015: I Wouldn't Last a Week in Seattle

First, COMPILATION.
February didn't happen. This is an editorial decision on my part and you'll thank me for it in a minute. Also short on links in this one because, quite frankly, I am tired.

I'm so tired of the alg. I miss posts, sometimes dozens, from my own partners. Even in Most Recent things are out of order. I'm starting to get bullshit right-wing ads pretending to be posts from people I'd never in a million years follow. I wish we could all just... leave.

Someone dared to besmirch my beloved Admiral Holdo (and TLJ in general) on the internet and I will NOT be having that.

Right so when they say brake fluid is corrosive, it turns out they're not kidding. Took off a sizable portion of my nail polish, it did.

I'm pretty sure I'm overhearing a Tinder date, and if this is what those "travel is my passion!!" people all sound like, just yikes.

I think my kid dislikes the mayor more than I do.

So I've been playing Morrowind in and off for the last few months and it turns out that Bethesda Save Glitches still haunt us in the year 2022. Luckily you could do things then that you can't now, like open a damn console window and restore your items that mysteriously vanished from one day to the next.

Love how St Patrick's is a two-week-long celebration of day drinking on the CTA.

Twins just traded away Mitch Garver, a first round draftee, and Josh Donaldson for the return  of trash and magic beans, so my choice during the lockout to watch MLS this year was the right one. (This is funny because less than a week later they got Carlos Correa for at least a year and now I'm just confused.)

Had my neuropsych eval today. I think I passed?

Me, perusing my own Insta: Dang, I'm kinda cute sometimes. A lot of the time goblin, but some time cute.

Today's motto is: FUCK OFF IDES. Other years the Ides have had their way with me. NOT THIS YEAR. FUCK OFF IDES.

Walked about a mile and a half and boy howdy do I need to get my bicycle up for the season because that was so fuckin worthless. I did manage to send a package I've been sitting on since Christmas though.

Second, MOVING NORTH AGAIN.
But not too far. We're currently in the westernmost part of the Lakeview neighborhood, close enough to Wrigley Field that we get parking passes for living here. But we just signed the lease on a place in Rogers Park which is a two-bedroom with a ton of space. It's on the third floor, with no air conditioning, but we'll make it work. Space is the primary motivator here, along with a new kitchen. We could still technically be a bit more north and still be in the city, but not much.

Hopefully our fucking MAIL SERVICE is better.

Third, CONSUMPTION.
- Finished Orlando. I love it. Now on to see the movie one day.
- Started and finished Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing by Stephan A. Hoeller. I've been interested in the subject for years and only recently got around to actually reading anything about it. While I had my reservations on this one (mostly that it's very interested in the Us vs. Them of much of the historical bits and happens to also endorse a system of clergy into a religion that is about individual knowledge), it did get me primed for a more in-depth look at more first- and second-hand sources. I've had The Gnostic Gospels sitting around my Kindle library for ages.
- Probably gonna read Gillen and McKelvie's first volume of Young Avengers. Representation and Kid Loki just being a bitch in general? Okay.
- Played through the demo of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, which ostensibly tells the story of how Garland from the first game turns out to be a villain. The demo itself took about four and a half hours once I got done futzing with the menu and gearing and progression. I'm interested in the full game mostly because I want to just, like, play the full systems of the game. Of the things that compel me in FF series games, the systems are the biggest. Are you actually able to "roleplay" to some degree, or are you shoehorned into a specific class? The story for me is often irrelevant, and 90% of the time it's just your standard JRPG batshit scrappy-teens-kill-god sort of thing. (The biggest reason 6 and 7 are my favorites is because they're quite specifically not about that.) Overall had a good time.
- Speaking of games, here's a really good article by Magic: the Gathering inventor Richard Garfield about how we determine skill in competitive gaming.

Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky. The book is up for sale on Amazon and BN.com, as well as Bookshop.org! The best deal is with Mr. Bezos, but Bookshop actually lets you support your friendly local bookstore if you want.

Do you want a FREE Advanced Reader Copy? All I ask is that you review it on either/both of those sites and/or Goodreads. Let me know!

And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!

If you like what I do here and don't have the scratch or the inclination to do the above, please share this newsletter with you friends. I like making words wiggle people's brainjuices.

Finally, THE OUTRO.
The spouse's motorcycle runs. It still needs some tuning and whatnot, and the replacement of some running gear, but overall, big gains there.

The Fiero... still almost no progress. Current biggest hindrance is the fact that the gas tank is Swiss cheese. And because the Fiero is some sort of weird mutant car, the only replacement for it that you can get is a non-Swiss cheese tank out of another Fiero. It's the only car it came on, and only in a two-year period. No one makes replacements. So I'm trying to focus on other parts now, like getting the rims repaired and doing brake work.

Even when you're stuck one place, you can usually do something else while waiting for the logjam to break.