mosquitos must be stopped

06-09-2021

Life has been pretty dull lately. I'm becoming very frustrated with my surroundings. It's been very hot and rainy lately so going on walks isn't even really an option. Well, I can't go very far without running out of sidewalk or into a major road, anyway. Hmm...not bored enough to take my chances either. Not interested in the broken swingset, empty parking lot and patch of grass area local park either. Suburbs are truly hell. But I think I'm ready to start apartment hunting again, and me and my friends are taking a belated grad trip later this summer. It's some weeks away, but having something to look forward to keeps me going.

I also got my wisdom teeth yoinked out recently. Gouged out, really. It was my first surgery! Wouldn't do it again but they let me keep my teeth. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet. Maybe I'll eat them and grow new ones.

bill gates 5G

05-17-2021

Finally, I'm fully vaccinated. The new DNA has been fully integrated into my cells and I have completed my initiation for Microsoft's cyborg army of electric sheeple. I can't believe the day I was waiting for, for much longer than I thought I'd have to, really did come. I'm so happy that I can finally do all of the fun and fulfilling things I imagined my early 20s would be made of. Things like traveling the world, hanging out with my friends who also had to move back in with their parents and now live several hours away, going to concerts and conventions with all of my abundant free time before I dedicate the next 40 years of my life to a 40~60 hour work week, in which I operate within a 20 foot radius where I go directly from my bed to my desk and back to my bed every day because offices are obsolete. What the fuck. I don't believe in an afterlife but someone needs to be held accountable for this and I think I'm entitled to a do-over.

I also, coincidentally, finished one of my quarantine projects. I finished reading 1Q84. I don't read much fiction anymore (especially fantasy, I think I got burnt out on The Wheel of Time some years ago), most of the books I own are basically catalogs, and I'm not terribly familiar with Murakami's work...but I do appreciate the work of Chip Kidd, who designed the cover. So it was on my read list for a while. I found it terribly boring and eyeroll-inducing. It was going well, up until it started going on and on about Aomame's pubes and small, pathetic, unwomanly, saggy breasts. Then the last 10% was pretty fun, and some parts in the middle were wonderfully written (or translated). But I ultimately didn't like it very much. I don't really have anything to say about 1Q84 that hasn't already been said, or about Murakami in general, but I'm pretty sure at times he was writing with only one hand.

I'd like to try another book that has a similar plot to 1Q84, but without long passages about pubic hair (metaphor or not). And ideally, properly written female characters. If anyone happens to read this and has some recs, please share them!

Making Stuff

04-21-2021

It's kind of weird that people who make bowls or spoons by hand are not really valuable to society anymore, and probably really haven't been for quite some time. It's not that handmade items have no value, but there's a general attitude of "why would you ever bother when you can just buy one?" True, along with being able to get more, factory-made is cheaper, more consistent, and in a lot of cases, the product is a much higher quality than what human hands alone could do in a reasonable amount of time (disregarding that factories are still run by humans...for now).

Especially in an era where everything can performed by a screen or two, there's even less of a need for such skills. But even then, Neocities is kind of "handmade," isn't it?

Well anyway, about twice a year (because that's usually all I have time for), I'll take on an ambitious project. This time, I'm working on modding one of my first BJD. I think it was the first head I tried doing my own faceups on. Unfortunately, I messed up a lot, and used some improper materials, so it got a little damaged. Since I've been able to learn from my mistakes, I'm much better at faceups now, but the damage, while very minor, kind of bothered me. So I wanted to sell it...but I couldn't really bring myself to do it and I wasn't willing to take a loss.

The thing about the BJD community, is that while there's a lot of freedom to customize and really make a doll your own, there's a lot of hesitation to not "ruin" a doll. They're expensive, after all. But over time, I've learned that it's difficult to truly ruin it. The nature of the material and the engineering makes it so, I think. But even untouched dolls will eventually change color due to age. There's nothing you can do about it. So there is no need to try to preserve a doll in some kind of pure state. Well, this isn't that unusual of an attitude, since there's lot of people that specifically seek out damaged dolls to fix them up, or people who enjoy mutilating them. Both are almost equally fascinating, but for obviously different reasons.

But as for me, I've decided to do my first large mod. When I first got into BJD, I really loved sleeping eyes, and unicorn dolls. Trends in the BJD world cycle slowly, but once they're gone, they don't really come back. I hope in the end, even if it's not perfect, I have something close to what originally made me think I would really like to own BJD one day.

If I end up deeply regretting my decision this entry will quietly disappear.