Next - Archive - Icons - Previous 09/30/26 Been a while since my last update. Still adjusting to the new diet. It's been interesting, and by interesting, I mean disturbing, how much pre-packed or fast food/restaurant stuff is now completely off the table that I wouldn't have ever considered. Like french fries having meat and dairy in them, or nuts and frozen vegetables having ground up beef powder on them. Just bizarre shit that doesn't add to the food in anyway and seems to only be on the food because some company made a deal with some other company to add it for extra profits. What's even more disturbing is that a lot of restaurants, fast food places, and grocery stores have over the last few years intentionally limited vegetarian and vegan options from what used to be and from what I can search up, it's absolutely not related to demand (or rather lack of demand, many of these were actually really popular with customers). It seems to just be to force more people to go back to meat, egg, and dairy by effectively starving them of options outside of that. It seems to mostly be a US thing, because of course. It's funny because what really kicked me off on starting to more heavily remove animal products from my diet has been the US intentionally letting in tainted meat. Just recently there was some company caught putting fake inspection labels on meat in my state. Disgusting. But this seems to be what a lot of Americans want, going back to the days of The Jungle. Who knows how much of all our food is even what it's supposed to be anymore. Another reason to try and use more raw ingredients and cook from scratch. There's still people out there not even washing their fruit and veggies too, a sizeable amount of Americans don't, proudly don't. Sigh. The other day I watched Spring and Chaos. It was alright for what it is was. If you like Kenji Miyazawa adaptions of the cat variety, it's pretty good, haha. It's definitely not easy to follow if you don't already know a bit about his life. It's a loose, somewhat abstract biography. Watching it really made me realize between his two big works, it's The Life of Budori Gusuko that pulls more from his life than Night on the Galactic Railroad. Watching Spring and Chaos made me rethink some scenes in Budori and appreciate them more. I really liked how they portrayed writing inspiration in this, how Miyazawa just zooms in with this intense focus and everything just goes wild around him. I do like that they don't shy away from the fact that Miyazawa likely was suffering from hallucinations when he was alive and it acknowledges some of the things we're seeing are definitely just that and not just inspiration. But it is another bit where if you're not familiar with the author already, it seems random for him to just say "Oh, I'm hallucinating again". He was an interesting man, very whimsical airy-fairy idealist, while also being very science-minded. I loved the parts of sciencey poetry and the students are like WTF is this? My favorite part in the film was near the end, when he's getting the snow for his dying sister. It's a sad moment and you know both of them are suffering then because it's obvious it won't be much longer. And then we see Miyazawa behind himself in this sort of dissociative state, locked in with that intense focus, furiously writing out inspiration sparked by his own grief. The man wrote a variety of works, but the two biggest both have grief and the pain of losing someone woven throughout the narratives. Most writers are pulling from real feelings, people, places, moments when creating prose and poetry. That includes the painful times too, and it's kind of strange to think that suffering can cause inspiration, but it can be a source just as much as any other emotion. Often, that inspiration helps process the pain itself. Unfortunately, from what we know about him, Miyazawa never did get over the death of his sister. He carried that pain with him till the end. I might make a page for Kenji Miyazawa one day. Not quite sure what I'd put on it though. 09/20/26 Finished the Wolf's Rain rewatch yesterday. Definitely ended on a messy note. I really gotta wonder how much the SARS fucking with the production + the year gap between episode 26 and the OVA final episodes. There's such a bizarre tonal shift between episode 26 and 27, and a lot of character development across the board gets reset in a way that seems to spit in the face of episode 26 and earlier for no real reason. That, and some plot elements get introduced that absolutely were not mentioned anywhere prior to these final four episodes that it feels like I'm getting the ending for an entirely different show. Gives me real Endless Waltz vibes. And in a similar vein, there's just enough good bits I don't want to entirely ignore its existence, but the show quite literally would've ended better at 26, unfinished journey and all, than finishing at episode 30. I thought about making a page for the rewatch, but I think I want to finish the rewatches of the other anime I had in my list and do them all at once on one page. The others should be shorter at least. Unless I decide to throw that fourth title back in the mix. Anyway, over all, a pretty nice journey. They just kinda fucked up at the finish line with unnecessary angst and convaluted bullshit. But yeah, more on that whenever I get around to reviewing all of the rewatch titles. Escaflowne (movie version) and Blue Sub. #6 are the other two to go. Possible fourth is Last Exile...but yeah, that's a really distant fourth. It almost rained yesterday while we were watching the final four episodes of Wolf's Rain. It got really stormy and windy, really dark, the air smelled of rain and there was lightning and thunder. And then...nothing. It just blew over. There were a few droplets and nothing more. The wind didn't last for long either. Only one more episode of S1 of Mao left. I'm gonna miss the Saturday Mao time. I keep checking anime sites hoping something else interesting is coming out soon, but no. It's mostly just degenerate garbage. Alas. Maybe I should find another longer series to rewatch. Or my other plan of revisiting old 80s/90s films again. As expected, I had a really weird ass dream after finishing Wolf's Rain. I expect I'll probably have a couple more weird ones in the next few days. 09/19/26 Went out yesterday to look for more food. The watermelon I bought earlier in the week turned out to be rotten on the inside. I know as soon as I started to crack it open, before I could see anything. It felt wrong. Went out to Lidl and left empty-handed. IDK why Lidl and Aldi are so worshipped online, especially Aldi. I stopped going there because the raw food was always rotten and I kept ending up with bug infested rice from them. They have like nothing in terms of spices and any kind of dietary restrictive stuff. Lidl is a little bit better, I can find oatmilk and the fruits aren't quite as bad. But they're never really good either, and the prices around here have just been skyrocketing in a way even Walmart isn't, for shittier quality food than Walmart. Are these stores just better in Europe? This can't be the quality people online praise because these are the worst grocery stores I've ever been in in my entire life. IDGI. Anyway, because Lidl is expensive and has garbage food and didn't really have what I was looking for anyway, I ended up having to go to Walmart. Ugh. A good chunk of the fruit there was also suspect, but I found some decent stuff. Found some really cheap pomegranates and cheap corn. Basil was cheaper there too. Just a few more days until autumn. High today is 94, feels like 104. Supposedly, it might rain today. I'm hoping. Been nothing but sun and heat all week. Going to try and focus on writing this weekend. (I say every weekend.) I have a plan for October, but I feel like I'm being too ambituous. Maybe if I get a little ahead in September...Not saying what yet. We'll see if I can even get through the thing I'm currently working on. 09/18/26 It's almost autumn now. It's funny, most of September is actually summer, but it feels like people see it as autumn, like they do with June being summer despite it being mostly spring and March being spring despite it being mostly winter and December of course is actually mostly autumn not winter. I wonder why that is. Anyway, it's still hot as shit here. The high today is 95, feels like at 100. Right now, it's 91 with the feels like at 97. Lovely. We're almost done with the Wolf's Rain rewatch. There's just the last four episodes, the "OVA" ones that were supposed to be part of the anime anyway, but you know, SARS shit happened and fucked up a lot of the latter half of the show's production. Haven't decided on if I'll make a little reflective review on it here or not. S1 of Mao is getting close to finishing as well. I'm gonna miss the weekly Mao time. But maybe I can continue on with finding another old series to revisit. I've added a new component to the LB experiment, this part being a phones only one with how I select what apps are allowed on the phone and what ones are allowed on the home screen. I really do need to do a write-up of what that's all about. I have the layout I want to use for that all ready to go, but I've been lazy with writing everything out about what I'm doing. I doubt anyone even cares to read about it, but I still want to put it up somewhere anyway. It is my website. It doesn't need to have anything on it except exactly what I want on it. 09/16/26 Been a while since I last updated this. Another day, another fever. Some updates. No longer eating meat anymore. I've cut out meat entirely in the past a few times. I always ended up with it back in my diet due to money reasons and food availability. Some of the places I've lived in the last ten years have been pretty bad with alternatives for meat and dairy. There was a time even when a lot of grocery stores actually had a pretty good selection and then just pulled nearly everything and marked up the rest. Rednecks really, really make it a whole part of their identity to eat meat and guzzle cow milk. They can't tell you why, but damned it they'll stop and they don't want you to be able to stop either. That's the relly ass part of it. With meat prices skyrocketing here and meat and dairy in general possibly not even being safe to consume thanks to (Porky Minch) and his shady deals and deregulations, fuck it. It's out. I've found some vegan ground "meat" relatively cheap and some dairy-free cheese and we've switched back to Oatmilk. I've been trying to get my parents and brother to eat less meat and really avoid the beef in particular, but they do not give a shit. It's kinda weird how much meat Americans eat to start with. Humans historically never ate much meat, if they ate any at all in some areas. People used to get some extra iron from those old cast iron posts which we've traded out for pots coated in forever chemicals that give us cancer and don't last anywhere near as long. But I won't rant again for the thousandth time about literally everything we have being traded out for shittier versions at this point. Looking at things, the biggest issue will be sour cream. Only Whole Foods carries any alternatives or Sprout's, and those are both quite a ways off and not worth a trip for just that. Even ice cream, we found alternatives already with an oatmilk base. There's only two brand options here, but it's better than nothing. I guess this also means the end of fast food for me. Not that I should've been eating much of that anyway, and I'd already been eliminating most of that before now anyway just from absurd rising prices, rapidly declining food quality (that was already just "okay"), and shrinking food portions all happening at once. But yeah, I guess that's bye bye to that. It's crazy when I was homeless for a bit, fast food discount menu was the cheapest way to pack on the most amount of calories for the day. That couldn't be these days. What's even the point now, especially since it's all slow lines now too? It effectly serves no purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of fast food places don't make it past the next two years. Many of them were already barely skirting by with long hours throughout the day closed or with just one employee staffed and the dining shut down and closing/opening times moved to cut out nearly all of the night and good chunk of the morning. Probably for the best of everyone's health though if they die. Since everything has gotten awful with prices and also just generally being openly evil, it's interesting to see how tiny my list of places I will even spend money at has become. Obviously, for food, I can't really avoid evil companies. There are no non-evil food companies nor non-evil sellers of grocery stores that are also cheap. I've been mostly priced out of the local farmers market. I get they have to bring up their prices too, but well, if I can't afford it, I can't afford it. Since I can't avoid terrible brands and companies for food, I try to limit how many locations I will get food at to as few as possible and as few brands as possible. Which doesn't do much, as most of the brands are really owned by like 6 companies anyway, but you know. Just trying to shrink my existence in that part of the economy as much as possible. I've been looking for ways to reuse things. Our groceries are mostly delivered (it ends up cheaper this way for us and I'm also avoiding using the car as much as possible because of gas prices), so I can't control what the food comes in but it's usually brown bags. I've been saving a lot of them to reuse as trash bags or for scraps for making stuff. Been saving worn out fabric too, to repurpose as scrap material for small projects. We we do go on walks, we've been doing neighborhood ones over driving out to the nature trail. That's another car trip. I've tried to keep my "fun" purchases to craft supplies and music. IIRC, I think I have 71 cassettes now. No idea how many digital songs I have, but that collections been going on a lot longer. Not really happen that I've been watching a lot of prices for cassettes going up and up too. I don't collect CDs, but I've noticed ones that used to go for $3-6 a few months ago are going for +$15 now when the CDs were pretty commonly cheaper than the cassette or vinyl equivalents. Unrelated to all that stuff, recently my brother has been trying to convince my dad to take him to some place called Round1 because if you spend a certain amount of money, you can get anime figures or some shit. He was trying to convince me to, by showing me look they has CSM stuff! A figure of Power. (I don't collect figures.) And I see it, and it's a damn bunny figure. That's already cringe and sleazy that it's a slightly horny figure, but ew bunny figures in particular. I know way too much about Playboy's founder to not be disgusted any time I see sexy "bunny" outfits. But he showed me this also hoping I would take him (and pay for him). He didn't even seem interested in the arcade part of the whole experience, just the prospect of getting some anime stuff paid for by someone else. I also learned my brother can't figure out how to pronounce Reze's name. That's two syllables. How?! What was more baffling to me if my brother refused to go seethe CSM movie with me even though I offered to pay because he claimed he wanted to "experience the film in the peace and quiet of his own home" to not "taint" the experience of being around other fans I guess. But if he can't pronounce Reze's name, he clearly still hasn't seen it. While talking with him, I came to realize I don't think he could tell me who Pochita was either. So...I don't think he's ever even seen CSM but was previously acting like he had, I guess because it was popular for a while? What? WHY? But he was really interested in that Power figure. That tracks with people who collect bunny figures, from what I've seen online. They don't even give a shit who the character is. So weird. ANYWAY, bro is a fake CSM fan. Not knowing who Pochita is?! And he still hasn't watched any of it? I'm just really baffled by him trying to convince me, someone who actually likes it, that he is also a fan when he apparently hasn't seen or read any of it. But would be cool with a family member buying him a sexy figure of a female character from it. Okay...I know he's done this with video games before. He used to tell people he played the original Pokemon GB games on the origal GB when it came out. We never owned a GB. The first time he played a Pokemon game was in like 2005. So stupid. 09/02/26 September is here. I've archived last month now. Made a couple more icons I need to add to the icon page in a sec. I think I mentioned in my last update that I did my Hobonichi order. This year's selection may actually be the worst I've ever seen from them in all the time I've been paying attention. Just a bunch of bland crap and a ton of plastic fabrics. I'm pretty sure prices went up again, and the shipping cost Hobonichi is charging for shipping from Japan is still ridiculously overpriced from what it should actually cost. Hobonichi really relies a lot on thinking anyone outside of Japan is incapable of finding out what the real shipping costs should be for items, LOL. Anyways, made my order at Jeptens. Really wish there was something that was a full dupe of the Cousin, size and all, with proper FPF paper, but I haven't seen anything worth a damn yet. So I guess I'm stuck with that again. A little update on the money thing with my dad. My mom confirmed some more about his spending. About $800 every Costco trip, which he does twice a month, so $1600. Then $200-300 every other week for "misc" stuff he couldn't get at Costco from Walmart, so an additional $400-600 on top of that $1600, so $2000-2200 on "groceries" he claims that three people need per month. Then he spends about $200 each time he goes to Costco by stopping at a liquor store afterwards, so another $400 in hard liquor. Some of his Walmart and Costco "groceries" are also beer and wine. Out of that $400 at Walmart, about $80 of it is beer and wine and it's around that for Costco as well. So his alcohol spending is about $560 every month. He's the only one who drinks out of the three of them, so all of that alcohol is just for him. Much like with meat, what he spends on alcohol alone is more than my wife and I's entire food budget for a month. What he's spending on liquor store trips plus the actual groceries is also more than his mortgage. Why. He also usually does a shopping spree for "decor" every week, spending around $100-200 each time, so another $400-800 on random crap. My mother doesn't go on these trips with him, it's usually him and my brother or him by himself. A portion of the expensive items are things for my brother, like the $40 sushi platers and random expensive clothes. I'm not sure how he's paying all of his actual bills, but it's gotta be tight. For no reason, because he's just blowing through all his money on dumb shit. He's been complaining lately he's always "broke". He makes over 6k a month. I can't even imagine spending that kind of money every month on any of the shit he does. My mom tried to suggest a way for him to save a few hundred on his ridiculous meat spending (over $600 every month is just meat) and he apparently had a big blow up about how she was trying to control him or something, and how the way for him to save the most money is for him to buy meats at Costco specifically, because that's what he does. And what he does must be what is the smartest thing to do. Been on and off continuing with the Wolf's Rain rewatch. Not quite half way there yet. It's been interesting, looking back at it. I have some new perspectives on some of the characters. I may make a page about it after I'm done with the rewatch. Not sure yet. Next - Archive - Icons - Previous