Archive - Icons - Previous 4/17/26 Waiting on Mao...Anyway, finally Friday. I am so sick of this job. So sick of the stupid ass customers. I feel like they're actually getting dumber somehow. Yesterday, they called in the one guy who left that they screwed over for a new interview at a higher paying. I don't know if he took the job back or not, but LOL. They're getting really desperate now. One of the other people that was hired recently is already talking about leaving too because of management. Also, heard that the guy who walked out recently was checking into rehab for doing compressed air directly outside of the building. So, that's two people in rehab that Stinky hired at the same time and both of them were the reason A) the really competant guy left in the first place 2) I didn't get promoted over. And where are they now? In rehab. Because they so desperately wanted to not promote from within to bring in "buddies" for the manager over merit. Brilliant. On a positive note, I took a chance on some cheap cassette player+speakers combo. They came today and work really good. Even work alright with my laptop. They were apparently cheaper than normal because most people who collect old cassette players are dorky dudes, specifically the kind who would cry if they're mom asked them to hold her purse for five seconds in public. LMAO. I've learned if you don't care about color, you can get a lot of things for cheap. The cheapeast colors for used items is often a shade of pink if it's a masculine or unisex hobby. The set isn't even really a true pink. It's more like...IDK...like a mauve or something? I'm looking up shades of mauve...I guess it's "rose mauve" or a "dusty rose" kind of shade. It kind of looks like a dark version of a metallic rose gold finish. It reminds me of the DS Lite Metallic Rose and the 3DS Pearl Pink editions, which were the two I had because I pretty much hated most of the other colors. I personally like a lot of pale pinks. Many of my Hobonichi Weeks were "Sakura" something or other. So I really don't care if something is a softer "pink" shade anyway. Soft and dusty pinks feel kind of calming to me. Maybe it's because roses are my favorite flower and that's what it's reminding me of. (I don't care for hot pink OTOH, unless it's paired with specific other shades, like you'd see on late 80s/early 90s stuff and even then it was usually a paler pink than say Barbie Pink, which is just Pepto Bismal disgusting or the ugly gamer girl pink to the gamer boy black+red shit.) A lot of soft, higher pitched music has lots of pale pink shades in it, a little above the light oranges and bolder orange shades, and I tend to find that kind of music pretty calming too. These kinds of pinks don't seem to be too popular though, outside of maybe rose gold stuff and even most rose gold is just...gold rebranded as "pink" without any hint of pink for boring office ladies. Though my true color love will always be grey-green shades, the mid-range of rain sounds. Not a lot of stuff comes in those shades though. Mint and teal, sure, but actual sage green is a lot harder to find. The other day, I thought about getting a DS or a 3DS again to play on, but I don't play games anymore. Every time I've tried going back to play a video game, I just...don't feel anything. Also, those old handhelds have gone up phenomenally in price, some of them costing way more than when they came out new! And the batteries in a lot of them are already failing and not as easy to replace as me just popping in some new AAs in a cassette player or changing out a tiny belt you can pop out of another cassette player. But I know it's really just the desire to try and repacture a feeling from the past. Games just feel like wasting time now. Time I could be doing something else with. And I don't have much time anymore. I still have more planting to do. Most of the plants I planted recently have started to sprout up. The peppers are all taking a long time, but that's their nature. Only one has sprouted up so far. The moonflower vine is really doing well. The leaves are so big. 4/15/26 Seeing my paycheck short a day of work because neither of the managers approved my sick leave from when they knew I was sick. I'm still fucking sick. So, now we're at that point of the game, huh? Just like before I left that other job. Nothing's good enough, let's micromanage the fuck out of everything, focus on irrelevant stats for corporate shit so big manager can get a bonus, let's lock up everything and have everything checked in and out because no one can be trusted with anything they were fine with trusting us with for months upon months before, daily "check-ins" that are really just grilling sessions on why you (and "you" = all staff, because no one is good enough) are not doing enough, and oh oops we didn't approve your use of off time one of your very few "benefits" to even working here. Always this bullshit. The wendigo transformation is complete. It's done. Even the richy rich managers who were all fawning over this new guy are starting to get tired of him already, because now it's their turn to get eaten up too. Can't ever be full. Love how I never got that sign-on bonnus for my current position either. Long ass process and then a three month wait period after the end of the process and then they would "begin" to process it and it just...never came. Because of course it didn't. They didn't think I'd get this far and stick around this long. They were never gonna pay up. Now they don't even advertise they do the bonus anymore. So they're just up front it's a lot of effort for something that gets no real reward. Before I started at the company, they used to do quarterly bonuses for my position, then it was yearly, then just a sign-on that most people stopped actually ever seeing. Now, nothing. LOL. And I can't even take a vacation, because there's no one to cover me. Work harder, though! I'm pretty checked out at this point. I am not making any harder effort than before. They've already made it clear I'll be stuck in my current position with no upward mobility, as is every other person presented. No one moves up, people only move in to specific positions and then stayed locked there. They're currently still trying to find a replacement for Miss Vodka, and have rejected a shit ton of very qualitifed people and will not even offer the job as a promotion to anyone who's already been working at the company no matter how long they've been there. And so it stays unfilled. They would rather there be a void (because then that's a higher paid person they don't have to pay) than to promote anyone. It's like when it's not, as I've found out, just having rich fail kids funneled directly into management positions without any merits or their buds, it's just leave it empty if that's not the case. There's several people here who've been there for years and are still in the exact same position at the exact same pay rate. No raises, nothing. The last job was like that too. Some people seemed to get hired then immediately promoted upward because the company claimed it always "hired from within" and these people would work like one week in the starter position and then be managers or higher positions. But no one there for years ever seemed to go anywhere. It was so obviously bullshit. All this shit is rigged at so many companies. And it didn't used ot be like this. I'm old enough to remember when things weren't like this. It all got weird around 2008. Everything related to employment got super weird and fucked after that specific year and it's only gotten worse since then. It was always degradig, but that was the big turning point, 2008. This job at least isn't physically likely to kill me though, so I have more time to search around for what's out there. The crumbs of what exists. I love how no matter how much experience or education or certifications I can get, there will always be a new thing. When I was desperate to just move on from that last job and considered some fast food places, I got rejected from one for not having "sandwich experience" and another for not having "chicken experience" even though I have made/cooked both of those at a fast food job before. But apparently what they meant was working at a place that speciically only does those. These jobs wanted $7.50/hr, which I was not interested in actually working the pay of as that was well below what I was getting paid at the time but I was really desperate to just find anything to get out of that other place and considered it just to have something before moving on to a better paying job. And I got rejected...from minimum wage jobs for not having food type specific fast food experience?????? Again, what the fuck are you even talking about? I saw someone on Reddit arguing recently no one paid around the federal mimum wage anymore and in fact no one paid below $15 anywhere in the US...Well, I can tell you plenty of places in GA will pay you under $8/hr and demand years of specific niche experience in something that isn't even a real field of expertise. And if GA is doing this, you bet your ass places like TN and AL are too, because they're even bigger shitholes. There's also the classic unpaid internships expecting years of experience too. Still see loads of those. Reddit is a dumb dumb place. I'm just so fed up with wendigo shit. I honestly hate Reddit and all Reddit alternatives, but Reddit killed most spaces for hobbies and discussions. I'm doing a little experiment right now with YouTube. Once it's gone on for a bit longer, I'll probably make a page about it. But it's mostly about me dickig around with the algorithm and some observations on it. As I've been working on that, I've kind of realized there's no way to run this same thing with Reddit or Blue Sky or Tumblr. They're actually more fucked than YouTube is, and nothing can replace them and be less fucked because of the very nature of what they are. I'm trying something on XHS though similar to YT. We'll see how that goes. Can't wait for the weekend. I'm just tired of existing at work. 4/14/26 Well, the building manager finally left last Friday. The new building manager is here, since they at least realized bumping up the current dude would be stupid. But the new guy is one of those micromanaging dudes who spouts off corporate lingo constantly. So possibly actually a worse choice than the previous option of just bumping up the moron stinky guy. He's already making up lock up stuff that was previously never locked up (including the toilet paper for some reason) because lower staff "can't be trusted". There's barely any staff in the building. This kinda shit is how things were right before I left that other place. Once someone comes in locking up every goddamn thing, you know you've got a shithead on your hands. He's overly polished, appearance-wise, to the point it's cringe. The first time I met him, he instantly started trying to play mind games with me to assert some kind of "power" and I just ignored him. He's already expected I should be getting "numbers" for shit that isn't even in my department because "everyone needs to do this" for corporate blah blah blah. Wendigo alert. I filled out another application today, but I know it won't be as quick to move on to somewhere else. Last time, I was willing to just be anywhere else. I gotta like write out CVs and shit now. Takes forever. I miss the previous guy. He wasn't the greatest manager, but at least he was chill. Oh, I also found out how stinky has gotten so far. He's a trust fund baby. He is rich as fuck. He literally does not even have to work here and could just live off his various properties he's a landlord of. He owns a shit ton of properties in multiple states. And it's like...so you're just doing this shit job at this shit place...for the hell of it? You literally do not need to be here. I've learned most of the managers and even higher up staff are all really rich, and were born rich. I guess what he's actually after is to eventually be one of the big boys by already starting a few steps ahead of everyone or something. But it's pretty obvious now that I know more about everyone here, only rich people ever get into management here, unless someone above is buddies or sexually interested in someone. From what I've learned about how the company ran before, this is a more recent shift and employees actually used to be regularly promoted up from the bottom and were average people. Now, it's the poorer employees stay at the bottom, and the rich ones jump in already at manager level and go up. Maybe I'm crazy, but having rich people just skip over the lower tiered work to start at "managing" the poor people and never letting them move upward...feels like it's by design...to mimic a system we've already had before. Anyway, this place is clearly a dead end. Most are, but if I'm going to reach nothing but dead ends, better it at least pay better and have more tolerable bosses. What I find interesting is none of the managers go a long before, always shit talking each other, but this is the most smug, micromanaging fuck and all of them are basically head over heels for it. It's so bizarre. He must have even more money than they do, because nothing else makes sense. I forgot Mao was coming out this month. I'd put the manga on hold around when Yashahime ended, because I honestly didn't want to look at any Rumiko related after how much a fucking shitshow that was. I've started to go back to Inuyasha now. I mean, I don't consider Yashahime to be canon. It was written worse than the worst of IY filler episodes and shitty movies, almost none of which was good to start with. I really don't care for the IY anime staff. But anyway, I'm just ignoring all that. (Really sucks as a Sesshoumaru fan. Sess, Rin, and Jaken were my favorites. :/ ) So far, Mao has been alright. I remember the beginning started a lot slower than Rinne, but is definitely much better written. Gonna have to wait a while for my favorite characters to show up, but I might get to see them towards the end of S1. Haha, Rinne just kind of went nowhere, huh? Started off alright, and had plenty of characters I liked, but quickly turned into the "time to do this generic Rumic trope again" and "here's another poverty joke" without much of any progress. I'm not really sure Rumiko herself actually enjoyed writing Rinne. It always came off a little half-baked. I don't think she knew what to do after IY. Mao feels a lot more thought out and the characters are more compelling. I know Rinne was more comedy focused, but IDK. I don't think Rumiko is great at comedy. I could never finish Ranma 1/2. I'd always get fed up with it roughly around the same point. UY was even worse. And the little humor in IY isn't great either. She's much better at more serious stories, but I guess the comedy shit is what got her the most fans. I'm still sick. When will it end? Oh, also YT took away my translate option for Japanese videos. I guess YouTube has decided I can read Japanese fluently, for some reason. It's only done this with Japanese videos. I guess I better get back to remembering how to reach kana and kanji... 4/8/26 Called out of work yesterday. I couldn't get out of bed until around noon. Just feverish and coughing and disoriented. The night before, I was coughing really badly for hours, to the point I was struggling to breathe. I can't recall any time I've ever coughed like that before. It definitely didn't feel like a "regular" coughing spell or even a regular asthma attack. Today was a bit better. Managed to go to work. Got to hear more details about why other people failed to be able to get certified for my job. So, the guy who's leaving who got the farthest failed at a certain point anyway. Stinky manager failed, flagged as having something shady in his background. And other guy who was the least of the way into the process was also flagged as sus and kicked out of the process. And now they're not even bothering to look for a backup because they have me and don't need an "extra" person. Which means I'm never allowed to use my vacation time. And I'll get more chewed out than everyone if I call out sick, like yesterday. Yay. I filled out five applications yesterday. I'm feeling pretty exhausted tonight, so I might skip doing that today, but I'll do more tomorrow. Stinky manager was talking about how much it would suck to lose my position for the store because of the hours and money it brings in, and if it left, he'd have to like promote me to a manager or something, but he doesn't want to do that. He wants me where I'm at. Making less money. And I was like, wow, what an interesting thing to tell me. That you don't want me to ever be promoted and you don't intend on having anyone help me and never want me to take a vacation. So cool. I'm just thinking too about how this guy was the reason I didn't get that other promotion and we lost one of our best employees during that whole incident. So he could hire some lady he wanted to fuck who is now in rehab and not coming back. Just amazing. Customers have also been dipshits. Had to hear so many people today tell me they had to come back today because the "person yesterday didn't want to bother working". That'd be me. It's only me. There's no one else. It's interesting how many people of the few times I've called out will complain to me about "yesterday's" staff calling because "that person" cleary "doesn't want to work". Had a fever on and off throughout the day. I honestly don't remember a portion of the day. Right now, I'm just really, really tired. Also had three different disgusting interactions related to takeout this week. Not returning to any of those places, which is probably better for my health, but I used to like going to those places. One of them was especially disgusting. Started with them pulling some phenomenal shrinkflation bullshit (literally made the food 50% smaller and relabeled the standard size as "large" and introduced an even tinier size they never had before and called it "small") that ended with me learning about them having a roach infestation problem. That was definitely the grossest of the three. But I'm not returning to any of them. I can't belive the roaches thing. So nasty. 4/5/26 A slow weekend. I haven't been able to do much lately because I can't breathe when I'm outside. I had to order some N95s and now I'm having to carry an inhaler with me everywhere every day. The pollen is so awful this year. I see a lot of people masking up for the pollen around here. It's insane. This is an area where post-COVID, masking shifted to something people just do when they're personally sick, if they bother. It's a purple area. Masks everywhere right now. I was going to plant today, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Went on a walk earlier and I could barely get through it even with a mask on because my skin was breaking out in hives from the pollen. Then rain washed away some of it, but even after the rain, it's still a shit ton of pollen. I hope it rains again soon. At least my plants got a lot of water. Some more little sprouts are visible now. Added two new pages to the site. A review for Area X + its related movie, Annihilation, neither of which were good, and a page called Nostalgic that's the opposite of my Anti-Nostalgic pages. God, getting through those Area X books was so fucking awful. I threw the book away when I was done with the review. I don't even want to wish reading that shit on anyone to give it away or resell it. Straight to the garbage can. I should've known with how popular it was, that the books would of course be dogshit. As for the other new page, I'm pretty happy with how the layout came out. It's the right amount of loud that I was trying to do. I need to update my credits info at some point, but I'm too lazy to do that tonight. I reread some Masumi Nishin last night. I read all her works a few years back one night, starting with Heartless in what I can only describe as being so shocked at a trainwreck I couldn't look away and I just...kept watching trains wreck, you know. The whole night. I don't know why. Sometimes, at my last longterm job, scenes from Heartless and Feeding Lamb would just pop up in my head and torment me again. I thought about reviewing some of her works before, because they are legit horrifying, but the idea of having a page for any of her works kind of makes me sick. I don't know why I reread anything yesterday, beside being a weird, low mental state. I reread Host is Down and Heartless. I knew I definitely shouldn't touch Feeding Lamb again. It's cliche and not the scariest thing out there, but I find it especially disturbs me. Maybe because it feels pretty real to me. Heartless does in weird way too. Those two just stuck in my head as disturbing me more than the others. Some of her work is just obvious torture porn dressed up as horror, and since all of her work has graphic sexual content, all of it's X-rated regardless. A few feel more horror story with porn rather than porn pretending to be horror. Heartless feels the most like it is trying to actually be a real supernatural horror story, but the sex is quite graphic in a way that isn't that necessary. (Yes, I know, I know, one of the characters is an incubus. Doesn't matter. It's the framing of it all.) I did enjoy the bits of worldbuilding that were there, but it doesn't go anywhere deep. It feels liek the story should be at least another volume long. And there's no reason for the sex to be so graphic. But it does have a mood about it that I don't see often in manga, or in horror much these days. Wish it was in something else though. I get an ick feeling about the mangaka though. You can tell she's into the torture porn element, so it makes narratives around it feel disingenious. You know it's really only there to draw someone getting assaulted. I just can't imagine getting off to the kind of disturbed stuff in this. I'm not sorry about it. I think it's weird. I think about this a lot with horror in general. This ain't about the BL genre. It's an across the board horror thing, the mixing of terror and viewer sexual gratification together, and I find it gross no matter what it's in or who it's aimed at. It's the shit like in Poltergeist, both the mom and the underage daughter are sexualized during the ghostly attack scenes, it's the 13 Ghosts remake having the teen daughter being attacked in a way that has her top ripped off with the camera zooming in on her breasts. That shit creeps me the fuck out. We're not even talking the "oh no this person is assaulting me but I am actually enjoying it for some reason" trope. I mean, I'm talking it's just straight up a "regular" assault kind of thing with all the regular fear of that involved, but it's clearly meant to be spank bank at the same time. I don't know why a lot of fiction and fandom spaces tell me I'm not right for being disturbed and disgusted by this stuff. I don't care that it's fiction. Why do you get enjoyment out of people being afraid and assaulted? Anyway, I think that's my main thing with her. These stories don't need to be as sexually graphic as they are. They are because the author is horny about it. It's not horror for them. The horror is part of the porn set-up. In isolation, some of her works could be taken as just really mature, but collectively? Gives me a very different impression. Dunno why I reread that stuff last night. It just made me feel paranoid. Probably some PTSD symptoms acting up, making me trigger myself. 4/1/26 April has begun. We have a manager from another building subbing in right now for that stinky manager who's training at another building with someone because the other manager that's leaving is moving right now (but will be back for IIRC a couple more weeks before fully leaving). It was amazing how much better the vibe was without that stinker stinking up the place with both his smell and his general nasty personality. Work slowed down a lot today, which I was pretty glad for. I am so tired from last week. Higher ups actually sent a message out that our store was overworking me with the amount of applications they were making me process per day. It seems a few locations in our area were pulling this crap because their managers thought they would get bonuses or some shit. I, of course, wouldn't be seeing any bonus, but you know. I should work extra, extra hard for them to get a bonus. Anyway, once I saw the message I was like well, fuck this shit, I'm kicking out the walk-in dipshits. The temp manager from nearby was like "I fully support you in doing that, because that's what we do at my location, fuck 'em". I was also informed that some of the gaps where I thought I just was never gettig appointments weirdly were actually scheduled in by the company for my 15 minute on the clock breaks just like my lunch is scheduled in so there's no appointments in that time slot, but the managers here have been pushing me to just take walk-ins during this instead of allowing me breaks. Fucking bullshit. Stinky manager was like "I mean, we could do things by the book, but don't you want to make more money?" More money for who? I get paid the same! Those are ON THE CLOCK BREAKS. Wouldn't mind if we just traded managers. Let ole stinky go out to that other building, or better yet, the hellhole one all the shit staff end up at eventually. Got something posted at the main site finally. As always, I remain disappointed at how little I manage to post per year. I used to be able to get so many updates out when I was younger. I wish I could go back to that, but I doubt I'll ever have that kind of output again. More of the soil arrived, but it's late. I'll do the planting tomorrow. Had to stop by the laundromat today. ETA: Wow, this is the sixth month of the Denji Log. I can't believe I've kept this thing up this long... Archive - Icons - Previous