Readshorts: A Blogpost with Three Prologues

 1. Dreamed the night before last that Cailin and I were in the pool table room of Grandpa's house, looking down out at the field, down where there may have been a few workers doing something or other. In the dream there's no fence or ditch that separates the field from the road, and there's a cement truck that pulls in hard off of the road, swinging and broadsiding on of the figures down on the field, who collapses. Horrified, Cailin and I drop whatever it was that we were doing and rush out to see if they're still alive. It's a little later, and we're back in the house, and the man who'd been hit turns out to have been my coworker Oscar. If he's dead then I don't know how I'm going to continue working- but thankfully he's still alive.

2. Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi is about a group of future scientists who have strange, impossible-to-explain things happen aboard their starship, where it eventually turns out that the things are happening because they're characters in a Star Trek-like television show that plays fast and loose with its science. It's a pretty funny book, though truth be told there was only one occasion that caused me to laugh out loud. It's still worth reading because of those three codas mentioned in the title. It's worth reading for those three codas alone. They're, among the most raw human honest things I've read in my life, and each is better than the last. And, like, the rest of the book is pretty okay too, worth reading on its own and not that thick so it shouldn't take longer than a few days if you want. Anyway.

3. At lunch yesterday Dad handed me a couple of bags of cookies that he'd made, for me to give to my coworkers. I've got two of those, more or less. Usually it's Oscar who helps me feed calves, but a couple of days a week it's Joaquim. Before feeding the calves their dinner yesterday I found the opportunity to tell Oscar my dream, and hand him one of the two bags of cookies. I think Joaquim was off yesterday so I kept the other bag in my pocket till I could see him.

Work's at 7:00, and I'm usually pretty punctual and sometimes clock in at 6:59, which happened this morning: walking in, a loader had driven up behind me, lowered its bucket for me to get in, to drive me to the barn. It was Brent, and as I clocked in he told me that with both Joaquim and Oscar in today, if everyone scheduled to be in the barn today came in, I can take the day off. (If not, it would be Oscar and me feeding, Joaquim in the parlor helping to milk.) We'd see by around 7:30, but until then, I started getting prepped to fill the calf bottles, because it takes me just about that long. Prepare everything by the calf room (including heating things up, rinsing things off, pouring in hot water to keep the bottles warm and adding formula which will be mixed into their milk when that gets poured in,) swing the tractor around to in front of the milk room, fill up the bottles with milk, put the nipples on them. We can usually leave around 7:50. 

So I finish up there, head back to find Oscar. I'd seen Joaquim, in the parlor, so I'm not sure by this point if he is going to help with breakfast, but when he sees I'm ready he heads into the break room to get better dressed for outside. Brent had disappeared somewhere, not sure where - so, was I supposed to gauge for myself if he'd let me leave early? But he's with Oscar, in the break room, Oscar finishing up telling him the story of me telling him my dream and then giving him cookies. Brent says I can leave if I want, and goes off elsewhere, and Oscar asks me what I want to do and I say I'm here actually to give Joaquim some cookies as well. And it's perfect, and it feels so scripted, and I decide to stay to feed for breakfast, because it goes a lot quicker with three people than with only two.

And then right before feeding the hutches, Joaquim saved my bacon-- so I caught myself in time I didn't dump all the bottles to the ground when I dumped out the hot water from the bottle tray-panel-tub-thing (it's usually closed, bottles held in and locked by the top grate, but the tray had been opened from feeding the group pens before the individual hutches got fed) but he called my name and I caught myself, and everything turned out non-disastrously (maybe the bottles would have gone everywhere, or maybe I would have caught myself in time had he not been there, or maybe I wouldn't have tilted the tray at such a steep angle if Joaquim hadn't been with us in the first place so it'd be fine anyway, who's to say.) And feeding the calves in the hutches I could make sure that the right calves received the right bottles, because the youngest ones get a special mix and I counted it out just right based on how many were born the most recently.

So in Redshirts, they try not to get caught up in The Narrative, because it's where bad things happen and where nothing makes sense... but in my experience of it, this morning felt so perfect, like a Narrative, only my writer is a lot better apparently, and it was humbling and lovely. Kinda working out how to deal with these emotion things, and that feeling, like being caught up in something like a well-crafted story, certainly is one of those.

Twinning

Feels like something I would write, in a lot of ways (thematic, structural etc) and I quite enjoyed it!, so you can consider this a second Spooky Short Story if you want IDK, half a month later. Maybe I should've waited till next year to link it so I wouldn't have to write one myself but it looks like they (VICE) put up one every year themselves, and this is this year's, and who knows if next year's is going to be as, me, as this year's is.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vvz3/twinning-halloween-short-fiction

the rope slackening in your hand

 maybe it comes as a memory. dusk, at the fair with your father, and the late autumn air still warm. a cold front blowing in as the evening sets, a chill finger of wind that tugs at the edges of your sleeves. you two, you're walking together, faster and faster and the crowd seems endless and the fairground seems to stretch on and on and maybe you can't remember arriving in the first place, to be so far lost. you're reaching out to your father and maybe he's reaching back for you and you two are holding tightly as possible (and maybe his hands seem so big and maybe his hands seem so sweaty) and you're in a hurry though you don't know why (maybe he's afraid) and he's so much faster than you, running and running. and you slip and he keeps running and you do too so it's like you're still together, and maybe it's like neither of you are moving at all, if you can stay close to him just the same and if you don't know how far in or out you still are. maybe it's the people around you who are all the ones moving past in an endless procession. but your father keeps running, and you can feel the precise distance between the two of you, and you can feel it grow like a slipping rope slackening in your hand. and maybe you don't cry as you two drift further apart and maybe he doesn't see you get swept up in a line of people lined up so neatly and so eagerly, lined up to go inside the haunted house which you had been so afraid of last time but did not have to enter.

and you can still feel the distance between you grow and grow as he never looks back over his shoulder,  like maybe he trusts you or maybe he doesn't care or maybe he's in too much of a hurry and his mind is on other things, and as it's the queue that's moving and as it's you who's standing still as you run, you're caught up into the building as your father slips away from you. and your voice catches in your throat and you try to turn around and leave out the entrance but the line which stretches endlessly outward pushes endlessly in, the doors of the house open like a maw to accept them. (though maybe there's only a few dozen people, and maybe it's just that you can't see past their legs, though maybe you're taller than that by now, in whatever reality the memory corresponds to.)

and you, still feeling your father slipping away, attuned to his location in the mysterious way that a compass knows where north is, have no choice but to push through the house, race through the house and race out the other side, the neat little line that pours out the back door you know is there. and keep running and following your north and catching up to him. and maybe if you're brave enough and fast enough he'll turn around and never even notice that you had slipped away.

maybe you take a look back out at the sky again, though, blue with orange setting in, before licking your lips and putting your head down and stepping through the doors.

and there's straw everywhere and dust, and fake cobwebs and maybe you remember shrill laughter from another room. and there's arrows on the wooden floor in chalk, and you're hurrying and following the arrows and not looking up and your compass is spinning and you look up too late to realize that it was a maze and that you'd been tricked. and maybe there are employees dressed as monsters and hiding in the walls, and maybe there are other guests around you but in your memory you feel alone and you feel small and you feel like you'll never be more lost in your life.

and your father is there suddenly like a vision before you, though you can still feel him running further and further away, in your compass in your rope, and maybe he pulls you up in his arms and carries you to the car and you two drive home together but maybe the memory ends before that, with the thought, or maybe the knowledge, that whatever had come to rescue you, it was not your father.

but you've known fear and held its hand and talked with it the way that some are said to be able to talk with the dead, and see it all around yourself and everyone in the way that some are said to be able to see the dead. you see it in adults in their loves and lusts and their politics, and you see it in children in their breath and in their heartbeat and in their trembling hands.

and maybe you see it in yoursel

Video Games Are Cool

 Drifting off to sleep and I remember this out of nowhere. Maybe just the sheer nightmare of reality breaking down around you. (Not what my spooky story is about this year but not a bad idea.) Video games are cool, but they have edges, but this is something that incorporates the edges into other edges. Not anything that could be accomplished in any other medium. Videogames are cool.

 I could not sleep until I'd tracked it down and shared it. Now I can sleep.

Still Counts

 This is from the day after the thing from last post, though it's been a couple of weeks. The thing from last post it took me a while to swing around to and post about as well, but I figured everything in order and posted that before this, I guess reckoning I'd be around to posting today's post the day after, or even later on the day of. Didn't happen obviously. Executive dysfunction SUX.

Alright so after the calves are around 8 weeks old we move them from their individual hutches into group pens, 8 at a time (four fit in the wagon so we make two trips.) Those calves in the pens get fed once a day, until we wean them by simply stopping doing that. Pens two and five weren't getting fed on this particular day. And I realized. Two and five.

Alright I've mentioned before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTlg0cK-UjE wrong link Deep 6 Eyes here!, I prolly (??) have synesthesia associating colors with numbers- 2  and 6 with blue and orange. Two and five, here I realize, fit together: five is yellow somehow, with two being blue.

When I eat M&Ms I eat them in colored pairs, it's this whole thing, and blue and yellow go together. The two pens here not getting fed, the mathematics of it, reminds me of that, and the rest of it snaps into place.

I mentioned being unsure of any of the other numbered colored connotations, but with blue and yellow in place the remainder snaps in place easily. Or, most of them do. 2 is blue, 3 is green, 4 is ??brown?red?? 5 is yellow 6 is orange 7 is purple 8 might be black and 0 feels white. 1 and 9 are also numbers. They feel like colors imperceivable by humans.

Like I pointed out earlier it's not a literal viewing of those numbers as intrinsically colored, it's more of a vague association. But it still counts.

My Favorite Author Wrote Something Just for Me!

(I mean it was in response to a comment I made on a YouTube video he did, about how soothing the fan in the background is, but that's still pretty cool. eh?)

Not always, but it was a very hot day :)

(Dan Wells is a professional GM now and does videos reviewing different roleplaying systems and splatbooks, and his channel is still small enough for him to be able to reply to each comment he gets.)

Legit tho FATE is such a good roleplaying system. 

Which Reminds Me of This Other Hypnotizingly Good Video Essay

So I watched a few more Errant Signal videos, but like not as many as I'd want to, because video game videos but spoilers? Either I'm interested in the games he talks about but there's spoilers in the videos which I don't want, or I'm not and I don't care about spoilers but I don't care about that? Wavering on whether I should watch his mostly-spoiler-free take on Outer Wilds, the first half of a two-part thing of which the second is the spoilery bit. It's the Fortnite one that I keep on coming back to.

Errant Signal's take on why graphics aren't that important is a pretty good one I think, I mean the video itself is good; Jacob Geller comes to a similar conclusion in his video about the same subject, and of the two I prefer the former, so. 

Yeah so Jacob Geller, also doing video essays about video games (for someone who's so hardcore in how casual I am gaming-wise I sure watch a lot of gaming YouTube; I'm fascinated by the formation of genres and subgenres, and also really into analysis of storytelling within an interactive medium.) Of his videos, the one I keep coming back to is, this:

Speaking of spoilers, this one's got unmarked analysis of Kentucky Route Zero, and the whole thing could be seen as a discussion of that game specifically? (via analysis of other media and games, and other real-life stuff.) And it's like HEY THERE, I'm geTTING AROUND TO IT GEEZ. Warn a fella a little next time.

So This is a Great Video Essay that Blew My Mind Repeatedly

Figuring out Blogger's new interface; got most of it licked but it's reminding me I need to post on Wordpress more. (That's what I'm figuring is going to host my next webcomic, aside from the I-need-to-post-on-any-of-my-blogs-more.) 

This year has been pretty bad for my executive functioning; is it the lack of blogging that's leading to lack of structure, vice versa? It's probably the job; even back when I got things done it was just very very slowly, and I accomplished things at all because I had 8-9 more hours in the day I don't have anymore. 

Video coming ever, though! I should probably chop off a smaller project instead of the huge one, but I'm still down one battery charger, so no way to shoot video; at least with the one I've been working on the past six months, all the footage has been shot and I just need to finish the script and edit film clips together. (I'd be working on it now if I weren't blogging, but that just makes my getting-anything-done seem irresponsible.) I've been working on it *to the best of my ability,* I just have a naturally slow work process as I let ideas percolate.

Waking up early has gotten me this far which is pretty sweet; I read somewhere that executive function for people with executive dysfunction works best at non-daylight hours for some reason. Guess I'll keep doing this then.

even if I were to start taking meds where would I even start with them? It's something I've never done before, so, just spinning blindly in space...

So you watch that essay yet? It's 40 minutes long but probably only 20 minutes if you put it on 2x speed. Watch it again if you want. I've heard of Errant Signal I guess but never really even meant to get around to watching his stuff, even though he's one of the channels subscribed to by Dan Olsen (my favorite YouTuber) but Dan Olsen is mentioned in the video, and linked to it on Twitter, and here we are (and though of course I'd seen Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite several times and knew about the stuff they're (both) talking about here, it still just blows my mind.)

So I've been playing this video game The Outer Wilds, where you're an alien astronaut caught in a time loop as you explore your little solar system and solve mysteries, though it's far more common that you die and restart well before the sun explodes-- and how crazy would it be if there were a Battle Royale just, set in there at the same time as the exploration stuff...

it's time to get good at darts

Give Me a Call (A Song for Mom)

The Very Worst Version of Me

Comic Things, Comnc Thiigs

Darths and Droids has finally, finally begun their Force Awakens story arc. A week ago, but I only checked in today, and hey-hey! https://darthsanddroids.net/ (Darths and Droids is a webcomic in like this, [exhales] so there's this genre that like reinvents the plots of movies and TV shows as being actually D&D-style RPG stories behind the scenes?; this particular one wasn't the first but it is arguably the most influential, and they've been going since 2007 and they're only now getting to the sequel trilogy because they were waiting to see how the whole thing would shake out and the time is finally here, woo.)

Non Sequitur introduced a new character today; that glasses kid has a younger brother with autism. Fingers are crossed??? but we'll see how this turns out??? https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2020/03/29

Third comic thing to recommend, third comic thing to recommend... there's a "I'm married to Betty Boop" thing making its rounds on Twitter or whatever? It's, something. Dare I say, something that exists.

kay bye again for now.

Dog That Speaks German!?!

(first I was reading about the history of tiki culture and there was this seminal restaurant Don the Beachcomber and trying to track down more information about that ran into Don the Dog instead. Also at Smithsonian.)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-don-talking-dog-took-nation-storm-180968867/
Meanwhile speaking of those guys did you hear about the 2.8 million images they released into the public domain for anybody to do whatever with? (it includes 3D models+stuff too.)

⟾https://www.si.edu/openaccess⟽

Aayyy

Wow I'm actually at a computer in the evening finally at all this year. Been meaning to blog but every time I think about it it's all, not gonna get out of bed for that. 

But being into a new decade (it's an arbitrary dividing line but I love it) each thing feels like, oh first of the decade, gotta record this, ye know? First movie watched this decade, Casablanca. First Killers song I sang this decade, Believe Me Natalie, actually? First U2 song, City of Blinding Lights; first twenty one pilots song, Migraine; first Beach Boys song, Good Vibrations. First song from Cats, it's impossible to say. 

I saw two rainbows so far this decade. I'm not going to let this hellworld strip my joy from me.