Callum Keith Rennie

            On Monday morning the B string on my Martin acoustic guitar wouldn’t tune. It went off immediately upon being set right on the tuner. The string is almost new so it doesn’t seem like that would be an issue. In the year I’ve had this guitar this has never happened. To some degree the B goes off more often than any other string on all my guitars but not to this extent. I think I need to take it back to the Twelfth Fret as soon as possible to have it looked at but they are closed on Monday like most guitar shops. I tuned up my old Epi, which I haven’t really played since I got it fixed last year. I had to adjust the leather cord I use to tie the strap to the neck because there was too much slack. It went out of tune a bit during song practice but not much, which is pretty good for a beat up old guitar that’s been hanging on a wall all winter. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Et quand bien même” (And Even If) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. 

            I ordered the Boss FV 50-H volume pedal for $171.44 from Amazon. It’s supposed to arrive on Wednesday. 

            I backed up several documents into my Samsung SSD, including the folder where I’ve put all the files for the courses I’ve taken over the last few years. They’re worth saving but I don’t need them on my main hard drive now that I’m graduating so I deleted them from my computer. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:52. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my acoustic performance of “The Post Colonial Breakdown” I deleted part A of my September 11, 2023 song practice. “The Post Colonial Breakdown” is the first song in part B but there are several wrong takes before the final, so I removed those until there was a proper beginning for the video. Then I had to do the same with the audio. I got it so it was just a few seconds behind the video and then I stopped for the night. I should have them synchronized tomorrow.

            Over the last three days I’ve worked on trying to synchronize the master track of the studio recording of my song “The Next State of Grace” with the added drums version. During that time I zoomed in on the wave forms for both tracks and tried to line up the mutual patterns, usually by cutting tiny bits out of the drum version to bring it forward but sometimes copying and pasting tiny bits to move it back. I listened to it today and to my surprise my efforts worked. I exported the project so I can use it after I make the video for the master track. 

            In Movie Maker I imported the Riot Gallery concert video of my band Christian and the Lions. I started a project for The Next State of Grace and inserted the concert video onto the timeline. “The Next State of Grace” is the second song and the video shows me preparing to do it but it skips for a second and is late by about a second of the beginning. I needed something to briefly fill up that space. Years ago I shot a video of some boots tied together that someone had tossed onto the power line outside my window. The wind was making the boots dance as they dangled from the wire and so I decided to add the first verse and chorus of The Next State of Grace as a soundtrack for the boots. Today I tried to import that video but Movie Maker rejected it because it was in MP4 so I changed it to WMV in Total Video Converter and then imported it. I inserted the boots video ahead of the concert video and deleted half of it. I’ll probably need to cut out quite a bit more but I’ll figure that out tomorrow. 

            I cut a whole chicken into legs, breasts, wings and spine and roasted the parts in the oven. I had a leg with a potato and the rest of my gravy while watching season 5, episode 2 of Star Trek: Discovery.

            Burnham is asked to testify before a tribunal that is judging Captain Rayner’s actions that indirectly caused an avalanche on Q’mau. The president asks her if she agreed with Rayner’s actions. She’s reluctant to answer but finally says she didn’t agree and thought it posed an unjustifiable risk. 

            It’s Saru’s last day on Discovery as he has accepted an ambassadorship. Discovery enters the orbit of a planet called Lyrek that has twin moons as indicated in Valleck’s diary. Burnham and Saru beam down outside of the target area because it is surrounded by a magnetic field that interferes with transport. The planet holds the ruins of an extinct civilization. Burnham and Saru make their way towards the ancient city. They find a giant four eyed stone head that has fallen from a statue. The eyes open and from them fly drones that begin firing at them. Whenever one drone is destroyed another emerges. Tilly and Adira are monitoring on Discovery and trying to figure out the power source of the drones. Suddenly Rayner appears as a hologram and says they are overthinking the problem. The power source for an ancient civilization would be one that the planet provides naturally, which is an electromagnetic field. Tilly tells Burnham and Saru to shut down the drones’ control mechanism by destroying the statue’s head. Saru draws the drones’ fire because he has quicker reflexes. Burnham gets to the statue’s head, overloads their phasers and drops them into the head’s eyes. The electromagnetic pulse disables the drones just as they are moving in for the kill. Burnham and Saru continue through the jungle and find a monolith that shows signs of phaser fire indicating that Mol and L’ak have already been there. They used phasers to destroy the writing on the monument so the Federation wouldn’t be able to find the clue. But Saru detects the writing is still there shaped by bacteria. It’s the first four verses of a Romulan poem. The fifth verse is traditionally hidden and Saru guesses it’s under the monument and so he slides it with his great strength and it is there. Burnham scans the verse as the drones become active again. She also finds an object which she takes. Saru pushes the monument back to cover the message. They beam back up to Discovery just as the drones fire. Burnham shows Stamitz the object she found and it looks similar in style to a drawing from the diary. He has the computer construct a 3D object from the diary symbol and the object Burnham found fits right into it. Burnham thinks it’s a map broken into five pieces. They need to find the other four pieces. The first four verses of the poem suggested the next piece is on Betazed but in the last verse it reads, “A world like no other where two souls entwine joined as one”. Adira says it’s the planet Trill. 

            Book goes to see Dr. Culber to find out what he’s learned about the thieves Mol and L’ak. Mol is human but L’ak is a mystery. They are extreme risk takers and also in love. Book sends them a message on a dark channel to offer to buy the diary. Mol and L’ak appear as holograms. Book tells them his name and Mol looks surprised. They say they don’t need to sell the diary now because it leads to something more valuable. They close communication. Booker reviews the recording of their projection and has the computer zoom in on Mol. Then he has Mol’s image de-aged to seven years and three months. He recognizes Mol by her birthmark. He’s never met her but he’s seen her holo-image. Her name is Moline and she’s the daughter of Book’s mentor Cleveland Booker IV. 

            Burnham talks with Admiral Vance and he says he’s asked Rayner to take an early retirement. She goes to Rayner and asks him to be her Number One now that Saru is leaving. He warns her he’s not a yes man and she says she’s counting on it. She says she got a second chance once. 

            Rayner is played by Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie, who started acting on the radio when he was in college in Edmonton. He went on to join the Shaw Festival. His first stage performance was in American Buffalo. His first leading film role was co-starring in Double Happiness. He starred in For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down, Falling Angels, Flower and Garnet, and Frank’s Cock. He played Billie Talent in Hard Core Logo and won a Genie for his performance in Last Night. He co-starred in the TV series Due South and The Firm. He starred in the series Shattered. He played Leoben Conoy on Battlestar Galactica. He starred in Twitch City. He co-starred in Suspicious River, Wilby Wonderful, Unnatural and Accidental, The Invisible, Normal, and Faith Fraud and Minimum Wage.