Back to the homepage.
Back to the index.

Date: January 16th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 6:41 PM.

Weather: Cold with scattered drizzles.

Mood: Fine, though itchy.

Day Overview: Woke up early today to see the new Smash Bros fighter reveal, which was sufficiently whelming. I don't mind Byleth as a character, since there's going to be six more DLC fighters. Knowing that there were more coming along was honestly the best part of the announcement for me. A few hours later I left the house to apply for a Passport Card. I'm hoping to go to Canada with some friends over Spring Break. The guy processing my application, whose name was Glen according to his nametag, seemed very done with his job, his life, and basically everything he touched. A lot of muttering the word bullshit but reassuring me when I apologized for doing something wrong that I wasn't doing anything wrong. I have a copy of my passport photo; it's in my wallet. I went to CVS afterwards and looked for some Crispy MandMs (nectar of the gods) to celebrate. They didn't have any of the ones in bags, which was a tragedy, so I settled for the crispy mint bar. The guy at the register was so nervous that he tried to make small talk about me eating MandMs. I relate, but I also detest. I went home right after that and putzed around watching YouTube videos for a while.

On My Mind: I don't understand how I can switch between being socially competent to the point of not being phased when something awkward or embarrassing happens to me some days, and then physically paralysed when I'm having a relatively relaxed conversation. Today I was absolutely fine despite being in somewhat close proximity to dangerous interactions (and that's as specific as I'm going to get), and yet just two weeks ago I was having trouble going up to someone that I knew was expecting me to arrive and give something to them. I'm wildly inconsistent as a person. The only thing that really grounds me is my writing, and I know I haven't been very productive on that front outside of this blog but I've blown way past the amount of stuff I anticipated having to say in each section a while ago. If you look at the post template you'll see that I set a soft limit on my Day Overview section, forecasting that each entry would only be a couple of paragraphs in length. I've had multiple entries that went over double that, and I don't see that trend stopping anytime soon. I'm glad that this habit has caught on as quickly as it did - I can't stop now!

Consumed:

• Pony Island developed by Daniel Mullins Games: Well this was a weird one. I got it on a Steam Sale a few months ago thinking it was a different game-that-isn't-actually-about-ponies (which is a sub-genre, believe it or not, of the Surreal Exploration category) but it wound up interesting, until I got stuck on a puzzle and shelved it for a while like I do with a lot of games these days. It's not even that long, it barely took me two hours in total. I didn't go for full completion, but there wasn't much bonus content anyway. The puzzles were alright. The story had less depth than I expected, but there was this one bit that was really cool where it does something sort of Psycho Mantis-esque (not spoiling the surprise in case you want to play it). A neat little experimental thing that I am going to install in a minute or two. 7/10.
• 2112 by Rush: It's worth noting at the outset that the lyrics for this are completely disposable. No way around it. These words are uncool as fuck. Anyone who tries to defend this schlock is first against the wall when the revolution comes. It's also worth noting that I first got the impulse to start writing about this only six minutes in. My patience for this album very quickly wore thin. My last note is that mainstream classic progressive rock has never been my favorite. I like King Crimson and Yes, but that's about as mainstream as I'll get. Led Zeppelin I can barely put up with. Rush, to me, just sounds like an honestly less adventurous version of that. The drummer is good (rest in peace) but deserved a better band. These guitar solos are absolute self-indulgent masturbatory schlock. These songs certainly do go places, but they aren't good places. This is why songs that revolve around the same few chords can be good, if underwhelming, because they have a concrete musical idea and center to revolve around instead of a bunch of random crap that sounds poorly cobbled together and linked by a really stupid lyrical idea. The stock Asian motif at the start of A Passage to Bangkok also fucking sucks, like wow, that's a quick way to destroy any hint of musical credbiility you might have, and the lyrics help none at all. Imagine being actually unsettled by the The Twilight Zone song on here. I'm going song by song because they all have glaring faults. No faults that actively disgust me or make me pause and reconsider my life choices, so it's not bottom of the barrel, but it really isn't good. 4/10.
• K-On!! Season Two produced by Kyoto Animation: Reviewing this now feels very strange to me. I started this in August, with the plan to watch one episode today along with a re-watch schedule on the anime subreddit community. I managed to keep up the pace, finishing the first season along with the planned timing, but when Marching Band Camp 2019 rolled around it completely destroyed any hope I had of finishing on time. Thus began the incredibly slow picking away at the K-On!! ore vein, bringing me countless riches over a long, long period of time. I decided tonight that I'd binge watch the last five episodes, so a lot of my thoughts are based on those instead of the season as a whole. Despite my offhand assessment over the years that the K-On! franchise was moeblob trash (TL Note: Moeblob means excessively cutesy), the show has a lot of heart and soul put into its presentation, with expressive character animations, lovingly drawn backgrounds, and real effort put into the actual music that the Light Music Club plays. The show is very entertaining, especially when it is in its more imaginative, less down-to-earth mode. All of the main characters are inherently likeable and generally hilarious - I honestly can't say which one is my favorite. While each one is seemingly built off of an exaggerated personality trait - Mio's shyness and reserved nature, Yui's airheaded disposition, Mugi's general weirdness and status as the heiress to a very rich family - they all feel real in a way that can only be done by really slowing down the pace of the show and giving them time to do a lot of stuff together, revealing details about their personalities and histories that wouldn't at all be obvious had the show been given any less time or effort. I did tear up at times, especially during the last five episodes. That said, there are some low points. While the relaxed pacing of this season helps flesh out the characters, it also makes really simple plotlines stretch to fill an episode. There are a few duds in here, and one of the reasons I took so long to finish was definitely burn out. Additonally, the appeal of this show is admittedly somewhat limited. If you, like me, enjoy Slice-of-Life genre anime, then you will enjoy this (if you haven't already seen it), but anyone who finds the idea of watching 4-5 high school girls sitting around eating pastries and occasionally playing music together for 40 episodes and a movie (still haven't gotten to that yet!) even slightly boring will not. The show is a lot more than that, in the end. It's a story about growing up, and it's a story about passion. I dunno. At its best it struck a great chord with me, pun intended, and at its worst I felt like I was chuckling while my eyes looked at the time until the episode was over. We'll see how my feelings change on this one, but since I gave Season One a 7/10, and I liked this season a bit more, I'll give it an 8/10.

Produced: A passport, lmao. Might write later but that's pretty unlikely to be honest. Gonna take it slow these next couple days, except for the big site feature coming out tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Other Thoughts: In addition to the new feature, I'm going to be trying various fixes for an organizational problem on the backend of the site in the next few days. Things might get a little gunked up, but if I can get things to work I think I'll save myself a lot of headache later down the line.