Tees Maar Fox

So I was researching Neil Simon, as one does, and it turns out that 

1. he didn't write his first play till he was like 40, which means that I don't have to feel bad about not having anything significant accomplished in life yet (though he did work for years in television writing as practice leading up to it), and
2. the first film he wrote the script for, the Italian heist After the Fox, was given an Indian remake in 2010, Tees Maar Khan.
3. (Incidentally, how do you spell "40" out? Forty? Fourty? They both look right yet somehow off...)

Looking into that, Tees Maar Khan, it turns out that it was written and directed by my favorite Bollywood director, Farah Khan!, and somehow I had never heard of it!

So I checked whether it was on Netflix, and it was, and I watched it- and I can tell you, well there's probably a reason why I'd never heard of it. in that it's not very good; though it's got a few interesting ideas and stuff not in the original film. And some pretty funny references for the more advanced student of Bollywood, and some digs at Slumdog Millionaire and M Night Shyamalan. Those were great.

Still, it's nice when these things that you'd somehow never come across before, present themselves to you.

This News

Alex Trebek is, just, an international treasure. Best of luck to 'im.

Sword Artifact Idea

Cursed sword that strikes down the righteous and innocent- finally destroyed in a forge, the blood of all its victims seeping out- the iron from that blood reforged into a blessed sword that strikes down the wicked and guilty. Maybe a bit too "high" fantasy to fit into TTDECBA, but still a neat idea that I've had for a while and realized I wasn't doing anything with so might as well use it as a post for the day.

5 Facts About Nutrition Off the Top of My Head

Tryptophan. Turkey doesn't contain that much tryptophan; it's some weird chemical reaction in your body between the tryptophan and the shocking amount of carbs you also consume at Thanksgiving that makes you so sleepy. Like, something to do with insulin levels or something? I tried making sense of that section of the wikipedia article and it was INTRICATE.

Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid- your body doesn't make it but it needs it in its diet in order for you not to die. Like lysine. I could go on this whole tangent about how much sense the lysine contingency in Jurassic Park doesn't make. Phenylketonurics (and I spelled that right first try somehow) are somehow allergic to phenylalanine, this essential protein thing; and so like I don't know how they don't die, maybe they just eat much less of it?, but there's a lot of phenylalanine in aspartame which is why soda warns phenylketonurics away from it.

Bromelain isn't acidic per se; it just breaks down proteins. The only known medical use for it is in removing dead cells from wounds. Pineapple is stinking delicious. 

Citric Acid. Vitamin C. Scurvy is bad news. I want to go on a tangent about the history of biscuits and hardtack. I want to go on a tangent about the freezing temperature of brine. In the book Treasure Island, when Jim is hiding in the apple barrel listening to the pirates, Long John Silver doesn't reach in there without looking, though that is a cool scene still and IIRC he still feels like eating an apple, he just never gets around to it? And now I want to go on a tangent about the provenience of many of the pirate "traditions" Stevenson made up for Treasure Island. And now I want to go on a tangent about pirates named Red Beard. How do I know so much about pirates. Cooking food removes much of its vitamin C content. I'm not sure how much vitamin C raw meat has, but it probably has any. Long John Silver doesn't have a peg for his missing leg, he goes around on crutches.

Monosodium Glutamate tastes terrible in Jello, at least when you mix it with unsweetened cocoa powder. The European classification number for MSG is E621. Niiiiiiice.

Newspaper Word Puzzle from My Dream

Pretend that the webcam didn't flip the image horizontally. 

The gist of it is, fill in the alphabet, snaking it around so that it's connected orthogonally, asterisks indicate warping points where one letter can jump to the other like there's a little tunnel there or something?, helpful for figuring out duplicate letters in the word??, and figure out the secret word of the day (in this case, PASSENGERS) by snaking letters into the circled squares. And bullets indicate inpenetrable walls you have to snake around.

Nightmarish In-Name-Only Treasure Island

Day 2 of never letting an opportunity pass me by: napping. A lot of napping. Also putting potato crisps into my tomato sandwich.

Continuing to track down films from my childhood for no real reason other than because I can (not letting any opportunities pass me by, yes.) I wrote down the details I could remember yesterday, after blogging for the day. 

I’ve got bizarrely specific memories of this- I could have sworn it was named Treasure Island, but it’s not listed among the list of adaptations. I think it was an anime, and an older one. Sort of like Tom Sawyer 2000, world of funny animals, but Treasure Island, but in name only. It’s not the legends of treasure island, but very similar. It’s not animal treasure island either; no human characters at all. Jim Hawkins is a cat, I think. He gets the map, but it doesn’t show where in the ocean the island even is, so Squire Trelawney says, “then we shall let the gods decide!” and throws a dart at a map of the world and they sail to that place and happen to get it right, the island happens to be right where the dart landed. At one point on the island they’re on a lake or river and there’s an “undertow” (not sure if that’s what they call it in the film or if it’s just my childhood understanding of the events) but it’s a living creature and Jim dives/gets pulled underwater by it, and gets to see the entire thing, which turns out to be some nightmarish anemone-like tentacle monster on the bottom of the lakebed. At the end of the movie, they never find the treasure and the island sinks into the sea and it’s incredibly depressing.

Found it! here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188249

Turns out it was The Legends of Treasure Island, but only kind of- in 1997 someone stuck the first three episodes together with the last episode of the first season, for some reason, and released that as a complete movie! It's called, just, Treasure Island, of course, just as I remember it, and... not everything's exactly as I remember it, the dart thing is slightly less ridiculous in context (but still pretty nonsensical and doesn't even matter in the end anyway.)

I remember the "have your guts for mincemeat" line, the "as the crow flies to the crossed palms" thing with the dead man's spyglass, and the stuff I listed, but the whole deal with the myst that takes away your memory I don't, heh, remember; maybe it was cut out of the film version (though going off of run time, it looks like the four 22-minute episodes just straight up got smashed together sans editing.)

Corndog Science Hour

Day 1 of never letting a single opportunity pass me by.

1. Watching the sun rise AND soaking in the hot tub
2. Writing down my dream
3. Painting some
4. Calling Personnel offices again at Walmart
5. Ripping a VHS tape
6. Wash the car
7. Seeing if anybody is home yet at the address where my phone was?
8. Cooking each corn dog a different way because there were four left and four methods of cooking instructed
9. Ripping a second VHS
10. Napping just now when I couldn't go to bed because I was waiting on the VHS tape
11. Blog about opportunities I didn't miss today
12. get the photos into here
    
    
    
    
    

New Vlog I Guess

[paste it here once it's uploaded]

pt III???

Everything's saying on the website itself that my application went through, but I haven't gotten an email saying as much, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I got an email when I failed it last time, but I  should also be getting an email succeeding, because that's what Personnel said over the phone when I tried to contact them the first time. I'd been going to call back today about it but I guess I didn't. 

Dilemma In Short

I should be making a vlog within the next couple of days but virtually nothing happened to me this month.

Assessment Battery pt II

Alright, so retaking the assessment yesterday, getting a new account with a different e-mail, filling in all the same forms the same way and everything (that's, what the personnel director suggested I do, when I called her wondering if she could somehow magic me into having the assessment un-failed, she suggested the best course would be to just try the assessment again under a different e-mail address) and I succeeded this time. Passed, I mean.

They go over applications on Tuesdays, from what I've gathered. But past that I really don't know what to expect.

Gosh, Do We Have Reason to Celebrate

I feel so creative at night. But any given thought is arbitrary, any one could be spun off or ran away with. I haven't been videoing as much as I should have (and I was going to say this into a camera but the battery's charging rn) because the world is too wonderful for me to try to put a little frame around it- but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try and share. And spending so long in the sun last summer really messed up my complexion. Have my ears also always been this red? I thought it would go away but it didn't. My beard looks much better trimmed- like, even looks really good now, whereas a few days ago I was considering just shaving the whole thing off.

Gosh, do we have reason to celebrate.

Cell Phone Detectives Saga- Maybe It's Not Stolen After All??

So it's something I realized recently (maybe yesterday?) but my phone seemingly having a new login on the 13th of last month, that wasn't someone logging into it on a different account because they found it and stole it and it's theirs now; that was me logging into my new laptop and counting as a new login across all my devices for some reason. I guess I realized that checking my email and seeing the login location as being the laptop, with the email sent the day the new login, which I'd thought had been my phone's, had registered.

But I'm not sure. Could check further into it.

Right so on that note, a few weeks ago I figured out that my phone wasn't misplaced anywhere at home at all, and had nothing to do with any of the suspects I'd mentioned, but had been taken somewhere after a Christmas pageant thing- for some reason. Tell you more if I ever find it...

Spit vs Polish

Figured I may as well get in a post today on this blog, though I'm far more interested right now in Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!. I learned a lot of weird and wonderful things today, but I'm not sure if I'm going to talk about them elsewhere in a more polished state, and I hate doing things like that redundantly, but I'm never satisfied with my level of polish, and so I never complete anything? And I don't like having the final say, in case I messed up somewhere, and I was able to publish so much project on my mission because hypothetically there was a buffer there in the form of my project supervisor(s) who'd give everything the once-over before things went to print. 

I realized today that heck I should at least be shooting stuff, under the knowledge that I'd have myself later as the buffer in the form of editor, but then I thought about how I'm never satisfied with the footage I got the first time around and go back and reshoot like everything and so it takes me forever anyway, and could I really be strictly an editor in my role as editor and get things done without extensive reshoots? That's the goal at least.

I could potential spend another half hour sweeping the cobwebs of the edges of the thoughts in this post, but I'm going to try to practice what I'm trying to preach, and just call this post good.

Assessment Battery

So I've been in the process of applying for a job at Wal-Mart because this overnight thing opened up which sounds ideal because who sleeps at night, right?; only I didn't say anything about it till now because, well one let's face it I've not been saying much of anything lately, but two, it seemed like such a shoe-in thing but not for certain so why bring it up early when you can wait if it actually comes true? And all this time it turns out that my application wasn't complete and there was this assessment I needed to take and I failed that today, so I wouldn't be able to reapply for another five months just as an automated system thing. In five months' time, of course, it won't matter.

And playing Super Mario Odyssey this evening and thinking about that, how maybe I can get someone to reset so I can take it again simultaneously also proving how dedicated I can be, Dad comes in and says how he doesn't want me playing video games all day for the rest of my life, living in my parent's metaphorical basement and working just at Wal-Mart when I could do so much better. And I was playing video games because like the Wal-Mart thing went south, and I don't want to make a career of Wal-Mart anyway I just really need a job, and night shifts how perfect is that?

And so I'm not sure whether I should request the assessment reset or whatever, because maybe not working at Wal-Mart would be a Good Thing, and it was a Good Thing that I failed the assessment?

(So the assessment is like this personality test, I guess seeing if the position you're applying for is a good fit for you?, and I fail personality tests just like in general as a general principle, even though  that shouldn't be possible because personality tests aren't pass/fail by definition.)

(Like, the assessment asked the same questions over again a bunch, and I'm pretty sure I gave polar opposite answers each time, because like, ????.)

(And like I'm sure probably if I did have a personality then I would totally know how to feel about all this, but I guess I don't.)

Game Overs

I dream in heists and sci-fi plots, and increasingly see life in terms of video game mechanics: I died dozens of times today, each failure on average carrying me further than the last, though only on average. The nevertheless frequent failures occurring in an area of the level that is well-trod and easy, those are more frustrating than the deaths at a more advanced and difficult zone, though the earlier failures be out of the way  more quickly. 

I had more to say on this theme, but I can't remember it right now.

Manmade Spams

There have been a few spammish comments on my blog recently but I'm not taking them down, because they're on a few old posts that I don't want anybody to be looking at anyway. Also because they're friendly.

Keep meaning to do a video a week no matter how bad, but then not because they're just so bad. Like yeah.

Getting to a point of popularity where I can be spammed on by perfect strangers, that didn't come from quality control. Came from putting up posts I thought were good at the time but now am so embarrassed by that I keep the spam on 'em.

So there's this guy on Twitter who's doing like fake AI writing, a human imitating how a computer imitates a human? So like Horse Ebooks, or Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash. And the future is just wild.

Dreams Are Fascinating and I Pity Anyone Who Thinks Otherwise

So I'm reading What If? by Randall Munroe, not the book but the website itself, and there's a question here about a giant hypothetical slope from one end of the country to the other, and... this all seems familiar. That was a dream that somebody had once, that I read about somewhere, but can't find out about because doing web searches for dreams just yields stupid dream symbolism stuff. 

But the parts I remember are this (could it have been my own dream once?): there's a giant slope, and people are riding bikes down it or something, just like in the What If, there's like a bike race or something... and there was something about, at first I was thinking a dog or a duck but the further I think about it it must have been a turtle, like a giant turtle, who can talk and is a vehicle or something, and something about needing to help its babies or something?, because it was a vehicle itself?, and, maybe it was my own dream, or maybe a friend's, I'm going to have to ask...

But man how great would it be if there were like a wiki of people's dreams, that you could search easily. Not magical or anything, just like, dreams famous people had and mentioned briefly in magazine articles or whatever, and then get stuck in your craw years after reading about them...

Cell Phone Story Maybe

Would you believe that I was like 12 seconds away from victory there? With the mission being, survive the onslaught for, however long. I'm going to try it again after this- and maybe a night of sleep as well...

So apparently it was only like last week that I got my major lead in the case of where my phone could have gone, based off of the fact that I didn't make a video last week but considered the topic. I'm no good at gauging time at all. Every so often I've been going onto my Google account and attempting to ping the location, like maybe magically the juice recharged or something?, but the login didn't work last time, so I had to look into it deeper. It looks like there was a new sign-in a month ago, hmm..., but attempting to call the phone yields no pickups, so I don't know what's up with that.

Didn't have location history turned on, but looking through my normal web history for that account, even just seeing what videos I watched on YouTube to see if I could spark a memory of my circumstances around my last seeing my phone, it turns out that the weather alerts come with GPS information attached, the precise location of the pertinent weather. This GPS information can get way accurate- down to the precise address.

The last weather alert was from the driveway of a house just a block down from the church. The phone was... well I don't know the story, but the last I saw it would have been around the meetings pertaining to the Christmas pageant. The address in particular isn't the home of a member of the church- but both houses neighboring are members'. So I'm going to poke in there and ask, before approaching the true address that it should be. Because I'm really not sure how something like that would have happened.

blogpost with many ??????s

My mom has been posting more than me this month and that's (with the idea that I'm "supposed" to blog every day and she's "supposed" to blog every week) a problem. But like so, maybe the problem is that once a day is too little?? With all the social media that I "should" be doing (and oh btw I've got a lead on the location of my two-months-missing cell phone but haven't told my mom yet because well I was gonna, almost did when I figured it out, called her over but she didn't come so I just sort of dropped the issue (this was like a week ago maybe? bad with gauging time)(oh man is it Feb already?, where did Jan go)) you'd figure it should be easy but well...

okay so like the thing I would blog about or whatever, that changes every 15 minutes, because the world is so big and wonderful that any conceivable thing could be worth spreading??? though actually I'm also very cynical of corporate interests???? and everyone's trying to get ahead which is just code for "get ahead at the expense of everyone else" but nonetheless I find everyone's struggles so eminently noble??????

and  I really feel like my pretzelize me cap'n could be so much more curated than this blog, which is also why I'm not posting there as much as I should because I'm not posting here as much as I should and it's tough to curate nothing.

Oreo

So I haven't posted in a week, which is all month, and I realize this, and I was just going to not post today either, but man midnight has been taking forever to get here, so I figured I may as well post right now anyway. I'm, well I've got all these ideas for videos or whatever, doing only one a week seems like I need to make it good or whatever, but which idea is best idea??, the one that's most recent... but I realized!! blog is good for daily thought.

Oreo the raccoon passed. :C

New Vlog

I didn't post yesterday because the clock in this room is like 7 minutes behind and it was past midnight so like whatever.

I've possibly told you about this blog before but Dan Wells is watching all of Babylon 5 for the first time and posting about it and I don't know what happened to his old blog but I guess it's gone man and ...? and he's gotten back to it for the first time in months so there's that (because Babylon 5 reasons)

http://discoveringbabylon5.blogspot.com/2019/01/episode-47-epiphanies.html

Brooding on War

I beat StarCraft 1 today, and am now on the Brood War expansion. After this, StarCraft II. But Brood War is a complete game to itself, with as many levels as the first game. It's called an expansion because... reasons, probably.

I'm on the second level, and I've figured out that the zerg are programmed to attack only once you construct a pylon- so I'm just harvesting all the minerals and vespene gas that I can before doing that. Pylons are what allow you to grow your population, so I'm just harvesting all with the four original worker probes that I started the level off with- it's slow going, but I can have the probes chugging away in the background while I watch Girls und Panzer in the foreground. 

It wouldn't be so bad to have the zerg attack or anything of course- but once they do then it's like... you have to be wary of attacks from then on. So this is just a strategy that I'm trying out.

Only the Crunchiest

Alex has a few more days left in his Crunchyroll trial, and so there's still a few days to-- well, okay, first of all, Crunchyroll is a streaming service that has a whole bunch of anime on it-- anime is Japanese cartoons-- Japan is this country in Asia-- dang I'm tired right now.

Even without a subscription you can watch episodes, just not new ones, and there's ads iirc. There's a new season of Mob Pyscho 100 and it is great and new eppies come out on Mondays which means a new episode came out today and it is great and. 

The books I have out weren't due for another couple of days but the library auto-renewed them today, early?, but now there's 0 renews left. I'll get around to those books after this trial thing is over and we can't get fresh anime anymore.

Further Twists in the Library Due Date Saga

Alright so looking at it it turns out that the DVDs WERE due when I thought they were but the library just, automatically renewed them for me. Like, oh dear, the check-out is about to expire, hold on there buddy I got that for ya. Which means that also, looking at it it appears that the library books also really were due when I thought they were, but it auto-renewed those for me as well. There's one more renewal on those books; better get around to actually reading them or whatever.

Further Adventures Brought to You by the Library

Cool so I had some DVDs I thought were due last week that I turned in on Thursday- but it turns out that they were due on Friday so I didn't turn them in late yay.

yeah life is fine how'bout u?

Even More Noteworthy Thing

It's a little early, and also a long ways off relatively, but it's definitely something on my mind, something relevant to today's events. Nothing changes faster than the future, there's nothing definitive and still just a thought, so I'm not sure whether to share... and I've got mixed feelings in other aspects of this too... but...

My brother-in-law won't be living here with us forever; in a few months' time they'll be off to school and stuff, and who knows from there. His work at the optometrist's office will thus leave a job opening, and talking about it today apparently I was brought up as a potential replacement, whether it would be a good fit for me and all.

Alright, let's just go over the mixed feelings. 

• I've never gotten a job through normal off-the-street go-to-a-job-interview processes, but always through nepotism of some form. I've noted this before, not entirely sure what I said about it then, but maybe there was something in there about maybe it's not meant for me to find work experience that way (connections are a huge important part of finding work, though maybe it's been a bit extreme in my case.) If I found a job at say Fox Peak Theatres, I'd probably lean at least some (if not a lot) on my sister as a reference- it would still be me gunning for that job myself.
• Also, with this distance out, and the expense put into it, this anchors me at home for, like, at least another year, this coming just a day after I write a bit about going back to schools somewheres. The only reason I talked about that and was thinking about that, though, is likewise nepotism, or that the subject had come up and tilted my hand.
• Mixed feel no 3: four or five months out still leaves me jobless up till then, and that's an awkward time-frame to gain temporary work for, going to a job knowing you can only be there a few months. Working afternoons/evenings at a movie theater, sort of part-time work that would still allow a day-time job eventually of working at an optometrist? That works.
• Also like I said, mixed feeling over whether to share this or not, because it's just a random tentative thing.

Anyway my fingertip under my nail is a bit tender from where it swelled up a little after petting those animals yesterday, so I don't want to write anymore.

Totally Random! Lulz (plus some genuinely noteworthy stuff)

I got to pet a cat today. Anda a dog. And there was one point where I was petting the cat with one hand AT THE SAME TIME AS I was petting the dog with the other. 

The technology available to us to be able to have like a grajillion tabs open at once, that's just fantabulous.

So anyway I'm looking into going back to school, like specifically film school? I have no money, but I'm also not in debt either, so no better time to become such! Dad informs me that UVU is supposed to have a good program, and I already love those guys, so...???

I wish that I had this energy in my videos, the same energy that I have in my head and am exhibiting now, bouncing from one topic to another. It's high up on my list of, ideal vision of what my videos look like.

Wednesday Jan 23

I'm not 100% sure why, but today felt really productive for some reason. I didn't spend all my time doing any one thing, but sort of spread my activities out over doing many things. I even played Starcraft for the first time this week, but only maybe half an hour of it. Also, prioritized. Didn't shunt my scripture study off till bedtime, but did it when I woke up so that that could be a part of my day. I'm also going to bed relatively early, instead of staying up all night procrastinating sleep!

My phone's probably in my room somewhere. I last thought it was in some pocket, then I went to bed, so, probably in my room somewhere.

Earth 51914

Today I've been doing a bunch of research on weird comic book trivia for no real reason other than to know it- going through a complete list of every designated reality in the Marvel multiverse; there are a lot but most of them only get passing mentions, and there's been a lot of media over the years wherein to make such mentions. You know those old Hostess snack cakes ads where Super Heroes fight criminals by tempting them with the delicious goodness of Hostess snack cakes? Spider-Man is dead in that reality, oh snap.

I'd been going to write more, but, man this is depressing; it really would have been nice to have been able to do more with my day.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go to the top of the mountain. And I have looked over.

And I have seen the promised.

(On) Arbitrary Conversations in my Head

Alright so I had a bunch of thoughts today that I didn't write down, random conversation snippets that came about as conversations because my thoughts were interrupted in the middle of the thing- were those worth writing down? Thinking about the appropriateness of neckbeards, noticing someone: "neckbeards are okay if-- who is that??" which leaves the other person desperately curious with a question of their own, "when are neckbeards ever okay?!" 

On fiddlers. The answer is on fiddlers. By the way.

And these conversations are fun, but so easy to generate they make themselves. And frankly super arbitrary. Is that thus still worth recording? 

There are also thoughts that play out so easily in my head because I go over the ground so frequently, need to express them out loud some time ever, which I can even whisper with great success but am not sure if I'd be able to replicate fully out loud and with a recording device noting my words. That seems a lot of work; do I even need to make note of them if they're so easily thought? Would a place to express them come organically, or would it be easier if they were written out to find places to put them?

So yeah just some more thinks about thoughts.

Not Enough Writing on Not Writing Enough

There's a lot that I don't blog here because I can write about it somewhere else, but then I don't write about it somewhere else either. There's a paradox there where the more locations I have to write down observations, the fewer observations I write down- probably also impacting my YouTubing.

Expect a new video next week I guess.

Although I Didn't Start Thinking in Portals, Tetris Effect Seeps into Reality

More and more frequently I'm thinking of reality in terms of video game graphics and mechanics- like, I only got a couple of hours of sleep last night and so my framerate is super low right now, that's how I think of it, I'm tired and my ping is super high. Playing League with a faulty connection, the game assets coming at you in non-real time and you just guessing the move you want to make based on old information but then the game flashes back to the reality of the situation and you weren't where you thought and you were attacking an enemy who wasn't really there and maybe you're dead but don't realize it, doing that then going back to the real world, time never works quite the same way after that, it's weird  that you can know of your own circumstances with certainty and it doesn't feel certain and at any moment you could actually be five minutes in the past.

And there's no saves in real life, no do overs. Though maybe we should actually act like there are. Maybe we should treat life in the experimental way that we do in games, like you just saved five seconds ago and now want to try something stupid, see if you can survive a frontal attack instead of sneaking around their defenses, it doesn't matter it's not like this is the real playthrough, you're just having fun. We need such boldness in our lives, such honesty.

But anyway yeah I've been playing so much Starcraft that I'm coming down with carpal tunnel and need to take a break. 

Duolingo Streak

Phew, just got my Duolingo for the day in, in the nick of time. I've been keeping it up for 79 days as of today, not missing a day since I started. I'm taking French and Russian: I've had French classes in High School but never really learned the conjugations; during college I did some Russian on Mango but can no longer remember my password for that. Almost plum forgot to do it for the day, but something somebody said on TV triggered a French word in my head, reminding me in time.

Musings on the Acquisition of Narrative Originality

Dan Olson's latest Twitch stream plays Vivendi's The Hobbit, which only a week or so ago I was searching around the web for let's plays of to refresh myself on how the lockpicking minigame went. I found what I was looking for, but there's a surprising dearth of material on the subject. So.

Thinking again about what makes stories original/creative, not in the worldbuilding or anything but in the tales themselves, the ideas they have and how they apply them (that's what reminded me to check in on Foldable Human, the reason he plays bad tie-in games, the unique quality that comes from nobody caring about the finished product.) Still no expert, it's a quest I doubt I'l ever reach the end of, but it seems to me right now: 

Super twisty plots could mean nothing; the only way to get the twists to mean something, when so much of the status quo is constantly being undone, is if the characters are placed in morally compromising situations/forced to choose in moral dilemmas. What they want being put at odds with what they need, is of course one way. 

The reason stories affect us (I think) is as reflections of our own lives, and sometimes, we flash back to those situations the characters are in, wondering what we would do.

Also what's the deal with EXPOSITION I'm trying to study the subject and seriously don't know. As setup for such story moments? But in a sense the story is the exposition itself, so...

The Killers - Land of the Free

Definitely their most political work to date. Getting a strong Jackson Browne Lives in the Balance-era vibe from it. And directed by Spike Lee, who knew. Thought it was worth sharing.

Slippery Slope

Season 3 of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events has apparently arrived, and I'm most of the way through, and it's the best of the three seasons I think. More dramatic, more funny, better visual effects. I've been meaning to rewatch Pirates 5 also on Netflix, to see if it's like as bad as I remember it or whatever, but Solo is on Netflix now and I love that movie, and it's a much better use of my time, but Piiiraaates... and what's the best use of my time, not just good or better? Probably not Netflix. 

I haven't arted any art in what feels like months. 

There's a lot that I want to change this year. 

Laptop Oofs

Oof. Adobe needs OS X 10.12 or later to run, like I've said, and I'm on OS X 10.10 like I've said, and the current version is 10.14 like I've said, and it's a free upgrade compatible with 10.8 or later like I've said... 2 gigs of memory, that works; 18.5 gigs of storage space, that works... but checking into it, doing a deep dive: hitting the little apple in the upper left corner, the first on the dropdown is "about this Mac..." this MacBook Air is from 2009, and it needs to be from 2012 or later according to the support website.

Oof.

2009!? That can't be right. I mean, I guess it can, but... Airs have been around for that long? 

January 23 2008. How about that.

Also I was expecting a DVD drive, but there's not one here. That's fine... I guess... The Amazon listing mentioned something about an optical drive. But whatever. If I wanted power, I could have went for an old Pro or an old not-Air; this is fine and I've somehow been genuinely calm about all of these disappointments.

Maybe it's still possible to get it to X 10.12, I mean, I don't need 10.14 or anything, just 10.12 but I'm going to have to do a deep dive as only the latest OS version is featured on the App Store...

In the meantime, iMovie is free I guess... FinalCutPro is $300, but that's cheaper than the Adobe suit in the long run...

Actually clicking on iMovie in the App Store, it needs 10.13 or later to run. double oof.

League works on this computer though at least. So there's that.

(The Creative Cloud App on Windows allows you to download and use old versions of the apps; I've been looking into that...)

Spot of Good News

Turns out those books I thought were due a couple of days ago are actually not due until the end of the month. 

Wooo.

Thoughts on Occupational Freedom

I passed my driver's license test two days ago, and like nothing's changed except for the fact that I haven't driven since then. I'm technically legally allowed to go drive places on my own, but there are never any cars at home and I don't have anywhere to drive anyway. I only seem to get anything productive done with my free time being limited; with my entire days open, as a deliberate choice, I'm taking in inputs a lot but saving all my outputs for when I won't be able to input as much, filtering it through some creative munching till then. This is my rationale, but it still feels like I'm accomplishing very little, and why would I ever change my habits; if I had a job I'd probably spend my downtime doing what I already do now, but I don't have any impetus to change. It's weird.

Meant to Drive to the Library Today

It's the tenth which means that I have books due today and I'd meant to renew them but forgot- libraries have websites, nowadays, only it turns out I've got no idea what my password is, so I'm trying desperately before midnight to enter in every password I've ever had but it only allows you to make five guesses at a time before locking you out for five minutes, and also the website does this weird thing where it does a soft reset every 30 seconds or so, so that your cursor jumps back to being in the username field instead of the password field. So, fun.

I'm Barely Dead

You know how I took the driver's test last month but failed and so we rescheduled it for today? And thus, you know how I took the driver's test today? And you know how you need at least an 80 to succeed? That's the score I got. And so...

It feels weird how non-weird this feels. Like I said, having a license is like death, because I've never done it before?

From here we can go in all sorts of directions. I still need gobs of practice, but I can legally do that on my own by now. But maybe, now that I can drive: jobs? And then money? And then as part of that: that camera lens, baby! I never explained why I want it so badly, but I got that laptop for Christmas instead, which (as spectacular and perfect as such a lens would be) is probably more necessary.

D.a?

The laptop arrived- D.a I think we'll call it, though I could still put it up to vote. I got confused during setup, and now system language is in French, and there are three user accounts having set up on it. English remains system manual of two of these user accounts. 3.1's hard drive is attached using External HDD Enclosure (which Instruction Manual style of English I'm writing with currently) (there's only one USB port) and it looked like I'd be able to use that the volume of 3.1 as the boot sector during startup-- in essentially having 3.1 on D.a, as of its OS. Restarting with this preference selected, nothing however happened, so I'm not sure if it really would work to do such necromancy. 

(Around) Exactly One Month Ago

I'm not entirely positive, but I'm pretty darn sure it was one month ago when I last saw my phone anywhere. Been trying to retrace my steps and thinking where I might have lost it- it was in my pocket, and then I woke up and looked for it and it wasn't in my pocket, but I figured okay it's just in a different pocket, and the phone's battery had run out by the time I realized it must have been lost lost.

So thinking about all the things that happened exactly a month ago. The seventh of december was quite an eventful day.

• mom's b-day
• smash bros ultimate came out; played a lot of that
• also the day the avengers trailer came out, maybe that's important

Not that I'm positive that it was the seventh that I misplaced it. For sure I had my phone on wednesday the fifth, because I didn't Instagram that day though definitely should have. (I haven't Instagrammed in over a whole month, but it's definitely not the longest stretch it's been, so that's alright.) I may also have had it on the eighth, which is the day I recorded my SpongeBob YouTube video. There was a lot of going back and forth, getting a lot of takes; I woke up early that day, spent a lot of time in the living room recording...

So yeah there are a lot of options, but I've been pretty thorough in my investigating them. It has been a month of searching. And I really don't know.

EDIT: It was actually the sixth that I recorded the SpongeBob thing; 18 years to the day after the Christmas special premiered. I thought it had premiered on the eighth when it had actually been the sixth, and so though I did record on the correct date, in my head that date was the 8th.

Another thing I misplaced is, I lost Kerrigan this evening playing Starcraft- not lost as in she died (the mission would have ended immediately had that happened); I just literally misplaced her. Our base was under attack and I needed to get her out of there, and I clicked her away to someplace, and... misplaced her. But that's fine, right, that I can't find her, because it's not as though I need to do anything with her after exterminating the Protoss-- what's that? I do need to do something with her at the end of the mission? Well nuts. 

(She was where I thought she might have been, in one of our Overlords. Must have clicked her into one in my panic. I figured as much, but finding the exact Overlord was a bit of a chore.)

Blizzards Lead to Slippery Slopes, Who Knew

Just, like, practicing driving a few days ago, Wednesday or Thursday, and parked outside the school while Dad grabbed something from the inside (come to think of it, not driving at the time, in the truck we'd driven to town in to pick up the car which was parked at DQ while Alex worked and anyway) sitting there suddenly feeling like playing Starcraft for no real reason, just a random jonesing to play this game I'd never played before in my life. I'd played Age of Empires and Empire Earth before, maybe a few more, and I've been researching a lot of RTSs lately for some reason, tracing the evolution of the genre and how it birthed other genres after it and deepdiving into the gamechangers that are woefully obscure anymore*, and I don't know how I got on this path but it's a fascinating one.

Starcrafts I and II being free-to-play now, to tie in with some remastered editions and stuff... And Kaellen saw that Starcraft was on Battlenet when it was open and asked if I played it; I might have forgotten about it if not for that. But I remembered, and I've gotten into it. Hard.

So yeah I've been investing a lot of my time lately cranking through the campaign modes both games; I'm on Zerg level three of the first one, playing a campaign through all three major races, and there's the Brood War expansion I need to play through before I reach even the second one.

And then maybe after that I've really been meaning to get into Heroes of the Storm, because its take on the MOBA genre is just mindbending, the things they do with it from what I've seen...

Most Certainly Not Life Lessons from Starcraft

I am just terrible at Starcraft and well I guess I'm learning from my mistakes but it's quite the investment to do so. Rolling with punches and getting back into it again even if that means going all the way back to the beginning and doing it all over again (and are we doing this, I thought we weren't doing this, my "life lessons from Starcraft" thing was going to be a different thing, switching the topic then.) I want to go write in my private journal now actually so see you later.

Timing of Ideation

My head is so full of ideas right now. Right now the priority is just to get them out, and then sort them later: all ideas seem like excellent ones if they remain in your head; those possessed of an idea are many, but you only hear of the lucky ones whose ideas were as good as they suspected. Best to be possessed of no single idea at all, give your ideas life by releasing them, allow new ones to grow inside you instead, and sorting out their respective qualities under the later tutelage of perspective. 

It's a tricky balancing act, timing its leavening, the point between your idea being nebulous and still full of potential, and your idea beginning to slip away like a dream. Record too soon, and you squash the idea of the unwritten potentials that would have grown in rumination. Record too late, and too many of its precious rose petals have fallen away into the steam. This may be a life skill just as important as the creativity itself, but I'm no expert on this idea, having only just discovered it myself.

Anyway the idea is about Starcraft and how they have schools in South Korea specifically teaching people how to play at high levels and that's so wild, are there classes on the history of the metagame, can you major in playing Protoss but minor in playing Zerg? Do they have intramural sports teams or do they just play Starcraft against each other some more but as sports this time? A good player can execute 200-300 commands in a minute. That's 5 a second. I can't even blink that fast (I mean that's hyperbole but you get the picture.) It may seem silly and trivial but it's people doing things at mind-bendingly high levels of skill, exactly what sports is meant to celebrate. And it's humbling to think about.

No ideas or anything connected to that, at least not of the creative type, but there might be a seed there, though the nature of these things is that there's no way of telling if our how it will germinate.

(Another thing about writing these down so early, sharing things like this at least, is that I don't know what I'm going to make a video about this week but just eliminated that as a candidate because it's no longer inside me begging to get out. I could still do a video on it, use those ideas and expend on them, but it's just one seed inside that apple.)

Construct Additional Pylons, I Guess?

The new microwave went kaput for no reason (government surveillance...!?) so Mom fiddled with the breakers and the microwave is de-kaput but the breakerage shut the computer off and when it turned back on it underwent automatic update and it's in the boat again in which it had been before the system reboot, which is ): but it still works and stuff. The D: is that I was halfway through a campaign game of Starcraft and had to restart because the computer shut down. I paused it while away, and wasn't around at the time of the shutdown because I was out practicing my driving.

My driver's test is one week from today. Dad's been forcing me to go out practicing driving in town with him every day so far this year. It's working; I'm learning a lot and getting more confident and stuff. Picking up quickly. (But am still being forced? What does this say of my work ethic, quick study but even things I enjoy I need extrinsic motivation? Idk just a rando thought.)

((Those are the only two things I've done today, Starcraft and driving. Not sure if that proves any points or whatever.))

Blog v. Video Hits

Alright so so far this year I've got a little over three hundred views, on this blog. 300 views in two days. Is there a way I can leverage this into YouTube views? Not from what I've seen, no. There is a very small click through rate on the videos I host, seeing as I see, both sides of the coin, the blog hits and the YouTube hits. The rate is basically zero. If there were any video hits from this blog, I know not of them.

This blog doesn't get that many hits, but it's still far more than my YouTube channel gets. (I've taken on, thinking about the channel in terms of a business. Though if I ever make money off of it, it will be years from now.) I almost have as many hits on this blog just over the past couple of days, that I've had over the entire length of my channel. It takes a while to build things up, of course; it's possible for my to be as prolific YouTubing as I am blogging, but that's not happening.

I could just make high-quality, engaging content, to up my viewer base (and/or to increase views embedded from blog,) but... I mean, I'm not planning not to, or anything, and I think my stuff is, decently, good... 

like I said, to justify the video format, what I've got to say needs to be more visuals-oriented. Requires planning. But the way my head works is like, if I write down the idea, then that "counts" already as being out in the world, even if nobody's going to see it. It's not that I lose motivation, but that I lose the urgency. Videos can't be urgent, they need to be planned. This blog is urgent, I do it every day. Maybe the editing is urgent, since it takes so long and I get it in so late, with the idea of getting in a video by the end of the week. But editing shouldn't feel like an urgent process.

(I don't know...?)

computer issues non-update

desktop: So the computer is, well there's this process and, well first off we got it working again, but the thing that you shouldn't click, got clicked, and reset the reset, so that we were back to the baseline, only, this time the system reset stops responding before it gets even one percent of the way through. Would go into detail if I remembered what anything was called.

Tl;dr nothing's changed, though something had it's back to the way it was.

Laptop: yep it's super dead. Trying to detach one board a from the other but the screw head was stripped, I could remove it by twisting but the connection between the two boards was delicate.

New laptop: Keanu Reeves????

Don't a know when a that's a gonna come.

1/2/19 UPDATE: desktop: now that I've it up in front of me: there's a popup that says sihost.exe - System Warning: Unknown Hard Error. That's what I was talking about. The only option out of it is to click OK. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you click OK. OK is death. We had the desktop working again and Kaellen clicked OK and we were in the same boat again with the desktop just not being there. I thought with the desktop up and rebooted, maybe it would be acceptable to click OK on that warning, but nope. Nope. Nope.

The reason the system reboot didn't work, the reason it froze at 1%, is because the system was already rebooted I guess? Because, I tried it this morning, (alright I just restarted the computer last night and gave up after I couldn't log in, but trying to log in this morning I remembered that you need to attempt a login first to this second useraccount that Kaellen tried making; (that useraccount is fake and you can't log into it, but you need to try to log into it and fail before you can successfully log into the main account: and then logging in should work)) logging in thus this morning and lo!: the desktop is up and working, though it took a few minutes for the taskbar to start working, and the start bar doesn't work if you try to click on it or hit the windows button.

laptop: the hard drive from 3.1 should be usable as an external drive on the new laptop coming. Ordering a, port converter thing from Amazon this morning.

new laptop: trying to learn the arrival date, looking on Amazon, order history, there's nothing there. What the-? It's under canceled orders for some reason. I figured it's because there was that other one from the other seller, which I accidentally added to the cart but might as well spring for the slightly-more-expensive-but-in-better-condition one, which we took out of the cart and that somehow counted as cancelling the order for the other one?, but that doesn't make sense; checking the confirmation email account it turns out the order really was cancelled... but only this morning. So ??? quite mysterious, quite mysterious. Ordered a different order of the same laptop, in the same order as the hard drive disk thing. Fingers crossed that this one doesn't cancel itself.

scrap snippet: perfect impossibilities

There's a lot that I want to say on my YouTube channel but that's okay I guess when the thing I have to say isn't particularly suited for a visual medium over any of the other things I want to say. I can go to my Pretzelize Me Cap'n! blog but that also feels like it needs to be more official. So here's a thing, scrap of thing really, and maybe I'll have other use for it one day but it'll be here for now till then:

It's weird how some things would be so perfect, but then turn out to be impossible for the exact same reasons that they would be perfect? Let me give a couple of examples.

Like, it may seem a shame that David Bowie died before he could play Tamatoa in Moana, instead of the character being played by Jemaine Clement, but the only reason "Shiny" was written so Bowie-esque-ly is because it was inspired by Bowie's passing itself, and there's no conceivable world in which Bowie would thus even be around to play that glittery boi. But Jemaine Clement is cool too, so there's that at least.

Or the neighbor kid in Spider-Man 2, (looks up,) Henry Jackson, how they wasted the opportunity for that random neighbor kid to have been Miles Morales instead- only, Miles Morales was only invented after Donald Glover wanted to play Spider-Man because they were replacing Tobey Maguire after Spider-Man 3, and Henry Jackson could never have been Miles Morales, and Henry Jackson is from Queens and Miles Morales is from Brooklyn besides. You totally know, though, that Henry Jackson is probs gunna be some Spider-Person swinging around the future of Earth... (looks up,) 96283. Like, maybe.

New Vlog Up

https://youtu.be/DA3Z3n5iZbQ
This randomly generated URL is not bad. Can dig, can dig.

The thumbnail I made for the video is my best yet, and the editing isn't too shabby on this one either; my vlogs get consistently little hits, but that's fine, I didn't have much to say this month.

A.0?

The new laptop will be coming in anywhere between like the beginning of next month to the end of next month. 3.0 is so far on its last legs that it's at 3.1 by now I'd say, and I may never get it working again. If I do get it working, that is to say, it will be by getting it back to 3.0 again somehow. It doesn't even bother flipping to the BIOS screen when I boot it up; it's asking for my keyboard layout preferences at the start. Awesome.

Haha, I got it to the BIOS screen!

In the meantime, since I'm getting a new... nuts, it's at the keyboard layout selection screen again... since I'm going to get a new laptop (at a price greater than the fisheye lens... but I really do need a new laptop, I just proved it with the 3.1 stuff, so nevermind...) it's going to need a name as well, not 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever. Maybe A.0? Or something? I should start another one of those polls, like how I did with the 2.0 branding...

And this time I'm going to have the background you voted on! Never actually did get around to it on 2.0...

Ssusspense

watching greak british bakeoff and how do they get it so watchable? that's hwat I'm tryign tto gifugre out suspense but you still want to see what happens before 'what happens" happens so that criteria for what happens makes sense. the editing as well is jjust topnotich. rewatching some of my stuff my edititns's been getting bnetter at least.

Continuity is evidence against lady last Thursday, but deja vu fits into continuity??

Had a third idea but can't remember it now. 

Super Smash Family

There was a family reunion Smash Ultimate tourney this afternoon. I came in third place somehow. There were some pretty major upsets.

writing right now is physically painful to me. i'm going to bed gnight (maybe update this post in more detail later)

EDIT Alright so I've got motivation to write right now but not this. Uhm I got a dairy queen blizzard mini, for free (coupon was third place prize.) I started off facing against a number one seed, when I was third seed- coming in third place probably won't change my seed rankings, because I'm still definitely third seed tier, but well I am a lot better one-on-ones than in multiplayer FFAs.

Snippets (on) Wisdom

Alright, so let's... there's only a few days left in the year now, less than a week, but if the rest of the year has been an indication this week is going to last two somehow. Things are so strange.

I have a lot to say but none of it really belongs here. Snippets, maybe. Wisdom doesn't exist for its own sake, not even as a practicality so much as a guiding principle. We call wise those who speak of love because loving is something we do every day. Wisdom requires us to worship, in order to appreciate it or in order for it to be wisdom. But in order for us to take wisdom into ourselves we must also open ourselves up to take folly in as well.

My dreams haven't been as strange as they should be; it's my waking that's strange, but these influences don't offer up immediate strangeness in itself. Seeds for later.

Any detail could save a life. Pray in all things that everything you do has wings of its own.

Christmas Card 2018

Scan turned out a lot crisper than I was expecting. It almost makes me want to add in a layer of digital coloring...

twas twasn't it

I think I know where my phone might be (I've been missing it for like half the month??) so that's good. I was worried about doing a Christmas card each year (and this year I could IG that!! but alas, no phone) but that's acceptable to do on the day of, so I'm going to bed peace y'all (no pun intended, but, peace!)

"C O N T E N T"

b r a i n w o r k i n g

so trying to vid-a-week i guess only two videos this month though TIME TO VLOG but really should still be working on C O N T E N T otherwise; writing future videos etc (other blog has answers other blog k  n  o  w  s  ) really focusing ideas to get audiences to care, studying building channels and all that

is this what i'm d o i n gw i t hm yl i f e good question

okay time to give up on all dreams i guess

right now i feel like doing NOTHING it's a bad time to plan the way that shopping on empty stomach is bad time for that except opposite. shoppinglist this is

all i want out of life right now is to make it through christmas. plan later.

n ewy ea r s??  ?

Shepherding

The nativity pageant thing is over. I played a shepherd in it for, each performance that I was in, which was all but one. I think I'm the only one who cared that much about historical accuracy in the pageant, wearing sandals instead of sneakers and taking my glasses off for the performance, but it is what it is. I got to shave my neck now that this is over (shepherds didn't shave their necks back then, like, probably?). I'd been going to trim my beard further but this is good and feels good and looks good and maybe I'll keep it fuller.

Weird to think Christmas is only a few days away.

YouTube Vagaries

You know those vague technical problems I ran into but can't talk about? They're good now. The project isn't over with, but we can continue with it. I want to talk about YouTube stuff now.

Doing a video a week but not having time to really record anything this week, not anything cohesive that is; I'd wanted to talk about Spider-Man once I'd seen it, just a hot take on that which I'd be able to edit together quickly, but I wound up not seeing Spider-Man yet and you know how that turned out, and I could do something on Aquaman similar but that's so complex I would need to focus on one specific element or something, instead of the gestalt of the thing but it's too compact for now.

Building up an audience I need to figure out who that would be, and why they should care, and that's more difficult than it sounds. Similarly to the Aquaman thing, I need to find some common thread to focus on, pursue that. Research the playing field. Find an entry point. Et cetera.

Fresh AquaMan Hot Take

I watched Aquaman today. Spider-Man will be on Saturday. 

Boy is there a lot to unpack.

It's certainly one of the most unique films I've seen in my life, and I'd like to believe that's saying something. I'd have to rewatch it if I want to articulate exactly what I mean when I say it's not quite like anything I've seen before, but it's a loooooooooooooong movie, so I'm not champing at the bit to see it again too soon. And it is a lot like things I've seen before, of course, like watching it I'm going, hey I understood that cinematic technique, I see what you did there, deal, but. It is a pretty unique dang thing here.

Like, TRON is a lot like Star Wars in a lot of ways, but it's the only movie that looks and feels like TRON, you know?

It's not so much throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, as, throwing everything at the wall and not caring if it sticks or not. And it is glorious. The director James Wan got his start in horror films, and people who started in horror are some of my favorite directors, because for some reason they just, first of all have the craft down pat, and know how to work with the artists and craftspeople under them, but also have really fresh takes on everything, know how to maximize the creative potential of any given property and any given scene. Peter Jackson. Sam Raimi. James Gunn.

Aquaman is also unique in that it's very much a product of its time. Like, it could only ever get produced now. This age of cinematic universes, and mass-scale special effects, and learning from what went wrong with other fellow DCEU films and what went right with other competing MCU films and just going gonzo at worldbuilding the way the Mummy did, RIP Dark Universe. While also feeling like the cinema of a decade ago, the Avatars and Dark Knights of the landscape, with 2+ hour runtimes and epic plotlines and dense worldbuilding (the thinking being, the longer the runtime, the more we can monopolize the movie screens, maybe put this movie on multiple screens in your cineplex if you want more showtimes, leaving fewer screens for our competitors. Business! (Show business!)) (Maybe they're doing it here because Aquaman is the only DCEU film to have come out this year, and so they need to cram this one movie to bursting with all the DCEU they can muster?)

And like there's no way this movie didn't cost a billion dollars to produce. Look at the hairs flow! CGI flow like that doesn't grow on trees!

Thea'r Work

buncha second gears wanna come in here I'm their little field trips and eat out popcorn and but or concessions. And watch their fieldtrip movie. Just Grinch, but there's Spider-Man tomorrow. Finally.

Wishlist

Mom's getting on our cases about getting her our wish lists; I'm hosting it here because I've got links to preferred vendors. Mostly I want video equipment, and that can of course run the costly side, but I think I've found some pretty swell deals.

Samyang 12mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS Fisheye Lens

Rode VideoMic shotgun microphone (just the mike is fine though I wouldn't mind with boom mount, "dead cat" windbuster, and cable)

A new laptop for video editing etc- or, old laptop really, I'm thinking an Apple this time, looking at used MacBook Airs (link on Amazon to what I have in mind; that second guy has good quality and $0 estimated tax!)

So yeah.

Avatar! (The James Cameron One): The Theme Park: A Video Essay: An Analysis

This came out a week ago. It's a long video, about 56 minutes I think, but this is good stuff. The kind of stuff (not the exact kind of stuff, but the quality level) that I want to produce. So let's dissect it a bit, shall we? 

The video quality is only pretty alright, not terrible or anything but pretty baddish (she's not that washed out in the video itself as in the thumbnail, but she is just as vaguely not-quite-in-focus) but the audio quality is great. People are willing to forgive middling video quality; it's all about the audio quality. (How was the audio quality in my latest video btw? I ran a noise reduction to remove the background hiss, and I think it turned out well.) There's very little music, none non-diegetic except over the credits. (I experiment with music in, music out. I don't know. I could see arguments going either way, in my own videos.)

The editing here is awesome, on a macro and micro scale- she's not afraid of jump cuts, and she places them well. The flow from ideas to idea is coherent and well-segued. The ideas themselves are well-researched, but the content only relies partially on academics. A lot of the information comes from personal enthusiasm on the subject matter; most of the runtime deals with personal experience.

Presentation-wise. She's both humorous and informative. 

I try to inject humor into my videos. And also like, information. Both of these things I excel at in real life, but neither of which I can quite translate to any of my videos with any consistency. Make that, any success at all. Need to curate that better, but not sure where to begin. A lot of my humor comes out in interactions with others, what makes others laugh, and also other people giving me a springboard to bounce lunacy off of. The things of my own which I find side-splitting may not translate to others even realizing the inherent humor. And I know the things I know, so of course I'm not sure what information would even be valuable to share with others, or what things people just sort of already know.

Though of course that's an effective content model, listicles of things the audience already knows. So that they can say, "ha I knew that," watch the video or read the article to see if their own knowledge of the situation gets brought up, if their own opinion is shared. (Do people already know that that's why they read listicles? See man this is hard. I don't know if what I know is like common knowledge or what, which is why I usually do vlog things. Because I like vlogs the best, on the channels of hosts I care about; and also because of course such-and-such a personal detail of this last month is going to be unknown to the audience. It's low-hanging fruit.)

Also, she's got loads of Patreon patrons. Loads and loads and loads. Just, like, loads. But less than 400k subscribers. There must also be a content model, some effective business plan on how to maximize social networking content, but that would require further digging. It's something I've been meaning to look into, how different channels effectively use social media platforms. 

On the Growing of a Channel

My YouTube sub count grew by 50% this evening just by Kaellen and Hannah subscribing. I may have more YouTube subscribers than followers on Instagram; I don't know, I haven't had my phone to check.

I was taking photos for their Christmas card and Kallen just asked me if I was working on a project involving SpongeBob, he'd heard somehow, and so I him, and they both looked it up separately then and there, and we just sat there for a few minutes as they went through a couple of my videos with me just sitting there instead of taking photos, them watching my videos around me. It's a weird experience.

I'm not sure why I don't tell more people or whatever. It feels like I should be actually doing things with it. It feels like I could be a little bit better, on writing and directing and acting and editing and videographying everything. Just a little bit better on each of those, and then I'd be ready to share my stuff more. 

And the videos themselves being viewed by and through other eyes. It feels simultaneously too personal and not personal enough.

People watch YouTube on their phones a lot. I need to keep that in mind from now on. I'm not sure how that would affect anything any different, but it does make me feel better about my latest thumbnail; it actually looks pretty good on mobile, when I'd been thinking, on desktop, that it could have been a little bit better. 

The act of shoving the content out involves loads of compromise, but learning to make that compromise was part of my making a video a week in the first place now. 

Next vlog title idea: "Now where did I park." Eh?

New Christmas Video

It's been two weeks, on a one-a-week ideal schedule; I severely underestimated how long it would take for me to edit everything together, and also my idea of what the video was to be shifted several times through the creative process. Maybe I'll tell you more about it on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!
My First SpongeBob (Hospitalized at Christmastime)

?????feel liek tiping lik this

Like I wanna go see spider mans but like im the shepperd in this live action nativity pagenat and like i'm not even sure the times on that so like its so hard to schedule stuff and like CRAP why do things have to be so difficult 

i havnt see my phone in over a week now i dont know were it is 

Comparisons Between Driving Tests

I failed again. It gets easier and easier. Today marks six months to the day since renewing my learner's permit, but it doesn't mark its end. It's fine; the only downside is that I have to wait to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse tomorrow instead of today, because there was nobody to drive me into town (or more accurately, nobody to drive me in and back out again.) I guess it might as well be time to review what I need to fix for my rescheduled appointment next month.

My first driver's test, I kind of went too fast, didn't slow down, still think it might have been the slope of the road causing me to roll down faster and not slow as fast; this time, I think I did a pretty reasonable job of staying within the speed limit, but my decelerations left a lot to be desired. Waiting way too long, when pulling up to a sign or a light, to start slowing down. My first driver's test, already going to flunk, I was still asked to try and parallel park; this time, not even.

My second driver's test, pulling out of the DMV parking lot at the start and failing because I pulled in front of a car down the road (it was very very far down the road, so I'm still not sure why she instaflunked me for that); this time, pulling into the DMV at the end, I overshot the parking lot and had to pull into the parking lot of the hotel beyond instead, then back out and try to make it back in again.

Traffic has a massive butterfly effect, effect, but it's nice to know that I still probably would have failed that second test anyway, seeing how I failed this one more than five years on.

A Brief History of Driving Tests

My driver's test is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at 3:30. I'm trepidatious.

I honestly don't know how solid my chance is at passing. I'm either going to pass it or I'm not, which means that to the best of my knowledge it's like 50-50. That really is how statistics works. It's wild.

You need to be able to parallel park, and I've done that before, but I'm nowhere near the "don't practice until you get it right, practice until you can't get it wrong" zone. My first driver's test I instaflunked that section. I did manage to parallel park, but I pulled up partially onto the sidewalk to do so. I'd accumulated enough frowny points by that point that I would have failed the test regardless, but this was icing on the cake.

The second time I took a driver's test I instaflunked as we pulled out of the DMV parking lot. I'm probably some sort of record holder for quickest failed, so that's one positive out of that situation at least.

Passing my driving test is like dying. It's something I've never done before.

Solid Salad Day

Blastin' through the Foldable Human let's play archives. There's a lot of material there so I don't think I'll ever get the 100% completion achievement or anything, but I've already taken a huge chunk out of the backlog. Finished the Undertale pacifist run let's play just a few minutes ago; he said he was going to do genocide route next but that was three years ago by this point. Has Undertale really been around for that long? Guess it's not that long in comparison to other things, but.

Anyway, though I didn't really watch any less let's play today than the last few days, it's definitely been a lot more productive of a day for me. Today felt really good, really solid.

Folding Video Games

I have been watching SO MANY DAN OLSON LET'S PLAYS lately. He streams every Monday on Twitch, hosts archived streams on his YouTube channel (most unlisted but accessible as a playlist) and has a  super obscure secondary channel I only discovered today that has even more archived streams, not unlisted but with not-that-many hits on any of them, this super obscure thing. His main channel is mostly about movies, but he plays a lot of video games as well: he likes to stick with more obscure, kinda crappy titles when he plays, generally movie tie-in because of course; as a sort of archive of all this ephemera that would otherwise be lost or else overshadowed.

He also streamed his playthrough of Undertale for the opposite reason, because it's so good.

Today he played that crossover fighting game that everyone's talking about: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale! I actually kinda like that game but yeah it sucks.

https://www.twitch.tv/foldablehuman

Input/Output Balance (and other balances in general)

I think the technical difficulties I was talking about yesterday (and the other, unrelated technical difficulties which I'd decided to work around later) have been fixed. Sweet! Now onto talking about other difficulties I guess?

I haven't posted a really hardy post on this blog in a while. I just need to outcrease (increase my output!) in many media generally, but I've been caught in a rut lately of falling back onto familiar, input-based habits instead of artistic creative output-based ones. Even during NaNoWriMo, my non-writing time was just awful in terms of input-output ratio. 

I really don't know how to solve this problem, other than perhaps gamify my outcrease, hack the parts of my brain that just want to fall back onto small trivial tasks to get them to work toward large non-trivial ones? I've looked vaguely into gamification as a lifehack, but no one app or system really stood out to me. It needs to have a good balance, for one; not just the way it fits into one's life but in the way that intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation needs to be balanced. A lot of these cryptocurrency things look really kinda pyramidish to me.

Even reading my scriptures daily is at this weird zone between active and passive, too involved for casual input such as YouTube watching but too passive for involved input such as gaming.

If I go to bed right now, it will be the first time in days that I'm going to bed before 2:00 a.m.

Vague Technical Difficulties

Oh gosh that may actually be a Christmas spoiler so never mind. I don't know who all reads this. But in as vague of terms as possible (but you don't even know whom the gift is for, so I really don't need to be that vague, because even if you knew it wouldn't really be a straightforward guess beyond that) there are some technical difficulties, and not just because 3.0 is so far beyond being 2.1 anymore, but other truly baffling computer problems. You may think I'm some kind of tech expert, but 90% of the time I'm just as baffled as you; I just push forward and find the obvious solutions and stuff. And a different machine entirely would be the easiest thing to do, in this situation. Which tech wouldn't be that easy to track down anymore, so it's not thaaat easy??

Driving and Unskills

Been "busy" playing Smash Ultimate, which came out yesterday. There are a few things I need to do. Taking my driver's test in less than a week now. I failed the first two times I took it, but those were years ago. I now what fails you instantly now; I've done basically all of those. Driving around occasionally, for practice, there are frightening gaps in necessary thinking patterns; my instinct is to slow the car down when there's a dispute at an intersection, instead of speeding up, and it's kind of a miracle that I haven't been t-boned three or four times over by now. I'm not very good at the things I'm only just starting at, and apparently at the things I've practiced hours and hours at either. Even the things I think I'm good at, or I should be good at, I'm not very good at. But I guess maybe that's like the Dunning-Kruger effect. Or maybe the WHAT'S THE WORD FOR IT ARRGH the thing where you only show your greatest work to others and feel like a pretender and a fraud all the time in the presence of other artists?? Whatever that is. See, I just proved the, thing. However.

imposter syndrome, that's it

oh and see also the peter principle? that's another one that may have effect

metaphorical cordyceps

I don't want to be ready for anything. I'd rather spend  my time doing merely the technically productive, instead of actually producing anything. They're very good at hijacking your brain. Like the fungus genus Cordyceps, but looking it up now, what it's doing is hijacking the body of the ant directly, circumventing the brain entirely? So never mind. Other than, I learned about Cordyceps through meaningless puttering around, so, it is a necessary part of my creative process. Like I said. It's technically productive. But it only enlarges the hole of I-should-be-doing-something.

Like, Instagramming? I said I'd IG twice a week, and Wednesday would be perfect for that, but I didn't post anything. Hurh.

And Pretzelize Me, Cap'n hasn't been updated since the beginning of October.

Do you think that adding another social media account for me to do will make me more likely to social media ever? Or like would it do the opposite? Because tumblr is... aw heck, never mind, not tumblr. But as a, medium. As a canvas. When I can't even with the others. nvm

Apparently with most people it's that they social media too much??? My goodness.

Or maybe that's also just a distraction. Maybe it's good that I don't ever social media. sure it would force some productivity into my life, a means to an end and not the end itself, but who needs that means either

in other news , with this computer (the one where you have to ctrl+alt+del and go into task manager in order to open anything because trying to open up windows explorer itself "references a token that does not exist") if you try to type more than four characters into the URL it exits out automatically, and if you so much as click on the URL if you're on a site that has more than four characters (read: all of them) the same applies.

weeeeird

New Video (Dec 1)

https://youtu.be/bGFEt2bpZDM

This was supposed to go up on Saturday- with the idea that I'm doing one video a week- but it usually takes me, longer than a single afternoon, to edit everything and upload it. Obviously I couldn't do any of that until I shot the video, and I couldn't shoot the video until December being too busy writing to get any video shot in between. I still need to do another video for "this" week, but I already know what it's going to be about and everything. Expect that on Saturday.

Alex says my thumbnails are getting better. More clickable. That's great news.

Music and Graph Paper

Thinking of adding music to the backgrounds of my videos; trying to compose my own but it's slow going arranging MIDI instruments to sound good. I've already a video or two with my early hands at it, and it doesn't sound very good!

Royalty free options are available; I already have a track from bensounds.com downloaded on my computer from the YouTube workshop from college, the one class I managed to attend. Did you know that incompetech.com also has royalty-free graph paper, for all your graph paper needs? I'm not sure if there are any companies out there charging for digital graph paper, but, if there are, it's also available for free, and maybe they should have considered that before they based their business model off of ripping people off for digital graph paper?

A lot of royalty free music doesn't sound much better than the stuff I come up with, so... there are some gems, but they require digging. Plus you have to match the mood to the content of your video and stuff? But it looks a lot more professional right out of the gate, with music.

Video??? (Blog!)

Meant to have a video yesterday but I didn't even get it in today. So??

Also wouldn't this be better for Pretzelize  Me Capn since its about that? Maybe. I decided today that that should be about graph design, and furry stuff.

Word Count Overshot

There was a ward dinner last night when I was trying to write, and it took a couple of hours but it was fine apparently because I made 50k by the end of the month (if you include The Funny Home in that word count, because I wrote most of that Halloween story, past midnight on Nov 1st technically...?) and that's only the words on my blog anyway, because I did fill in a few blanks in there into a copy of the first draft file directly, found the bracketed content and edited that, in chunks too small to bother posting up.

But I also wrote past 50k words as far as I could, just to be on the safe side, and I'll tell you the story behind that. This new crop of words, I also had a little bit of bracketed content, for one, and decided not to have that as part of my official 50k. For some reason. There were also a couple paragraphs of content I'd written previously, outside of NaNoWriMo, which I could interpolate into the bed of word count here though it didn't technically count as November word count.

And also the NaNoWriMo word count tabulator counts "*"s as being individual words, when Google Docs did not, nor was I intending for that to be the case. There were 69 of those in total, in the Doc.

So there we go. 155 words I needed to overshoot. And did so successfully.

There was, like, some stuff from Halloween, that I'd actually written in time... but it's impossible to say which is which, by this point, so, we're saying it was ALL November. Yeah.