Archive - Icons - Previous 2/23/26 I've been sick most of the month. Still sick, in fact. Almost everyone at work is sick. My wife is sick. It's awful. I've had more soup in this month than probably all of last year. I've been rereading the Fellowship slowly, when I can manage to do anything. I'm keeping a little journal about it, and I plan on keeping one for the other two books as well. Not sure yet if I'll reread The Hobbit or not. I'll post the journals here at some point. I still haven't decided if I'll do that before or after I finish the reread of all of them. I plan on posting a review/retrospective of the film trilogy here as well and I think I'll give all these pages their own layout as a little sub-section of the site. I don't know if I'll go "deeper" into the other books or not here. I might. It'll depend on how I feel about all that later. Right now, I'm just focused on the trilogy. Glad I got the pocket sized faux leather versions. They're so easy to read from, such a nice, small size and no distracting art on it. I find a lot of the older paperback art is just...very generic. Not a fan. I prefer simpler covers for these. These ones feel more like something someone in the books might read from themselves. I saw a lot of complaints about the small text size, which is weird to me because long books always had text around that size, especially high fantasy books. Are younger people struggling to read books? I wonder if reading on screens has something to do with it. I finished recording my cassette collection on Discogs. It's nothing too interesting, much like my Bandcamp account, and ultimately only a portion of my music collection. I suppose since it allows it, I could catalog all my digital music that's not on Bandcamp somewhere too, but I don't really care about that. I was just wanted to have all the information for the physical stuff somewhere. I really hate the dipshits who've inflated this market. I got back into this on a whim because I kind of missed that experience, and so much mass produced stuff that was pretty popular is really insane prices for what isn't even mint condition. I got lucky I could find Sneaker Pimp's Becoming X for under $20 on cassette. An album I played the shit out of as a kid and teenager that my dad bought pretty cheap himself and people are wanting ridiculous prices for it. Stranger Things fans have still kept the Kate Bush stuff elevated. I ignored a listing of Björk's Debut, the version with Play Dead at the end, for $15 because the idea of spending that on a cassette was absurd to me. Now I can't find it anywhere for anywhere near that price. I've given up for now on getting Massive Attack's Mezzanine and Portishead's Dummy for now, again because what the fuck why are these so expensive. THIS SHIT PLAYED CONSTANTLY ON THE RADIO. THEY WEREN'T HARD TO FIND. I'm not even bothering to attempt to buy anything Nirvana. God, Kurt would roll his eyes at this shit. This shit is NOT obscure. It's RADIO music. At least no one's inflating the cost of Coyote Oldman, Cusco, Kitaro, and Enya cassettes, LOL. (NTS: Need to get some Carlos Nakai too...) I've got a few things on order from Bandcamp waiting to come in. I've been pretty picky with what I get from Bandcamp. So much of what I see from people putting out cassettes there is bland music with nice covers. But that kind of describes a lot of Bandcamp in general. A lot of wading through a whole ton of boring trash for some diamonds. Better than modern radio though. All that shit is arranged by wendigo. I love how when you tell young people that most of these people are using ghost vocals in addition to ghost writers in addition to playing NO instruments in addition to composing nothing OPENLY and that their bodies are full of plastic surgery and video/photo editing and their personalities are scripted in a board room, they don't even care. "That just makes it a better performance". It's so wild people will have these parasocial relationships with these celebrities who literally make NOTHING, they're affectively actors playing musicians faking their personality, and when you tell them what they've gotten attached to is made-up and not the real person, they don't even care and are still just as devoted. Reminds me of cult shit. I was watching a video last night about how we got here, and how in the late 90s all the local radio stations were getting bought up and all that eventually turned into iHeartRadio and we've had increasingly shit music since then because the "hits" are literally just selected for us with the illusion of it being what "we" like. Everything's been like that for several decades now. Popular books are popular because the publisher has pre-decided what they will market the fuck out of it. Harry Potter didn't become popular from word of mouth. No one gets that kind of mult-series book deal with a multi-movie book deal right out the gate with no prior published works of any note with the book from day one shoved down kids throats because "word of mouth". Last time I went to a bookstore, they had remodeled the kids section from having various characters from old books and general kid things to 80% of the design was Harry Potter related. That's not "oh kids just love Harry Potter", that's "several companies have decided this is what we are selling, because we sell a shit ton of merch off this franchise". And as someone who was around for when those books first came out, there was never a single point in time these books didn't have a fuck ton of merch beyond anything I had ever seen with any kids books before. It was Disney level day one. That shit was planned to be a "success". (I'd actually argue Twilight was more "word of mouth", at least around book one, than most of the popular kids and teen books from the late 90s and early 00s.) I remember how much they absolutely PUSHED Holes on everyone. Boring ass book. Fun memory, re: Harry Potter. For the youngin' who may be reading, we used to have this thing called Accerated Reader where we'd read books and take tests on them. We got to pick the books, and we were all given reading level tests twice a year to determine what books were best for us to read at our current skill level, regardless of our actual grade level. We would keep a log of the books we read, the scores, how long they were, if they were fiction or nonfiction, etc. Well, a lot of places got rid of AR because kids wanted to read Harry Potter books repeatedly. And no other books. So instead of encouraging them to read another book, they just did away with this system for entire school systems and its now a thing of the past. (LOL they don't care if you read at all these days.) I remember people saying back then that Harry Potter books were getting kids to read, but there were absolutely these weird kids who would only read Harry Potter. They refused to read anything else, even for school. They would fail things because it wasn't Harry fucking Potter. And the response was "but at least they ARE reading ANYTHING so it's okay". And to accomodate these culty kids, they just didn't bother tracking all the kids reading anymore. Because someone wanted it that way. I've met so many people who are just plain weird about this kids book series that wasn't particularly all that novel. I remember as a child reading the first book and getting a "hold up" moment recalling The Worst Witch. I just wanna post this quotes from Le Guin:

"I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the "incredible originality" of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a "school novel", good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited." "This last is the situation, as I see it, between my A Wizard of Earthsea and J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter. I didn’t originate the idea of a school for wizards — if anybody did it was T.H.White, though he did it in single throwaway line and didn’t develop it. I was the first to do that. Years later, Rowling took the idea and developed it along other lines. She didn’t plagiarize. She didn’t copy anything. Her book, in fact, could hardly be more different from mine, in style, spirit, everything. The only thing that rankles me is her apparent reluctance to admit that she ever learned anything from other writers. When ignorant critics praised her wonderful originality in inventing the idea of a wizards’ school, and some of them even seemed to believe that she had invented fantasy, she let them do so. This, I think, was ungenerous, and in the long run unwise. I’m happier with writers who, perhaps suffering less from the famous “anxiety of influence,” have enough sense of their own worth to appreciate their predecessors and fellow-workers in the saltmines of literature. The whole history of a literature and of every genre within it is a chain of influences, inventions shared, discoveries made common, techniques adopted and adapted. Must I say again that this has absolutely nothing to do with copying texts, with stealing stuff?"

I've thought often about the ethically mean-spirited bit. Even as a kid, that always stood out to me. I feel like in ways, the HP world feels more bitter than a Roald Dahl book and much as people remember them fondly, they are also really...weirdly mean looking back. His adult material even more so, honestly. Less surprising when you know he was a really terrible person, especially to his kids. This is such a familiar thing to me, personally, but I wanna leave it here too.

"After I sold my first children’s book, he had struggled up to his hut with agonised hips to fetch his royalty statements. To prove to me that I would never make as much money as him, however successful I became. More narcissistic than fatherly, perhaps." - Tessa Dahl

But back on point. I do think it's interesting how much money is tied up in HP. I've been a JKR hater since before it was cool, not because of the shitty books or her political stances or her rampant narcissim or the corporate shit. That's just the regular wendigo shit. No, it's because she spent a good chunk of her Twitter years promoting literal pedos and shrinks who promoted that pedophiles shouldn't be put in jail, even if they have offended. Sadly, the only people who were keeping screenshots of this weirdo shit were in some of the nastier parts of the net largely because at the time she wore a leftist mask. Now that she hates trans people, no one cares about her weird pedo-defending. I've never once taken her concerns about "protecting women" seriously. You can't "protect" women and girls but promote pedos "just need therapy not jail". I will not abide by any bullshit "oh some of them don't offend!". ANYONE and I mean ANYONE who's done serious research on these sickos knows at minimum, they always go for CSAM. The 2D and CG stuff is just to normalize the shit. Any time you see some shit where the weebs are up in arms that someone's house was raided because "they only had loli" is always dead silent when 100% of the time it turns out no, they had the "real thing" too. Early lolicon magazines straight up included real photos of girls. The 2D thing was always a smokescreen, just like "oh I wish I didn't think these things I feel so bad I would never hurt a real child". People should really read what researchers and investigators find about these people. They are all too willing to tell you exactly what they really think about kids to a disturbing degree. Fuck all of them. And fuck JKR for even entertaining that shit. But I should've seen that coming anyway. She claimed her favorite romance story was Lolita. Nabokov is rolling in his grave. Jesus Christ. No one who says Lolita is their favorite love story should be anywhere near children, must less writing chilren's books and being promoted as THE childrens book author. So disgusting. (Also, makes me really side eye that weird Lupin/Tonks shit...) But you know, when you look at those files, and I have been reading them, much as they horrify me, I suppose in a world where everything is decided by a few, what's successful and what is popular, that so much of that would involve people for some...unknown reason...promoting pedo shit. As always, here's my regular fuck Miyazaki too. I see no reason to not believe Oshii when you look at 80s interviews with other people in the industry and they say the same shit. They all knew. Some of them were no different than him too. I could name quite a few of them, but I'd rather not have too many dumbass fandom people screaming at me. I'll leave this bit here from the Department of Justice:

"In recent years, communities of so-called “virtuous pedophiles” or “non-offending pedophiles” have emerged online. Members self-identify as having sexual interests in children but claim they have no desire to act on their fantasies. Many attempt to normalize pedophilia as an alternative sexual orientation. Several observations warrant consideration. First, while some mental health professionals and academics have advocated for a re-conceptualization of pedophilia and the risks “non-offending” pedophiles pose to children, their advocacy appears based on the assumption the self-identified pedophiles are as “virtuous” as they assert. Many appear to simply accept the claims of the anonymous group members that they have not acted on their impulses. Law enforcement authorities, however, have found the supposed non-offending pedophiles are in fact consuming CSAM online." "In a related issue, some forensic psychologists support the concept of “support groups” where those with sexual interests in children can congregate and communicate about their desires on social media. For both clinical and ethical reasons, this approach is contraindicated and may be dangerous. Unmoderated support groups can quickly devolve into inappropriate communications or become de facto therapy groups as members attempt to “treat” one another in the absence of qualified clinicians. There is no way to confirm whether members in “self-help” groups are truly non-offending, and under the façade of providing help they may increase networking opportunities and facilitate offenders’ desires for ongoing immersion in the world of child exploitation."

At work, every now and then, they'll play Alanis's "Hands Clean", but a lot of lines in the song will get really quiet compared to the rest of the song. It's some form of censorship to hide the "adult" subject...but that's like most of the song. It's so baffling. I think about it a lot. We like this sound, but we can't sell you the message. Anyway, I went really offtopic there. I wish all this old media wasn't getting treated like some "collectible" to sell. I would rather younger people have lot of access to this stuff, to see what used to be out there. And for the love of god, please stop worshipping these narcissistic weirdos. Please, just form real friendships instead. I remember back when I was atheist, I would see frequently how atheists assumed once religions and spirituality were all "dead and gone", that weird, cult-like destructive worship would end and I always found that naive and moronic. But that was one of the reasons they thought atheism needed to be pushed, for world peace. Well, as you can see, you can take the gods away, and people will easily be convinced to worship something else, including humans they know are illusions. And as always, you can make a lot of money off of that. EDIT: Forgot I wanted to say something about someone else. We'll call her F-ko. Since we're on the topic of parasocial relationships. I've liked enough of F-ko's music for decades at this point to keep up with her, though I would say like most modern musicians, she has no albums of no skips, you know? But usually there would be a couple songs I'd like. F-ko has struggled with a couple of pretty severe mental illnesses and has been open about it. A few albums ago, she was in recovery, looking better, being really open about everything and terrible stuff she did in her past due to mental illness, etc. Then next album drops and she looks obviously sick, clearly relapsing with one of her illnesses. The music somewhat goes into wanting to be unwell again, a warning sign she might be about to relapse with the other one as well. Recent album is literally, lyrically, just a mental illness episode on recording. I go and see fans and media praising the fuck out of it. So raw, so open, so dark and daring. Hello? Does no one care? I don't think I'll be able to listen to F-ko's music anymore, or at least nothing particularly recent. Given her age, one of these illnesses could take her to her grave because of the physical strain of it, and given the other, could take her the Kurt method instead. Fans cheering, our wild witchy woman, so brave. I feel like I'm watching Amy Winehouse all over again, except instead of boos, people are cheering while they're still watching some unwell woman fall apart in front of them. Either way, help won't be given. No, you can't talk "bad" of your idol. Even if your idol is dying in front of you and needs help. Then you might admit to the rest o the group you're not looking at a real goddess. I am honestly sick from the whole thing. Sick, from her lyrics. I've seen this sort of delusional spiral in real life, so it's honestly slightly triggering and painful because I know she probably just needs in patient treatment and some meds but no one is doing anything and her brain isn't helping her right now. Sick, from the fans who are so happy "mother" has made them new things to buy. When I was at my last job, I kept rewriting a poem about F-ko, and how I noticed I tended to like her lyrics more when she was clearly unwell and how I wished she would just make music I hated or no music at all so she could be better off somewhere. I could never finish it, the words were never quite right. But I've noticed with this album she's so unwell the songs aren't even good. She crossed the edge of artistic madness, as I call it. I've noticed in myself if I'm triggered, and I sit and write, I can write actually sometimes better or more bold things than normal (which doesn't make that experience, uh, worthwhile), however, the few times I've experienced a psychotic break with reality, I just wrote gibberish garbage. There's like a line where you cross and you aren't even really coherent enough to make art anymore. She's crossed the line. This is her worst album she's ever made. But I'm sure it will sell well. And I know her illnesses aren't an act. You can't fake having an eating disorder. It shows in every inch of your being and manifests in every way you frame yourself. People lost in that mindset don't even keep up their usual fake personas well anymore. Everything gets replaced with the ED's demands. She's one of a few female musicians I've watched clearly have EDs and the fans will just come at you if you point out the obvious that anyone with sight can see. Even with celebrities that are open they've had them. What are you defending? The fans don't want these people to have any humanity to them either. Everything must be fake, even if it might kill something real. Eat her up until she's nothing, huh? More wendigo shit. 2/9/26 Guess who forgot to buy any decorations for Chinese New Year until a couple hours ago. Oops. Well, at least I got it done. Eventually. More dumbass customers this week. I feel like the last two or three weeks, the customers have been especially dumb and belligerant. And smelly. So many stinky people. This one guy came in smelling like onions, stank breath, and some vague other stinky smell I couldn't identify. Then there were at least three women and one man who smelled like they shit their pants, only one was elderly. And this one lady came in with what I can only describe as hot, rotting sausage breath. Does no one care if they stink anymore? Is this another thing lost to COVID? There was this one guy some weeks back who may have been the stankiest human I have ever encountered in my life. And the thing is I can't even describe to you exactly what he smelled like because even the stank was some new kind of stank. It smelled like nothing I have ever smelled before, but it was the most vile thing I have ever smelled in my life at the same time. And wherever he went, the area he left SMELLED like that for a disturbingly long time. He literally was leaving a cloud of pure stank behind him. You could follow where he had been in the building purely off of the smell. He was so ungodly stinky I actually had to force myself to not vomit while I was talking to him and I actually threw up twice after he left. The first time immediately after he left when I quickly went to the bathroom because I just could not keep it down anymore. And the second time when I went back to my desk area and walked into his cloud of stank a second time after he was gone. I nearly threw up at least two more times from accidentally walking into it a third time and from just thinking about the smell. Every now and then, I think back on how he smelled and I actually have to push back the urge to throw up again and I'm not even smelling it for real. I just cannot explain to you just how fucking disgusting this man's smell was. Just the thought of ever having to smell that smell again is enough to make me gag. And I'm just thinking, how the hell did this man get so smelly and also not care that he is so smelly? Does he not have the ability to smell? Does he just enjoy making other people suffer his stank? He had a wife, but it was pretty clear from other things about them it was likely not something she had a choice in, sadly. Not getting into that, just ugh. Looking back at my Writing stuff on the Listf page is a little sad. What the hell happened in 2023? Damn, I didn't get shit done that year. I can't believe it's 2026. My brain's been stuck in 2018 since 2019. 2/5/26 Redid the icon page, just so I can put even less effort into it. LOL. Another day, another "can I do a walk-in". All fucking day. At this point, 50% of the people I see are walk-ins because they would rather come in whenever they feel like than just schedule an appointment. I talked to a lady yesterday who said it was like that at her doctor's office too. She's schedule an appt and be early and there would be a long ass line of fuckers who expected to be seen that day with no appointment, and of course expecting to be seen before the actual appointments because they were "there first". When did this shit start happening? When I was a kid, if you didn't have an appointment, you'd be lucky if someone would even talk to you outside of an actual emergency. To expect to be seen ahead of people who did schedule an appointment...like what the actual fuck. I feel like this is another post-COVID thing where for some reason a pandemic happening where people had to stay inside slightly more than usual means we don't have to follow any social rules anymore. (Yes, I'm gonna be rude about it. Most of the people who were going "stir crazy" in their houses were not inside their houses a significant amount more than normal. They were just upset they couldn't do whatever bullshit on demand anymore. That's all that was ever about. Your screen time was already over ten hours daily. Be real.) But I am required to say we take walk-ins. One day this week I had about 80% walk-ins and mostly no shows. These groups overlap too. The few who do schedule an appointment will still just show up at a random time and date anyway. Because they felt like it. So I can never plan anything around my appointments at all. My favorite though is "I wanna do this today" "so have you started the paper work online yet" "no" "do you have your documents in person" "what documents" "your (PII stuff)" "no I don't do I really have to have all that to do this?" "YES" "but why". ARRGHHH. Another favorite "I have a picture of my important document you use that as proof I am me" "No I need to submit official proof" "but you can see it's real" "NO". Or the classic "I need an ID with a photo of you on it, an official one" "here's my social security card" "I can't take that" "why not it's official" "it doesn't have a picture of you on it" "but its from the government. what about my work badge? it has a picture" "That's not from the government. Needs to meet both criteria" "BUT NOT JUST ANYONE CAN GET THIS BADGE. DOESN'T THAT MEAN SOMETHING TO YOU?!" "No." And the classic "I already paid" "You can't pay until the process is complete. There is no advance payment." "But I paid (random price) online already." "That isn't the cost of this." I can never tell if these people are trying to scam or if they've already been scammed, or if it's a mix of both. But it's every day. Also answered some phone calls for the company unrelated to my department and some dude was going on about some shit with his account and how it's especially messed up because it's his birthday month, so shouldn't I see it's even more messed up that I am clearly scamming him?!! ON HIS BIRTHDAY!! IT'S THE GRAND CHAWHEE'S BIRTHDAY EVERYONE! MAKE WAY! Anyway, that dude had his account hacked, so I told him to call a diifferent number because individual locations don't handle that kind of situation. He was very upset I could not look into his account and fix it for him. Why would any random employee have access to all the customers' accounts like that??? This is why creating a surveillance state is easy. People on average literally expect you to just break into their accounts for them to fix their problems. Actively just not wanting any privacy or security. So bizarre. 2/4/26 Start of a new month's log. This is the 24th entry, four month of doing this. I am honestly still surprised this lasted longer than a month. Two stories for the day: A sixteen year old discovers social security numbers exist. The dad is disappointed she doesn't know what it is, much less have her own memorized. She is shocked each person has one because "that's so many numbers". I love parents who are upset when their kids don't know some basic shit and it's...dude, that was 100% YOUR JOB. Why are you surprised? Who the fuck was supposed to teach your kid basic info other than you? Every time though, and I've noticed this as a recurring trend, the parents are grandparent age. They are not the grandparents, they're really old parents. They seem to outnumber the "normal" aged parents of kids. So many clueless kids and teens with parents who are well into their 60s and 70s. Like, why the fuck did you wait till literally the last possible ovulation cycle the mom could've gotten pregnant on to pop out a kid? But these elder parents are always the ones most shocked (and angry, and may even make a scene) when their kid doesn't know something that would be absolutely something that a parent is normally expected to teach a kid. I know I'm just one data point, but these parents seem to outnumber the "regular" aged parents of kids and teens. I see so much online about how bad millennials and older zoomers are as parents because the next gen down is not doing well...but it still seems to be mostly be the final remnants of boomers and Gen X parenting...SOMEHOW???! Like OMG, won't get out of the government, won't retire out of the top paid positions, won't even stop having kids when nearly ready to collect social security. What the fuck. The teen who came in today, her dad (and he was definitely her dad, not her grandpa) had to have been mid-40s at least when she was born. This man was at least in his mid-60s at the youngest (I'm being generous) with a sixteen year old. How do I encounter so many of these? Anyway, the other tale for the day. "So, where are you from?" "Um, here?" "Oh, but you look Hispanic. What's your name?" "(Name)." "Really? That doesn't sound like a Hispanic name. Shouldn't it be spelled (Spanish version of my name) instead?" Sorry my name wasn't Latino enough for you. I guess I should've told her my name was Pedro or something. Also "hispanic" look. People always love to point out Latino/Hispanic is an ethnic group, not a specific race therefore it doesn't have a look whenever they have some bullshit agenda. But we all know what that look is. It's looking Native American. The US is just so good at having convinced average US citizens that nearly all indigenous people are dead that when they do see that look their brain defaults to "Hispanic". But that's what the look really is. I love the audacity of a white person demanding to know where I'm from like I don't belong and it's their land. LOL, go back to Europe. (I'm not even getting into the history of indigenous people being moved around all over the place from their original home lands by various colonizers for centuries either, so a lot of people aren't even on their "native" land and their native land could be on the other side of a border they're not allowed to even visit, but I'll be ranting for hours.) It's funny. I'm pretty light-skinned and I'm mostly white myself. But it doesn't matter. I am not white, not to any racist. So if I'm not white to them, then I'm not white. It's really that simple. Most of my childhood, the racial slurs used against me were all either Latino ones or Native American ones. The exact word choice just depending on what side of the border they thought I was "from". I can't believe that lady had the gall to tell me my own name should be spelled differently and more "ethnic" and not "white". LOL, I didn't pick my name. She eventually decided I must be from the Dominican Republic. I have no relatives in the Dominican Republic. Also, boss, "Go ahead and cancel your sick leave for the day you called out, since we're having you come in an extra day and you'll be getting the same amount of money anyway!" No, I don't think I will. If you want to me come in an extra day, that will be in addition to the pay you already owe me in sick leave. That's one of my benefits, and most of my benefits don't roll over to the next year. You aren't letting me take vacations even though I have PTO. I am using my sick leave when I'm sick and getting paid for it! The guy's been trying to regularly get me to come in on paid holidays too. You'll get time and a half! I don't care. I'm off. Fuck off. I was already pissed they called me in to work "a few extra hours", and then that few extra turned to a full eight hour shift in under 24 hours less than a week from when they dumped this shit on me and they're alredy talking about trying to get me to do a six day week another week. Sigh. I love how even managers at the bottom end of the hierarchy have the same rot inside them about trying to stop staff from using benefits they themselves are always using. I think what bugs me most about the leave stuff is how much we have is related to our time at the company, our position, and how much we work. I've literally earned these benefit. Why sort of asinine nonsense is it that I shouldn't use it? Haha. No. Archive - Icons - Previous