I’m pre-writing this, because I’m thinking about it now, and I’m not sure that I want to get back into posting more often just yet. That’ll be one of the things I’m thinking about in the future. But this post is more about what I’m going to be working on by the end of summer.

As a substitute teacher, I don’t exactly have much to do between June and August. This means I could either get through my video game backlog, or actually do something worthwhile. So far, I have two ideas.

1. Music video
2. Table(s)

To be more specific:

A few years ago, I started visualizing a video to go with some songs. One in particular has stuck with me because the more I thought about it, the idea refined in my head until the video was about my grandfather’s last thoughts before he died. And then he actually died, and I told myself “I should definitely actually make this video”. But I convinced myself that, because I’ve never had a class in animation, and I was working on other things, that I didn’t need to right now. But that idea has never really gone away. And I think it’s something that, even if it doesn’t look as amazing as I can visualize it, it needs to get done, or at least to a point where I can get the idea out of my head. As of typing, I’ve written down big block timestamps, where scenes should change, and super general beats to hit, so I can start making thumbnail sketched. This will be animated, not filmed, because I definitely don’t have the budget for making some of these ideas work, and also if it’s going to be about my grandpa, I don’t want to draw anyone else.

As for the other one, I’ve been using my dad’s old drafting table as a work space. It’s a sturdy enough table, but I don’t use it for the things it’s designed for (the tabletop can tilt forward, and the laminated top was good for drawing but really should get replaced). I know Dad has made cabinetry, so there’s some experience with woodworking. I want to make, at minimum, a work table that is easy to disassemble for if/when I move out, but is also designed around the sort of projects I want to do, like integrated shelving, worktop electrical outlets, multiple flat files, etc. A lesser project is making a computer desk with similar customization, such as worktop USB ports, sliding drawer so it’s easier to get at the back of the PC, a spot for the Switch, etc.

Between these two projects, I should be able to stay pretty busy over the summer, and feel like I’ve actually accomplished something. Granted, working on the table will coincide with a bit of a room rearranging, but that’s the price to pay for having a space that fits you better.

Song of the Week: Starlight Brigade by TWRP ft. Dan Avidan. TWRP stands for Tupper Ware Remix Party. Their band members can be seen in the video in the other spaceships. They are: Doctor Sung, Havve Hogan, Lord Phobos, and Commander Meouch. The ninja is Ninja Brian, from Ninja Sex Party. This is what happens when people that love making music that makes people smile because it’s silly, decide to make music that makes people smile because it’s a good story, and they work with people that like to draw things.

Bonus Song: Reading Rainbow by TWRP, so you can see what they really look like when they perform.

I promise, this isn’t turning into solely an anime complaining blog. This actually reflects more on general storytelling, but it’s come up most recently in season 3 of Sword Art Online. The subject is: making up bullshit names for things.

The title of the third series is Sword Art Online: Alicization. I bet you’re wondering how that’s pronounced. Well, if you watch it in the original Japanese, I don’t think you’d ever know, because it’s made up. Thankfully, the English dub (which I watch because it’s on in the background and I can’t read subtitles while doing other things) gives us the pronunciation. Several episodes in. Not a good idea.

On top of that, the show continues to use a term called “fluctlight”. That’s not a fluorescent duct light, it’s a fluctuating light. Neat, I guess, but what does a fluctuating light do? Is that a strobe light? Maybe a traffic light? No, that’s a human soul. They describe it as such, and once that’s done, they’re set to use their new term for soul, instead of just saying “soul”, for the rest of the show. And that bothers me, because there’s a perfectly good, shorter word for “soul”. It’s “soul”.

This is by no means unique to this show, or this genre. Sci-fi and fantasy are dense with just throwing names and terms at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes, like in RWBY, they have to spend minutes of screen time explaining how their world works. A simple term like “semblance” (a superpower everyone has that’s unique to each person…maybe) gets brought up halfway through the season, and then hammered home, breaking the “show, don’t tell” rule of narrative. Sometimes, like in Skyrim, they drop name after name, term after term, with no context, and expect you to keep track of all of them. A guy just lists off all the major deities before you’ve had a chance to move. He’s praying to them, and they’re called the Divines, so that’s all the clue you have to who they are, but that’s it. Hope you remember them 25 hours later.

Now, sometimes you do need to have a weird term for something. Your space drama takes place on another world and involves the mining of a material unseen on Earth? Sure, call it unobtanium, and the native population probably need a name too. But don’t get too carried away. Fancy names for spaceships, parts of spaceships, new technology, alien words, etc? That’s a lot for audiences to keep track of. (This is not an indictment of Avatar, they actually do a decent job, since most of the new things they do are visually explained as well, like the USB hair)

Another thing that helps is adhering to “show, don’t tell”. Need to explain what a “semblance” is? Zoom in on the person using their superpower, have it lead to a gap in the fight, and have someone get big excited eyes and go “a magnetism semblance? Wow…” Hell, if you want to get really obvious without being hamfisted, and your story takes place in a school because I’m using RWBY as an example, have Semblance Gym Class. Actually, come to think of it, they were at a school for fighting monsters, and the one time they actually fought a monster during class time, it was indoors in a lecture hall. That’s a lesson you can learn from Hagrid.

Am I guilty of this? Probably. The hard part about making up bullshit names is that they make perfect sense to you, because you thought of them. I could tell you all about my griznop, and you’d have no idea what a griznop is because I made it up. For times like these, I fall back on the Advice for Supervillains: employ a 5 year old to sit at your Evil Round Table. If they can see a flaw in your plan, take their advice. Alternatively, use a trusted parent. Trust me, if your mom can understand what you’re doing, anyone can.

Song of the Week: Genghis Khan by Miike Snow (not a typo). It’s got a very interesting music video lampooning James Bond-style spy thrillers, and is also pretty catchy. And the idea of “get a little bit Genghis Khan” to mean “so jealous I want to fight for you” is an interesting metaphor.

Not sure what to write here. I feel like my life is getting into a normal rhythm again. I still want snacks sometimes. Saw some cinnamon rolls in Sam’s Club and got sad for a moment.

But I have to post something, or else the little voice in my head won’t give me the good chemicals.

So I’m going to complain about a piece of media I watched recently. No, it’s not about the podcast where we watch Academy Award winning movies, despite how poor some of them are in areas where they didn’t win (and sometimes a lukewarm area where they did). No, I’m going to complain about an anime on the internet.

Before you get out your most elegant straightjacket and roll out the red carpet to the limestone oubliette in your basement, I understand that complaining about an anime is fairly commonplace online, and especially this one. But I saw it recently, it made me upset, and I have to vent.

I’m sure that I’m not the target audience for Sword Art Online. To recap for those who have no idea what that is, it’s a show where video game technology has progressed so far that people can log into a virtual reality game from home, and play it with other people. In addition, the man who made the game rigged it so that once you log in, you can’t log out, and when you die in the game, you die for real. The main character is the best at the game, has unique skills that make him very strong, and the girls like him. So in all, it’s a show designed more for teenagers than adults that can piece these plot points together. I’m aware of that, I wasn’t expecting Fullmetal Alchemist, or Death Note, or something with deeper, serious themes. Think more along the lines of My Hero Academia, but a bit more serious. Also, if you want to understand anime, those three are pretty good standouts in some of the main genres that aren’t the weird and creepy genres.

Anyways, Main Character Boy defeats Evil Bad Man, but then Other Evil Bad Man kidnaps Generically Attractive Girl so she doesn’t get to leave the virtual world like everyone else who was trapped there for two years and he has to go into a different virtual game that’s about faeries instead of swords, and we’ve definitely fixed the problem with people dying in the real world this time, to save her. And he does, yay, and that’s season 1.

Season 2, Generically Attractive Girl and Main Character Boy are playing Game 2 when he gets a call from The Government. Apparently, there’s another another virtual game that’s about guns instead of faeries and swords, and despite the claims that they’ve definitely fixed the problem with people dying in the real world, someone is killing people in the real world, and only his Mildly Bullshit Skills, Awkward Stammering Around Girls, and Giant Neon Sign Stating “Shoot Me, Bad Guys” can save the day. But it’s not him I’m complaining about. It’s Generically Attractive Girl 3 (or is it 4, there’s a few of them in this show).

Full disclosure, I don’t know much about trauma. I’ve been pretty lucky to not experience it heavily myself, and I haven’t had much in the line of serious conversations with other people about it, so this is based on “does this make sense in general”. But here we go.

When she was middle school age, she was in a store that got robbed. The guy robbing the place had a gun, and she tried to save her dad by biting the bad guy. She wrestled the gun from him, and in the struggle, she shot him dead. You with me so far?

Unsurprisingly, having killed someone at a young age, and not being part of some deep Italian mafia (well, it’s a Japanese show, so it would be Yakuza, but whatever), she now is horribly terrified of guns. Someone points finger guns at her, and she freezes. A bit much, but OK.

She has a toy gun in her top dresser drawer, and at one point, pulls it out and holds it, apparently to see if this time, she won’t have a screaming mental breakdown. She has a screaming mental breakdown. This backstory is starting to get questionable.

In order to try and desensitize herself to guns, she starts playing this virtual world game about shooting people. She’s very good at it, discusses gun specs clearly and correctly, and sounds very cold and calculating when discussion killing people. This is where I started to have problems, and it’s something that’s pretty easy to do when you’re writing. You get two good ideas, and you put them both in the story, but you forget about how those ideas interact with each other. You can’t have a character both traumatized by firearms, but also who has clearly done the research into how guns work, and is fine discussing shooting people, even if it’s virtual.

Also, the main villain’s name, when translated into English, is Death Gun, so this isn’t exactly an intellectual show.

Song of the Week: Attack on Titan Opening Theme by Linked Horizon. This is from another anime, and while I’m not 100% on the content of the show, the opening song is really good. Also, while it’s common for these opening themes to have a bit of English to go along with the Japanese, the use of German is very interesting. Translated lyrics can be found here, in case you want to make sure that what you’re hearing isn’t too weird.

This diet has not defeated me yet. I will admit to having moments of weakness. You know how easy it is to get a cheeseburger here? And eating fast food burgers with no bun, lettuce or no, in the car is messy. But I’m soldiering through.

Here’s a hint. Give yourself the chance to indulge. If you’re on a diet that doesn’t give you the option to make at least a few foods that you actually like, then you either need a stronger will than I have, or you’re in the wrong diet. For me, there’s plenty of snack food that is keto friendly. Beef jerky, cheese sticks, pickles, olives. All great. But for “real” food, it’s mostly meat and greens, and I’m still not the biggest fan of rabbit food. So what sort of meat can I get?

Wings. Wings are fantastically keto, if you get the right sauce. And I already like a very keto sauce: parmesan garlic. And so, ladies and gentlemen…I made my own wings for the first time. And second time. I bought a lot of chicken.

Separating wings is a pain in the ass, and next time, I might just get the ones that are pre-separated. It’s not that much of a markup. The sauce isn’t quite as “one consistency” as what you get in a bottle, but then again, the sauce has 3 ingredients, and two of them are solid things cut small, so I can’t get too disappointed. And they taste good.

Frankly, if there’s something out there that you like at a restaurant, unless it’s really wild, there’s a recipe online that’ll tell you how to make it. Just make sure you wash your hands.

Not as big of a post today. Oh, hey, I haven’t had a nap for three days. I wonder if it’s because of the diet, my mental health, or because I haven’t been teaching this week. We’ll find out on Monday when I go back to work. Actually, after work is therapy, so I hope I don’t come home and crash.

Song of the Week: Shit Boat by Alestorm. I’m not going to apologize for this one. It’s crass, it’s stupid, it doesn’t rhyme, it’s short, the music video is stupid. But it’s catchy, and I love it.

Turns out, goods and services require currency.

I’ve already paid up for my initial dentist visit, plus the co-pay for my cavities. I know there’s another decent charge coming when they get going at my gum disease in the summer. After going to my physical check-up, I got my prescription for Vitamin D (because of course I don’t go outside enough) and a large blood pressure cuff so I can see if I actually have high blood pressure, or if I’m just nervous at the doctor’s office. And my insurance isn’t real, big boy insurance, so it doesn’t cover the weight loss clinic, sleep studies to see if I have sleep apnea, or counseling for my very probable depression.

But that’s OK. I mean, I’d much prefer that everything in life was fine, and I didn’t have to pay these fees. But ignoring my problems is how I got to the point that I had to pile up all my problem solving into a short period of time. I’ve been able to live fairly frugally, though not…actually that frugal. More accurately, I’ve been able to spend money without keeping a budget, as long as I don’t spend on things I don’t “need”. For example, before the diet, I was eating fast food a lot, when even off a diet, it’s cheaper to get frozen meals at the grocery store and make them myself. But at the same time, I only have one game console with 4 games, instead of all the latest with any game I want. Those kinds of things.

The point is, I can afford these costs, to a point. I can afford what the baby insurance doesn’t cover for regular doctor visits. I can, if it looks promising, afford to pay full price out-of-pocket for counseling. As far as weight loss and sleep studies, I assume that both of those will have better results once I’ve plowed through the “easy” pounds from just my diet change, and need help pushing past to the actual lifestyle/medical changes. So I don’t mind not paying for them just yet.

I’m one week into the diet, by the way. I could be eating more vegetables; I’m still a child in that respect, avoiding my greens. But I’m also keeping well on the low side of keto, based solely on my food choices (since I haven’t been counting grams of carbs). Next week, I’ll be looking into things like Crystal Light with caffeine as a morning Mello Yello replacement, or tips for making lettuce wraps that actually hold together in a lunch bag.

Also also, next week is spring break, so no work for a week. No work means…I’m going to have to clean my room. I’ve been slowly pecking away at an actual factual organization of my space for over a month now, and I need to actually do it. I know, this is the riveting content you read this blog for, but I’m here to bring you the truth about life. And the truth is, sometimes, you need to give yourself a clean space to exist. That’s all there is to it.

Song of the Week: Halo Theme by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. I like video game music, as evidenced by previous SotW spotlights. But this one is a classic, almost a landmark point in game music. Before this point, the consoles were the N64, Playstation 1, Sega Saturn. Not exactly known for their musical capabilities, especially the cartridge-based N64. Sure, the songs were iconic, but it was for their classic melodies, not the impressive arrangement and performance. With the advent of the Microsoft Xbox, the Playstation 2, and the GameCube, with their DVD disks (mini-disks for the GameCube, but that’s a different story), suddenly there was a lot more space for graphics, and story, and music. And Halo, as one of Microsoft’s first games on the console, set the bar for years to come. It’s not going to win any Grammy awards, or show up at a non-nerdy orchestra very often. But it’s got the iconic melody that made classic video game music great, along with arrangement and production that lifted it to greater heights.

Three cavities are not fun. COVID vaccine is sorta necessary, but leads to soreness and general unwellness as your body figures out how to fight it off. And then, because my leg felt left out, I got a massive cramp. Hopefully it’s not anything worse.

But hey, I made it. And I had keto pizza today, which uses multiple cheeses, almond flour (OK, seriously, how do you milk, butter, and flour a nut?), and an egg for binding. And it’s pretty good. A shame my jaw is still hurting. I think I bit my cheek a lot when I couldn’t feel it.

Tomorrow, I go to the store and start food prep for an entire week of meals. This is something that I’ve tried to do before, and I usually make it about a week before giving up. However, if I’m going to be serious about a diet, there’s not much I can get without purposefully preparing it myself. We’re talking Jimmy John’s Unwiches (lettuce wrap instead of bread), Chipotle salad bowl, things like that, but plowing through the average drive-thru is going to leave me at, I dunno, Double Whopper, no ketchup, lettuce instead of bun? I don’t even know if Burger King will do that for you. And no fries, no soda. When faced with options like that, you start to turn to your own devices.

So here’s the current plan:

Breakfast during the week is a ramekin (for those who were like me, and thought all food is cooked in a pot or pan, a ramekin is a small glass/ceramic dish designed for individual servings of food, usually baked in an oven) with pre-cooked breakfast sausage as a “crust”, then scrambled eggs, bell pepper, onion, mushroom, and cheese inside, baked.

While I’m baking that, assemble stuff for a smoothie, blend it up, throw it in a thermos. Grab some beef jerky and a cheese stick, and now not only do I have breakfast finishing in the oven soon, I have lunch at school too.

For dinner, I’m thinking something like Meat of the Week (this week, I’m feeling steak, which means steak every day, might change the plan here next week) with a salad. Dessert is dark chocolate and almond butter, or a bit of the keto ice cream we’re trying out.

No juice, no soda, just lots of water, which will take a little less getting used to, I’ve been pretty good at using a water bottle when I’m thirsty at home. Might bump it to two thermoses for school, one for a smoothie, one for water, since I don’t always know if I’m going to have easy fridge access. Might need to get one in that case.

Oh, yeah, and reusable containers. The success or failure of this might end up riding on how well I clean up after myself and how many ziploc bags I go through, versus reusable containers. But that’s thinking for tomorrow. Basically, all I’m doing tomorrow is this. And recovering from all the adulting. Wish me luck.

Song of the Week: Primo Victoria by Sabaton. There’s another song I wanted to post, but I needed to introduce you to Sabaton first, so it makes sense. Also, I usually try to make sure the music I choose is reasonably acceptable for a lot of musical tastes, and Sabaton is…not. It’s pretty heavy metal, but thankfully no screaming, which is good. What makes them interesting is, pretty early in their professional career, they hit upon the “gimmick” of historical lyrics. Primo Victoria is about D-Day, for example. In particular, this song is one of my “get up and get moving” songs, so it’s extra apropos for this weekend. And also for the Allies at D-Day, so I guess good job, Sabaton.

Hoo boy. This one has been a long time coming.

Probably ever since I started going to college, where my meals were part of my tuition and therefore there was no one at the dining hall to stop me, and also I didn’t have anyone around me that I really respected enough to listen to their advice on my weight, and also I might have started getting depressed then, I’ve been putting on weight. I was a pretty scrawny kid growing up, owing to Mom making all my meals and getting lots of exercise from having three brothers. Even when I was working at McDonalds, I would often bring my own ham and cheese sandwiches instead of taking the employee discount.

But that’s a lot of history, all to say that right now, I’m overweight. Obese, even. Possibly medically defined as morbidly obese, but based on what I’ve seen around me, that definition might need shifting. Maybe there needs to be “morbidly obese (American)”. Or maybe that’s just an excuse. Anyways, it’s a thing.

As previously discussed here, I don’t care about myself. Tracking down when that started, and how to correct it, is something that I plan to discuss with a counselor, and perhaps with you here once I’ve gotten a handle on it, but for now, it’s my main excuse for my weight. I’d just rather eat food I like to eat, and sit around, rather than take care of myself. And it will take something pretty serious to change that.

Well, serious has been happening to me recently. Revelations about myself did a lot to spur me forward, but I’d like to share a small story from earlier this month. I was invited to my brother’s wedding in Miami. Florida, not Ohio; it’s March, after all, we want to escape, not shuffle sideways. Needing a seatbelt extension on the plane? Not being allowed to sit in an exit row because of it? Sleeping through game time? Not going to interesting places because people were walking? I considered this all a small burden for myself, but also just part of what life was like for me. After all, I can’t get upset at my weight right now. I can’t change it overnight, so it’s too late to be upset, and I just have to live with it in the moment.

And then the day of the wedding came. We got dropped off on the beach for the oceanside ceremony…at the wrong spot. You can tell where you are on the beach by the numbered lifeguard stations, where Baywatch hangs out. We got dropped off at around 8 or 9, and we needed to get to 3. And they’re not that close together. So Otto, my brother, takes off, determined to get to the right spot and make sure that nothing else is going wrong. And my dad keeps up with him, and apparently, he’s venting the entire way. Hearsay from my dad on that fact, but honestly, I would be. And nothing else on that trip made me upset at my own fucking lazy fat stupid gasping wheezing out-of-shape ass than that moment.

I want to help people. It’s my brother. He’s at the most important day of his life, things are going wrong, and I can’t be there with him because he is able to walk at a brisk pace for 10 minutes in a suit and dress shoes, and I’m back there stopping every time I get to shade because I can barely catch a breath. What kind of a brother have I become, if I can’t be there for my family?

That was it. I’m looking back, and I think that if there was ever a moment in recent times that showed me that my poor diet and lifestyle have prevented me from living the life I want to live, that was it. I’m not ready to make a change yet, because I need to be certain that the change is going to work, and that I can stick to it for long enough to actually change. I’m seeing a general practitioner in 10 days for a check-up, and I’ll be asking questions about my weight and about choosing a counselor. But I need to change. I can’t keep lagging behind, or eventually, everyone will just walk on ahead of me. The world isn’t going to wait for me to catch up.

Song of the Week: Win the Race arranged by ITeachVader. This is going to be a tonal change from previous music, as this is what is categorized online as “YouTube Poop”. A lot of videos in that category earn the title, unfortunately (I may have dabbled in the genre a long time ago, those videos are private now because I’m very embarrassed). However, sometimes, the videos are good. The general idea of a YouTube Poop is: you cut and paste clips from popular sources (in this case, the Sonic the Hedgehog TV series) in order to get the characters to say funny things. Like cutting out words from a newspaper to write a story. ITeachVader specifically is very good at arranging those clips into music, editing the pitch of clips like a manual synthesizer. It’s not for everyone, but as for me, I enjoy creating art out of smaller bits, and this is the musical version of that.

So a long time ago, I wrote about starting a podcast about the Liam Neeson Peril Meter/Index (it changes every time I tell the story). That podcast came to an end several months ago, with both a bang and a whimper. Our final movie was The Lego Movie, a personal favorite of Mom’s, but to my disappointment, the parody movie Tooken was not, in fact, a clever deconstruction of the decades-long career of a working actor, but instead an excuse for dick jokes and crude humor. So we didn’t get to talk about that one.

Anyways, where one podcast ends, another must begin, or else we’d have no excuse to get together as a family once a week and have homemade pizza. I went back to the drawing board. We like movies, and we’re getting pretty good at watching them at this point, so I figured we’d stick to what we knew. It had to be easy criteria for movie selection, but not too easy, such that we were treading very familiar ground. And finally, I didn’t want to repeat our previous formula, so no following one actor/actress’s career.

This lead neatly to the Academy Awards. It was always interesting when a Neeson movie would win an award, even though he never did. Also, a lot of Neeson’s movies were…not amazing, and tying the criteria to an awards show, despite the fact that it might be biased/rigged in some ways, still means that we’re probably going to be watching higher quality movies. But back to my rules for making the podcast. Just watching Best Picture movies is something that I’m sure people have done before, and I did zero research to confirm that, but it made sense enough to me. In fact, there’s probably podcasts, or at least articles and discussions, specifically about each category. So why not mix it up?

Welcome to If I Ran The Oscars (also available on iTunes and Spotify). Starting in 1953, the first year the awards were broadcast on TV, we select one merit award at random, watch the movie that won the award, and select three other award categories at random, to discuss if this film could have competed for those awards. We’ve had some ups and downs, yes; John Wayne being a bit of a chauvinistic ass is par for his course, but on the other side, Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront is amazing. We’re a few decades into the awards at this point, starting to get into movies that Mom and Dad remember in theaters. Yes, I did make Mom watch Star Wars. Yes, the dialogue in Star Wars is not great, that’s not why people like Star Wars.

In any case, we upload most Saturdays, unless I have something else to do that evening, which will hopefully continue to be rare. This week, it’s The Sunshine Boys, a clean, funny film about the lost art of vaudeville.

Song of the Week (because I keep not making a separate post for this): The Other Side from the musical The Greatest Showman, performed by Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman. Good golly, I need to get started on my playlist of songs from musicals that are in my vocal range and also happen to be really good songs. The Greatest Show is also a good song from the soundtrack, but this one gets the edge for telling a story in three and a half minutes. Also, Wolverine singing showtunes is a bonus.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it.

On top of having a job for real, I found myself getting extremely involved with a different online community, which I wrote about a few times (like the character backstory posts). Within the last month, I’ve come to realize a few things about myself.

First, that I hate being selfish. Not that I hate other people being selfish; this is purely about myself. Aside from mooching off of my parents when we’re going on vacation or to a restaurant so I can save money, I will actively avoid taking things for myself, preferring to let other people benefit. This is a bad combination with my second realization: I do not care about myself. Maybe these are really the same thing, but they feel different to me. It’s the reason why I don’t shower on a regular basis, haven’t been to the dentist in years (update on that further down), I’m overweight, I don’t clean up my room, etc. All the usual things that fat bachelor slobs do, I had this revelation, like a lightning strike, that explained it. And instead of just accepting this about myself, I’m finally doing something about it.

The first step was quitting the online community. There’s a lot about that group that I really enjoyed. Having a place where I could always, no matter what time of day, hop into a conversation with, drop a bad pun, bounce creative ideas, it was great. But all of my creativity was going there, as evidenced by not updating this site for 1.5 years. In addition, there was a constant slow steady stream of people that, I still believe mostly accidentally, took advantage of my desire to see others have fun over my own entertainment. In the end, I was spending too much time on the administration of that group, without getting enough in return. I cried the day I realized that I needed to leave, I was so set on staying. But I had to, before I overstayed my usefulness and started to hate it.

The next thing on my list is taking advantage of having a job to get…health benefits. Shocking, I know, how can this still be called Pretty NEET if I’m so employed that I have benefits? Deal with it, I’m not changing my branding. Anyways, I’ve been to the dentist, and now have three more appointments to handle the three cavities and gum disease that’s making problems in there. Still need to work on the tooth brushing habit too. The physical checkup at the regular doctor is later this month, where I’ll be asking about how to handle my obesity and probable depression.

I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting here. This is kidna spur of the moment. I’d like to get back into a schedule, but I’m starting to upend my entire existence. Working a blog into there is a good idea, but it might not happen. Still hope it will.

Song of the week…or month…or last year and a half: Song of Women by The Hu featuring Lzzy Hale of Halestorm

One of the last activities I participated in with that online community was an in-character talent competition. One of my characters was a highly charismatic singer and dancer fox girl with nine tails. Hit a lot of tropes, let me tell you. A while ago, I had Photoshopped some artwork that was definitely not lore appropriate, of her wearing a punk leather jacket, tight pants, black and blue hair, you know, more tropes, just in case she ever needed to do some rocking. The talent show was the opportunity I had been waiting for.

Here’s the playlist of the five songs she “sang”. Highly diverse, but each one is a song that I personally know the words to and will jam out to despite it being female vocals (ok, so I don’t know the Korean rap in Pop/Star, and Go the Distance was originally sung by a man, but whatever). Song of Women was the finale, a song that gives me goosebumps because it’s just…power. Not in a way that feels like it’s pushing you to feel something, but more like it’s slowly opening a heavy door to show you something you always knew was there. Also, if I keep up posting and going back to Song of the Week, expect The Hu to make another appearance.

For anyone that is still waiting to see another post, I’m sorry it’s been so long. I’m still here, and I’m still trying.