Hey freaks. This month has been pretty uneventful. I got pretty sad for a minute there and have been weirdly sick off and on. But fuck it we ball. Here’s the April photo dump. Reach out for the password. Still did some cool stuff and have been watching more movies, reading more books, and listening to more albums that I wanna talk about, so let’s get into it.

Employment Update

Still fucking nothing!! I’ve had three or four interviews since the last update that went nowhere. I got booted off unemployment for seemingly no reason..? I’ve been going back and forth with the state’s unemployment office and they’re taking their sweet time. But I’ve been applying for food, retail, office jobs, and graphic design creative stuff. I haven’t been picky since February. To be fair, I think my interview skills are really bad, but I’ve been doing research to improve so hopefully that’ll give me some results soon. If I’m being totally honest, I’m getting to a point where it feels real fucking hopeless. I’ve been denied out of pocket for 5 dishwashing jobs. Dishwashing. No interview, no nothing. Just denials. I have to have hope and keep up my motivation with applying to jobs anyway, I know its a numbers game. But that’s the honest update on how I’m feeling.

Birthday

It was my birthday! Technically happened after last month’s update was already written and posted, but I didn’t feel like waiting. I usually write these in one long hour or two long stretch and post them immediately after because that’s just how I roll. I don’t like sitting on fully finished posts so they get posted pretty quick. Anyway, I didn’t feel like waiting. Especially since most of my birthday activities had already happened earlier in March, or weren’t going to happen until mid April.

Cass and I had a lovely day out, Wasabi drew this beautiful image of him and I hanging out, and my parents drove up from their house in the south to drink in a hotel with me and my brother. It was really nice! Until I got food poisoning from White Castle.

Image of a photoshopped buff Shrek and twink-y Simon the Chipmunk stand shirtless in front of balloons and confetti. They are surrounded by the artist Poppy and the Dungeons and Dragons logo. Text on it reads 'felizz cumplee dalasito, us fr jajaja'. Simon and Shrek are getting a #1 victory royale.

TV

Designated Survivor

Cass and I got obsessed with this show called Designated Survivor and very quickly binge watched the first season. We’ve.. basically come to a screeching halt after getting a few episodes in through the second season. But the first season is great, it’s genuinely really fun and thrilling television. It’s a political drama about a fictional terrorist attack destroying the capital building, as well as the president, vice president, and literally every single congressperson and secretary. With the exception of Tom Kirkman, the head of housing and urban development, who was not at the capital that night as he was the designated survivor and was relegated to a hidden bunker far from the capital. The show is about his sudden presidency, the search for the terrorists, and the giant power vacuum that the attack left behind. The first season is fucking awesome, Cass and I were on the edge of our seats basically the entire show. Again, that is until season two began. No spoilers, I do still want someone else to talk about this show with and I do genuinely think the first season is still worth watching, but the second season kinda.. doesn’t have a plot? Basically the first season had several overarching plots, the ones I mentioned previously. But there were several smaller scale plots that would last one, two, or even three episodes. The show had a lot going on and there was always something you needed to pay attention to and take in. But in the second season there just kinda.. isn’t a plot? I mean, they’re still looking for the terrorists, but that’s kinda it. It just stops escalating and sort of.. plateaus. We’re only a few episodes into the second season, it just got really frustrating to still not have a plot after 5 episodes.

Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks is a weird little show. I finished the first season and I’m gearing up to begin the second soon, but it.. is quite odd. I think I had hoped I would love it a lot more from the jump, and I do feel like I’m missing out a bit by not loving it. I think it’s just because the show’s tone is.. so weird. The entire show exists in the uncanny valley and its a bit hard to parse because of it. But I can’t look away and I can’t stop watching. It’s really good, just fucking weird. I was struggling a bit to get through it because the interpersonal web of relationships between characters is so hard to keep track of and is constantly changing. I ended up looking up a chart to make it a bit easier to get through, which has helped. Although a part of me kind of wants to rewatch the first season before getting to the second just to make sure I fully understand everything that’s going on. The show is really good and I want to fully appreciate it. Oh, I also need to mention, the absurd amount of cheating going on in this show is insane. And not just the amount of cheating, the amount of cheating that happens with high schoolers is insane!! Literally half the cast are high school students and they’re all having casual sex with married middle aged adults??? TeChNiCaLlY they’re all over the age of 18, but its still so weird!!

Image of a large and complicated web of how characters from Twin Peaks are related to each other. Some relationships are tagged with odd names, such as 'Pals', 'Weird Therapist', 'Sold Narcotics To', and 'Cousin & Look Identical'.

Anyway, tag yourself, I’m weird therapist.

The Last of Us

This is just a segment to ask if anyone else is watching tlou s2 weekly so I have someone else to talk about it with. It’s hard to write about it here since it’s still actively coming out. Cass and I are watching it either live on Sunday or sometime Monday morning. Shoutout Robin and Elliott for chit chatting with us about it also.

Rachel Visited Pt. 2!!!

Rachel made her way down to our humble abode once again!! This time we got up to some more shenanigans, accidentally visiting a bar while there was a furry meetup going on. It was really silly, I got very drunk and told everyone I loved their fursuits and I even got a balloon animal made for me from one of the suiters. Rachel’s got unwrapped. I have no idea how this happened.

Image of an orange balloon dog.

Image of a brown balloon in a long, sausage like shape.

It was also really lovely because Rachel got to actually meet my friends! It made me very happy. I love bashing people I love into the same room so they can all hang out and become friends also.

Books

Sunrise on the Reaping

Okay, it’s probably no surprise that I’ve always been autistic about The Hunger Games. But this book sent me into a hyperfixation spiral for a full fucking week because.. oh my god I love The Hunger Games. The book made me shed several tears and I’m not ready for the movie at all, I’m going to lose my mind!! It’s so hard to talk about this book without getting into spoilers because of how many jaw dropping moments happen in it. If you have even a passing interest in The Hunger Games, I highly suggest reading this. Normally I’m super anti unnecessary prequels and sequels, but Suzanne Collins has more than proven at this point that an addition to the franchise will only be made when she has something new and different to say. Sunrise changes the series and adds a lot of valuable insight we don’t get in the main trilogy that add a lot to the main themes that have been covered in the past. It adds a lot of nuance and context to the events of the trilogy and was ultimately really fucking good.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

I had heard of this when the movie adaptation came out on Netflix a few months ago. I really didn’t know what it was about beyond a relationship possibly ending. It wasn’t until the book was mentioned in the same breath as House of Leaves that I knew it was a book I knew I wanted to read. That combined with the short 200 page length and the fact it was available at the library, I picked it up and read the entirety of it in one sitting. And then made Cass read it, which she also did in one sitting. It’s a BRILLIANT!!! fucking book. It is so fucking good. The amount of dread and suspense this book makes you feel just holds you in place from beginning to end and has such a legendary ending. The second I finished it I knew I was going to reread it. If anyone wants to borrow it from me before I have to bring it back to the library, please do, because it is so fucking good and I need more people to talk about it with!!!!

Oh, and I watched the movie also. I hated it. I don’t wanna talk about it. It was bad from a movie standpoint and also from an adaptation standpoint. It was well made and clearly every single person working on it put their all into it. It nailed the vibes so well, near perfect. But it fully fell apart about 45 minutes to an hour in by fully changing the core themes of the story and by overly complicating the already pretty complex story.

Terrafirma Shit

Ok, despite how it looks I did do other stuff besides apply to jobs, get drunk, and consume media. I also made media! Kind of. Kalyn and I have picked up our efforts in homebrewing D&D 5e ancestries into Shadow of the Demon Lord as playable characters in upcoming campaigns. It’s been a lot of writing, slightly altering flavor text, and making a lot of roll tables. While I haven’t made as much progress as I’d maybe hoped I would’ve, kenku are about to be fully finished and ready to play in SotDL. I also drew my boy, Javier.

Digital illustration of a hispanic cowboy smoking a cigar and looking at the camera.

Conclusion + Guppy

Um. I think that’s basically it. I feel like I’ve been too busy being sad to have anything actually cool to talk about. I’m a little scared of having nothing to talk about during these. But it doesn’t really make sense? Am I meant to post every single time me and my friends hang out? That’s weird. But still, I think I just wish I had more to show for my time. Oh well. Here’s Guppy.

Image of a tabby cat curled up in a ball sleeping.

Image of a tabby cat looking over her shoulder at the camera. She looks like she's being caught doing something bad.

Image of a tabby cat with wide big eyes in purple lighting.

Image of a tabby cat standing in the middle of the floor. She looks fat and contemplative.