A few times I’ve had the opportunity to become deeply familiar with the score/soundtrack of a game/movie before enjoying the art that the music was made for, and every time it’s a fascinating experience.
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The annual New Yorker puzzle issue just arrived, which always fills me with glee! There’s something delightfully old-school about getting a physical artifact all stuffed with puzzles in the mail. Yes, I suppose I could just subscribe to Games magazine or something, but then it would be less special, and I really enjoy how New Yorker-y it gets - like I just flipped through and there’s a bagel-themed puzzle.
EDIT: so when you solve the bagel puzzle, it gives you the caption for a cartoon where one bagel is being psychoanalyzed by another one. Like I said, it’s very New Yorker-y.
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I finally had a whole day to just do whatever I wanted ALL DAY. I did not have a single responsibility. Not one. I never even put on pants. I bought books recommended by folks here. I futzed around with my WIP. I watched an episode of a TV show while the sun was up. I generally did not do a single useful thing. It was grand.
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My favourite book is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke. On @AmandaB’s recommendation thread ( Need book/TV recommendations for completed series ), @zarf mentioned Piranesi, Susanna Clarke’s second book, which I didn’t know existed.
I walked into the library today and it was there.
I read the first chapter and I am shaking my head in flabbergasted bewilderment. In a very good way.
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I had a nice dopamine rush programming a new section of a big game today. I’m trying to break the ice by just throwing together the rooms and people first.
It was just so fun to hit “play” and see the character pop out of a train bathroom and see random murder suspects; it’s fun to have inform just create a new world out of nothing. Just a few lines of code and you can make just about anything, it’s nice.
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Did some drawing with my younger brother.
He turned on a guinea pig drawing tutorial after declaring my first guinea pig to be “really squished flat” and the latter two “obeast.”
In the picture of the big capybara and the little one, he declared that they were done in a “kawaii capybara style” which was incredibly funny to me.
He also attempted to recreate one of my drawings and got bored colouring midway through, but it’s quite cute:
And he coloured in and “added some terrain” here:
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I did think it’s capybara! Good job! Not that many people around the world know what they are? Somehow, I always associate them with hot spring! 
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The lil man placed his sketchbook front and centre on the kitchen table to show off his latest sketch of “capybaras having a relaxing spa day” over lunch today which was very cute. He loves to draw, mostly kittens and capybaras and guinea pigs, (spiders are still a bit tricky for him, all those legs!) and when I draw occasionally he’ll come sit by me to watch me digitally paint. He’s still attempting to draw people, and has proclaimed “hands are really hard” which is pretty much universally relatable to artists.
Animals are easier for him, which I find amusing, since it was the reverse for me when I was younger. He also knows the importance of referencing, and often spends time searching up images of animals online, or asking me to draw “an example please” and then carefully studying mine to recreate. Occasionally we do life studies from the bird feeder, but we get less visitors to the feeders in winter.
He discovered some of my old sketchbooks and insisted on keeping one like a “real artist like sister” which is adorable. We have bath crayons you use to temporarily draw on tiles or walls and the house is decorated in little doodles- of flowers and paw prints and kittens and groundhogs and pigeons and all sorts of silly messages like “wow, one of your animals got up for a late night walk and left all these paw prints!” and “I love you!” and “the sun was beautiful today” and it’s kind of a bohemian disaster of interior decorating, but he loves it. An unforeseen side effect of this is that he’s in love with graffiti, and shouts “THERE’S ART!” with absolute delight when we run across any- tagged names, murals, little quick doodles from local high schoolers mucking around.
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Thanks, I’ll let him know. And yes, they’re a bit of a more niche animal compared to the kittens and puppies his school friends draw, but he absolutely adores them and drags around a specialty plush of a capybara we bought from Japan for him. I’m delighted he’s kept up the trend of “very carefully naming every single stuffed animal” and amused he’s given them all quite human names. The pictures of capybaras in hot springs are very cute!
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Spoke to some friends and acquaintances today. The “oh, they’re like lichen to me” (in the context of a composite organism composed of two different but similar little guys that enhance their experience and could exist separate, but would be changed for it) mention was a hit. Saw a cool OC and gushed about Philip Marlowe with one of them. Love that detective.
I have plans to meet up with some people on the first day of school (need to double check wheelchair accessibility routes in advance) to grab drinks and snacks, which is really exciting. (This is indeed plans to meet up with the friend I couldn’t see because of the major storm and then getting heinously ill for several weeks after.)
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Please ask your current therapist to watch this. I have seen it, loved it, and hope you will too.
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Honestly in the honeymoon state of a new relationship right now and I forget how absolutely amazing it is to feel puppylove for someone! I love love!! I am going to enjoy every second of the honeymoon phase to it’s fullest!
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Figured out the particular issue that’s been haunting me when it comes to writing as of late. (The answer is that I’ve bored myself to tears with writing dialog, even if the dialog was dressed up in interesting shapes like articles and blog posts and chatlogs. A girl cannot subsist off of dialog alone… I’m in dire need of some (admittedly purple) prose.)
Thinking through these things out loud while babbling to someone else always helps with sorting it out. I’ve been turning over another Gothic story concept that I’d kind of abandoned in the wake of a really gnarly breakup earlier this year, and buffing out the scratches and dents and recasting faces in it to rotate the new shiny toy around after recognizing the issue.
Also, I got to chat with a friend earlier about Ghost shrimp care and fun tips and tricks for maintaining the tank and critters, which was a blast. Recently I’d had the chance to chatter on about the contaminated blood crisis (an area I’ve written a number of assignments and a paper on) and it was briefly brought up when we were all joking about Powerpoint night with the gals and ghouls and what topics we could bring to the table (cold war history, the contaminated blood crisis, European geography, warrior cats). It brings me a lot of joy to be able to share and engage with someone about a topic I’m deeply passionate about.
A friendly face also updated me on the status of a stationery shipment and was very happy with an order of a fountain pen I had helped them pick out, (both model and nib size, after some discussion of other pens they had enjoyed in the past and also the intent behind the pen’s use/the sort of lineweight they were angling after) and that made me really happy. I love being helpful! And I love sharing things I love with other people.
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Found an excellent let’s-play of Subnautica!
I do own the game myself, but I got severe anxiety with a freeze response. I don’t really have a fear of the ocean, but I do have a fear of the some of the bigger fish in the game.
So the issue is I can only play maybe a fifth of the game and then my freeze-ups makes it impossible to continue. I’m talking like forgetting-to-breathe didnt-realize-fifteen-minutes-passed-and-I-have-been-frozen.
So I rely on watching others play the game to experience the rest of it!
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Feeling sentimental, as New Years looms. Maybe that has something to do with listening to an album I loved as a teenager. Admiring the people that I care for is nothing new- ‘I love you’ is thrown around quite casually. But it’s nice to take a moment to pause and reflect, on not only those that I hold nearest and dearest- but also the small, casual acquaintances and friendly exchanges that’ve been a bright spot in a year that was rather dismal.
To be thought of when someone is packing little treats into carry on luggage. Someone coming to you specifically to ask for advice on something they know you’re passionate about, and coming back to cheerfully share that they’ve fallen in love with the recommendation. Being able to help someone with knowledge and practical experience in a vaguely obscure area and help their pet. Appreciating someone’s consistency and dedication to saying ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’ to the crowd. Stumbling into playing an ongoing game with a group of really cool people. Accidentally reminding someone to take care of themselves. The fact that several people have shared that they really love my silly kitty pictures I send on Discord!
And of course, there are the people I love. Being encouraged to monologue passionately about something that I’ve loved for years. The way that even though his voice has changed significantly over the years- I still recognize it, would turn to it in a crowd. Being able to be vulnerable and ask for what I’d like, not just what I need. Having my creative input valued and sought out- being able to inspire and help them in turn. Writing and drawing and playing together. Just existing in proximity.
I think a lot about my best friend. How we’ve known each other for essentially half of our lives- how we’ve grown up together, and how funny it is looking back at the people we were when we met, the people that we’ve become. I think about how wonderful it is to love someone, and to be loved in turn. To know that no matter what, we’ve been there for one another: reflexively, instinctively, without needing to fret. Of course I’ll text you back in the horribly early hours. Of course I’ll call. ‘I’ll be there for you if I can.’
How it’s always like picking up right where we left off- no matter how long it’s been, or what’s happened. ‘I love you in the way you could walk in through my front door years from now and I would say welcome home.’ The consistent acceptance and love. The security in knowing that he’s there- even that he exists at all in the world is a comfort. I’m so happy that other people love him, too. We’ve gone through awful things, together and apart- and we’ve muddled through it, in the end. It’s so comfortable being around him. I feel at ease. And for someone fraught with shot nerves and adrenaline, that’s a rarity. (We aren’t, and have never been romantically involved. I love him platonically.)
I’m grateful that we’ve remained friends. New Years is always a hopeful time of year for me- a happy time, seeing the joy from other people, the sparkly hopefulness of another chance- all the new potential ahead, pristine. I’m looking forward to another year- with all of my friends, and acquaintances, and everyone I think gently of. I’m curious about who I’ll meet, too!
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One of my favourite silly things to do is to try to make predictive text spit out coherent sentences when it’s prompted with a name, or an event.
For example, after typing in ‘Hephchat’ and letting it finish itself: “Hephchat is a good friend to me and my friend who is so cute and funny and so adorable and so much fun and i love you so much and love you too” which I thought was cute.
If I put in the forums: “The interactive fiction forums are a good idea and it’s a very fun game and it’s a lovely little thing that makes sense and it’s a precious little gem.”
It’s sort of funny seeing how different people’s phones will fill in stuff- a friendly face tried inputting peoples names and kept getting the sort of text that’d spit out as a automatic courtesy email after a job interview because she mostly uses her phone for work. Mine has a propensity for “little” and “cute” and “good” and “love you so much/love you too” which I find endearing.
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The Internet and what people save continues to amaze me. This may not have meaning for other people, but I still enjoyed that something I dimly remembered was out there. It involves college sports, but trust me, there’s an interesting image and story that make it worthwhile. I couldn’t think where else to post it.
Back in the 80s, a cup company in New Orleans produced plastic cups for Big Ten games. This was back when the Big Ten had ten teams. They mass-produced a bunch of cups with mascots for each team … BUT … they messed up the lettering of one of the mascots. And in a way, the “GO BIG TEN!” on them was a bit insouciant, as these cups were almost exclusively sold at games between two of the teams whose mascots were on the cup. This doesn’t matter, though. They were a great memory.
But they were only a memory. Then after hearing Weird Al’s song eBay, I thought, “you know what’d be on eBay? Those cups!”
And what do you know, I was right. Link to auction:
Note, Illinois’s mascot is not the image below, because – well, it could be potentially offensive, and I’d like to respect that.
Mods, I don’t think a patch-up of eBay pictures is a copyright infringement problem? But if it is, let me know. I just wanted to capture some nostalgia.
Oh, the wrong mascot? ISU should be UI. They wrote in Iowa State instead of Iowa. They didn’t have the Internet back then! And yes, Iowa vs Iowa State is a big rivalry, though some college sports writer-comedians dubbed the annual game between them as “El Assico,” a riff on Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, because there’s always a hilariously unwatchable part. But it’s almost always close!
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