What's everyone up to right now?

[Rev. Rye]

After finishing work on that big spreadsheet for all the movies in 366 weird movies’ Certified Weird list, I’ve decided to go down to my basement theater to watch The Truman Show.

The strange thing is I find I’m relating a lot to Truman, not so much the “I could be the star of some weird tv show” thing, but more the “whenever I need to get something done, it’s like outside forces do everything in their power to keep me from doing it” thing that happens whenever Truman tries to get to the truth of the masquerade.

Also, It’s kind of weird seeing a film as recent as this still having occasional specks and scratches, including a few cigarette burns. I don’t hate it; in fact there’s something nostalgic in it.

As for earlier in the day, it looks like there’s a snow day in Skokie and I was told to not go to work. At one point I did an an Anglotopia article about Peter Jackson making a documentary from unused Let it Be footage, and the boss not only posted it immediately, but also gave me this message: “I'm so glad you did this! Thank you - hope you're staying warm!” it’s pretty strange, especially since the last time he interacted with me via email, it was when I asked him about the propriety of doing an article about how the Archbishop of Canterbury used Stormzy to stay focused during the Royal Wedding In May.

[Rev. Rye]

Also, having just finished, I simply have to ask... how did they handle Truman figuring out how to masturbate, like he almost certainly did when he was a teenager?

[Rev. Rye]

Here's a tale to tell: I don't know if you guys will empathise or just insist it's too damn much ado about nothing, but here goes. Over a year ago, I discovered an app called Pixel Art. I quickly became addicted to it and, over the next few months, I decided to see if I could do every pixel art picture that didn't require an extra subscription.





Eventually, I would complete it, and I decided that since every day, they'd add some more, I'd do those as well. This seemed like it could be a good thing to play with in the mornings. It can be almost zen at times, and with a bunch of waves of my finger, I could create a portrait of the Forbidden City. Harder ones felt like a good challenge, hunting for the right pixels to complete it. But still, I could be finished eventually. It looked like a pretty good arrangement, and it was like that... until today.

I found about six or seven images related to the Chinese New Year, and then, looking at the "more images" tab on the bottom, I found a bunch of pictures I that did not look like the new ones that I hadn't already done. I finished somewhere in the area of a hundred of these images over the whole day (thankfully, the store is closed today due to the extreme weather), and at this point, it looks like there's no end in sight. You remember one of those old cartoons where some glutton, hated by his family for eating them out of house and home, tries to make it on its own, and meets some mysterious stranger who promises them as much food as they can possibly eat, and they just strap him into a chair until he bursts? That's what trying to do this feels like:





Another analogy: Imagine doing the boss' books, and then, just as you finish, he says "wait, those aren't this year's books. These are this year's books." And he hands you a stack of papers as long as The Passage. That was the analogy I used, and I even plopped the copy I was reading on her table to prove this point.

The weird thing is that these new pictures are only accessible in the "more" bar when you finish one painting. But still, even yesterday, I was still able to get that to be totally clear. Today, it looks like the backlog is a bottomless abyss, with all these images turning into a reminder of unfinished business whose . There is no end to the potential pictures, whether it's pictures of cats or food or winter-related stuff, or fucking god it's overwhelming. I didn't eat breakfast, I ate lunch late and I started to vomit with the first bite of the sandwich I made. Thankfully, I had an appointment with my therapist that day, and, as bad as the weather was, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep me from trying to make that appointment. Especially if my anxiety is getting puking bad. I spent the entire appointment talking about it, and I talked about my options:

• Keep doing what I'm doing and keep the feed-a-matic going.
  
• Scale it down somehow. I don't know how, exactly.
  
• Delete the app and lose years of work (I've been using it every day for over year), so there's a lot.
  
• Keep the app and stop using it and hope it doesn't trigger anything.
  

Another analogy I came up with comes from Grizzly Man. Timothy Treadwell recorded his last moments. He didn't have time to take off the lens cap, but you could still hear the bear mauling hauling him, his vain attempts at fending it off with a frying pan and his unsuccessful attempts at convincing his girlfriend to flee. Very few people have listened to it, and you can see Werner Herzog becoming one of them. It horrified him. Seriously, the guy who shrugged off an apparent assassination attempt turned white upon listening to this. 





As you can see, he urged Timothy's ex-girlfriend to destroy it because "it will be the white elephant in [her] room all [her] life." I remember watching its TV premiere on I think the Discovery Channel, and it was followed by a discussion by several of the surviving participants. Jewel would admit that she couldn't bring herself to destroy the tape. She put it in a safe deposit box and has never listened to it, and in putting it in that box, she hopes she never will.

With this in mind, I decided to finish some of the ones I had started, but not finished. As soon as we left, I started to finish them. By 9:13, I finished the last unfinished (as opposed to unstarted) drawings: a picture of the Forbidden City. A rather fitting end for a last one before I say "fuck this in all holes." And then, I put the app in a folder, one with enough apps that Pixel Art could be hidden in a second page, so I would be far less tempted to try and finish it. 

Shit like this, you don't know if you're going to look like you're talking about giving up an addiction or just being a whiny kid wingeing about a minor change to a game he used to like.

[Nakara]

Hour 5:30am: “Hmmm looks like it snowed a bit. Guess I’ll get ready quickly so I can leave extra early.”

Hour 6:00am: “Got my coffee, got my banana, time to head to work!”

Hour 6:03am: “Oof, it’s so snowy you can’t see the road marks! Good thing I’m familiar with this route!”

Hour 6:15am: “Phew made it to the highway!”

Hour 6:17am: “Due to the snowpocalypse we are progressively devolving into total anarchy. The highway is now 3 lanes instead of 4. I am clearly straddling the lane line but it appears this is now socially acceptable.”

Hour 6:20am: “And so, our dutiful march continues as we collectively crawl along the solemn white landscape in pursuit of our destination.”

Hour 6:23am: “My coffee, that was to be enjoyed while I worked, has been drained. With luck this shall sustain me for the remainder of my journey.”

Hour 6:30am: “OH MY GOD WHY ARE THERE GIANT SNOW BUMPS ALL OF A SUDDEN.”

Hour 7:00am: “Somehow I and my fellow journeying compatriots have overcome the Field of Haphazard Snow Bumps, although I suspect we have lost a few along the way. May the insurance have mercy on their pocketbooks.”

Hour 7:23am: “The people of the highway have now realized it is 4 lanes and have since carved out a new path.”

Hour 7:30am: “I should’ve been at work by now. My boss isn’t even there yet...”

Hour 7:42am: “THE SNOW BUMPS ARE BACK ASDFGHJKLLGSAVT.”

Hour 7:45am: “My vision darkens. My supplies are low—I carry only half a banana and my coffee is long since gone. The end is nigh...”

Hour 7:46am: “Ohey I made it to work.”

[The Grand Nudger]

Not a whole hell of alot.  I'm usually seeding right now....but it's too damned cold .

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Enjoying the cooler weather. Is a pleasant 66' F (19' C)
With a faint, misty rain falling.

Also enjoying a lunch/dinner in the quiet time. Nummy jasmin rice and butter chicken.

[The Valkyrie]

At work.

Enjoying the cooler weather. Is a pleasant 66' F (19' C)
With a faint, misty rain falling.

Also enjoying a lunch/dinner in the quiet time. Nummy jasmin rice and butter chicken.

Yeah, it's much cooler here right now.

Even had some rain last nighr.

[Rev. Rye]

My day so far:

1. Eat breakfast. 
   
2. Play with all the apps I usually do in the morning except for Pixel Art (for reasons detailed above)
   
3. Have to deal with numerous internet blackouts. 
   
4. Meditate over the big upset of yesterday.
   
5. Ask the boss if the temperature is warm enough to go to work. He leaves it up to my discretion.
   
6. Eat lunch and end up retching up a big bite of my sandwich out of nerves.
   
7. Finally go to work, and deal with an unusually thin maze of cars, miraculously failing to hit any of them.
   
8. Arrive at work only to find that Amazon One Click has somehow been installed on the computer. It starts up a dialogue window asking what I want to search for. It will not take no for an answer, and I end up having to uninstall it. 
   
9. I spend a lot of the day reading The Passage or looking up gear.
   

[DodosAreDead]

Think about how summer is only a month away. Cry about how summer is only a month away.

[Angrboda]

Planning to plan. I have reading to accomplish in a few weeks, and $350 of new hardware and a failing computer store that I am deploying the hardware to replace. Both of these tasks require some sort of plan, especially the computer bit, and so far I've just been winging it. I set reminders for myself using a Thunderbird add-in for Google Calendar, and so I've set myself a reminder to plan things out at 7 this evening. Now if I can resist the temptation to hit the snooze button on that reminder when 7 o'clock rolls around, I should be good.