ELSEWHERE

It's halloween! We have a big bowl of candy, one (1) decoration to put up, and a werewolf mask to answer the door with (well, I have a mask to answer the door with, I don't think Lee or Erik would want to wear it). Maybe we'll get trick or treaters! I hope so but they're not particularly high hopes.

Lee and I are going to watch classic horror movies and/or the new Hellraiser series and/or Cabinet of Curiosities while we wait around to hand out candy. Some time before that I need to shower and some time before tomorrow I need to record some Arcadia lines

 
I have in fact burnt out on No Man's Sky now, though last night I went through with discovering a new galaxy. All the missions are feeling samey though so I'm going to put it down until I'm feeling like just wandering around planets again. Need to decide what I'm feeling like now -- maybe I'll pick Elden Ring back up, or Okage. I do need to get back to dot Hack and grind until I can beat the final boss but I don't think grinding is going to do it for me. I think I want something a little more engaging than mindless routine.

 
Might do a NaNo type thing just to get into a habit of getting words down regularly. Not into anything specific, just a count of any writing in any thing. We'll see if I have the energy to keep anything like that up

No trick-or-treaters, though Erik said he saw some on the streets while he was walking the dog. I didn't see or hear anyone at any nearby houses

I was thinking earlier about like, halloween cartoon specials, or movies, that show people trick-or-treating. And how the streets in them are just full of kids, huge groups going door-to-door, and how probably kids-these-days see that and think it's an exaggeration. 'Sure, people go trick-or-treating but no one celebrates it that much.' But that's legitimately what it was like when I was a kid

I also hardly see any houses decorating anymore, which I think is a consequence of the fewer trick-or-treaters problem. Why bother if no one's going to come see it? But on the other side of it, kids are less likely to come to your house if you haven't decorated, so.

It's not only an issue with COVID, or with people fearing their neighbours/neighbourhoods, or with people getting less into holidays in general -- it's also an issue with fewer people having kids. Fewer kids, fewer trick-or-treaters

Anyway, I want to decorate properly next year. Maybe we'll get more kids, maybe we won't, but I want to celebrate. Assuming nothing happens to throw our lives in disarray -- this year it was just monetary hurdles but in previous years we've been moving or just recently moved. Before that I was in Hell and not in a particular mood to decorate. Next year I want to go as all-out as I'm able.

 
I was in the mood for something "unapologetically horror" tonight that would be new for both Lee and I, that wouldn't turn out to be very slow-paced or very cerebral or anything. A real classic horror without necessarily being one of The classics of horror. I asked Nick for a recommendation and he said Nightbreed, which has very promising summaries, so Lee and I watched it

It is not what I asked for but it was a very fun watch. It's at least two movies in a trenchcoat, and very bizarre. I said during it that every time you think you know what's happening and where it's going, it zigs -- that analysis doesn't hold up for the entire movie, but it holds up for much of it. But the acting is good, the pacing is mostly pretty quick, and it's certainly original. A lot of very neat creature designs, though quality there varies a lot. It's not what I asked for, but I do not regret watching it.

After that, in bed, I flipped through video game options for a bit but just didn't find anything that was what I was in the mood for, so I looked Heaven's Vault up on steam to see how much it was -- $25, which is more than I can justify right now, but I also saw that Disco Elysium was on sale and that I could justify, so I bought, downloaded, and played a couple hours of that. That game has some fantastic writing, I'm really enjoying it. I did have to stop, though, so I can get ready to go to bed

 
Which I am going to do now. Some kind of NaNo tomorrow, hopefully, and knocking out some things I've needed to do. And probably some laundry, as a cat peed on my bed at some point.

I have knocked out the arcadia recording that needed to get done and now I'm going to play more video games

Disco Elysium is good! I intentionally went into it knowing as little as I could and I think that was a good call. But it's very witty, the writing is a delight, this is the kind of game I want(ed) SnowRPG to be. I could have written this and I love it.

The pacing is also really, really good -- I blink and two hours have passed. Which is why I ended up staying up much too late last night playing it, but hashtag no regrets.

I'm looking forward to playing it with different builds -- I want to play it as Jones, and I want to play it with Lee as Our Boy (Pearl).

But first we gotta finish our Ace Attorney playthrough (we're most of the way through the penultimate case!), and the new Rusty Lake game came out today so we've got to get that and play it together. And also the Made In Abyss game, at some point. And probably finish the other games we're in the middle of, like Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines and Lone Survivor and,

The good news is that the weather is cool enough, and going to stay that way, that Lee won't melt if he has to be in my room with the video game machines. The bad news is we also have many things we need to watch together.

That was a very satisfying sleep. No interruptions, just slept until I didn't need to be sleeping anymore.

 
Today I need to cut my nails and do some pickup in the garage. I should also walk down to the store but I'm going to put that off. Also apparently I need to give cashapp my new card info so I can pay rent and continue paying Lee back

 
I need to watch Wendell & Wild, but that's the thing, is that it feels like an obligation to do so, and I don't want to go into it with that vibe. So I've been putting that off, too. Part of it is that it's gotten enough hype behind it that it's pushing 'no fuck you' buttons when I see it recommended anywhere, and part of it is that there's just enough little warning signs that I'm not actually going to enjoy it that I'm a little wary. So I want to actually be in a mood to watch it, give it its best fighting chance, and not go into it already inclined to be annoyed by it.

I should be excited for it, and I'm a little annoyed that I'm not. Like it's already been a little ruined for me, by other people liking it, which is silly but there you go.

 
I've been mulling over a little twine game about being a field linguist who goes off to Kuris when the island is discovered, and is part of first contact with ketal. I was thinking serial story for it, but I think a game could be fun. Mostly linear, still just the story of it happening, but interactive. But it needs to percolate more

 
Continuing to really enjoy Disco Elysium, it's been a while since I've been this engrossed in a game. A little annoying that I can't multitask while I play it, as it's so text-heavy, but I'll forgive it. I am, however, not allowed to start playing it until I get some stuff done, first.

You would think multi-billion-dollar corporations could afford websites that actually function and aren't total ass, but apparently you'd be wrong

But I have successfully updated my card info I think everywhere I need to and paid off the first round of bills. I also cut my nails earlier, so that's that also crossed off the list. The garage is happening tomorrow when it's less balls-cold out there, now that I've gotten Lee to explain his plans for this weekend at me. So, tomorrow I bag up the pile of clothes that's ended up out there, make sure boxes aren't overflowing, mark off anything that seems susceptible to breakage if stuff gets stacked on top of it so Lee doesn't stack anything on top of them, and that'll be good.

We also discovered there's another, secret broken sprinkler head hidden in the bushes, so tomorrow or this weekend I'm going to cut a hole in the hedge and see if I can't fix that.

 
Lee got me a new coffee machine, so I tested it out tonight. It seems good! I mean, I don't really know what makes a coffee maker like, a good coffee maker aside from the fact it makes coffee, and this coffee maker makes coffee, so I guess it's a good coffee maker. I also dug out my coffee grinder, so I could know whether I had access to one before I bought whole-bean coffee, and discovered it was absolutely caked in old coffee grounds, but after fifteen minutes of scrubbing it's clean and still works, so that's also good. So I put in a subscription for the Awesome Coffee Club, because I'd been meaning to do that -- I hopefully like their coffee, I am very into the concept of being able to buy something that someone else has put in the work to make as non-exploitative as possible. If I don't, I do have a fallback company that I had previously done research into that seemed not-heinous, but man do I wish I didn't have to research companies and pick the least-bad option in terms of how downright evil they are.

I'm rambling. Point is, I have coffee access from my room, which will be nice as we get into winter. I do need to think of a good way to deal with the grounds, because if I throw them away in my room garbage, Oz will dig them out and overdose on caffeine. I can use some of them outside in my garden, but if I make coffee ~daily that's too much. So like, I'll have to just carry them out to the kitchen garbage, but find a way to stop Oz from getting at them between making coffee and going out to the kitchen. Like -- kind of defeats the purpose of being able to make coffee in my room if I have to go out to the kitchen anyway.

 
Lee and I watched some more Paranormal Park earlier, one episode of which had a weird focus on characters just straight up being mean to each other, which was weird and unpleasant; one episode had a focus on characters being mean to each other but actually funny and for plot-relevant reasons; and one episode had the main character just casually mention being trans, which was great and not what I'd expected. The first season heavily implies that about the character without outright stating it, so I had at one point googled if it's ever said or if it's left ambiguous, and got results about the character having a coming out moment with another character, so finding out that before that there's an episode where he just says 'This is hard because of how I'm trans' was unexpected. I don't know my exact thoughts on that but they're overall positive. The episode additionally had flashbacks to that character's childhood, and neither portrayed the character as a girl nor had anyone misgendering him in it, which was interesting and I think a good choice for the format, though I also don't know my exact thoughts on it. It's interesting living in a world where media aimed at children just, has trans characters in it, in ways that assumes the audience will know what that means and don't need any of it explained to them.

 
I need to eat more food. I'm going to go do that.

Been thinking, and it's seemed more and more likely, that Musk is tanking twitter on purpose and plans on doing the equivalent of selling it for scrap

Or he's an incompetent egomaniac, that's also likely

I would die for this man

Been trying to sleep but feel, extremely bad

An hour later, still can't sleep and still feel like absolute dogshit

blaahhh