A glimmering of thought

On a whim, I bought a drawing tablet earlier in the week. Not a wacom, but one that actually seems as good, and for less. Shortcut buttons, zoom wheel, and a 15.6 inch screen. All for $150+ cheaper than the 16" wacom, which didn't even have shortcut buttons. It's in transit, though no idea when it'll get here. Still, I'm rather happy about the whole thing. I'm not a huge artist or anything, but I dabble at times, and a decent drawing tablet is rather necessary anymore. Pity I can't easily transfer my sketchbooks into digital, but I'm going to have fun testing out all the various options. I had a period of time where I had a cracked copy of photoshop, and got decent at making user icons, so at least I'll be coming at it with a little history. Heh, I might even occasionally draw along with Drawfee.

Le sigh. I have mixed feelings about working from home for my job of late. On the one hand, I can actually go to the kitchen and get food whenever I want, as opposed to just not getting a chance to eat during shift. And I can move around, listen to music as loud as I want, and have way fewer people constantly asking me questions. Not to mention I don't have the constant distracting hubbub. However, my laptop only has one screen instead of my normal two, and it slows me down dramatically. Neither can this win 8.1 do multiple desktops as win 10 and linux can, which also makes everything more difficult. But having had the week prior to Easter off due to disciplinary action (two days of ~3 hours sleep each, a long day, and working from my bed, I fell asleep two or three times), I already miss the time off. Particularly as we have a lot of work and not enough people to work remotely, so we who can are working hella long shifts. A job I already very much dislike and find emotionally and mentally draining, and now even longer!

I don't even know how long I'll work on a given day. Maybe 6-7 hours, or maybe they'll have me work 11-12, and I won't have any idea until I'm already in it. I only know what days, but even starting times I don't usually know until mid morning. Ending times are not really guaranteed either, other than we almost never dial past 10pm locally. But will I only have east coast work and get to end my day by 7ish, or will it be west and I may not get done until 10 or 11? Adding insult to injury, after they're done, I then get to write reports! Extra reports with lots of extra work for jobs that went poorly! So the worse it went, and the more you are brain-fried, the more you have to do... Bleck.

In other news, I just finished the FF7 Remake. It's mostly good, though a few negatives keep it from being truly excellent. It fleshes the characters out really well, and I didn't feel it was bad to build more of their backstories and such. The combat is pretty darn fun. It actually makes you use items from time to time. Also nice is that materia doesn't have negative stats like in the original, and your weapons gain points to use toward a kind of sphere grid for each one, letting you improve stats, add more materia slots, etc. Boss fights take forever; not sure if that's a plus or a minus. Due to the nature of the revamped fighting system, the game gives you way more kinds of materia. Some I like, others, meh. But it definitely becomes a constant battle as to which ones to use.

It's interesting how this game is like a parallel universe to the original game. Most things are the same, but certain key events have shifted some. Some I like, some I don't, and some don't make much sense... I am very likely now to go and play the original. So good. Pacing is a little bit of an issue throughout this game though. And I mean actual pacing, like walking. So many, many times the game suddenly decides that now is not a time for running, and forces you to walk at varying speeds, for random-seeming lengths of time. Occasionally it's to make sure the conversations going on don't get cut short, which I understand, but numerous other times for no definitive reason. It becomes more and more noticeable over time, and is incredibly frustrating and breaks immersion frequently. On the plus side, I think the voice acting is incredibly well done. Sometimes a game or some such will add voices, and it's like, that's not how they sounded in my head. But this one was done well, and I enjoyed them all. A coworker says that Barret at first sounded like Mr T, on whom he was partly based, but now all he can hear is RDJ from Tropic Thunder, and that's hilarious. I enjoy Aerith especially. Her chipper personality and teasing really makes her more of an interesting person. I still dig Tifa something fierce, even more so now (dem stockings yo). Now I actually care about some of the Avalanche crew, mostly due to enjoying Jessie immensely. Though, what's up with Biggs' voice? It sounds like it was recorded in a hallway or something. Also, Barret's daughter Marlene is the cutest child ever.

Been a while. Been doing most of my writing and musings on paper with my fountain pen as I practice my calligraphy/cursive. I am getting slowly better, which is nice. I'm still experimenting with various ways of doing my capital letters, as it's the one part that really allows for a lot of creativity and flourishes. I don't want them over the top, but definitely want a little bit my own. I still only use the smallest nib that it came with. One of these days I'll have to practice the bigger ones, but for the time being I'm having fun enough with the small. I've always preferred smaller tips to my writing implements anyway. .05 lead for mechanical pencils or nothing!

I'm also continuing to practice my guitar, albeit not as frequently as I was for the first week. I'm still practicing Hotel California and John Mayer's Daughters. I still much struggle with proper strumming rhythm, or lack thereof, though Mayer's song is hella crazy for chords too. It uses the pinky, held constantly on one string while the other fingers move around. The pinky is not often used, particularly for an entire song, so that's causing most of my difficulties.

Been playing a number of different games as well. Played Control for PS4 for a while, and am almost at the end, but like the final main battle has frustrated me enough that I will retry it a few times a week, then move on when I can't beat the very long battles. Meanwhile, returned to playing Fire Emblem 3 Houses on my Switch, and Spider-man on my PS4. Both still hold up well.

I watched the Witcher on Netflix last week, and the thing that really stuck with me was that really great song Toss A Coin To The Witcher. Man, that thing is just fantastic. Makes me not only want to listen to it on repeat, but to write something similar.

It got me thinking, though. Specifically, I thought about the sorry state in which culture has become which makes parody more and more difficult. The thing about parody is to point out how something is ridiculous or overblown, often by taking it to an extreme. But how do you do that when things are already taken to an extreme and seriously? Often I'll hear some love song or what have you on the radio and want to take it to some ludicrous end, except I always realize that such songs have been made. Can anyone think of anything more horrid or extreme than some of the shit you can hear in rap and hip hop? You can't take it any further than they already have, and they didn't do it as a joke. A perfect example was when Weird Al tried to parody Lady Gaga, the woman who wore a dress made of meat. The song changed born this way, to worn this way, and it really didn't have to make anything up, because she'd already worn everything ridiculous.

The irony, or perhaps paradox, is that to parody things, anymore it can be more impactful to downplay things. Turn some song about being the greatest to one about being just alright, or pretty average. How odd.

I feel like a broken record. I just keep skipping. I hate my job so much, but it leaves me so emotionally drained that I can never work up the energy to find something else. I don't even get two days off in a row. I get two days off, but not together, and while I used to enjoy the short reprieve in the middle of the week, now I find that it's just barely keeping me going without really giving me the break I need to recharge the batteries. Days like today, I feel like when you're running down a hill, and you're trying very hard not to eat it, but every movement is about catching up. It certainly does not help matters any that the job market in this town is notoriously poor. Unless you want to work retail or restaurant, there's not really much available. And as much as I would hate it, those options are starting to look more appealing than this position. I have worked here for three years, am a supervisor of sorts, and I make 25 cents less than my buddy who just started work at Best Buy. Do you know how demoralizing that is?

What's worse, my attention to detail is slipping somewhat at the work I do because I beyond don't care. I hate everything about my company. One of my fellow supervisors didn't used to drink until he became the second in command, and now he drinks rather heavily. We do surveys! It should not destroy people and should not be as stressful as it is. I have just enough energy to get angry, but not enough to act on it, and I just don't know what to do. I'm feeling a touch of despair this evening, I think. This too shall pass, as they say, but it still sucks now. My singular days off are almost entirely dedicated to sleep and trying to de-stress. My every work day is so unregimented that I can never schedule anything. On a given day, maybe I'll work 4-5 hours, or maybe I'll work 10, usually without a chance of taking an actual (legally mandated) lunch, getting off at 11pm and completely wiped and unable to go do anything at all.

I hate it, I hate it, I really, really hate it. And I don't know how to fix it. The job is so all over the place that I don't ever have any sort of savings. Grumble.

I hate how every time I start to get creative, my job will suddenly get hectic, and leaves me completely bereft of mental energy. I worked a 10 hour day yesterday, and without a meal, even. Today it was only 5 hours, but it was from like 5 to 10, so I get out and it's already late. I had coffee with a guy this morning who has worked in the video game industry for many years now, and who has just moved here with the idea of getting christian game makers together to help make the industry as a whole a better place. After talking with him a bit, he said something that really hit home. He said that my job was killing me, wasn't it. I've said similar before, but having it phrased the way he did really stuck with me. It is. It kills my creativity, my drive, and my general mental well-being. I do so wish I knew where else to work.

I had this idea come to me earlier today, and I can't bear to see it go to waste. I was thinking on twists, and realized that a lot of them are like, you find out that you/the hero are really the villain at the end. But what if a villain was basically cursed to constantly aid humanity no matter how hard he tried? I envision a mad scientist who has a deep loathing for humanity and just wants to wipe it all out, but who's every invention somehow ends up making things better, which only further infuriates him. Like, society keeps praising him or his mysterious creations that seem to come out of nowhere and make everything better, and all it does is further loathe them and try even harder. Maybe he creates some super-virus that mutates and ends up killing off cancer, or some giant mechanical monstrosity that happens to show up at the same time as another monster and saves the city. Ooh, or a freeze ray the stabilizes the world climate. I envision a man, maniacally doing his damnedest to exterminate human life, but each one just keeps helping! The fury of an evil man as he continues to improve the lives of all he attempts to kill absolutely amuses me. Maybe one day he even snaps, makes a simple gun and decides to kill someone, only to save someone from assassination, or dislodging something important.

So many potential ideas. I think the hardest part is thinking of things going right. I've found many times that doing things backward is funny, but usually a lot more work and understanding of the subject. The nature of things is to fall apart, degrade, get worse, so thinking of them getting put right can be both more impactful and more difficult.

After a vigorous discussion with a friend last night about stories that are head trips, emotional bombshells, or overall mind screws, I was alerted to the genre known as SCP. And down the rabbit hole I went today, spending hours read the various ones. SCP is basically a sci-fi genre in the vein of a creepypasta meets Warehouse 13/Men in Black, but with way more fatalities and needless expenditure of human life. SCPs are all written like semi-redacted files as one would find in some clandestine organization that finds, captures, studies, uses, and/or kills weird shit. It's all the fun of conspiracy, creepypasta, and documentary all in one. It's like reading the write-ups from survivors of Lovecraftian horrors who see this stuff every day and are a bit blasé about it at this point.

It also makes me want to go back and read some of the better creepypastas, though at the same time, I kind of don't? I enjoy the what-if nature, that inherent quality of all good sci-fi, and many are incredibly well-written, but a person can only handle so much of the dark, depressing, and horrifying. Not terribly healthy to be in that headspace for long.

Note to self, remember this writing prompt for later: you acquire a house with very advanced gadgetry, the most important being an advanced AI that helps out. Only there is no AI, it's just a helpful ghost pretending.

There are too many stories. Mainly I am referring to movies and tv. I read recently someone briefly expound on how our culture as a whole is fragmenting itself due to the glut of shared experiences. Thinking on it, I have to agree. We have certain memes and movies such that a large portion of society can share them, but how many shows/movies/games are there now compared to even a few decades ago? Throughout history, you would still have your share of in-jokes and memes, but there's never been a time of so many all at once, compounding, as we have more and more that are available to view at will. No more is there the shared moments of many millions watching a show or event because they'll only ever see it once. Well, mostly.

There are certainly shows more common of which most people are aware, like the Office or Friends, but fandoms continue to fragment. Some kids watch this streamer, or that. Some watch these shows or that, and all have complete control over what they watch and when. Gone (mostly) is the forced time slot that everyone has to watch at the same time. More, little remains of the boredom of waiting for another show to come on and watching something else in the meantime, potentially finding something new, or at least sharing an experience that others might have.

How many books, outside of Harry Potter and Shades of Grey, do people have in common as having read? Twilight and Percy Jackson maybe, but that's still a pretty low number.

This is not to say that there aren't many amazing stories. It is instead that there are too many for there to be universal, shared experiences to bring people together. Hmm.