random

Beat Fallout 2 (agonizing to play, enemy encounters were stupidly unbalanced) and have been trying to unsuccessfully play fallout new vegas for the past 3 weeks. I can't get it to boot without crashing (using viva new vegas) because there's a texture issue..? Got advice to just eliminate mods one by one until the game runs. I have 50 mods installed. That's great. I'll still do that, though, because I really want to play NV. friend told me to and like, i respect her taste in stuff soooooo... never going to tell her this but she's like practically why I got into fallout. It was just some thing to me but I figured the more shit i got into, the more I could talk about to her I guess. and now I have like 40 text files about me talking about gameplay lore mechanics etc and I'm super into it. cool. this is fine.

school

why am i even worrying about this. I'm taking ap chem and calc and they're both kicking my ass. I've never studied this hard and still felt like I'm not progressing at all. I've never like, had problems with school(i studied, sure, but studying when you have like 10 pages of homework to do and 50 other things at the same time is way harder than how i used to study) and this is becoming a real challenge. Will Cork rise up to the challenge, or have another stress induced breakdown and pussy out..?? who knows. I'll figure it out. Bought some workbooks, made a schedule. I've never put in this much effort, sure, but who knows what'll happen if I try and fail? Is this how my classmates who aren't in advanced classes feel about school? idk.I'll get back to studying for like 5 hours after I write this.

necromancin dancin'

• been playing crypt of the necrodancer. Heard there was a sequel and finally booted up my copy of the original after 4 years. I'm not good at roguelikes so it's hard as hell, but I don't feel like I HAVE to beat it. Just osmething I can come back to once in a while. It reminds me of Mother 3 in everything, aesthetics story and gameplay. Like the plot is you're trying to find your lost dad (finding family plotline) which. might be a stretch. But the rhythm game mechanics remind me of the mother 3 rhythm game fighting mechanic (especially the maddeningly frustrating offbeats in the boss fights and stage 2). Styro if you read these (probably not) you should play it it's GREAT.

food history

got more pdfs of some culinary history books. I've been reading this one called The Secret History of Food. A lot of the complaints in the reviews are about how it rambles and drags all over the place, from military history to agriculture, but I kind of like it that way. It's because of how my fixation on food works: anything tied back to food is immediately interesting to me. Chemistry, science, history, etc whatever. So reading about military history for 3 pages is actually pretty fun in this context. I like absorbing info.

I wouldn't reccomend it to my friends though because there's way too many dick and cum jokes, imho. It never made me super uncomfortable but, like, I guess that's part of why it's so hard to reccomend? There's no real focus. The sources are really good though, they're like half the book and I kept actually reading them (something I never do and probably should start doing) because I kept saying "wow, this is real?" and it was! Most of the claims are attached to credible first/ second sources.

I wonder about the real veracity of the claims, namely the couple times he cites PETA. Plus he keeps sensationalizing stuff like "oh this chemical in your food? It's actually from internal organs/horse shit". Which would be concerning if he went into why that was bad, but he frames it as "the FDA is lazy and doesn't care what goes into your food." It's like the subway yoga mat controversy (azodicarbonamide) / tampon lead poisoning thing all over again. It's recognized as safe by the FDA, and only toxic in doses thousands of times above what would be in the product. Chemicals have multiple uses. I wish we'd focus more on lead pipe replacement, something we know 100% to be a dangerous contaminant in our food, than something generally evaluated to be safe. That's what I find so frustrating about food politics: it's not cleanly drawn along partisan lines. Which, I know, is a bad way of trying to scope out the "right side" in a situation, but... is it really wrong to question what goes into your food? Does the FDA cover every base? They're one of the only government institutions I somewhat respect, but still, are they too forced to fall on partisan lines regarding food regulation like the EPA? I'll have to look into this more. I'm not sure what to think.

But yeah, here's some fun snippets I got out of it.

misc

• listened to more Siinamota discography, namely Alone (his final album I think. It has Young Girl A on it.) I want to write analyses of his song lyrics, something probably futile since I'm reading translated versions of them. They just resonate deeply with me even if I don't know any japanese. The ones about unrequited love are really relatable in a (deeply depressing) way. wow. Maybe I'll rank them later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LG7RhXCIys anyways this one is my favorite for this week.

god that reminds me I have to take a class on markdown this week. I already know how to use markdown. what a waste of time.

++ again I probably won't post here for a while because of school and life and job and shit. I hope I can still retain that sense of like, wonder and weird nerd rambling throughout it all even if I have less time to write.

+++ I've been drawing more comics about stuff that happens at school. can't show them here because I don't want to doxx anyone. I've found it's easier to freehand caricature people if you know them less. Like my closest friends? I can't really cartoon-ize them as fast. It takes more time.

++++ it's been getting worse. [] came up to me and like, actually talked to me and stuff. of their own volition about stuff they like.

I wish I could be honest about how I really feel.