Learning to drive is my latest replacement for what I imagine crack cocaine to be like
I got my permit (extremely belatedly, but I got it) a few days ago, and I've gone driving three times since then, bringing the total number of times I've driven a car to 4. That first unaccounted-for time was done clandestinely, inconspicuously, and illegally in a parking lot with my sister (who later told me she thought I had a permit at the time. Way to go for me, going along with what I thought was some scandalous law breaking). My total time spent operating a motor vehicle, if I had to guess, probably tallies up to around an hour now.
Before today, I was driving a 20 year old honda odyssey with terrible power steering issues and something wrong with its muffler. It's loud and is all around a shitbox. So today, since I was hitching a ride with my dad again I asked to drive when we got close to home. Those 15 minutes I spent behind the wheel of his fairly-new idon'tknow-the-year nissan rogue were life changing. The entire time, I couldn't wipe my dumb grin off my face. It was one of those smiles that's triggered deterministically by unconscious chemical reactions (aren't all smiles triggered that way?). Everything felt so smooth, it was incredible. The odyssey has a throttle response reminiscent of that of a lawnmower, and the steering isn't far off from a lawnmower either. The rogue in comparison feels so damn softened and easy to operate that I felt giddy while thinking about it hours later. Have you ever seen those volvo ads where they've macgyvered a hamster wheel onto the steering wheel of their truck, and then they navigate said truck through treacherous quarry switchbacks by putting a hamster on the wheel and doing the ol' carrot-on-a-stick method? I felt like the guy holding the carrot in those moments. I wanted to turn, and it just turned. Essentially zero exertion required on my part. I'm sure some of the smoothness I was perceiving is because of the CVT which of course many self-identified car enthusiasts will inevitably decry as artificial, inauthentic, unfun, and contradictory to the true spirit of internal-combustion propelled vehicles, and to them I say shut up and hold thy peace until I get the chance to drive a manual.
National Make-A-Will month
I'm not really sure what the deal is with time periods that are nationally designated/dedicated to some random thing, like national donut day and national texas day and whatnot, but I've always kind of just accepted that there's a seeming infinitude of officially sanctioned or otherwise "days" (or months, or weeks or whatever) dedicated to such disparate nothings as "personal trainer awareness", "fruit compote", and "Jamaican patty". I got all of those from a website called national day calendar, which seems to be running a business based on the model of selling people a "national day calendar" (what a term), so that they can wake up every morning to find out that they live in a world where days are treated as irreverently as park benches and tree-planting plaques. Actually it's far worse than that, because from what I can gather most of these supposed holidays, or "days" or whatever the fuck we're calling them are basically just glorified ads - when a marketing department gets a little too whimsical and "innovative", we end up with a new "day". I mean, this day alone is "forgiveness day" (not so bad), "chicken boy day" (what the fuck?), "no rhyme (nor reason) day", "burnt ends day", "hotel employee day", and finally "acne positivity day". This little hustle of fabricating national holidays is undoubtedly incredibly lucrative, because there are multiple companies like National day calendar pulling the same shit, which hilariously leads to them declaring the same "days" but on different days which kind of exposes their endeavors as soulless capitalistic pursuits that hold zero regard for the actual sanctity any worthwhile holiday ought to have. I'm not about to go back and find out, but I wonder if they actually have self-imposed limits on how many days they can shove onto the same date. I also wonder how long it takes these leases on days to expire.. eh probably a year since they're selling annual calendars. They're probably charging an annual keep-your-day-in-existence fee, as if they were ICANN selling TLDs.
I'm saying all this because a while ago, maybe a week or two ago, I was participating in the endangered activity known as listening to the radio while not in one's car and they began talking about "National make a will month" (august), which struck me as an incredibly grim thing to dedicate a month to, so I of course spent five minutes laughing at what I just heard. It's almost the kind of thing you'd expect to see in The Onion - it has that comedic irony to it from the celebratory connotation of a nationally dedicated month, and yet they actually just want you to be aware of your own mortality. This one at least doesn't seem to have been created by one of those companies, but instead is a slightly more genuine attempt at raising awareness about writing wills. It's not entirely redeemed in my eyes though, because every single thing that I've heard promote it was only using it to shill out to their own "legacy programs" where they try and get you to make an endowment to them in your will. I'm not really sure how to feel about this, considering that most of them are just non profits. I found one page promoting make a will month on the website of a cancer research foundation, which is undoubtedly a good cause... right? I would want to say it is but for the fact that the people at the tops of "non-profits" are often profiting quite nicely. Also, it's kind of morbid to basically target terminally ill people for their money like that. Can't really blame em though, and you can't exactly call it intentional.
Capital One shopping rewards is the biggest scam I've ever "fallen" for
I recently got an email from capital one confidently informing that I could, and I quote "(CONGRATS!) Redeem $45 on us, [MAUHS]. You earned it!" Since I'm broke and unemployed, seeing this subject line in my inbox was major cause for celebration. I thought I'd made it big. I mean, 45 dollars for doing nothing? Sign me up! Figuratively, of course. I didn't actually want to sign up for anything, I just wanted my free money. Of course though, I'm still a sweet summer child in terms of experience with banks, and when I opened the email I was met with the reality of the offer: If I installed their shopping extension, I would be able to get my 45 dollars in rewards points after five days of letting it worm its way through all my juicy data. The extension itself is pretty much just a honey clone which is always a great sign for it having innocent underlying motivations and not abusing the hell out of the fine print. Anyway I grudgingly obliged them, and installed their dumb little extension. A few days later I opened it up to find out if payday had arrived yet, and saw that it seemingly had: A little popup was now present underneath my points balance, telling me that "Rewards are waiting for you! Redeem a $45 bonus in our free iPhone app." What. The. Fuck. So not only did they shamelessly clickbait me with claims of "redeem your 45 DOLLARS", as in USD and NOW, they lied in the initial email's fineprint about it being redeemable on desktop. If I want my "money" I have to download an entire goddamn app, and on an iphone. I don't have an iphone, so I flew into a rage and uninstalled the extension, excising it from the sacred data-haven that is my vivaldi rice as a means of revenge.
This made me genuinely mad. Although I should qualify everything I've just said by mentioning that I might be wrong about that popup being the $45 I was initially promised - maybe it was just an additional 45 dollars of points I could've redeemed had I wanted to further spread the parasitic infestation of capital one shopping to my non-existent iPhone. Perhaps if I had left it installed a while longer, the points would've actually deposited into my balance as they alleged would happen. In any case, they shouldn't have made them give the same amount of money. This theoretical misconception could never have come about if they gave you only 30 bucks for installing their malware on iOS, say, instead of exactly matching the quantity they promised me in the email. Anyway regardless of whether my anger was misguided here, I no longer had any patience for their bullshit so I think uninstalling it won't end up being to my detriment.
Russ from RGC's friend was stabbed to death, they made a shockingly good song together in his lifetime
This one happened a while ago. I was on youtube, indulging in some quotidian post-scrolling when I was confronted with an extremely strange string of words that had me shook for a good few seconds as I repeatedly double-took at what I was looking at: "... My good friend (and bandmate) Chris was killed on Thursday morning, fatally stabbed while walking to work in Honolulu." Hearing about a fatal stabbing attack on a personal friend of the retro gaming man was not something I ever expected to hear about. It was another one of those moments where in an alternate universe you might be lucky enough to hear the same thing but in the form of a surrealist joke and not a real piece of news. As they say, reality is often disappointing. What wasn't disappointing, however, was the song that russ linked to in that post. I know it's not exactly good to speak irreverently of someone or their work in the immediate aftermath of their death, but as I clicked on the link to this song my unfiltered crass thoughts were "this is probably going to sound like total shit, their band was probably mid." Fortunately the power of not-shit music rose up to quash my apathy and transform the moment from a failure of my humanity into something that actually made me feel genuine sorrow through a computer screen, which is an exceedingly rare occurrence. It's a good song - a really good song, in my opinion. Despite my affinity for radio, I don't listen to many Tiny Desk concerts but as far as this one goes I feel like it must be pretty far above what I assume most other submissions sound like.
An Air of Peacefulness - Oh the Possibilities - my favorite part starts at 1:30.
state of the magazine collection 2026 + somewhat interesting basement find
nearly all of them. They look pretty diminutive, all together like this. I was expecting more.. maybe I should scour my house for the lost issues
I've mentioned here how when my basement flooded, I was pretty confident that the magazines I'd left down there were definite goners(maybe around 40 issues of Make: magazines and popular mechanics, collectively). I'm pretty ashamed to admit this but I somehow neglected to even check on them or attempt to clean up what I assumed to be the ruins of my own belongings for several months after the floods that initially had me thinking those magazines were destroyed. But recently, I finally mustered up the necessary sense of responsibility and maturity to go downstairs and begin assessing the damage, which had until then gone entirely unexamined as a result of my instant forfeiting of any hope for their survival. Turns out that a lot of them are actually perfectly fine - they smell a little suspect, but there's no visible mold or even visible water damage. When you flip through them it's pretty clear that they've been wet, but despite that I wouldn't really call it water damage since it didn't even dry weirdly or get discolored or run like most paper things do when they get wet. Truly miraculous, now I can fill my current shelves with the somewhat-collectible backlog that had been sitting down there. I like "Make:" and am actually partially enthusiastic about collecting or having them at least, since I don't get them anymore. I do still get pop mech, but I've sort of come to hate it as the quality of the content has fallen off a cliff over the years. It used to be you'd only find ads for male-enhancement drugs and pheromones and whatnot in the final, shamefully assembled pages, but as of late it seems more and more like they're willing to make every other page in the first ten pages a full page ad for some self-declared INCREDIBLE DEAL, like a "QUArTZ MoVEmENT (!!!) watch that's $100 just $60!", or "five newly minted limited edition quartes for only $39.99 $25.99!". They're of the variety of ad so specious and backhanded in their claims and graphic design choices that they're forced to print on top of them, "ADVERTISEMENT", just so they won't be mistaken as having fallen to the level of selling an aphrodisiac of their own. Anyway I was subscribed to both at the expense of a relative starting sometime in 2016, so I should theoretically have around 60 issues of pop mech and 40 issues of Make:, although that's definitely not the case since I've lost many over the years to my past foolish irreverence for them (which is kind of still not past to be honest).
"where is your cd drive?""...don't need it."
Also something I discovered while in the basement was a copy of the robert miles song that went viral some time ago - children. I was pretty shocked when I found it, nestled between some other cds soaked in cat piss and a box set of pirated chinese soap opera dvds (my basement is seemingly home to a large range of strange and disgusting goods that I somehow have yet to become fully familiar with, despite having lived in it for multiple years). Even though it was in close proximity to some other less-fortunate pissed-on cds, it had been cleanly spared of the fate its brethren had suffered. I was shocked because before finding it, I had assumed that it was a song previously obscure to the point of being unfindable in the form of a physical release but evidently I heavily underestimated robert miles' game when he was in his prime. In fact, that assumption I had couldn't possibly be farther from the truth as this song literally hit number one on charts in multiple countries. Despite the reality of the songs popularity, I was still only aware of it as a result of a vinland saga meme. I'm an uncultured gen Zer at the end of the day.
Living on the shaver-chargerless edge
I lost the proprietary charging cable to my phillips norelco shaver a few weeks ago. I don't grow facial hair at a furious pace or anything so I've been coping, but it's still quite scary to live like this. Every time I decide I need to shave, I feel like I'm playing with my very life. I shave with earbuds in, so I can't really hear when it starts to spin a little slower as a sign that it's about to go kaput - any day now, I'm going to be mid-shave and it'll just die and I'll have to make a midnight target run for a razor or something, or else I'll be utterly screwed. This is my idea of living dangerously, every time I successfully skirt humiliation by eking out another full shave on this single charge I get a massive adrenaline hit. I need to be reined in, or I'm going to end up hurting myself on this crazy thrill binge..
Entering the world of canvas "optimization"
I was sitting in a massive lecture hall for chem recitation and I happened to keep inadvertently getting glimpses of the laptop screens of the people in the row ahead of me, and I couldn't help but notice that a lot of people seemed to have somehow themed canvas and given it an applewatch-esque to do list made with those concentric circles of varying sizes (that phrasing sounds kind of redundant but I think what I mean is clear). I really dislike the shitty UI that canvas offers by default so I was intrigued and thought, "huh, what setting did I miss that does that? I remember a high contrast mode and a "dyslexia-friendly font" as being the only configurable appearance settings." So I just looked up something along the lines of "canvas extension" and found a weird little pack of extensions that added exactly the set of features I was seeing so many other people equipped with. So I found the exact thing, basically. I'm kind of glad that I was able to find it that easily, because I assume most other people found it from something like a college-prep youtube shorts series, which is exactly the kind of thing that everyone except me has somehow tapped into. Canvas is much easier to look at now, although the extension tries to get you to buy a subscription. I tried blocking the ad element with ublock origin, but it's made with some kind of cursed homogenized framework element, and I can't block it without blocking half the canvas UI now, so I guess that's not happening.
seeing my laptop now elicits a pavlovian stress reaction from me
This is probably because I've barely used a laptop in the past three years until now - and now that I've gotten one, over 90% of the time that I'm looking at it I'm doing schoolwork. I started with a clean mental slate on which to engrave new, traumatized impressions of my laptop. I'm not really sure if this fact should constitute headline material but it's an emotionally distressing fact to me that I've developed an aversion to the computer I was so recently enthusiastic about getting. It kind of reminds me of how abused children flinch away from the slightest balling of fists and raising of hands - if I just happen to see my laptop sitting out, or god forbid open it to find canvas or outlook still open, my heart rate immediately jumps and I'm filled with an inexorable sense of unease. Even doing "leisure" activities like writing this blog post comes with some kind of dread showing up in the back of my mind that is ever present as long as I know my "school" workspace is just a few short clicks away. Hopefully I'll eventually get better at time management and I'll be able to shed this peace-of-mind-destroying, creeping angst. Until then though I'll continue to suffer silently.