Lamp, broken circa 1988

Hakuho seems mad.

Friends are warmer than gold when you're old And keeping them is harder than you might suppose Lately, I tend to make strangers wherever I go Some of them were once people I was happy to know Mounting mileage on the dash Double darkness falling fast I keep stressing, pressing on Way deep down at some substratum Feels like something really wrong has happened And I confess I'm barely hanging on All my happiness is gone All my happiness is gone It's all gone somewhere beyond All my happiness is gone Ten thousand afternoons ago All my happiness just overflowed That was life at first and goal to go Me and you and us and them And all those people way back when All our hardships were just yardsticks then, you know You know It's not the purple hills It's not the silver lakes It's not the snowcloud shadowed interstates It's not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, Oregon Where nothing's wrong and no one's asking But the fear's so strong it leaves you gasping No way to last out here like this for long 'Cause everywhere I go, I know Everywhere I go, I know All my happiness is gone All my happiness is gone It's all gone somewhere beyond All my happiness is gone

What's amazing about Kakuryu is that this is a basho where he's won at least twice by pulling (once on Abi, forget who the other was atm), and traditionally pulling gets Kakuryu knocked into orbit. So this is just going to reinforce that habit until he tries it on like Takayasu or something and gets sent to the cheap seats. Look forward to it.

it seems to be Ishin Gundan (Choshu's old stable). Evidence: 1) the only three emote packs I ever bought on LINE are of a skeleton, a kakapo, and a set of Riki Choshu emotes in that exact same art style, and 2) if that's Riki Choshu in the front that HAS to be Yatsu to his left.

well, turns out that still might be required. dude went for the Cusack "Say Anything" but instead of a boombox it was a collage he made of all the times other people said nice things to her, spanning back to several months. I'm not wiling to explain what she does that he would have access to this information. so she checked into the hospital today and is gonna be there for a while.

update: she went public with the dude's harassment and their mutuals have been on his ass like wild dogs, so I wont even have to do anything. Hopefully now the healing can actually start, now that she knows she's safe from like threats of exile/exposure or whatever.

I'm going to make this as broad as I can because the second I get into details I see red. My sister is suicidal. She has been doing everything she can. What is not helping is that there has been an extremely horny dude that's been hounding her for months, taking every conversation and turning it into "you know maybe I could fly out and we can get dinner and a movie and just you know cuddle and stuff." After she went public with feeling suicidal, he has been trying to leverage that information into his attempts to fuck her. I want his head.

I have an update on Konami's Pixel Puzzle Collection. If you dont remember what this game is, it's Picross with old Konami spritework. I cleared it 100% today and as I was working on the puzzle I was thinking "Gosh, I really don't want to uninstall this but I guess I'm done with it." So when I finished the puzzle, it popped up this big screen that said "NORMAL MODE CLEAR." And then it unlocked expert mode. They removed the ability to make X's, and in order to earn credit for clears in expert mode you have to clear it faster than your time in normal mode. So uh this is probably the best phone game?

here comes an extremely esoteric rant. So my favorite band ever is Women. They're from Calgary. They're amazing. You might have heard me talk about them. Anyways, how amazing they are has lead me down wild roads searching out new bands from that scene and related ones, which has lead me to a lot of amazing groups. Freak Heat Waves, Telstar Drugs, Manchild, Faux Fur, Jean Audet and his million bands, Each Other, Grime Kings, etc etc etc. A lot of stuff that I've listened to obsessively and dissect for months when I find some newly unturned stone. There's this new buzz band called black midi. They're talented musicians. They have some good tunes. They also do a lot of extremely, extremely similar things to all these Calgary bands I've mentioned. A lot of the critical response centers around how experimental and new they sound. This frustrates me. Greatly. I will continue writing songs, there will be at least one about this hernia forming in my stomach. I had to put this somewhere and I chose here.

putting my bandwagon application in the mail monday morning

I blame @Death From Above for lodging this in my brain.

MARIO MAKER 2 [3] yeah what he said OUTER WILDS [4] I don't believe I am built phobia-wise to play this game, but, it is Neat as Fuck and I wish I was. Basically: Myst In Space, where the other books are just other planets, and the planets are very small in a stylistic way. I am freaked out by Under Water Stuff and Space Stuff so about once per hour my body just goes "AHH" and I have to close the game. So, not looking good for me beating it, but, strong recommend. VERY clever.

first response: "am I being stereotyped" second response: "oh I see why you'd say this about me and this band" third response: "wait they're literally from calgary" fourth: "ok i'm being stereotyped but this owns"

There's probably like four decent indie rock bands and Wolf Parade is one of them. I've listened to this album a fucking lot in my life so I could yell about it for hours, but I'm going to summarize it by saying that as I've aged I've liked Dan Boeckner's songs more, to the point where I almost prefer his stuff on this record to Krug's. Like, I think I've spread my opinions on being Anti-Ballad, but one of the few exceptions I make is for Same Ghost Every Night. Also, one of my favorite songs to play on guitar is Shine A Light.

So I've been meaning to listen to this record for years, so it was nice to finally get around to it. I didn't like it. I try to give a wide berth to rappers for singing about ignorant shit, especially the older it is because it's a young art form from a population that traditionally hasn't had chances to express themselves the ways they've wanted to. Like, with older stuff, it's people inventing a language for themselves in their youth, so of course some of the shit they say is going to be wack. To be young is to make mistakes. That said, I was reading about the reception to this album and all of the people that positioned this record as like "FINALLY, A 90S ALTERNATIVE TO GANGSTA RAP" unnerve me. I don't know. There's a disconnect between this and me that I'm not sure I've actually done a good job highlighting here. It's not like a bad record at all, it's just extremely of it's time and place and I wasn't there.

requisite Boredoms-adjacent content

I will say that when I saw there was a song on here with "Ska" in the title I felt real, real dread. I am no friend of Ska. Then I put it on and just genuinely enjoyed the record all the way through. I feel that it's got what a lot of rock bands are missing, which is engaging in tropes because you enjoy them and not because it's your brand or because you're seeking some puritan ideal. They immerse themselves in rock history but none of the dogma, so they can fuck around with it in anarchic ways. Really enjoyed this. Favorite song was Manhole.

AUTO CHESS [4] This is probably the game of the year, in an objective newsworthy sense. It's the dawn of a new genre and it's exploded in popularity. I'm now going to do my best to explain how it works, and then the difference between the three variants of it currently available, and then what I actually think of it. I'm doing this because I think a lot of people are doing a totally shit job of explaining how the game works, and I would like to throw myself onto the pile and see if I can climb to the top and get the flag. ACT 1: PLAYING THE GAME Okay. So, eight players. You get a slight amount of money, and you use that money to buy units, or "pieces." You place those pieces on half a chess board. A timer ticks down, the other half of the chess board fills with enemies, and then all the pieces come to life and act in specific ways. Warriors will tank things. Archers will shoot stuff. Assassins will leap over everyone to the back of the line and attack the ranged people. Mages isolate and attempt to neutralize specific targets. etc. The pieces each have two types of synergy, and those synergies will convey different things. (Multiple warriors will increase armor for all warriors. If you have a single demon, it will do 50% more damage. If you have two witchers, they will be recognized as one demon. etc etc.) At the end of the round, the board of purchasable pieces changes, and you can add more pieces. So, you construct a board of pieces through what's available. You can also use the money you get to re-roll all the purchasable characters. "Why is this important?" If you get three of the same piece, it will upgrade into a Two-Star version of that piece, which makes it hit harder and more resilient. If you get three Two-Star pieces, they can all combine to one Three-Star piece. The Three-Star pieces are the goal of your teambuilding exercise. Now this all costs money. There's multiple ways of accruing money. If you get REAL lucky early on, you can just spend the whole game accruing money through a win streak. There is also, however, bonus money gained for being on a losing streak. So if you don't get money early, it behooves you to job so you can accrue money and see what interests you in the purchase board. Oh, and by the way, the money accrues interest, so the longer you wait, the higher your interest is, the more you have to throw around when you cash out. You can also sell pieces back for a full refund, if you start with one strategy and then realize you want to pivot to another. Throughout the match, you will level up. Every time you level up, you can add another piece to the board. I have never gotten past level 8, but I assume you can. Winning is not the only way to get experience. You can also buy it. Five coins gets you 4XP. So that's another thing to add in to the overarching strategy of the match The first three rounds are against AI enemies, and then after that it's humans, with an AI damage check at every 5th level from then on (starting at level 10). So your boards of pieces will fight other boards, while defending your own board. It'll in fact make a copy of your board and put that against someone else. So, you can be defending against Player B, but attacking Player E. The ultimate goal is to defend: If all your pieces die, you will take damage that is multiplied by the number of enemies left. Oh, also, these AI enemies drop items that you can use to permanently buff your pieces, and those items So, to recap, this game has -No Mechanical Barrier (you place the pieces and they fight for themselves) -Looting (items from creeps) -Gambling (Constant rerolling of purchasable characters) -Creativity (Creating synergies from the characters you see, which keeps you on your toes and looking for exploitable patterns) -Tactical Considerations (Placing your pieces to counter assassins and mages and put the pressure on them) -Strategic Considerations (Economic considerations that run through the match) -It's totally free-to-play and is doing the season pass thing. It's like a perfect modern video game. Oh, also, each game takes like 30-45 minutes. ACT 2: WHICH ONE'S WHICH So there's currently four versions of this game that you can play "right now." These have various weird hoops around playing them. I'm going to address them in Chronologicalesque order. Dota 2 Auto Chess. This is a mod for Dota 2. If you're familiar with the origins of Dota, this one is the most cosmically funny way to play Auto Chess. It uses Dota assets to represent all the pieces, and if you have some Dota knowhow then you'll understand what a lot of the pieces will do from knowing how they work in that game. It does, however, require that you install Dota 2, and expose yourself to the kinds of people that play Dota 2. It's not long for this world, because... Auto Chess (or Auto Chess:Origin). When the Chinese team that invented the game could not come to a deal with Valve, they made a version for phones that cleverly adjusted the models/names to look somewhat similar but not entirely. It's currently only on iOS and Android, but it will be coming to PC through the Epic Game Store. This is the one that I play. Teamfight Tactics. So the League of Legends people saw that Auto Chess was popular, and saw that it used MOBA models and assets to make a new game, and went "Hey! We have MOBA models and assets!" And now they have one too. Oh, it's also hex grids instead of squares. And, it's currently the most popular game on Twitch. You can only get it through the League of Legends clients, so take the thing I said about exposing yourself to Dota people and make it like 300 times worse. It's also only available through their test servers, and I dont know if they added a restriction to keep new players from getting on there or not. Dota Underlords. When team invented game not come deal valve, Valve make own. So basically what I'm saying here is, "some modders had a good idea, and then the MOBA teams had a big old freakout about being undermined and slapped their assets into similar games as fast as possible." This one is currently available on phones and PC, but in PC you only get access if you're paying into the Dota 2 Invitational Season Pass? Or something? It seems really rough, like it's been hurried out by a bunch of techno-haberdashers that aren't used to making games. ACT 3: WHAT I ACTUALLY THINK I think it's fun! The 4 rating isn't just for how weird it is to watch this genre materialize in thin air before the world. It is an interesting game. I am terrified for the mod creators because I think they're going to get totally fucked by how widespread League of Legends is and how cruel and petty both Riot and Valve can be with monetization is probably going to lead to this genre being a toxic dump in maybe as much time as it took for this game to take over their respective parts of the internet. So my full opinion is such: It's fun, I like it, if it sounds appealing or really confusing you should give it a shot, and please try to play the one that the actual inventors of the game made and don't let the MOBA people fuck them out of recognition.

Turns out I have a physical limit to how much zydeco I can listen to before I get antsy, and it's 24 minutes. I find it hard for me to say a cogent thing about this for a few reasons. 1) it is an extremely regional thing that I imagine has to get its claws in early. It is such a peculiar mixture of elements though that it feels like some kind of jukebox for aliens that plays two songs at the same time. The cheapness of the electronic drum sounds is just so distracting. I dunno. I can't get my head around what they're going for. 2) It's a compliation, so it's not like I can fall back on artist's intent, since it's meant to be a thing you just hit Go on because there's some ritual in your life that's zydeco-centric but not necessarily zydeco-discerning. It's raw music for the sake of raw music. This is not a bad thing. It's just that- as someone who specifically only makes music in an album context, and even more specifically sees songs as a collection of pieces that can speak to a greater idea and flesh it out in a three-dimensional way that I enjoy more than other art forms- I'm not equipped to think about it in the same way that I do with longer statements. I did finish it. I did not make a special note of any of the songs on it. Bottom line: if you like zydeco, I can confirm this is zydeco.

Awwww shit, it's time for the spin-off! So there's some Shit That Needs To Happen in this house, and while I have my own wide array of music I've been going through while cleaning, I figured I'd open myself up to suggestions. I'm probably going to be making less notes than usual about these records because I'll be cleaning, but hey, if you've ever wanted to make someone listen to your favorite shit ever (or you like the other version of this thread that I do and want me to write about something less modern (because I don't like have some legal way to make sure you're telling me your Actual Favorite Album)). The only ground rule is I'm still not listening to the maga-era kanye shit. Other than that, go nuts. By the way, my favorite album is "Public Strain" by Women. Do what you like with that information.

I get what you're saying but I feed this stuff into a spreadsheet to keep track of what I play and I dont have it set up to accept that as an option, nor the interest in doing that

So I've been trying the xbox game pass pc beta thing and got around to trying some indie games I've been waffling on and could never justify buying. It's at this point that I'm gonna give a seasonal reminder as to what my scale translates to: 1 = I Hate This 2 = I Regret Playing This 3 = I Don't Regret Playing This 4 = I Love This 4.5 = Game of the Year 5 = A Dream Come True (so Fire Pro World, Tetris 99, and maybe Virtua Fighter 6 some day) VOID BASTARDS [2] What's weird is that I would recommend this game in a heartbeat to anyone that likes roguelikes. It seems extremely clever and well made, and its setting is just fantastic. I just am not the target audience. I have too much of a perfectionism thing to enjoy roguelikes, and once it sank in that it was one of those and I was like feeling my chest tighten as I progressed through the third level, I realized "oh right, I dislike these" and uninstalled it. KINGSWAY [1] Speaking of Not for Me, Kingsway! It's an open world RPG built with the conceit of like it being a fake operating system that has this one game installed that just launches a shit ton of popups to manage health, quests, etc. It is a very particular kind of throwback. Turns out, I have absolutely no nostalgia for how PC RPGs circa Windows 3.1 used to work, and I bounced off this within minutes. I'm sure this is someone's perfect game, it sure as shit isn't mine. WEST OF LOATHING [2] This is a very specific 2. Namely, it's that I cannot justify the time investment that it would take to beat this right now, which is awful because I REALLY want to just clear all my responsibilities out of the way and shove this in my face until it's done. It's the first comedy game I've played in years that I've caught myself laughing at multiple times, and on top of that it's got a decently dense set of RPG mechanics that would make a non-violent playthrough possible. It's just arrived at exactly the wrong time in my life. Strong recommend, but this game and I are star crossed lovers.

They're going to announce the release date when Act 5 is done. Not a second before. Remember, it's a VERY small team making that game.