Cerulean @Cerulean@dragon.style

Welcome. Primary mastodontal activity will now be here. Refer to @CeruleanK for toots prior to October 2018.

I've been fascinated with performances of "Failing" by Tom Johnson, and when I think I've seen them all, YouTube finds and serves up another one to me about once a day. This is the most popular one, because it shows the score: https://youtu.be/RM-t19KCkd8

I don't feel like I can really mark the end of 2020 until the inauguration, but gosh, goodbye Flash. I made sure to revisit the Differences games by Ivory before I uninstalled. "Find 6 Differences" was weirdly important to me as a night person.

I'm still playing this, because it doesn't require my full attention, and since I unlocked the Sorceress it's still worth playing. Her fire gloves are probably the only defense item in the game that can be used on consecutive turns, and the one-for-all and card container give me control over my hand and make me feel more like I'm making real strategic decisions.

It's still impossible, of course. This is the furthest I've gotten, having squeaked past the Kraken boss of world 3 only to be obliterated into a fine mist by this spicy gumdrop.

My allergies have been overwhelming my attention since it got cold enough to run the heating. Whatever's in the vents that's worse than spring, I'm sure I can't do anything about it. Switching from Zyrtec to full-strength Allegra has given me just enough focus to wrap up the technical details of the font family I've been ignoring all year, except for the mystery of how to handle the name fields in such a way that most applications will recognize all of them at the same time. This last problem is intractable enough that I may be setting the whole thing down and ignoring it for another while.

If anyone comes even later than I to Monument Valley and unspoiled, be advised that the 5th Anniversary Edition of this charming little tribute to M.C. Escher starts in "party mode" which gives your character an assortment of hats/masks precisely calculated to spoil almost every slightest thematic turn to come including the ending, which is impressive for a work so short.

My parents got me an Amazon Fire for xmas, knowing I would never get a tablet for myself because I live in one room with a computer on my desk, and society has heretofore failed to impress upon me that certain things belong on a whole other computer that you hold by the edges and keep with the throw cushions. I am doing my best to get accustomed to it and find uses for it, starting with Monument Valley. But I am tempted to affix a big handle to the back.

I estimate that upstairs is actually an entire percussionist family of various ages and stages of learning. The rhythmic expertise of whoever practices this complex routine of clog dancing or floor hammers, or whatever the hell it is, is clearly not the same as the kid who batters a djembe and/or furniture and jumps from heights, and is actually much more difficult to ignore. Probably neither is the same as the beginner on the drum kit with cymbals, who I barely mind.

In the first hour and a half of beginning to recoup some sleep, in a not entirely together state of mind, I may have just got up and thrashed my bare fists against the low part of the ceiling, six times, much harder than a fragile flower who needs to hold pigment liner pens really should against a surface that is not going to give way. It got me my peace, but I didn't get back to sleep.

I somehow got a little hooked on dashcam videos, not because I need to see any more of the worst of humanity, but out of a nostalgia for what it's like to go places. Yeah, those guys are trying to kill each other, but what a pretty sky, and hey, a diner, I'd stop at that diner…

For an example. Usually I play the starter character, the Knight, because he is the only one who starts with a shield. But I tried a run with the Huntress. One of her items is her dog Duke, who does not take cards, but stuns the enemy for the cost of one food, the dearest resource in the game. Because this is her only means of defense, this predictably ended with the Huntress starving to death.

About to take another step and automatically lose, there was one other remaining option: Just as regular items can be scrapped for pocket change, Duke could be scrapped for 5 food. Grim, but abstract. Until you click it and the game brings up the battle screen. Facing down a sad dog whose only action bears the description, "Duke whimpers with his tail between his legs. He doesn't know what he did wrong." Clever, game, but also fuck off. Especially since we're here because none of the enemy bulls, goats, boars, horses, or giant lobsters we have to cut through ever drops food. Obviously I aborted the game before seeing any more of that.

Being unable to focus on much, I've been giving time to Poker Quest. It's interesting and pleasing and I like the card mechanics, and maybe I'm not especially experienced at this subgenre of roguelike, but it seems to me to suffer from brutal resource poverty. The damage ramps up way faster than you can gather items and upgrades of any worth. A hit can take almost all of your health, and if you make it to a campsite you can heal 15% of it back. Every step of progress across the map costs food, and if you run out, every step starves you 20hp, which you will especially regret if you chose to eat some for 10hp earlier. The hardest things to find are defense items, because the shops tend to be full of three-handed weapons you can't afford. I genuinely don't think it's possible to beat a run, not without extraordinary good fortune. And maybe it is the frustration that keeps bringing me back; like Bennett Foddy says, mountains become real.

It has come to my attention that I left out a middle section which leaves this thing insufficient for karaoke. I think it is best kept short, but if you were singing along with the original song, the omission would leave you stranded. So:

It's an old place and they say it gets older
And sometimes it clears its history folder
But the mightier men beg to differ
Building a domain on the bend of a river

He lies in state, shattered and grim
The desert stretches out where the city had been
My world's on fire, how about yours?
It's not the most delicate of metaphors

It happened again: My phone fell back two hours to Alaska time, and will only allow me to set it to Pacific if I decouple the clock from the network. Not sure which is more improbable, that I'm the only one in the area who experiences this, or that I'm not and nothing has been done about it.

Opened a can of cheese potato soup. Already had half a can of turkey chili (with no beans) open in the fridge. Thought, what if I mix them together? Can't be terrible.

It looks kinda like refried beans.

It _tastes_ kinda like refried beans.

It's just fine, basically, but I seem to have hit upon the most pointless food simulation ever.

It is gratifying to be able to vote in the middle of the night with no one around. To do one thing I need to at any time it is convenient for me.

Caught up on 20020 and I'm a bit disappointed that when we stop to see what the board game enthusiasts are doing, it's a pit-stained incel gamestop caricature playing opaque garbage and then sneering at "sportsball". It's like, buddy, I've read this far, you got me engaged with the strategies of a wacky football game, but now when you stop to make this dig, all you've done is remind me of all the real reasons to resent the self-important role of sports in the real world which your comparison does not address at all. Convenient that none of these reasons are valid in a world without harm.

Being in the dark with only my thoughts for five hours, in the hope of regulating my untamable sleep pattern for the sake of an appointment I made a month ago, is always such a good time (it is not a good time)

The following is something I wrote the first verse of on Twitter a few years ago and it has stuck in my mind. With Neil C having just dropped a Mouth album yesterday, John and Hank Green wrapping up a certain folly today, and our civilization and/or emperor collapsing as we speak, I now revisit it here in full.
____

Somebody once told me he happened to behold the
most colossal wreck in his antique land
It was looking kinda sunk just two legs without a trunk
And a sneer on its face in the bare sand

Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming
A century of rule can end up as nothing
Did it make sense when the sculptor read
The hand that mocked and the heart that fed
So much for you, so much for me, so much mighty work lost to history
We'll never know what it's all for
We'll never amount to much more

Hey now, Ozymandias, you're the king of all kings
Hey now, Pharaoh Rameses, grow your empire, build things
Nothing else remains there
Look upon my worrrks and despai-air

Someday some hunter will stumble through and wonder
at some giant fragment left of this place
He'll say "Yes, I can only guess, who once dwelt in this wilderness"
about our own unrecorded raaace

(Well the years etc.)

Hey now, Ozymandias, you're the king of all kings
Hey now, Pharaoh Rameses, Younger Memnon, Time sings
Nothing else remains there
Look upon my worrrks and despai-air.

Have some Hain and the Half Coin.
http://cerulean.st/hain/#new

The exercise of repeatedly jumping off something and trying to break through the floor is still part of Animal's regimen. If they ever succeed, they are not going to like what they find down here.

I should be cleaning myself so that I can suit up and get in my car to see if the charge took when I used a portable USB battery to jump my car this weekend. Then I can buy groceries, maybe get a flu jab, maybe fix my tire pressure, and call the dealership to tell them I'll be able to bring my car in for service next week without needing a tow. Once the car is taken care of, I can find a dentist to replace the filling that's gone missing. Because the theme is "one thing after another", the dentist is definitely where I will catch covid, and then I'll have to complete a proper last will and testament while I suffer and die. Can't wait to get started on the whole process.