I have been a slave to my hyperfixations!!!!!!! I have been trapped thinking about my various blorbos from my shows over and over and over again and it’s ruining my life!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay not really but also pretty much entirely. I have been struggling to do things I want to do and I like doing because I have been trapped in my brain. It is a really cool and a really shitty problem to have that I love some things so much it’s hard to function. But uh I’ll try and talk about some things that happened in the last month that have actually happened in real life and actually matters, as well as some stuff that isn’t real and doesn’t matter.

CTWC

The Classic Tetris World Championship happened this month!! It took over my brain for an entire weekend watching the streams on Twitch. I began watching the CTWC starting in 2018 when this video randomly appeared in my recommended one day. You will notice this is from 2016.. yep! No one said the YouTube recommended feed made sense! Though it did pop off just in time for the 2018 CTWC, which I watched live at the time. The way these tournaments work is two players will play a game of NES Tetris, using the same exact pieces as each other, and attempt to get as high of a score as possible before the speed gets too fast to play. Garbage and other things in modern Tetris doesn’t exist here, so it’s just about how skilled two players are.

NES Tetris is also far more difficult than newer versions of the game. You can only see the next piece, you can’t hold pieces, and once a piece touches another piece, they cannot move at all. These things make the game far harder than it seems. If you think it’s easy, feel free to try it out in your browser! Something else about CTWC is it has exploded in popularity over the last several years. From Joseph Saelee dethroning the 7 time world champ, Jonas Neubauer in 2019…

… to the advent of the new ‘rolling’ technique by player Cheez in 2021, revolutionizing the endgame…

… and finally to player Blue Scuti beating the game and making world news in 2024…

… the competition meta has changed and grown so very much!!! It has been an absolute joy to be around and involved with the community for so long. It makes me happy nowadays that I can say “CTWC” and people know what I’m talking about. I fell off from keeping track for awhile. One of the most important members of the community who spread a lot of positivity and has kept the competitive scene full of love and respect unlike the typical toxicity of esports - and the 7 time world champion - Jonas Neubauer passed away very suddenly in 2021. His cause of death was sudden heart failure. No symptoms, no signs. He was only 39. It got really difficult to just.. get right back to following the competition without him around anymore. The community has done so much to honor his legacy, things that make me cry a bit if I think about it too long. They established the Jonas Neubauer Championship, a competition based solely on DAS playing, Jonas’s playstyle of choice. DAS is basically the “normal” way of playing the game where you tap and hold pieces to move them across the screen. They also changed the trophy for the CTWC from the old T-piece to the J-piece, with an important quote from Jonas himself engraved on the back.

Image of a golden J shaped trophy with the text 'TETRIS World Championship.' Next to the trophy is text that reads: 'If you're a high visibility player, it's on you to move the community in a positive direction - Joseph Neubauer.'

Anyway, all that to say, how was the competition this year? Fucking legendary. I think this may be one of the most intense and thrilling championship in CTWC history. The competition is streamed live on Twitch, YouTube, and anywhere else you can watch livestreams but you probably aren’t. Multiple games are streamed at once in multiple different brackets. But I was glued to all four livestreams for the entire weekend. Obviously I wasn’t fully paying attention or listening to all of these, but I was switching between them pretty consistently. I don’t want to talk too much about this year’s competition, because not all the edited VODs have been uploaded to YouTube yet, so besides pointing you to their Twitch page, I don’t have anywhere to tell you where to watch yet! They’ve started uploading videos from round 0 onto YouTube, which you can watch here.

Screenshot of four different Classic Tetris streams playing simultaneously. There are four matches per stream, sixteen in total.

Some Art and Things

I made some more art and stuff. Nothing super duper crazy, but I put a good amount of hours this month into some art I’m proud of! I think it’s been about 20-30 hours of arting it up.

I finished this at first as a gift for my very dear, darling friends Robin and Elliott’s birthdays this month. Featuring their absolute favorite Pokemon and then striking some epic trainer poses. This one took awhile, originally I had wanted to make it in Pokemon’s own art style, but I found I honestly really don’t like the style very much so every time I drew something faithfully recreating the style, I didn’t like it. And I didn’t want to give them something I couldn’t be proud of.

Digital illustration of two men holding Pokeballs next to a jumping Umbreon and Vaporeon.

I also made further strides in my series of art for our SotDL party! Here’s Sam’s character, Vebradu, a kenku wizard who’s always pondering his dang orb.

Digital illustration of an anthropomorphic crow holding a blue orb in wizard robes.

Fire Walk With Me

I finished the original Twin Peaks tv show and the prequel film Fire Walk With Me. I’m struggling really hard to try and find words to say anything more. I don’t know if I have any. Fire Walk With Me was one of the most life changing movie watching experiences I’ve ever had. Laura Palmer suffered more than Jesus Christ of Nazareth and is the patron saint of anyone who has been failed by the adults that were meant to protect them. It was a movie that ripped my soul open, shone a spotlight on all the things in my past that I find difficult to talk about, and then gave me a warm hug. It is the very definition of a comfort movie that isn’t comforting in the slightest.

Anyway, beyond it all, I think more than anything it inspires hope. Somehow.

“The angels wouldn’t help you because they’ve all gone away.”

Image of Laura Palmer holding hands and smiling at an angel.

“But the angels will return, and when you see the one that’s meant to help you, you will weep with joy.”

Morning Walks

I’ve started waking up earlier, around 5:30-6am and going on walks around the neighborhood. The only times I haven’t made it is whenever it’s rained, it’s over 90 out, or when I get really hungover. Fortunately, that last one I don’t suspect will happen very often because this last hangover was.. awful and has made me question what the point of drinking even is anymore. Anyway, more importantly, being out and about in the morning has forced me to see more things. Like some giant mushrooms and a coupla baby skunks.

Image of two small skunks walking on a small grassy hill.

Image of two large, white mushrooms.

Hanging with Rachel (And All the LEGOs I Want)

If it wasn’t clear from the fact I got so drunk I thought about quitting alcohol, Rachel came and visited us this weekend! She came back from Ireland visiting Robin and Elliott and came bearing gifts. Cass got herself some touristy fridge magnets and a really sick bottle opener. I got a cute little frog mug wearing a cowboy hat, as well as several small bags of prawn flavored Skips. Skips are a brand of chips available only in Europe and the prawn flavor SLAPS SO HARD!!! It doesn’t sound like it’d taste good, but it’s delicious. Robin also gifted me an amazing propeller hat which I’m excited to wear everywhere I go.

Rachel and I also headed to a large mall nearby. We stopped at a LEGO store where we made ourselves as minifigures. I did a lot of windowshopping for all the LEGO sets I’m gonna pick up once I have some disposable income. Specifically the post card sets, which I had never seen before, and a Keith Herring set with his dancing figures.

Image of two LEGO minifigures wearing purple chili suites. They are smiling and standing next to each other.

We also saw some Minecraft bath bombs at Lush which went kinda crazy.

Image of several different Minecraft themed bath bombs, such as TNT blocks, pickaxes, and totems of undying.

Oh, Yeah, Employment Update

I have a few employment updates. Technically, I am employed! Kinda, I’m working with the same graphic design job I had last year for the tech event. Haven’t begun working or signed any paperwork yet, but I’ve gotten an email saying that starting sometime in early July, I’ll be back on the team. So that’ll be great! It’s only part time, but it’s experience and I’m getting paid for it so.. what’s it matter? Plus, on LinkedIn it looks like I’ve been working there for a full year! Which I have not! Wahoo!!

I also have an interview tomorrow afternoon. I call it an interview, but I was told to bring my ID, SSN, and direct deposit information so.. I think I got it. It’s just a pizza delivery job, so nothing crazy, but I’ll be doing something! Which is great! And I like delivering pizza, I did it for two years when I was in college part time and it was awesome. I’m hoping this job will be temporary and I’ll be able to pick up something else, but I’m happy to have something that will pay me an alright amount that I actually enjoy doing. It’s hard to ask for much more from a shitty fast food job.

Conclusion

Uhhhhh yeah that’s basically it. Here’s the link to this month’s photo dump. I’ve been doing a lot better this month. May was really bad for me, and June didn’t start out great, but since I started waking up earlier, exercising more, and changed my diet slightly, I’ve actually been feeling amazing. I mean, I still feel like shit sometimes, but it’s kinda crazy that like…. when millions of studies prove that sticking to your preferred sleep schedule, exercising, and eating good….. it helps treat depression…… huh…..

Anyway, here’s Gup.

Image of a tabby cat sitting awkwardly on someone's lap.

Image of a tabby cat loafing in a doorway. Her paws are fully tucked under her.

Image of a tabby cat sitting annoyed with a small fidget spinner on her head.

Image of an awkwardly close photo of a tabby cat.