2024 Week 50 Monday Musings
Saturday, December 7th, 2024 (cont.)
As could have been predicted, shortly after I finished writing that entry, we talked it out.
I was messing about with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a game that I am finding altogether whelming, she came upstairs to check on me. I told her that I had some complex thoughts about intimacy that I wanted to talk out with her. She said that she wanted to as well, but that she did not want us to fight about it. I agreed, but I insisted that for that to be the case, she would need to listen to how I feel and not get defensive about it. I, of course, would do the same.
We had a long talk about it. It was good. We always work these kinds of things out. It is how we have been together for more than 20 years.
We went for a short trip to the grocery store and liquor store; I picked up some Fat Tire and a mix-a-six. They had Honey Brown! I have not seen that beer in a long time. It brought me back to the nights in grad school where we would get calzones and hang out at the bar nearby, Michael's, which inexplicably had Honey Brown on draft. You never saw that on draft anywhere else. It is not a great beer, but it is connected to happy memories for me.
Back home, I went on a 5 mile run, cruising past the goal of 26.2 per week by nearly a full mile. My left knee was still hurting, so I skipped the squats and did some light lifting afterward.
That evening we sat down to watch Terrifier 3, something that we had been looking forward to for a long time.
Beyond liking the Terrifier movies themselves, I just love the way that they came to be and how unlikely of a success they are in the modern landscape of horror movies. It seems like the only things hitting theaters these days are very low-impact Blumhouse PG-13 movies that lack any kind of bite. The monsters are always very gimmicky. They feel like empty calories.
Terrifier was borne out of one of my favorite genres, Anthology Horror. Art the Clown showed up in a collection called All Hallows Eve and the character got its own short film which then was popular enough to grow into a full blown feature. Art the clown is an incredible horror character. In a sea of scary clowns, he seems completely different. The actor brings such a unique sense of joy and surrealness to the performance. I love that he is an actual mime, using exaggerated body language and gestures to take child-like glee in the absolute fucking gorefest that he creates. He's an absolute legend.
The first film was a raw and brutal thing to behold. The second opened up the universe in a way that I think would have seemed indulgent and unnecessary in the hands of a lesser writer/director, but Damien Leone repays your patience and rewards you for paying attention. Would I have wanted Terrifier to stay a straightforward slasher franchise with an incredibly unique villain? Maybe. But the creator wanted to take it in a completely supernatural, mythological direction. I wanted to resist it at first. But then I realized that we were in good hands. Leone has earned this. Let him paint whatever he wants on this crazy canvas.
Terrifier 3 did not disappoint. We had a blast, and I even found myself reading up on the lore of the world. That is not something that I expected to be doing after seeing the first one.
I dare say, I think I would watch all three of them again, and I think I will by the time the 4th one comes out. They are that good.
We also took in the new episode of Helluva Boss, which is another piece of art that is so good that I feel genuinely lucky to be alive to see it. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is how I feel. Season two has been incredible.
That night I hopped into VR for a bit with Johnny and Joel. That was really fun. It is special to have a new thing to experience with friends, and it really does make you feel like you are in the room with them. I can only imagine what this could do for people in long distance relationships, or those studying away from home and wanting to keep in touch with their friends.
I should have gone to bed with S.T. a little after 10PM, but I instead stayed up past 1AM, drunk and talking to strangers on Omegle. I'm a bit of a mess sometimes.
Sunday, December 8th, 2024.
We'd had some concrete plans for this day. We were planning on hopping on a bus and hitting the re-gifting EcoRI event for around 1:30PM, where we would donate a bunch of things and enjoy a couple of drinks at the Flatbread Company.
Unfortunately, S.T. was having major stomach issues, so a big wrench was thrown into those plans. Ultimately she asked me if I could just drive there and drop off the goods. I will admit, I was a little bit grumpy about it. Driving in Providence, or any major city for that matter, is something that I avoid doing at all costs. It stresses me out. And then there is the matter of looking for parking. I avoid it at all costs.
So, something that I was greatly looking forward to became a chore and something that I usually try to steer away from at all costs.
Still, it was for a good cause. I did what I had to do. Traffic could have been worse, and I found a parking spot that was just a 5 minute walk away. I walked into the venue like the terminator, put our donations on the table for anyone to take, and walked out as quickly as I had come.
It was a nice chance to sit in a warm car and listen to Nextlander.
When I got home I was feeling in the spirit, so I cut up a wire clothes hanger and made some makeshift stabilizers for our Christmas decor outside that kept falling down. It is not a bulletproof solution but it seems to be working for now.
That afternoon I ended up toying a bit with Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, because my computer had locked up and needed to restart, which meant that it automatically installed the windows update that makes Avatar unplayable. I gave up on it and decided to chill out with some Harvest Moon instead.
Harvest Moon has not changed, but I have. My creeping anxiety about not being as efficient with my time in game started up and I needed to turn it off before my first crop of potatoes and cabbage even became ready to harvest.
I switched instead to 9 Years of Shadows, a little indie metroidvania that surprisingly has been hitting the spot. I like the way that it plays quite a bit. It does not reach the heights of Islets but it is far more approachable than Axiom Verge, and a great deal shorter. So far, I am liking it a lot. As I understand it is only 7ish hours long, so I look forward to finishing that.
Having watched Terrifier 3 the previous day, I got curious about Scream Box, a horror streaming service similar to Shudder. I like to support these kinds of things when I can. I want people who make horror movies to get paid. I found a decent deal where I got 4 months of the service for $9 and I figured that was worth the risk.
We tried to watch a 'movie' called Horror in the High Desert and it was the biggest piece of shit that I have ever seen. I'm sorry, that sounds so mean, but I was actively annoyed to be watching it. Things have to happen in movies. I get the fake documentary angle, but at least shoot on film. It looked like a home video and the actors were all miscast and terrible. They shot basically no actual footage for the movie. Just a bunch of drone shots and still images to talk over. I tapped out after something like 20 minutes. I felt secondhand embarrassment for everyone involved in making this.
There is a way to do horror on a micro budget. See Bad Ben. This, however, should never have seen the light of day. Do people like this? Are people this dumb?
I was a bit sleep deprived and cranky. We watched Friday Night Smackdown from the previous Friday, I played a little more 9 Years of Shadows, and I called it a night around 9:30PM.
I made the decision to not go into the office the next day, though it was one of my in-office days. I had no in-person appointments, I was feeling run down, and my boss had been out of the office for something like 2 weeks now. We're also in a bit of a staffing crisis and I'm a fantastic advisor, so its not like they would fire me over taking a day at home when I need it.
That is something to be grateful for. I do not take it for granted.
Monday, December 9th, 2024.
This morning I made a point to stay in bed until 7:30AM. I needed the rest, and I took a Unisom, a Trazadone, and a Benadryl the night before to make sure that I got it. It worked very well. The world had color again.
My coffee tasted great, and I made a scramble of egg whites and spinach. Brushed, flossed.
I actually got an early start on work. It was a nice day for it.
It had been a blissfully stress-free day. I ran 6 miles, washed and folded a ton of laundry, and got a lot of good work done. In the afternoon I even squeezed in a bit more of 9 Years of Shadows.
Tonight I am not sure if I am still meeting up with the guys. Johnny is stuck on the Jamestown bridge and won't be able to make it. I think Joel wanted to show us something in VR.
There is nothing on the schedule for work tomorrow, but I need to bite the bullet and grade all of my class's final assignments and get their final grades posted. That will be painless. There is no reason to be afraid of that. And then that chapter will be closed.
Am I a bit checked out for the holidays? Maybe. And I do not take for granted that I have a job that allows me to do that right now. I'm a little stressed about money, and I have no idea what to do for S.T. for Christmas. I've mentioned in the last couple of weeks that I would like to do a little less spending this year and more just spending time together and living out the true meaning of the season and all that.
I have a secret project planned for her birthday, though. Its a silly little creative thing. I hope she'll like it.