Revisiting TLJ Criticism

Patrick (H) Willems is a YouTuber who posts on movies (you've possibly seen his series on hypothetical films directed by incongruous filmmakers, such as, What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men?) I posted a link to his Paddington review about a month ago, him making a video on why it's so great. He also loves The Last Jedi, and has posted a couple of videos about it, why that's great, and why people who dislike it are wrong.

Why are people so wrong all the time?

Down in the comments sections... hoo boy, well this was bound to get at least a little contentious... down in the comments sections they have other ideas. I can't just watch a film anymore; I also have to look it up and learn more about it, and well I guess YouTube comments sections are kind of the same way, for me to interface with this content.

A rough overview of the "anti-Patrick" camp comments is this: they say that when the videos are talking about negative criticism, he's attacking straw men; that he's taking for granted and dissecting the idea that TLJ isn't a bad "movie," just a bad "Star Wars movie." That the critics against the film (at least these ones) don't see TLJ as bad Star Wars films, just as bad films period. Which is a matter of opinion, as it always is, but, where in the world are they getting such notions? It's bizarre.

I'm genuinely trying to understand how people could hate The Last Jedi. 

At least they're just being wrong, instead of actively being terrible to people. There are worse things in the world to be, than wrong.

But seriously looking at the comments and suggestions as to why TLJ may have been a bad film, I'm getting, aside from "not understanding the characters" or whatever: it's tonally inconsistent. A lot of people didn't like the humor, or maybe they would have liked it, had not the humor been placed where it was.

I didn't get that one at all.

Are critic-y people and movie buffs such as I, just naturally more likely to be alright with  tonal whip-pans than mainstream audiences? Are people who don't watch that many films, or only watch mainstream faire, more sensitive to mood whiplash? Me, I love jarring tonal shifts. I watch a lot of Bollywood, and it happens there all the time, and you just learn to roll with it, and it makes the final product all the more epic in the long run. And so is my failure to see any mood whiplash in TLJ, even when specific examples are pointed out to me, a result of mood whiplash desensitization? And is that why I don't mind that? I don't know.

The other point, anyway. Maybe The Last Jedi doesn't understand its characters...? I'd have to rewatch The Force Awakens to see if the characterization was as thin there as I remember it being. I love that movie, of course, but I remember it being very much, not self-contained as far as characterization went, like say A New Hope was. I'd been going to do that today, actually, but instead I cultivated curated and annotated a selection of t.o.'d YouTube comments in an attempt to understand the viewpoint being portrayed therein. It's the good life.

View the curated list HERE.

+/- $1

I put a li'l bit of spare cash into my bank account, thinking that this subscription which I'd cancelled has its payment at the end of the period instead of the beginning, and the subscription costing exactly one more dollar than I'd had in my account. Only, the subscription didn't bill me, with today being the last day of it, so it looks like the payments are on the first day of the pay period and not the last- and thus I have the cost of that plus a dollar, in my bank account. Plus the other dollars I also put in just in case I was wrong about the "exactly a dollar" thing.

It's $3 credit toward a Kindle book anyway, so that extra dollar is, it's all exactly how much I'd thought it would be.

Pizlo Shouts Paradox

Mary Robinette Kowal hosts on her blog interviews with sff authors, consisting of one question: their favorite part in their latest work, and why. Lawrence M Schoen talks about his favorite part in The Moons of Barsk here; it is transcendently resplendently splendid.

http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit-lawrence-m-schoen-talks-about-the-moons-of-barsk/

$4 Discounts and Littul Kittons

I learned so much today it's absolutely insane. Alright, I've got $4 in complimentary Amazon credit which I can use to purchase a book. I buy an ebook on Amazon, I get discounted $4, right? It goes away at the end of the month, so I've only got a few days to decide what I want to do with it. Obviously I want the best deal for myself, since the $4 only goes toward one purchase, so $4 and up is perfect; at the same time, I'm basically broke, so it shouldn't be more than that by, almost any degree of money. So I'm looking for a book of exactly $4, or $3.99 or something. Dead Alligator Lizard is $2.99, but I already own it. There's a book on my wishlist at $4.99, which, heck I'm probably going to do that.

But the next time I'm at a library I'm definitely checking out (because hypothetically I also have the ability to make checkouts from this library) at least one book by Cordwainer Smith; also, why have I not heard of this guy before? Alright, I've definitely heard of him, but, why is he not more famous? I don't know. Golden-age SFF tends to be undervalued anymore, is my best guess.

The gist of his work is, it's mostly all in this one shared setting, but spanning thousands of years, and not connected by a story arch or anything; everything just, happens to take place in the same universe. Just researching his stories though, it's the most crazy imaginative stuff I've read since Osamu Tezuka.

Like, who needs death lasers or nukes in your killsat when you can have genetically engineered bloodthirsty minks who have to be kept sedated otherwise they'll kill themselves and each other? There is absolutely no excuse or need to be cliche in science fiction.

But also, like his prose is supposed to be really interesting too, and the way he constructs his stories...

Overcookies

So during the day I have all these crazy thoughts but when it comes time to write anything- it's not that I can't remember them, they just don't seem worth talking about. I mean, Solo: A Star Wars Story really is my favorite Star Wars film outside of the original trilogy, and in real life I could rave for half an hour straight about how much I love it and the details why, but writing that down, that expends a lot of energy, and it's not as fun as like saying the words out loud for some reason.

Made cookies. Overcooked them. Overcookies! Made brownies instead.

I brought a desk in from the garage, into my room. There had been two beds, but the day before yesterday one got moved out (like I said with the sleeping in the corner.) Big empty space, time to put it to use.

Bed on the side with the window now. East-facing. Wake up in the morning, a couple hours earlier than I had been without it. It's good for me.

Little Dots

54, why 54...? 55 has such a better ring to it, or maybe wait ten days after that and it's still going on, you get 64 with is 2 to the sixth power, much more mathematically significant. Oh well. It was late and I needed a post I could knock out quickly. I went to bed very early last night. Not really bed so much as, curl up against the wall and happen to fall asleep.

More on that later.

Polka dots! Now You See It has a recent video on the symbolism of stripe patterns, their use in costume designs in film. They mention stripes as being ambiguous (which color is the foreground and which is the background?), and also attention-grabbing. Making stripes the stand-out-iest out of all the patterns.

But me, I like polka dots.

Why did I curl up against the wall? It's something I've always wanted to do, lose all motivation and lie down then and there, even though you happen to be in the middle of the street when you do so. Cry yourself to sleep. Or whatever. It felt decently good, but in a dangerous way. Do this any more, and it may become a habit.

But polka dots gave me life. I was held in the palm of polka dots, and nurtured in their heartbeat.

I have a bed. It has a mattress protector now, which is what it lacked last night, which is why I curled up against a corner instead. The bed sounds nice. Even though I can't literally hear it.

There were things I wanted to get done yesterday. Too many things. They swam around, threatening to drown me. So I decided to take a break from them. In a corner. In the dark. And I remembered a lyric. It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small. The fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all.

I should still do those things, but they're not as complex or as time-sensitive as I'd made them out to be.

And in church today, I lacked motivation for anything too. I was lifted up by polka dots. It's the little things that make life awesome.

Day 54 of the "Check Out My Sick Elephant" Crisis

Wondermark.com

This is (Not Quite) My Life Now

Actually using hashtags and stuff in my latest IG post I managed to double my followers (still not a very impressive number but it's a start,) and linking my sites from the post, well I haven't gotten any hits from that but you never know. Which means it's time to STEP IT UP DOO-DOO-DOO.

My Instagram posts seem to go up every Wednesday, based on the not-pattern (but still precedent) of my last two posts posted. I probably should (and definitely could) make that more regular, but I'M POSTING AT ALL AT LEAST. And Inktober coming up waka-waka-waka facilitate that especially now that I have ink (thanks, ma!); I know how to control lines with a paintbrush so using a nib pen should be the same basic principle, right? I guess I'll practice tomorrow.

And also find time for editing and posting a video. I'd meant to get a YouTube video up today, but it looks like it's maybe a tomorrow thing, which would make it look like it's a Saturday thing if I want to go the weekly route. The last time I posted on Pretzelize Me Cap'n! was two weeks ago, on Saturday; should I continue with that also in posting regularly there, which would make those Saturdays as well...? 

And I'm not sure about regularity in terms of facebook, but last I posted there was Wednesday as well, same day as Instagram. (I'd had such a lack of activity on that page that it actually unpublished from the web, and I had to republish it again. Some weird thing Facebook does to make sure people are regular and frequent with their engagement. Booting my FB page back up, due to mentioning it in the IG.) 

Not sure if I should stagger these out; I've read website articles on the best times to post for MAXIMUM ENGAGEMENT, but I can't remember a thing other than: hey you should post more.

Or how about this: I work hard at making my yaargh content as quality as possible, and then see into regularity.

Feeling Spoiled

My birthday and Christmas are kinda vaguely in-the-distance coming up, like two months from now is my birthday, and it's thus kinda vaguely time to start thinking about what I want. I love the two being so close together, meaning it's possible for the combining of gifts (I adore quality over quantity, as much as it may not seem it sometimes.) The camera a few years ago, that was the greatest, and I'm still getting much mileage out of that.

The real question is, since getting one huge gift over the two holidays would supplant any other huge gift (the camera was like the only thing I got Christmas of 2016,) what it is exactly that I want. My laptop 2.1 crashes at slight breezes, so Mom suggested a new one, but I've got my eye on a fisheye camera lens (this one) for my camera. (It's so beautiful I could cry.) 2.1 actually hasn't crashed in weeks, although the USB drives, indeed all input slots, remain finicky.

Guess it depends really on what sorts of laptops Mom has in mind; I'd meant to ask her about that. If there are any specific models for me to choose the lens over, because seriously I am gunning for that lens, then we would know exactly which laptops are worse than awesome lenses.

Anyone Remember This?

Anyone remember this?

https://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/2017/09/anyone-remember-these.html

I'm adding one to the list; we've figured out a couple of them from that list already so good job there. #4 is Star Kid, which came out in 1997 and was released on video in 1998. And I discovered #5 today- it's You Wish, and it ran for one season back 1997-1998 on ABC's TGIF block. Knowing this, I'm guessing that the film I'm thinking of thus miiight be from 1997 or 1998, but of course there's no guarantee. 

I'm asking about it on the You Know That Show...? forums at TV Tropes as well, but I haven't gotten any nibbles yet. Maybe a family member would have more information.

Family film, live action. It’s about, or at least features, a girl, 12ish, whose father is a comic book artist. There’s a scene at a birthday(?) party, at a pool, and there’s a live 60s-esque band who’ve been hired to perform, singing lyrics along the following lines: “ooh, she’s daddy’s little girl” (trying to search these lyrics only turns up an unrelated song.) The other kids there are making fun of the girl because of something in the latest issue of her father’s comic book. It’s a vaguely TMNT-esque publication, with anthropomorphic animals as the characters, and the Master Splinter-type character has his adopted-daughter-type figure start wearing a training bra now that she’s growing up; all the girl’s friends recognize this as being a thinly veiled stand-in for the girl’s own blossoming into womanhood and tease her for this.

BICHOK

I would have gone to bed five hours ago already had I a post up; in many instances it's what keeps me awake. I bide my time hoping for an idea to come; sometimes it does but the cost is too great for the benefit. The benefit today of waiting till now is to realize, oh silly me, of course no ideas are going to start to flow with my hands off of the keyboard; it's only when I start writing generally in these circumstances that anything juicy occurs to me and I'm able to do a post.

NaNoWriMo in a couple of months like I said- if I'm doing Moone book 2, it's going to be discovery written rather than outlined, which has always kind of been the plan I guess. I do have a lot of ideas for it, but not really an idea of how they'll fit together. We'll see. There's going to be a lot of sex, like how gods reproduce is an important plot element and everything; I self-censored a lot of my more romantic elements out of the public draft of the first book, but if I do that here there simply won't be a book. So I don't know, it's pretty weird. That's the reason my POPULAR CULTURE machine of death Halloween story is posted as a page on the blog instead of in the body of a post, because of the saucier elements in that.

Musical Notation (Symbolic)

Heck, Inktober starts in two weeks, and NaNoWriMo after that. And my spooky short story the day before that of course. I'll think of something.

Today didn't really go as planned, but it was a good one nonetheless. A great one. I didn't think about killing myself today, and that like never happens (it's a disruptive thought pattern; I can't control it, but today was good enough that nothing was there to trigger it in the first place.) And I look and feel, really good right now.

(Not planning on killing myself but it's alright if you're freaking out and want to talk with me about it or whatever- it's something we don't talk about enough as a society, something we naturally shy away from. I'm just bringing it up here, really casually. Because that's the way the thoughts are in my head, hey you know what's a good idea suicide! That devil, sure is a wacky one...)

As long as I'm thinking about the subject of my own mortality, if I do die randomly sometime soon, I don't really have regrets? I talk about it a lot, how there are all these art projects I want to get done but which I never work up the motivation to start; I've got plans for them written out at least, as much of them as I've got figured out so far, so I figure that somebody else can execute those concepts if I'm unable to complete them in my lifetime. My failure to (be able to) execute plans on my own, that's just some part of God's plan for me for some reason; I feel satisfied that, as far as it's formed so far, my music is outside of me.

Maybe I'm unmotivated to do the things I want to, because they already exist, at least in concept form? The mystery continues...

Executive Malfunction

It wasn't a book, it was actually a symposium- trying to track down more information about it I'm hitting a brick wall; I don't even know what this McDougall guy's first name is. All I've got is what Wikipedia tells me. Which information, seems legit, but there could be honking gaps I don't know about, all that. All that I have is a list of what the problems are, with no specific strategies to combat any given deficit. Bleeehhh.

There are other resources online, of course; and I've already looked into in-print resources, at the district library back in Rexburg. The problem with all of these is, these are all from an educator's perspective, telling teachers how to combat executive functioning problems in students. I already know how to learn, plus I'm already graduated, plus, well the most important plus so you may as well call it a multiply by instead, I'm not a teacher I'm myself, I started this journey specifically because of that. I don't need to know how to combat learning difficulties in students, I need to know how to combat basic life skill difficulties in myself.

Thinking about the problem academically, though, just right now hands-off ivory tower armchair, I can think of a few rudimentary tools. Writing down what needs to be done, breaking it into smaller chunks, organizing those chunks into categories based on difficulty level and degree of importance/urgency (that's the good old, Eisenhower Matrix,) sorting those tasks into an order based on those categories, scheduling out those sorted tasks, going through the schedule and leaving some room for flexibility in case unexpected difficulties arrive. It sounds so easy in theory. In practice, for whatever reason, there's still this vast disconnect.

I thought in the beginning that completing a blogpost a day would imbue in me some executive function skillset and the ability to operate within deadlines and frameworks, and... well, it's given me those things, but only specifically within the context of, being able to complete a blogpost a day. I'm not sure if it's improved my writing skills or journalism skills any. I seem to have been good at that from the beginning.

So it seems that I yet lack (and may always be in want for) self-motivation. 

But I know that getting forced to do something compels me to do it. 

It's back to the SMART goals then, which I never really excelled at but which had good some good ideas still. I've read that telling people your goals may in some cases make you less likely to complete a task, for some stupid reason, (I don't even care enough to look that up,) but which IIRC would have something to do with it taking away your intrinsic motivation. There's this whole fascinating intrinsic-vs-extrinsic motivation debate, where if you offer a reward to someone to complete a task they'll complete the task specifically for that reward and thus find no intrinsic motivators to do so (take away their reward before they're finished, they won't finish the task because why bother.) But I don't really have intrinsic motivation for, well tasks certainly. Even things I want to get done and want to do, I won't do, because it's all just by myself and is all thus arbitrary.

Which means that telling people my goals would maybe actually work or something.

Not sure yet how to use this information (maybe in conjunction with blogging, which I'm actually already good at?), nor am I sure how to end this post today, but...

TRIPOD TOO HECK

Executive Dysfunction

Somebody force me to do something. Please. I don't understand "self-motivated" people at all. Is self motivation an affect of executive function? 

I'm still capable of, y'know, doing stuff. Like just now I went and researched executive functioning skillsets. Didn't, plan on it beforehand or anything. It was spontaneous. Obviously.

This McDougall guy who wrote a book (and like a legit one too not like one of those people who write natural herbal remedy books or whatever) divides executive function into two broad domains (his book focuses on executive function in the classroom but that's only inappropriate in the context of the specific illustrations he gives to demonstrate his categories, and not in the constructs making up executive function itself, dawg): self-regulatory skills and goal-oriented skills. Each of those is broken down into sub-categories:

Self-Regulatory

• perception
• modulation
• sustained attention
• flexibility
• working memory
• response inhibition
• emotional regulation

Goal-Oriented

• planning
• organization
• time management
• self-monitoring

Wikipedia is telling me that individuals with autism "commonly show impairment in three main areas of executive functioning," and lists those as flexibility, planning, and, fluency which-isn't-one-McDougall-has-but-that's-fine-because-my-fluency-is-great,-thank-you-very-much. (Best fluency I know! Many doctors agree.) My flexibility is also, like, the bomb, but we hit a wall when we come to planning. And, yeah, the entirety of the goal-oriented skillset. 

It's not only the goal-oriented ones, but it is mostly those ones. Out of the self-regulatory Pokémon, the two I want catching are, 1) depending on the task, sustained attention (probably any flagging focus would be due to, goal oriented stuff, like shifting from one mini-task to another and being unsure of the demands and thus fatiguing,) and 2) modulation. GOOD GLORY do I lack modulation. That's the, awareness of effort required to complete a task. Guess it's just a perfectionist streak or, well I actually talked about this just a few cycles ago. Something about taking up as much time as possible, polishing and polishing until the very very end? Though most of that polishing, based on my record of class assignments' work schedules, actually being fundamental like construction and not spitshine at all.

Which would have to do with, time management and stuff, solidly a goal-oriented skill. Don't think I have poor judgement in effort required to complete a task, actually, so much as, the amount of time required to complete it. So, yeah, I guess 100% of my executive function problems do stem from, the goal-oriented skills side of it; nice to know.

It's weird thinking that there are people out there who can just... manage their time. Just like, as a skill they've got, whether it's one that comes naturally to them or not. People out there who can plan. Or organize. Or self-monitor (actually that one I don't have that much of a problem with.) Feels like a prison, without it.

But, you know. Spontaneity can be a lifeskill too. 

HECKING LAV MIC

Well There's Your Problem. Solution, Though, Search Me...

I've figured it out, why everything seems to go so slowly with me. If I work on any task for greater than, some arbitrarily short period, it fills me with enough anxiety that I need to take a break, generally by switching to another task. The amount of time it takes to get into the swing of the new task is overtaken by the amount of time I can successfully give unmonitored undivided attention to said new task, and I need to quit before I even really begin.

So that's no good eh.

(Things would be a whole lot easier if I didn't cringe just thinking about the word) Brandbuilding

Okay but really, fiction is so much easier, because if I get a good story idea or anything, I'd understand pretty easily which if any of my ongoing projects it would fit the best into, as a visual beat or character motivation or whatever- and if not, I can still write that sucker down and save it for later. Even easier. 

But social media, I don't know- is there anything intrinsic, like, alright this would be a Facebook announcement, this would be an Instagram post, etc.? Thinking about it it maps pretty cleanly, visual things would be posted onto IG, announcements etc would go onto FB, and audio-visual stuff going onto YouTube... but that's on paper; it doesn't map nearly so cleanly in my head. 

Thinking about studying the way other people do it; some of my favorite content creators are on more than one platform, which though not surprising is still baffling how they'd be able to do that. Maybe it's exactly the things I described with the way things map above? Maybe it's just a bunch of cross-platform pollination? Maybe it's this whole horizon that I can't imagine but would comprehend intrinsically if only I saw it in motion? 

I don't know. Which is obviously why I'm gumming about it here. Doing anything else beyond that- well, that sounds suspiciously like work to me. This really does have the potential to be so easy and natural. I've got the ideas in place. It's only the implementation of the framework, now...

Social Media Means and Ends

Painted and posted a new Instagram post today; it's got one "like" which is quite nearly 100% of my followers, so I'd classify it as an unmitigated success. I've spent most of the evening braindumping all the ideas I've got for YouTube content out onto (virtual) paper; meanwhile I'm not sure how I feel about that as Lindsey Ellis's latest video is a deconstruction of YouTube as a, man I don't even know, but it was heady, and it had an interview with John Green in it. 

I don't think I want to be a "YouTuber" so much as I just see it as a means to an end, producing/ shooting/ editing content so that I'm comfortable with any given task associated therewith.

Same thing with Instagram, I suppose. An excuse to rip out the art ripened on my interior walls, instead of fretting over whether they could possibly be yet riper. As far as that goes, I should start thinking about launching that webcomic I've had brewing in me, though the problems with yet doing so are enough to base an entire post around them. I've got the worldbuilding in place, but not much story. For one. And for two, there are a heckuva lot of locations, within that worldbuilding, and cityscapes aren't my strongest subject artistically.

So anyway my Adobe payment went through yesterday, with my subscription back on track. It was... small. Very small. I'm just going to assume that it was intended to be that way, and not some sort of mixup.

Quem Canta Seus Males Espanta

Sing, the movie, its subtitle in Brazil is a Portuguese saying, Those Who Sing Scare Away Their Demons. Something like that. Which is just perfect, because the climax of the film is Meena abandoning her fears and opening herself up via her voice. Like Buster Moon says to her, "just sing."

Every day I wake up planning to have it be super productive or whatever, and every day I just sort of goof off all day, like, that's not productive. BUT SERIOUSLY THE NEW BUSAN MAP IN OVERWATCH I SWEAR I'VE SEEN IT BEFORE LIKE WAS IT IN THE BETA OR SOMETHING THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS.

Maybe they just ripped off a map from BattleBorn; nobody would ever know. Though BattleBorn doesn't take place on Earth of course.

I hold back like, man that's gonna take forever, but if I give myself just the slightest push, whatever it is to do just takes, like, fifteen minutes. Or feels that short, getting all up In The Zone.

Blog/Ideas/Vids/Jot

At World's End, I've said before, is just a failed The Force Awakens. This could be a YouTube video essay or something. It should be a YouTube video essay or something. So never mind what I was about to say; I'mma talk about this instead.

So with the Adobe sub going forward (this could/should be a post on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!, but whatever) though without any real excuse not to up till this time, I'mma gonna do it, I'mma gonna produce videos some more. Heck, I feel successful with only four subscribers. Heck.

I'm pretty good lately about jotting down ideas as they come to me, but that needs to improve when it comes to, video ideas coming to me. I'm not doing that as much as I should. They feel so fresh and obvious when they arrive, like a dream you just know you're going to remember so you never write it down and thus forget.

The Incredible Hulk feels like a failure as an MCU film because it's structured like a DCEU film. There's another one. I'm, writing these ideas down, at least.

Video essays (and, hey why am I writing this here, it deals with my Pretzel identity, it could go on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!, but then again with all these ideas for videos I should do I'm writing down, I wrote down https://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/2018/08/think-i-should-post-on-my-graphic.html and I still haven't done that;) what was I saying, something about video essays? It's a good fit for the platform, so those are popular, maybe too popular but whatever; that's like saying slide shows are too popular on that one platform dedicated to sharing slide shows.

Hats! Festival of hats! 

(That's not an idea for a video, that's me just writing something random so that this post doesn't get too boring, with me just talking about the same thing for paragraphs on end.)

A lot of the ideas for video essays are similar to themes in films I'm developing, though, and so there's this reluctance there because I don't want to be seen as a YouTuber who then started making movies. So???

Should I go through with that anyway? Leave your response in the comments; also be sure to like, subscribe, and share.

(nailed it)

What's the Deal with Dagon?

No incredible bouts of self-discovery today, sorry. I did have my mind eased though; I'll put the whole quote up when I can be bothered to (it's 10:00 at night, and while that's not usually that late, it's very late for the sabbath.) 

Artistic creation is a mode of worship, but I'm always off somewhere misinterpreting the second commandment. I still feel like I may be too occupied with media (and whether other people may be even more occupied is no concern of mine; "you do you" is correct in that regard at least) but there's no intrinsic theologically problematic issue in being artistic. 

https://www.lds.org/new-era/1974/08/q-and-a-questions-and-answers/are-certain-forms-of-creative-art-discouraged-in-the-church?lang=eng#

Answer to a Different Question

My mom asked kind of out of nowhere today why I don't seem to read as much as I used to; I used to read all the time. Digesting this, I did not answer at that time; I read a lot still, but not really books, books haven't been my go-to source for entertainment / edification for years. Which is weird, because it's a preferred method of reading, for me; I've got multiple tabs of research opened up on my laptop, dauntingly, which text I would breeze through were it printed out in a physical medium.

(Speaking of reading things online, I posted up a new post today on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!, which you can read if you waaant, totally optional but there for you.)

I guess the answer is that I'm, out of all the things I love pursuing, building up more of a visual vocabulary, because my verbal vocabulary (I guess you just call that a literal vocabulary) is, trying to think of a really fancy way of saying "sufficient" but sufficient itself is, sufficiently, sufficient.

Alright, so maybe it's not perfect or anything, maybe I write a bunch anyway. (It should me noted that the question was queried to me as I was writing something down.) That's an option open for me, and sure I've got some verbal prowess, but that's not the only arena I enjoy and am good at, and so I'm gearing toward more visual arts over literary ones (there's always a literary element to anything anyway.) Not only do I have words engraving themselves and bursting out of my skull, I've also got blocking and editing and camera movements doing so.

Funny. The more I research film making, the more I realize how collaborative a medium it is.* There's an upside and a downside to this; others can fill in my gaps (and there are plenty of gaps to any vision of mine), but it's arbitrary for me to be the leader when my knack for leadership is merely above-average rather than exceptional**. Writing, while authors do have a similar massive framework of editors and publishing teams and market researchers and all behind them, is still much more a solitary pursuit, and an entire vision can be carried out executed entirely by one person.

Which sounds fine and dandy by me, but still... Blocking. Editing. Camera movements. Bursting. Out of. My skull. The original conception of "genius" was the spirit of inspiration that visited a person, and not the person him/herself, and yep that sounds about right.

Q & no A

Great news! My mom transferred me $35, so now I'm broke! She wondered why I didn't just tell her about the issue, and yeah that's a question isn't it. 

questions aren't they
The situation resolved itself, so why worry in the first place, was maybe my reason? 

(Am I really so adverse to put in any effort? Do I take nothing seriously?) 

Am I afraid of my parents? Do I not trust their judgement? Or do I trust their judgement too much, knowing they'd be right and thus I'm afraid of that? 

Or is my blogging about things the way that I do deal with issues?

Unfinished Issues

Some kind of stream of self-realization!!?? better than no self-realization I suppose. I'm not comfortable (I'm sure there are people out there who are? but I'm not so I just have to find a workaround?) with showing any WIPs, any works in progress; that goes on to include a lot, and intrude its way into many aspects of my life. 

Including, not start any works, lest someone come across them unfinished. Even alone, where nobody would be around, it takes a while to build up the strength to overcome the inertia to build anything. It's like the indefinite waiting aspect- I'm fine if I know exactly how long I need to wait, if looking forward to something, but just giving me an indefinite "the future" is torture to me since I don't know how large an undertaking it'd be alright for me to attempt, undergo and finish before anybody sees. 

And even if I do "finish" something there's always room for improvement, so... Maybe this goes toward explaining my procrastination in school? I know that if I get started early it's going to take exactly as much time as it will until I'm finished, finished meaning deadline, so why waste all that effort? I'm not going to be satisfied anyway so why not force satisfaction?

Maybe I don't hate graphic design; maybe I'm not even bad at it. I'm ashamed of 90% of my design work from school, possibly higher, but if I put in as many hours in as my teachers recommended... Man what the heck was I even doing, I didn't do anything in school. Even my anxiety attacks were lackluster.

And anyway, not starting on anything because I always lack the tools, so I always hold out on it. Tools meaning, tools, and/or skills as well. I could start on something at least.

Concomitance Trubbles

So in the continuing saga, checking how having negative money in the bank works, from the time I'm underwater I've got a 60-day grace period thing to add money, before I get in trouble! Yay! I probably won't make any money in that time period, but eh that gives me time.

So I guess every part of my worldview is concomitant with every other part of my world view? It makes it very cohesive, but on the downside I'm not very resilient at all because if any part of my experiences are challenged or invalidated, I have to rethink the. whole. thing. The whole thing. And part of my world view is always accepting the possibility that the other person may be right, so. yeah. So yeah.

SO YEAH!!!

Season 12 Discovery

I checked into my bank balance, and what's going on is actually quite simple- I simply have negative thirty dollars in my bank account. That makes sense.

In real news today, it doesn't feel like much happened because mostly I played video games and it's hard to feel productive doing that- but this was actually a moment of personal growth for me, or realizing something about myself, and so let me explain that.

There's a new season of competitive play upon us, Overwatch-wise, and while I never really go in for that I decided it wouldn't hurt, and started my first match on that. We were swept before our enemies; it was a rather easy victory for them.

Man, all I ever do is fail, but I'm not even good at that; you'd figure someone so used to failure would know how to handle it but no I do not.

Were the thoughts that went through my head. Before I realized, I'm not bad at failing; I do know how to handle it. It hits me bad and emotionally, but if it didn't do that then I wouldn't have much incentive to learn from my failures would I; I'm good at handling failures because they hit me so hard.

The important thing is going back in there! And so I did, and we won, and it was great, and my team has been losing pretty consistently since then; I've won but two games today, and am a total burden on my team. But I'm becoming less of such.

Little World & Big Stars

Looking out at the night sky because you have nothing better to do because you're locked out of the house and it's night and you're tired but have to stay awake to fight off any night mosquitoes which may come, gives you perspective. On how small the world is, and how small our dreams really are. But what else is there to follow, the world being so small, the way it is?

Grown-Up Business

So I don't really have any news today; the Patreon front seems interesting enough but I haven't looked into it at all to find out what the hex going on. I think my utter lack of concern is what led to the situation, but I'm utterly unconcerned by that as well.

As long as I'm on the subject though, somebody randomly flagged the Furry Experience patreon for, adult content, which is patently untrue?? So that's pretty weird there eh. It means that she's making her posts there public until the situation resolves, which means I can link you to the post where she talks about it so you can read more about it there if you want even if you're not a patron, but it also means that you have to certify that you're at least 18 if you do want to read the announcement. 

Jolly hilarious.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/adult-content-21167531?

Heh... heh heh...

😱 So, somehow that transaction went through... in its entirety... Just going to show that money works how I thought, even less than I thought. I think there's some kind of, buffer, especially with, automated payments? Like there's a, check one, and it goes through with a positive, and then a check two which would come back negative, and so then it would come in through someone else's overflow because the cash has got to come from somewhere and it certainly can't come from me...? Or maybe the next time I make money, if I'm ever actually making money ever again 'cause I don't know, it's been like a quarter of a year since I've been paid anything except lunch money, it's going to drain out of a hole in my bank account and go to the bank instead, for the money owed?? And hopefully that wouldn't pooch up my credit for the rest of my life and nvm of course it will?

I've got no idea the level of concerned I should be. There might technically be a breach in contract in there somewhere; that doesn't count as perjury, does it?

On the bright side, maybe now that I'm not suspending payment for two months in a row, I can skip payment to patreon for a pay period again.

Patreon Death

So, logging into Patreon today to suspend payment for another month, seeing how the payment goes through on the first of every month and that's tomorrow, I find that I can't do it? They changed something our something; I can cancel my payment entirely but I can't just skip a pay period. Maybe you're not allowed to do it two months in a row; I've got no clue. I don't want to cancel my subscriptions/support, but neither am I able to pay.

But like maybe it's like the Barnes and Noble thing, where it like killed itself when it saw it couldn't go through; if they're in multiple transactions, one per pledge, it might still slip through for one of them, but that would require the savings-to-checking rollover. Trying to check my e-receipts if it's in a lump sum or not; if it is then no worries.

(Watching Paddington on Netflix)

You need a seventeen minute twenty-eight second explanation about how rad the Paddington films are? No worries, mate; Patrick (H) Willems has got you covered. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSq0308_g7c

Face Fit for Streaming

I got called handsome today...! Reminded this lady of someone she'd seen on TV... But she couldn't recall who.

If you haven't seen it, my beard is now better trimmed and even more magnificent than in my last YouTube video, the ~vlog of a week ago. Which, I'm not remaking? Think I'll just, move on, and start making fresh engaging content elsehows. Got so many ideas today. Good stuff. It's so much more inspirational to watch the high quality videos over the other stuff.

Westminster Canvas

Blank canvas is intimidating, but that intimidation is the most familiar part of creation, the step zero that all must experience, as well-known and background noise as that... hold on let me look it up... Westminster Quarters, the Westminster chimes, so accustomed as we are to our chiming clocks that it all just glides along as natural a part of reality as air being transparent.

...that was overwritten; i'm sorry, i'm tired...

but yeah i have things i want to blog about but mostly stuff that would be perfect for pretzelize me, cap'n! instead of for over here. it's easier to write here though because i'm already logged in right now but it's not easy to write right now anyway because I'm tired, everything sliding easily, like westminster quarters.

One Day/Last Week

Last week was super long for some reason; maybe the days felt full of purpose or something? Today I haven't had a single good/creative idea all day, when yesterday especially was full of insight and connectivity. So today felt long in that; actually felt longer than any of the days last week.

The Little Lost Breakfast Who Could

Nobody probably watched the video yesterday, since nobody watched the YouTube video I put up four days ago and embedded exclusively on this blog- nobody watches any of the videos I put up, or at least according to my YouTube's metrics, any of my own videos (unlisted videos do work the way I think they do, right, I mean you should have all been able to see that?,) but no matter! It was a very very weird video, and I posted it up as an act of deadline desperation. It was, the least weird, of his videos, that I could find.

Q Rais is the name of the artist; I can't make heads or tails of any of his (?) stuff, and I have a suspicion the situation would be the same even if I were fluent in Japanese. He (??) also does, like, comics and stuff, in Japanese, which is how I discovered, them.

But I just love weird things, don't you?

Q Rais

Focus

Doing the reboot remake is taking longer than anticipated; the focal length nearer to the camera is super short so it's easier to be out-of-focus? If you're so much as an inch off it'll do that to you. Recommended fixes?

Stand back further
Get someone else to focus the camera so you don't have to worry about it yourself
Get a wider-angle lens with smaller possible f-stop size (meaning wider possible focal distance.)

I'm eyeing a lens for that last option, but it looks like I'll just have to go with either firsts for now.

Whatever Happened to Why the Lucky Stiff?

Hey look an article about a thing I like! 

Too tired right now to write much more about it. Mmbleh.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/ruby_ruby_on_rails_and__why_the_disappearance_of_one_of_the_world_s_most_beloved_computer_programmers_.single.html

Reboots and BARSK PODCASTS

The video was easier to do than I anticipated, and with my current schedule I have the ability to produce a video a day, instead of once every however many weeks like last time. Tomorrow I'm remaking this video; it's all out of focus, but I think it had spunk enough to publish at least on private.



Do I want to be a YouTuber? Is that what I really want? It's what I kinda want, but I don't really care about, doing anything for subs or whatever. But, my goodness, look at me up there, I'm clever and smart and gorgeous; I don't want to do this for myself, but to grace you little people with my presence. 



Anyway. Check it out, a bonus episode of Writing Excuses came out today! It was recorded when Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard was written, but slipped through the cracks, and is now posted up in honor of The Moons of Barsk!



https://writingexcuses.com/2018/08/22/13-b1-bonus-episode-elephants-and-death-with-lawrence-schoen/

Returning Soon

Did I not blog last night? Whoops. 

Did I not post the above up last night? Whoops.

Two days later, then; I've got a lot but I think I'll save anything I have to say for tomorrow... not for lack of time to write it tonight; it's not about the writing. I'm feeling, a different format... a VIDEO format.

Tati's Chef

There's a scene in the Sylvain Chomet film The Illusionist which is presented so matter-of-factly and naturally it takes a while to realize how remarkable it is. Jaques Tati "interacting" with himself. This... this is the kind of thing I would use my YouTube channel for; I guess I still have time to put videos together. The Barnes and Noble thing and the Adobe account actually would go onto their next pay period within a day of each other, so I've still got a couple of weeks for both, not that I use either much. This is what financial responsibility looks like, cutting the fat.

Anyway, like the way it's been set up that TV and movies are live-action instead of animated, and the way that it's set up just in framing and the unusually long shot lengths, especially for Western Animation and animation in general, is what I was going on about. It's fine.

Insufficient Funds!

Mere hours after writing about the Barnes and Noble membership probably wanting to resubscribe itself, it attempted to resubscribe itself, found insufficient funds, and quietly curled into a ball and died.

Yaaay.

Technically it wouldn't go onto the new period until the 12th, so I've still got a month to enjoy the sweet goodness of a Barnes and Noble membership. Man, this would be so much better had I nearby access to a Barnes and Noble. Or if I had any money, that either.

Being penniless is so much more enjoyable without that hanging over my head. Still not very enjoyable, of course, so I suppose I should have phrased that, it's no longer as unenjoyable. 

I should start heckin' makin' art, and start heckin' sellin' it.

Think I should post on my graphic design blog, about graphic design stuff. If I told you the specifics here, I wouldn't have to do it over there, so.

My Adobe subscription is still technically going on, and I won't have to shut it down till September. Maybe I'd edit and upload a video, if not for the laundry list of excuses not to, completely arbitrary and conjurable at a moment's whim. I never did figure out how other people seem to get much better audio quality than I do, using the same equipment. Maybe I'm just more attuned to background white noise etc when it's in my own works?

I have a Barnes and Nobel membership which renews every year; I've got no idea when it's going to do that but it's probably sometime soon, and I can't afford it renewing on me. It'd probably cost, like, $30, or some ridiculously large sum of money like that, like dang, ain't nobody got a rai stone that big. So I'm going to have to figure out how to, like, suspend that as well?

MAN I DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING.

(fighting urge to make I Write Sins Not Tragedies reference)

SO my sister got married today, and I was I guess UNofficially the photographer, but the idea had been for me to be the official one, any so I didn't get the memo about what to wear there or anything, and they found a tie for me eventually... But I went up with the bride and groom as well, yesterday, instead of with my family, today, which is why I wasn't around any computers to post a blog post yesterday evening.

But it looks like my mom's going to have to finally update her blog, so there's that instead.

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING, WHAT A BEAUTiful WEDding says the
dangit.

Be Ye Therefore Perfect-- Eventually

I'm not as hot on Jeffrey R Holland as other people seem to be- like everyone else seems to be, oh yeah his talks are so great, and I don't think so, as much; and I've been unpacking the whys and wherefores of that a little bit, more recently- and I guess the reasons are a post unto themselves, most of them niggling, or otherwise just weird personal preferences. 

But his talk from the most recent semi-annual general conference, I'm listening to right now, and it's really good.

https://www.lds.org/languages/eng/content/general-conference/2017/10/be-ye-therefore-perfect-eventually

(moons of barsk)

The BARSK sequel, The Moons of Barsk, comes out Tuesday! It promises to be as weird and haunting and awe-inspiring as the first one, which I've been very meaning to reread anyway. I clicked around Lawrence Schoen's website, and there doesn't appear to be any exclusive swag available one should one preorder; his Twitter (@klingonguy) did have a sweepstakes thing where three people get a free hardcover copy each, but the deadline for that was today, World Elephant Day. The winners have winned, and the books are gettin' shipped. There is another sweepstakes, though, this time to win the audiobook; all one need do to enter is be a subscriber to his newsletter. Deadline is noon of next Sunday. Yep.

There's Nothing to Stop This from Being the Best Day Ever

I'm super excited for the Sabbath tomorrow. Last Sunday it was all, Sabbaths should mean something to me, so I'm going to live this week in preparation for the next one. And so I, well I tried at least. Didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but I'm back on track now.

Darn it, I really want to go see the Teen Titans Go! movie for some reason. I'm feeling really simpatico with Cartoon Network right now, is probably it. Cartoon Network is somehow awesome again. Yay.

I want to paint stuff again. There's a reason easels exist, I've discovered. I just looked it up, and the word easel actually comes from the Dutch word for donkey which makes sense, and doesn't have anything to do with the word "ease," which-- yep, I just looked it up, and its origins have nothing to do with the Dutch word for donkey. Easels make things easy, is what my point was.

So anyway- there's this long-term project I've been working on and I feel really good about it right now, like there have been days when it's all what is this, what are all these elements doing together, this is random and arbitrary, and really discouraging- but it's like there's a floodgate of inspiration that's opened up today, only two or three elements really, but they've just gelled the whole thing, and opened the whole thing up. 

Today started out, well not rough or anything, but it could have started out better let's say. But the U2 lyric, from their album which I own which I haven't even gotten the chance to listen to, really helped me, and, heck maybe it was the best day ever today.

It's way beautiful, isn't it, this moss-covered stone hurtling through an inexorably vast void.

League Defeats

There's a mission that I NEED to complete in League, otherwise terrorists kill my wife and family (alright, I only want to complete it, and the reward is just like some in-game whatever,) and like all I need to do is win one game, just one game is that too much to ask?, and Kaellen brought his laptop so he and Alex and I could all storm the Rift together, and my laptop (what's its designation now, 2.1 I think?) crashed on me while we were all in a group together preparing to queue up, and it tried booting up for the entirety of the game next (which was won quite handily) and I turned it off and on again and it tried to repair itself for the entirety of the game after that (also a winning one) and I could finally get it up and running for the game after that, and-- well, I can rest knowing that at least my worst possible League of Legends defeat is behind me; even if 2.1 hadn't had crashed on me again leaving my team fighting 4v5, I'd been marching straight into the jaws of death every time I set out down that bottom lane. Not playing Leona again, probably ever. And I've got two skins for her too, though that's the only reason I was playing her...

But I've still a few days left to complete the mission. so.

Scratching

There's always "content" in your heart or mind that can be put out there, if you want to scratch yourself bleeding that deeply. (Posting every day again it looks like, and though a lot's happened today the temptation is just to stick with something vapid, in which case I may as well not post.) Open-ended question, why do I want to protect the dark parts of myself, even though I see them as something external and of need to purge?

Story

Teeth cleaned today. Dentist! X-ray as well, full set, all my teeth. Four cavities?, but one is under a filling, so they will just tamp that down to fill it in. Still, no insurance :(. Expensive prospect.

X ray lead bib. Heavy, comfortable. Nice pressure. Measured heart rate to be less than one beat per second. Very healthy. Idea: make own lead bib-type object and keep my heart rate that low?

Teeth were very clean. What brushing I do is working. Brush more!!

Pandemic Legacy Season 2: Complete!

Beat Season Two of Pandemic: Legacy this afternoon. Which makes this my, third, or fourth Legacy game, depending how you count it? I've played Pandemic Legacy Season One of course; SeaFall; a game of Risk Legacy though not as part of the campaign (just a Risk game played out on a board that had been through some stuff; that was interesting.) 

Funny, this time, how it doesn't offer up any ideas for playing on the board now that we're finished with it, speaking of playing on previously Legacy'd boards. The other Legacy games all had that option, even SeaFall, rudimentary as that mode may be. There appears to be a few secrets left that the board has to offer, though; some panels that we never got to open though we completed the whole thing. Maybe they have to do with searches we never completed, or maybe they're just blank or funny or Easter eggs or what; or maybe they're like SPOILER from Risk Legacy, and we have to figure it out for ourselves. (there were a few failure options we didn't fail often enough to trigger, so it may have something to do with those??)

Speaking of spoilers, though, I think it's time to rank how I feel about this game as compared to the other Legacy games I've played? What I mean by that is, the twist in this one, definitely my favorite, plot-wise at least; game mechanics-wise, it'd be really really tough to top SeaFall for its twists. The opening part of the game, the months of exploring the world and connecting everything, that was tops, better than just starting out with the whole world open like in Season One, and better I think than sailing off and discovering new islands in SeaFall.

The way the game balanced, the world getting bigger our resources getting more stretched thin, but with mechanical ways to counteract that, was very well done, and I could feel Matt Leacock's hand in the way everything fit together, the elegance of the similarities and differences between Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert in between this game and Season One, and the balance of always being just about to fail just like in those games. I think he and Rob Daviau are a crackerjack team, and please please please somehow give us like, it doesn't even have to be Forbidden Whatever Legacy or anything, but please work together again.

Out of all Legacy games I've played so far, I think this one is the one I'm most likely to replay, not only because the thrill of discovery is more plot- rather than mechanics-based, like I said, but also to see how differently things can turn out. SeaFall was a mind-bending experience, once, and Pandemic Legacy Season One was harrowing and exciting (and heck maybe I'd need to play that one again as well as a refresher,) but this one did, well not everything, but most things right, that Legacy games should do.

Work/Feel

I oversaw the Cub Scout Day Camp obstacle course area on Saturday, which was fun and frustrating and busy and, it felt like I was getting something done, at least. I'd forgotten how very little it feels like I accomplish in any given day here back at home. Is every day like this? 

It doesn't really take much for me to feel like I'm getting something done, just a little thing each day. I'm working and thinking constantly about projects that had their inception almost a decade ago and are now maybe a few weeks away from coming to something resembling fruition-- but that doesn't feel like actual work.

Flat Heroes of the Universe

We are Ben.

The Switch game Flat Heroes came out yesterday, and there's a campaign mode (which I beat the demo of before the game came out, the first world and ~half of the second) and there are pvp modes, are seven survival modes as well, which all require unlocking, and which have world leader scoreboards. Two of those survival modes are solo, but the rest you can cooperate on and keep each other alive.

Playing on Ben's account, four of us, the name BEN climbed to the tops of the scoreboards. Like, the tops tops.

I'm not sure if this is the case still, but we have/had each of the world records, all at the same time. Each number one spot, on each survival mode, goes to BEN. 

Since it had only been out for a few hours, we were among the first to unlock some of the survival modes- that doesn't make it as easy as it sounds, though; we faced some stiff competition, and unlocking the modes requires a lot of SP, gained from playing well. The final (most SP-expensive) mode, a solo mode called arrows, we were the first to unlock, and thus automatically made it to the top of the world leaderboard (don't know what it looks like or how far Ben got solo.)

So I'm writing this right now in case, y'know, anybody sees our awesomeness, and wonders, y'know, who the heck this Ben character is.

Wreckin Ball

K so I've been gone for a couple of months, and everything in Overwatch is totally different now. Well, not everything, but with the Symmetra rework and EDIT: the Sombra rework and the new character and all, the meat meta is totally different. It's focused more on area control now, which meat is way neat, and the way I think the meat was always meant to be? I heard somewhere that someone thought the meta was getting stale, and I can't recall the circumstances, but I think it's way good now.

Hours of Night Driving

I've got my permit so I can drive, and yeah I guess everyone was asleep so I was for the most part not monitored, we survived so that's good.

Driving is hecka like life. Speed, checking down the road, all that. And I picked up on it quickly enough??

How the Alternative Means Work

The desktop's black. The only file on it is the recycle bin, which appears empty. (If you actually attempt clicking on it you get an error message.) The windows key and buttons on the task bar don't work.

I'm not sure when the computer problems started or anything, but I know they'd been waiting for me to come back and see what I could do to fix it, or find a way around it. But, not sure how long they'd been waiting, like I said. Turning it off and on again didn't work.

Here's the workaround I discovered: ctrl+alt+del takes you to the security options screen. I opened up task manager, then from task manager go to file → run new task. There's a checkbox there that allows you to create the task with administrative privileges; you have to have that clicked or else it won't work. You can type the directory, if you know the exact filepath... or you can just click browse, and search for your program that way. 

I opened up Steam, and League. They opened, but wouldn't work, because the network was down... Here's where Alex came in: he turned it off and on again. Or rather, unplugged and replugged the network cable to the computer, a phone line that runs from our modem into the computer through a USB adapter (which we got for a completely unrelated purpose, though it didn't work for that, and that problem resolved itself.)

Alex could log into his League account and play (and win) a game. The last he played before today was January of 2016, which was before I even started playing.

I haven't played any League in months yet still, but I have logged into my Overwatch (we got Battlenet to start by opening up the Hearthstone installer in the task manager.) I feel like Rip Van Winkle, so much has changed since I last played it's surreal.

719320

None of the blogs on Mom's blog's blog sidebar have updated in DAYS, so I figured I'd break the trend. Driving me nuts. 719320, that's the security code I had to enter in since Google didn't recognize this computer when I signed in. Dad's Chromebook. Working on tomorrow's issues of the newsletter Dad and I write/edit up here at Camp Fleischmann.

So I've been up here over a month, and will be back home in a week. I'm not as stircrazy to finally get to play video games again, as I had been a few weeks ago. But it would be nice.

Plans for when I'm home? Well, most of them revolved around computer stuff, specifically access to this account that I'm on now, dumping all the ideas I've had up here into their appropriate Google Docs and editing them around so that everything fits more-or-less cohesively. Some of the ideas fit more smoothly than others, I would think, but we'll see.

Alex has Scythe by now, play that. He should have Isle of Dogs by now as well, since it's out?

Also! Meaning to watch/rewatch the following shows if I can squeeze them in: LOST, Babylon 5, a small handful of anime I think.

As far as actual productive things go, like, having any money at all, there's plans for that. Acquiring the money, that's a different story, but I do plan on having it somehow. I've got a driver's permit now (also an ATV permit); maybe it would have something to do with that?

But I don't really know.

There's an article on TOR.com about mental illness/neurodiversity as reflected in the Stormlight Archive. It's pretty long, and's got spoilers, obviously, but it's pretty interesting too, if you're interested by that sort of thing.

https://www.tor.com/2018/06/05/ideal-heroes-mental-illness-in-brandon-sandersons-stormlight-archive/ 

There's a line in there about how incredible it is for this woman to have a whole year ahead planned out, and yeah, I don't even have two weeks planned out, after this. I have a handful of things I need done. I need to suspend my Patreon payments again, as I'm one half a payment away from being bone dry. The last four or five jobs I agreed to, thinking I'd earn money off of them, have yielded no money (maybe some portfolio/resume stuffing? (dang I really should get a LinkedIn like they told me to at school, shouldn't I, though I'm probably going to neglect it just as well as I neglect all of my other social media accounts.)) 

At least I've got four years of college under my belt and zero monetary debt-- such a stunt these days that it's worth a (monetary?) prize unto itself. But I don't know. Don't know much at all.

There's this weird thing where it's like I'm only capable of thinking about myself, but only capable of acting for others.