Author: Trip the Space Parasite

I think there needs to be more burning of Trump (in effigy, with votes, whatever).

Read: Hell Followed With Us (Andrew Joseph White): Gay trans bioapocalyptic body horror turned up to 12. This is absolutely not a book for the faint of heart.

Watched: I Am Not Okay With This 1-3: A teenage girl in some decade suffers the usual teenage problems of family, friends, peers, sex, romance, poverty, etc, while strange things start happening. Reviews say “superpowers” but I think she might just be haunted.

Written: 102, which is still more than 99.

Hurray for birbs!

I did manage to have a functional metabolism all night, although I still didn’t like getting up in the morning and doing some work.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 7-8: Yep, that’s a Scott Pilgrim plan, all right. I can’t help but think that Ramona could do better, but of course that will be a different timeline. Anyway, musical theater, massive battle, the end!

Read: Frogkisser! (Garth Nix): A young princess goes on a Quest to defeat the evil sorcerer who is trying to take over her kingdom, which involves a lot of transformation spells. The Quest gets pretty complicated and also smelly, but she has an assortment of friends and allies and it’s not like she can go home until she’s done.

Written: 252, although half of it was terrible and half was just notes. Actually maybe all of it was terrible.

We have always celebrated World Hypnotism Day. It is the best holiday. You should celebrate it too. Join us.

More beeping and cats to help me sleep, more going to the office, more sleepiness in the afternoon. Today I had some kind of Mayan pork and roasted vegetables thing for lunch, which was pretty good and also did not make my arm widget freak out. I also ate a dinner of carbs and stuff, so hopefully there will not be any beeping tonight.

Read: Secrets of the Silent Witch vol 2 (Tobi Tana, Matsuri Isora, Nanna Fujimi): Continued undercover magic school intrigue, with bonus accounting.

Read: The Luis Ortega Survival Club (Sonora Reyes): A mostly-mute autistic high school and her friends have had it with rapist-boy and aren’t going to let him get away with that shit any more.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 3 (Tomonori Inoue): Ah, the “captured and forced to do a job for the bad guy” arc.

Written: 205.

But I slept poorly, because my arm widget decided to beep annoyingly at me during the night. I guess I didn’t eat enough dinner? But I got up and went to the office anyway. The train was a mess because at-grade crossings are still somehow a thing, but because my new route is so much better, I was only like five minutes late. Did some works, got very sleepy, ate half a tandoori chicken pizza for lunch (didn’t seem to upset my arm widget at all, so I guess thin crust was the right choice), did some gross shell scripting to find out the shape of a customer’s doom. Despite being sleepy at work, I was very productive for a brief period when I got home, instead of immediately lapsing into torpor. Not sure how that happened.

Read: Candy & Cigarettes vol 2 (Tomonori Inoue): Further morally-questionable exploits of the 5th-grade assassin and retired cop as they work to take down the criminal mastermind through extrajudicial murder.

Read: Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki): A runaway trans girl, a diabolist violin teacher, and interstellar refugees cross paths in the Asian-American community of modern-day Los Angeles. It is very much about trans and refugee and violin star and demon servant experiences and trying to build new lives. I liked it, but

Read: Secrets of the Silent Witch vol 1 (Tobi Tana, Matsuri Isora, Nanna Fujimi): A high-level witch with social anxiety  so severe she had to invent silent spellcasting to avoid talking (and maybe on the spectrum as well?) has to go undercover at magic school to protect the crown prince. Hijinx ensue.

Written: 139, which is trending in the wrong direction but still valid.

Back to work for real, boo. I woke up early for 1:1, but it turns out my boss isn’t back until tomorrow, so it was all for naught. Then I did some works, whatever. I guess it was okay.

Played: Nothing, Ken had to take Jus to an appointment because Ayse is not up to it tonight. It is inauspicious but on-brand for the first gaming of the year to be Lancer and cancelled.

Written: 140. Still more than 99, so good enough!

Look, it’s 2024! Insert meme here.

I had to get up at 7 to be on call, which I was late for, and then I had a thing that needed attention right away so there was no going back to sleep. Eventually I got to stop being on call, which I was also late for. Not an auspicious start to the year!

In between, I at least got to play a little Minecraft with Ayse and Nonny. I haven’t played in a long time, it turns out.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.9-10: Pretty sure listening to Five is always more sensible than listening to any of the others, and this was no exception. Now the season is over and everything is ???WTF??? yet again, but next season allegedly will wrap it all up. I doubt it will resolve the discrepancies in scale, but all visual SF has to suffer from those, because all people with enough money to make a theatrical movie or Netflix show are complete morons.

Read: Strange Machines (ed Marissa Van Uden): I actually read this a while back but forgot to note it, so here it is. Subtitled An Anthology of Dark User Manuals, it is what it says on the tin. Stories include “A Brief Guide to Surviving a Human-Forced Reset”, “How to Install Organic Prostheses”, “Implementation of Eusocial Technologies in the Office”, and “How to Talk to Your Luvvbot-3000 about WWIV”. None of them are very long, so it’s more like the instructional blurbs from the backs of the boxes than actual manuals, but a lot of them are quite dark.

Written: 212 words. This actually is auspicious!

Marith could not come because she doesn’t want to be sick and still have to go work in our third-world hellhole, but I fear no germs so I went to have New Year’s Eve sushi and games and movies and companionship. (There was also Korean fried chicken, but we had so ridiculously much sushi that we didn’t get to it.) There were hugs and chonky cats and eventually toasts and fireworks. Bizarrely, transit did not have after-midnight runs for partiers, so I had to beg a ride home from Ken, but that was the only flaw in an otherwise lovely evening.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.8: I guess that’s one thing to do while destroying the universe.

Watched: Mystery Science Theater 3000 4.21: Circus on Ice and Monster-a-Go-Go. That movie definitely earned its place in the “Worst Movies of All Time” bucket! Apparently it was built on the bones of an incomplete previous movie, but that doesn’t come close to explaining the awfulness.

Played: Innovation. I’m still terrible at this game but at least Jus didn’t beat me. (We tied for last.)

Played: Uno. Ken kept catching me out on calling uno, hmph.

Played: Poetry for Neanderthals. Another of the “try to get your teammate to say the word” games. The schtick for this one is that the prompter can only use words of one syllable, and if they mess up, a member of the team gets to hit them with an inflatable club. It’s surprisingly fun even when nobody gets clobbered! Ayse and I beat Ken and Jus, based mostly on one round where I immediately picked up everything she laid down.

Written: Holiday. Tomorrow for sure!

Also another Bacon Day (it was meant to be Lentil Day, but right before the deadline…)

I did not want to get up and go grocery shopping this morning, but this afternoon I’m on-call, tomorrow is Retail Hell of NYE, the day after that is NYD and on-call, and then I’m back at work, so there was really not much choice.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.4-7: Well, that’s messed up.

Written: FAIL.

I feel like we’ve already seen this one, but I’m fine with extra chocolate.

Went back to work, which is good because otherwise Coworker T would have been the only one there for much of the day. He probably could have handled it, but it’s good that he didn’t have to.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 2.10, 3.1-3: Hey, look, it’s another disaster! With the only thing worse than the Umbrella Academy! But the main characters all get major points for being cool (if not chill) about Viktor.

Read: Daemons of the Shadow Realm vol 3 (Hiromu Arakawa): Not as many daemon battles this volume, but some politics and setup for a big fight next time. The daemons really do just have completely arbitrary powers, it seems like. However, based on FMA, I suspect we will eventually see some rhyme or reason.

Read: Timber Wolf (Murphy Lawless, Zoe Chant): The first Virtue Shifters story from Kit, and it shows. There’s an actual antagonist! Also the first appearance of Noah, whose control of the town only grows with each successive book.

Written: FAIL. I don’t know how to write. I never have. All is delusion and futility.

Finally, something I can participate in!

I slacked in sick to work, because I did not sleep at all last week, and slept all morning instead. By afternoon I was able to go get my glasses fixed and scarf some fries and soup, and now I am pretty much back to normal except for my face being even uglier than usual.

Read: Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers vol 7 (Chorisuke Natsumi): Only seven volumes and copious help from shippers before a love confession!

Watched: Wednesday 7-8: Yeah, yeah, Uncle Fester, power of friendship, mysteries, plot twists, all fine, but a of all, it’s 2023, Wednesday and Enid can totally smooch, and second of b, the final boss was boring. The secondary villains were fine, it should have been just them. It seems extremely likely I will watch the second season when it comes out anyway.

Watched: The Seven Deadly Sins 1.1-3: Maybe the plot is great or something, but the “hero” is always perving on a young woman who is completely dependent on him, and it’s just not funny.

Written: FAIL.

Didn’t manage to go into the office, but otherwise not too dreadful, the customers have been fairly quiescent. However, I apparently forgot how to operate my body, and there was vasovagal syncope and blood everywhere and my glasses got bent, and nothing was any good. Not what I hoped for from an evening!

Read: Evil Empire (Joel Shepherd): Sequel to Angelina. After the exciting events at the end of the last book, all the protagonists have a powerup, but so do their enemies, and now they’re finding out why. It’s not good. However, the looming threat seems more pulled out of someone’s hat than grounded like the first book.

Read: Slugblaster (Mikey Hamm): I’ve read most of this, I’ve played it a few times, but now I have actually read it all the way through.It’s still great, there are zillions of random tables for everything, maybe I should try running it at Big Bad Con next year. Except I’m too old and not cool enough.

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 2 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Now that the gimmick has been established, it doesn’t have to come up as much. Ogami being a horndog and Yaginuma being whatever he is and their friends shipping them is enough for most of the drama. You can get it, Ogami!

Watched: Komi Can’t Communicate 1: The anime is much like manga panels put on the screen, and I’ve already got 394569 volumes of the manga.

Watched: Wednesday 3-6: The plot thickens! Wednesday’s doom increases, as does her parents’ and her friends’ and really that of everybody she comes in contact with, and the other characters are actually not shy about calling her out on it, which is nice.

Written: Only FAIL.

 

Celebrated by going grocery shopping, because it’s the weekend, and doing laundry, because it’s Tuesday. Also by sleeping in a lot and being extremely useless,

Watched: Bee and Puppycat 1-10: The first series was on Youtube, it turns out. Also not as good. The writing and especially the art improved significantly from the pilot to the series, and then another leap forward when it was remade as Lazy in Space. Now that the remake exists, the original is really only of historical interest.

Written: FAIL.

Happy Merry to all who celebrate!

I celebrated by doing nothing useful all day and then going over to Ayse and Ken’s to eat food and see people and admire Jus’s presents and stuff. Poor Nonny is pretty sick, but I risked the germs for companionship. Even Marith did!

Despite most of the food being carbs, my arm widget didn’t freak out. It’s almost like eating a real meal made of real food is better than microwaving one unit of Capitalism Chow. (Also, ham.)

Written: FAIL.

I accomplished absolutely nothing useful today, because I am A Idiot. The cats did get three gooshy meals, though.

Read: Jangli (Ashvi Gupta): OSR set in pre-Hindu(?) Western India. It reminds me of Pendragon, with the PCs wanting to get glory but doing it through adventuring to protect their clan territory from monsters and witches, and going to battle against other clans, and not having magic of their own (so not like Runequest). Pretty standard OSR system, limited advancement, mass combat rules.

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 13-16: The end! Many things were wrapped up, some things were left mysterious. Plotwise there is plenty of room for more, although it would probably be okay if nothing more was ever explained.

Watched: BNA 1: I dunno, it was the next thing Netflix played, because their algorithm is trash. Something about beast-people being oppressed and getting stuffed into their own city and human terrorists and wolf superheroes.

Written: Nope, still FAIL.

 

(Comes before Christmas Eve, but is not that great.)

I failed to get produce at the farmers’ market, but did get some food to keep me going until Christmas, then went grocery shopping and got some more food to get me to Boxing Day, when I plan to go shopping again. Also finally tried the other chicken tenders place because it wasn’t raining, but meh.

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 8-12: Netflix doesn’t seem to have the 2013 series. I blame capitalism. Anyway, we get more about Puppycat’s backstory, and plot, and the weird people who live with Bee on her island. Puppycat did an actual nice thing! I think this series is Steven Universe + FLCL + pastel.

Read: “Zeta-Epsilon” (Isabel J Kim): So what’s it like having an AI stapled to your brain?

Read: “Day Ten Thousand” (Isabel J Kim): Very meta, about guys cloned from ten-thousand-year-old dead guys in the future or the past or alternate timelines or different drafts of the same story about suicide. Not my thing.

Written: FAIL. You’d think I’d be able to do something while on vacation, but no.

I know most cookies last a while, but it still seems like this should be closer to Bake Cookies Day.

Half the US team and our boss were on vacation today, but work was quite light. Good job having a holiday code freeze, customers! Now I’m off until next Wednesday.

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 2-7: The island is weird, Bee is weird, the aliens she does odd jobs for are weird, everyone on the island is weird, but Puppycat is actually less weird than in the first episode. But apparently this is actually the second season?! I need to figure that out so I can watch more effectively.

Written: FAIL.

 

It is now very unlikely to get any darker! Could still get a lot rainier, though.

I did make it into the office today, and it was not a lot less crowded than usual. I probably should have skipped the potato salad that came with my cow meat sandwich.

Read: The Girl I Want Is So Handsome! (Yuama): Complete fluff, a cute 1st-year meets a handsome and athletic and stacked 2nd-year and they fall head-over-heels for each other. The only real conflict is “she couldn’t like me that way, it must just be friendship” and even that doesn’t stand in the way very long. Complete in one omnibus of about two tankobon.

Read: Kiss the Scars of the Girls vol 1 (Aya Haruhana): When each vampire girl at Secret Vampire Girl School turns fourteen, she’s assigned an older vampire girl to mentor her in learning all kinds of important things, like how to feed on humans without getting murdered. They don’t seem to be very good at it, even when lesbian drama isn’t getting in the way.

Read: to ask about loyalty (tasara_bokka): Vorkosigan Saga fic, allegedly canon-compliant but a different perspective on Miles and Ekaterin’s wedding. I liked it fine, but probably would have appreciated it even more if I remembered all the books better.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 3.7-10: The triumphant conclusion, after struggling with principles and also with giant monsters. Random character: “Who would even come up with a plan like that?” Main cast, in unison, “Kipo.”

Watched: Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space 1: A young woman who has been fired from every job on her mysterious island encounters a strange creature that gets her temp jobs on Walkr planets. It is more surreal and has a chiller aesthetic than Steven Universe, but reminds me a little.

Written: FAIL, although I did scribble some notes of things that need to be revealed in one project. That’s not quite a plot, since the MC should also have personal development or something, but it’s stuff that would go in an outline.

Crap, they’re ganging up on us!

I meant to go to the office today, but slept poorly and when I woke up it was just not happening. I hope somebody ate my lunch and it didn’t go to waste. Apparently yesterday the office was pretty deserted as people go on holiday, and I can’t imagine today would have been any better, but it would have showed willing or something.

Read: Jack of Hearts (and other parts) (LC Rosen): A high-school boy who sleeps around a lot gets talked into writing a sex advice column for the totally-not-a-student-newspaper and also gets stalked and blackmailed. Definitely the sluttiest and probably the least romantic YA protagonist I have seen, but also one of the more stressed and traumatized ones.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 3.4-6: Humans kind of ruin everything, don’t they?

Written: Caught up on journal, which is still FAIL.

I dunno, probably none of the interesting days want to be this close to Christmas.

Last 1:1 with my boss for the year, all is chill.

Played: Lancer. We played the team of corporate goons sent to protect the colony’s valuable resources, with completely different mechs than the random weirdos that are trying to make things better for people. After the setup, we only got one round into the combat, but surely next session (whenever it is, maybe Boxing Day) will be exciting.

Written: FAIL.

Unfortunately I am incapable of doing any cooking, but I hope people who don’t suck have many delicious cookies today!

The power went out in the afternoon, taking local cellular with it. I walked up the street a kilometer or so and found a gas station that had both power and open wifi so I could tell work what happened, but it was raining so I went home and bibbled uselessly until the power came back. Fortunately there was not a lot of work.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 3.1-3: Human-level intelligence apparently includes human inability to cooperate even in the face of extreme danger.

Written: Even more FAIL. Are you maybe getting the idea that I suck?

I like maple syrup, but pretty sure the arm widget doesn’t.

Today’s major event: I thought about going to the other chicken tenders place before grocery shopping, but it was rainy and I remembered their outdoor seating as being uncovered, so I went to the regular place and ended up not sitting outside anyway. So excitement. Much decision. Wow.

I got packages, but they were mostly boring household stuff. Some of them might be presents. Or not.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 2.5-10: Just because they found another problem doesn’t mean the first problem didn’t need resolving. I’m pretty sure that’s not how that death trap works, though.

Written: Continued , unending FAIL.

 

Darn, I’ve run out of chocolate-covered chocolate.

Somehow I got up and did things today. Not sure how that happened, but here we are, with fresh produce and bao and flu antigens and the return of anime night and everything.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 2.3-4: Looking for Kipo’s backstory, but getting Wolf’s along the way.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess & The King of Beasts 1-4: Our first show for revived anime night! It’s pretty fluffy, with hardly any humans being devoured on screen, and so far the princess is only being compassionate, not getting into administration like rumor has it she will. It’s a full season, though, so we have plenty of time yet. Probably not enough for the cat princess to redeem herself, though.

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom vol 8 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): More of the same, including a flashback to Katarina’s earlier teen years when other girls were just as unable to deal with her. Apparently next volume they graduate and get jobs, but I can’t imagine it will change Katarina at all.

Written: FAIL.

Is two a herd? They certainly sound like it when they stampede in the middle of the night!

I did several works, but feel like I should have done more. Oh well.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 4-6: An entire subplot to tie in to the original story, sure. Get it, Wallace! But now Ramona has solved much of the mystery, so it’s time for another plot twist!

Read: Blackguard vol 1 (Ryo Hanada): Zombie apocalypse of the future, the arcology’s greatest defender fights alone with a sword and has a death wish, he gets partnered with a more orthodox bad ass, etc.

Read: The Shiunji Family Children vol 1 (Reiji Miyajima, Reiji Yukino): Forbidden teenage love that’s suddenly not forbidden. Despite the ML complaining that living with five stunning sisters isn’t like a harem romcom, it’s obvious where this is going.

Read: Paladin’s Faith (T Kingfisher): Another of the ex-paladins gets tangled up in the problems of a beautiful woman, in this case the mysterious best friend from the first book in the series. Intrigue, espionage, romance, and demonolatry ensue.  I liked it, but it didn’t seem like the espionage adventure and the demon adventure had any connection except one happened right after the other. It could have been two novellas just as easily.

Written: FAIL.

A good day for Ayse.

This new transit route has worked correctly three times in a row, and only requires getting up ten minutes earlier than the defective route, so I guess I’ll stick with it.

Office lunch was salad with pulled pork, which the arm widget liked much better.

Read: Magical Girl Incident vol 2 (Zero Akabane): As per usual, the explanations given to the MC are woefully incomplete, but at least he knows he isn’t the only one (even if the rest of them are a bunch of loons).

Not Read: Mob Psycho 100 vol 1 (ONE): I liked the anime, but I couldn’t get into the manga. The art style is weird, and I don’t know.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 1.10-2.2: Kipo and her ever-growing assortment of friends (apparently the favored stat for humans is Charisma) solved the problem they thought they had, which resulted in a much worse problem.

Written: FAIL.

 

Boo, office. Apparently the local COVID admissions are still green, though, so the CDC does not recommend that everybody else in the office mask. Arm widget said my fried chicken sandwich lunch was No Good, I guess it’s okay that all the breakfast carbs were for the capitalist oppressors.

Read: The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter vol 1 (Ichi Yukishiro): An elderly dragon adopts a discarded human girl, but finds that even death cannot release him from his parental duties. I’m not sure about the role models that are being provided for this poor girl!

Read: Magical Girl Incident vol 1 (Zero Akabane): An office worker encounters a monster and in a fit of heroism transforms into a bona fide magical girl. WTFery ensues, but there is apparently some rhyme or reason to what’s going on. Not clear why the coworker has such disturbing resources.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 1.7-9: Almost to the end of the first season, and of course the problem Kipo thought she had is not the real problem.

Written: FAIL.

No idea what that’s about, but it sounds like fanfic.

I had an hour and a half of meetings before my normal workday even started, so it was not a day of great cheer. Technically I was sad that we didn’t have Brooks and Kelsey and had to cancel gaming, but really it’s probably for the best that I didn’t have to try to brain in the evening.

Written: FAIL.

I didn’t think mountains really needed a day, you can’t miss them, but okay.

I did some work, I guess, and then I did gaming homework. My Lancaster build is almost certainly the worst one ever, and I must never show it to Ken, but hopefully he won’t ask too many questions about it. (He absolutely will, and will think I am stupid.)

Written: FAIL, mech design doesn’t count.

These cats are very insistent that they are entitled to three gooshy meals a day and a minimum of eight hours of snuggles!

Played: Librarians Errant. The team’s first assignment this session is tracking down the entrepreneur jerk who tried to hoard all copies of an important textbook. This requires beating up her little gang of  undergrad goons, but Thaïs gets to use a second-level spell and anyway the opposition are kind of wimpy. Only Flint gets beat up much before the team returns to the library in triumph. The next day, as they sort books, the library is invaded by bullywugs looking for volume one of the magical series! Every librarian is mobilized, and the team is set guarding a door deep in the lower lower stacks. Bullywugs come from the sewers, so this is not as pointless as it might seem, but it’s still a surprise when a  very senior librarian appears, chased by bullywugs and fire-breathing giant toads. She is definitely authorized, and also the shelves of archaic legal tomes are now on fire, so the team piles through the door after her and tries to lead the bullies off in a different direction through the maze of even more obscure (and now burning) stacks. Then they find the opening to the Elemental Plane of Books, or something, and the magic card catalog. Thaïs was already looking for books on shoggoth-banishing, so she makes a catalog card for it, and everybody follows the card across the walkway of flying books to the book island. The book on the podium tries to bite Thaïs’s hand off, so she zaps it, and we break as the other books flap to attack.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 4-6: A master villain! Mysterious powers! Metalheads! The shortest romance subplot ever! Probably for the best, as Kipo is way younger than I thought.

Written: FAIL.

Tried to see The Marvels, but there were only two showings a day and neither of them convenient, so I just bought some groceries and went home.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 1-3: A human girl from a postapocalyptic underground enclave is trapped on the surface where everything is mutated and weird and has picked up random scraps of human culture. Fortunately she falls in with some other humans who are willing to help her find her people, although they don’t like the way she tries to make friends with everything. It’s not up to the level of Steven Universe or She-Ra but it’s pretty entertaining.

Written: FAIL.

What do you mean, “pretend”? Same direction and speed as everybody else, though.

Watched: Derry Girls 3.4-7: More hijinks, but then sudden tragedy and the future and even more future, the end!

Read: The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This vol 4 (Takashi Ikeda): And they achieved some professional success and stability, and lived happily ever after, the end!

Written: FAIL.