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Date: January 12th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 8:06 PM

Weather: Stupidly warm early on, slowly cooling down.

Mood: Slightly overwhelmed.

Day Overview: Today was another do-nothing day. Woke up around noon, stumbling out of bed, and collapsed in front of the computer ready to just exist for a while. Which I did. Watched an episode of some anime (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is very good) and then helped my Dad take the Christmas tree out of the house. I removed all the ornaments and then took off the string lights, and as I watched the pine needles fall all over the ground and later as I helped sweep them up I knew that if I'm every celebrating this holiday again it's either with a tiny Charlie Brown tree or a fake plastic one because that was a lot of work for no payoff. Real Christmas trees can wait until I have children. Which might well be never. After that, my parents went to the store, and I was left home alone with my brother. I coached him with a problem he was having with a difficult member of a group project, who was trying to boss him around despite being bad at the subject and runty and a year younger than my brother. Right now I'm sitting here at the computer about to read a new chapter of a web serial I read called Worth The Candle which is going to be item number one on my Recommendations List page when it goes up probably sometime soon. I haven't made much progress on the website in a while. Oh, I also paid the rest of my bill for next semester! Now I need to sort out the medical stuff for my finger injury from last Halloween (a story for another time) and how much my textbooks cost. Which will surely happen tomorrow. Today was a limbo day, and that's alright. It's gonna be fine. I'm gonna be fine.

On My Mind: I forgot just how noisy my house was. With my Dad back from his business trip to Miami, my computer perch in the dining room is caught in the crossfire between the living room TV and the kitchen TV or whatever music my Mom is playing. The worst part is when they're watching the same thing at the same time and I have to either put headphones on really loudly or deal with the slightly delayed television program slowly hypnotizing me into becoming a mindless cretin fool guy. It's hard enough to think with one TV on. I hate it. Honestly cannot wait until I get back to university where it's a lot more quiet. Interestingly enough, I have no idea if I have a new roommate to replace the one that transferred out last semester. We'll see what happens when it does.

Consumed:

• Dragon Half animated by Production I.G.: I don't understand why OVAs from the 80's had to be the anime that got a lot of effort put into them. If this was animated as is typical for today's anime this would be scored much lower, but even then this isn't really deserving of any real effort, it's a gag parody of some fantasy tropes but it isn't able to decide which ones. Also there's fanservice in it for some reason. I won't lie, I wasn't bored when I was watching this, and I thought it was funny a couple times, but the overall worth of this to me is pretty low. 5/10
• I Disagree by Poppy: The first album I've listened to this year that's actually from this year. You probably know who Poppy is from YouTube, but in case you don't, she's the start of a self-titled YouTube channel that for a while made these really short and sorta creepy videos with her standing around saying vague nonsense that sort of critiqued social media influencer culture before it was like, the hugest thing, and then she did some pop albums that were satirical in other ways. I haven't listened to any of the albums she put out before this, but I have seen a lot of her videos. This album some time after a series of allegations that Poppy's longtime creative partner, Titanic Sinclair, abused his former creative partner Mars Argo who he did a similar video series with. On release of this album, Poppy cut all ties with Titanic Sinclair due to these allegations, and the subject matter of a lot of these songs imply not only that Poppy struggled with the allegations for a long time, but that Sinclair continued to exert a similar influence over Poppy. This album blends sunshine pop with various subgenres of metal, and the effect is pretty great, actually! The duality of Poppy's character is fully realized in a way not captured by any of the prior videos I've seen, and the metal portions serve as a sort of metaphor for Poppy finding some kind of inner strength and fierceness, self-actualizing in a way that allows her to become stronger than whatever force has been causing her so much trouble (the album is not explicitly about Sinclair) for so long. The middle falls inwards a little and is less memorable but the beginning is startling and immediately attention grabbing and the ending is very heartfelt and beautiful. The metal bits aren't just for show either, this is some good metal from what I've heard. In the early half of the album, there's a bit of whiplash as the pop and metal sides don't quite ever overlap, but by the end they coexist, representing more of Poppy's realization of her own worth and her own unique creative voice. I enjoyed this, and it was a good album to start off the year with. 8/10

Produced: Got the profile approved! That meant writing another four hundred words or so to make up for things I missed. Now I can set about writing with other people on this site. Really neat! Last night I was coming up with some ideas for a new novel, which I mean to write sometime this year, but I realized everything I'd been thinking of had already been done, and that wasn't a good feeling at all. It's okay, no pressure, we're only halfway through January.

Other Thoughts: Wait, we're already halfway through January?