora Meliora is one of the most coherent and consistent albums of Ghost in my opinion. The first two songs are what I feel like Ghost is at its essence; cryptic satanic lyrics, musically interesting and progressive-ish, technically impressive, both on the instrument and production front, and amazing clear vocals performance, different than most bands and not just in metal. The third track is my favorite from this album (it appeals to the lover boy in me). After a brief transition track, the fifth one is a light track, more relaxed; a welcomed break from the heaviness of the previous track. The songs gradually building up in intensity, to launch us into the sixth track, which opens very heavy with a fast tempo. This one is pretty catchy and definitely more experimental, a contrast from the seventh track and onward that are a bit more classic. The last two are catchy as hell. This concludes what is one of the best albums of Ghost and I believe the organic evolution of Ghost from their first album. This album was also extremely well received, and seems more tailored toward their listeners who appreciated the melodic part of the music beforehand, which is still a major overlap with their original target audience.

• Popestar Popestar is a five-track EP from Ghost, wildly different from their previous release, it's more fun, and definitely not as heavy. It is borderline pop and I would say way more approachable for the mainstream audiences. It is almost entirely comprised of covers and as an aside in their discography, I think it's a fun intermission. But it being mostly covers takes away the “Ghost sound”: the voice is different and more nasally, the riffs are simpler, less progressive and there are very few satanic themes in this one, which is one of the pillars of Ghost, and it is overall a pretty weak release. Although the first song of this album was a wild success, the rest of this EP was not well received at all by their fans. Now, this album looks like it is destined for people who are more into pop, and not really into Ghost, which, surprise, appears to be very little of their original audience. However, on my end, this EP being much different than their usual songs was nothing noteworthy since those were covers and not original material.

• Prequelle Prequelle goes back to the tradition of the first track of the album being a one-minute-ish intro track, this one being particularly creepy. The second track is fairly different from Ghost's usual offering, it's more fun, energetic and one of the only tracks from the main albums of Ghost that I would see being radio approved. Thankfully, the next two tracks are pure Ghost, and the fifth one, while being really different, is a pure banger. The next three tracks are not my cup of tea at all, I find they lack depth and are overall a bit bland with the lyrics being also not very inspired, and feel overall “sanitized”. Those three songs are very coherent amongst themselves, it sounds like they come from one same EP, completely separate from the main album. After one big skip, we reach the ninth song, which contains riffs that sound a lot like a slower instrumental version of the seventh, so not ideal in my opinion. But all is forgiven after; track 10 is a very fitting more melodic ending to the album and the two bonus tracks are pretty great. As a whole that is their weakest album release to this point, the lyrics are pretty weak, and the instrumentals seem a bit uninspired. The first half of the album can get pretty heavy (for Ghost), but the latter half is only composed of bland ballads and generic pop-rock songs. We can definitely see a shift in the target audience here, almost as if they are trying to retain the public they attracted with Popestar. It did not bode well for the direction of their next album.

• Impera I'm gonna be honest, I only listened to this album twice before deciding to write this post, and I was not looking forward to listening to it a couple more times to be able to criticize it. But I don't want to be talking out of my ass on something I listened to more than a year ago, so here we go. It starts on the traditional minute-long intro track which is fairly basic. Then the second track plays and my memory did serve me right; it's garbage I still really don't like it and it is very different from Ghost's earlier offering. It sounds like a generic pop band trying to vaguely and clumsily replicate the Ghost's music without their original sound and vibe. It continues on with each track, each time it sounds like a different band trying to copy Ghost. It's almost a parody of Ghost; the instrumentals are very basic, the singing doesn't really resemble anything we're used to, and worst of all it doesn't make for a coherent album. We then reach track 5 which almost sounds like it belongs in their previous album, in the middle of the three horrendous tracks aforementioned. The one after that sounds like it belongs in this album but is wildly different from the earlier tracks. We then reach a minute-ish interlude, which is more than necessary for me to calm down. What comes after is even weirder, it doesn't sound like it belongs anywhere; not in Ghost's earlier work, not in its current one, and honestly it sounds like it comes straight out of a musical – it's fucking bombastic. It is so over the top, with trumpets, a pirate-ish voice rolling Rs, and weird timing, the song is all over the place but at the same time makes sense. And honestly, I'm here for it, it may not sound anything like Ghost, but it fucking slaps. I saw someone describe it as a Disney movie villain song and it is spot-on. Unfortunately, the penultimate song of the album songs like a pop-rock boys' band trying to make Ghost, not only is it not my cup of tea but it is completely dissonant with the first half of the album. The last one sort of follows this, in the (cheesy) lyrics, voice and backing track that take more from the boys band side, while the instrumental comes from a more “traditional” Ghost song. It still doesn't really sound like Ghost. This concludes the main part of the album, as for the two bonus tracks I didn't even realize when one finished and the other started, they are still nothing like old Ghost, but at least the singer sounds like he's having fun. I was genuinely hoping that after re-listening to it, it would just be a case of their stuff being slightly different now and I'm overreacting, but it's not the case. My main gripe with this album is that it doesn't sound like Ghost at all. Everything they had built themselves upon in the first four albums is almost completely gone. It is also super inconsistent, has no clear direction, is completely dissonant with itself, and sounds like listening to a randomly generated playlist on shuffle. This album really lacks its own identity, and despite the little brilliances here and there, most of the songs really don't have a lot of character. The lyrics are pretty bland, cheesy and repetitive. It is definitely more mainstream, more approachable from an outsider's perspective, radio-friendly. To give credit where credit is due, it is one of the most impressive releases from Ghost on the production side of things, mixing and mastering are on fucking point. Not really sure how this album came out to be, but one thing is sure, the target audience has now shifted to something more mainstream. It seems to have completed its transition, as opposed to having one ass cheek on two different chairs like in their previous release. It's meant for a newer more mainstream audience, not metal fans, just people who like pop-rock. Still, this album was well-ish received, being really divisive between the newer/older fans, their newer fans loving it. This concludes our foray into Ghost's discography and the evolution of the target audience.
  
  

Should their music have stayed the same, or should a band inevitably evolve? Who are artists actually writing music for? Who do artists owe their success to? Can I come up with any more generic questions? I could go on all day, but I refuse to answer them, the answer to those is not what I'm interested in. Is Ghost mainstream now? Certainly not, but it seems that their later releases are trying to appeal to a mainstream audience more foreign to the metal scene. A fairly big departure from the underground rocky beginnings of Opus Eponymous and to the perfection of that beginning being Meliora, they are now for the mainstream, fleshed out to the point of sanitization. Which is fine, their new stuff not being my cup of tea does not take away from the enjoyment I continue to receive from their older releases. I'm just hopping off the Ghost train, taking with me four albums and one EP.

Now, if I go by the other (amazing) blog posts on here, it appears that a sign-off is in order, so here you are:

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie