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Date: January 3rd, 2020

Time of Writing: 7:04 PM

Weather: Unseasonably warm and cloudy.

Mood: Contently lazy.

Day Overview: Went to bed incredibly late, or early I guess, in the morning. Once again, I did not leave the house. My brother stayed home from school as well, but he didn't wake up until late in the afternoon. These days have been somewhat boring to write about because I haven't been doing much and I apologize for how boring they must be to read about, but I'm on vacation and I'm taking the time to just exist for a while. The next few days should be more interesting for sure, because I'm hanging out with friends and we'll probably get up to some hijinks.

On My Mind: I'm never sure about how personal to get in these blog posts. On one hand, the idea behind writing this blog is to take my prior New Year's Resolutions to keep a journal and hold myself publicly accountable for its execution. On the other hand, absolutely anyone can read this, and doesn't it defeat the purpose of a journal somewhat if it isn't somewhat personal? I'm lucky to have had some pretty relaxed days thus far, and I haven't seriously had many personal things to discuss, but when the time comes for me to share something a little close to my heart, I might just flake.

Consumed:

• The Consumer by Michael Gira: Truly one of the most deeply unsettling works of fiction I've read. I don't recommend this unless you're a fan of Gira's band, Swans, because in truth he is not the strongest writer and without the musical context a lot of this feels like posturing. There's plenty of easter eggs for Swans listeners, as lyrical phrases and the titles of songs appear frequently in the text. The first half of the book, The Consumer, contains short stories and writings from 1993 to 1994. These stories are of medium length and generally focus on the dredges of society, evil characters suffering from severe psychological problems and crippling addictions to drugs, money, sex and violence. Make no mistake: these are deeply one dimensional portrayals, and Gira is not attempting to romanticize his characters as anything other than disgusting, vile, wretched beings. The value in these stories lies in the starkness of their portrayal, the sheer evil they evoke, and the vivid pictures they paint in the reader's mind. Various Traps, Some Weaknesses, Etc., the second half of the book, is comprised of shorter, earlier writings. These are concerned less with a social evil and more with personal ones, hallucinatory diatribes on the nature of the human psyche. These were written in the early 1980s, and like Swans' output from that time period, they are raw and primitive in their violence. It is here that the book shifts from being off putting to actively revolting. If I was forced at gunpoint to pick a favorite story from this collection, I'd pick The Young Man That Hid His Body Inside A Horse. Definitely not for everyone. 7/10, though I am incredibly biased.
• Control, developed by Remedy Entertainment: Generally amazing action-adventure game set in an SCP Foundation-esque world with genius worldbuilding and really neat physics based combat. Some of the side quests are kind of dumb, but the main story is pretty great. As a longtime SCP Foundation fan, playing what is basically the closest the Foundation will ever get to a Triple-A video game was a great treat. I still have some post-game stuff to do, but I've completed the main story and seen the credits roll, so I'm counting this one as complete. 8/10.
• White Pony by the Deftones: I wasn't expecting to like this album nearly as much as I did. I historically do not like nu-metal at all. But there's something different about this album. Each song has a distinct musical idea and each song executes that idea fairly well, making for a varied and enjoyable musical experience. The album gets off to a bit of a rough start, but once it finds its footing it doesn't noticeably let up in quality. The guitars on this record sound pretty great, with something of a shoegaze quality rather than the sludgy effect in other nu-metal albums I've heard. The lyrics aren't anything special on of these songs and the vocals are sort of hit or miss for me, but I enjoyed this album a good bit. 8/10.

Produced: Wrote some revisions to that thing I mentioned yesterday because haha that got torn to shreds. Going to seriously rethink what I wrote. I sort of submitted the draft I had laying around without much thought and hoped I'd get through but the person who did my critique was not merciful in the least. I'm thankful for that, of course, but it doesn't make it any easier on me. Did a short update for a different thing, planned out the remainder of a story I'm serializing elsewhere, and wrote this post otherwise.

Other Thoughts: I have an empty brain today!