I've been playing too much Unreal Tournament

Caby finally shipped over the games I bought in Wales! It was a lot of fun sitting and installing them to the eMachines Box from disc, punching in the CD keys, the whole ritual. It's not convenient, but neither is the eMachines Box. It's fun! I'm very happy that the eMachines Box actually offers a much better gaming experience than I initially pegged it for—just so long as those games are five years older than the box itself. As Caby said once though, that's not really a negative since it's all retrogaming anyway.

So alongside 100%ing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for a third time (fourth if you include the PS1 version!), I've found a new favorite mental shutoff game, Unreal Tournament 99. Not one of the ones I bought, admittedly, but I downloaded an ISO on a whim and now I'm absolutely sold. The eMachines Box runs it great, the movement and guns are phenomenal, and the bot AI is damn good. I've actually found myself admiring and being humbled at all the built-in maps. Looking at them, it's clear to me how limited my ideas on how to build functional, beautiful levels really have been. I've been taking a lot of screenshots—Caby suggested I put them all in a room in my paste server on Discord for inspiration next time I make a level, and I really should take her up on it.

(If you're curious, my favorite level by far is DM-Agony, and my favorite gun alternates between the Shock Rifle and the Flak Cannon. So satisfying.)

And listening to a lot of old favorites (and fighting the post office for them)

As happens around Christmas, I found myself with a few gift cards in hand. I elected to start buying up some of the records I used to enjoy the most back when I was a teenager, but still never owned a copy of. Usually, these were torrented back in the days of Kickass, listened to over and over, and then lost and never rebought for one reason or another. Here's a small list:

• The Black Keys' Magic Potion: Old, old favorite of mine. This was one of the first Black Keys records I ever owned, possibly the first if that wasn't Brothers. Unfortunately, my copy developed some nasty, stuttering audio glitching possibly from the manufacturing of the discs not being the best, so I had to chuck my original copy. It's taken me four years, but I've got this one back in the collection, freshly unsealed, and it still fucking rules. They make such big sounds for being two guys, and Dan's guitar parts are surprisingly intricate at times. My essential pick for the moment, probably "Modern Times".
• Pixies' Bossanova: Only missing Trompe now. It's not uniformly strong like Doolittle is, but it's got its own weird, distant, creepy atmosphere and some real bangers, so that makes up for the occasional weak track. I still fucking love "Is She Weird".
• Blur's self-titled: God, I forgot how great this record was. I love the sounds, I love the varied songwriting, I love how it's a forerunner to Gorillaz' as a whole. I like the back end of it a lot more than I did back then too, and "Strange News From Another Star" is super underrated. My copy is a US one, so it came with a surprise extra hidden track, "Dancehall"! Which I fell asleep to last night. It might be noisy and woozy, but you can nod off to it as well, if you're insane like me.
• Josh Joplin's Useful Music: This one defined late 2019 into 2020 for me just as much as, say, Earlimart's Hymn and Her, but buying it slipped my radar for a long time because I refused to spend any money during lockdowns. Now I got it! There's some really goofy genre exercises on here, but Josh Joplin is a super strong pop songwriter, and songs like "Matter" and "Here I Am" are so early-2000s sounding, they're just awesome. Still really like this one.
• Superdrag's Regretfully Yours: The newest (to me) of the lot, this one's mostly notable for the fact that the Discogs seller included an extra CD in the package! This was a total surprise to me: it's apparently an early-2000s post-rock record called Finally We Are No One from an Icelandic group, Mum. I've yet to listen to that one, but I really should. I discovered so much cool shit in my teen years just from listening to absolutely everything, as I've been discovering looking through my Discogs wantlist, and I feel like I should dive back into doing that.

I did buy two more, My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything and R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, but they didn't turn up in the mail! I received tracking for both of them, and calling the post office with the numbers revealed they got delivered to a very similar address about ten minutes away, where our stuff has been blackholed in the past. They said they'd try to retrieve the packages, but I don't find that very likely. I'll probably wind up just getting my money back from the post office and going and buying them again. My manager suggested having them shipped to the store this time (apparently he does that), and I am highly tempted, yes.

Taking better care of myself

On a more serious note, I have been finding myself on more of a reflective, kinda depressive note lately. There's been plenty of times over the past few months where I've felt lonely, where I've been sad about how I'm still largely living online, and how I don't really indulge in a lot of solitary pursuits anymore. Everything I've done creatively, I've always tried to involve other people in, which is great, but it doesn't leave me with many places to go if stuff happens between friends and I'm just not in the mood to work on stuff with them.

I think I need to appreciate what I have more. I have good friends, a lot going for me creatively, and I'm comfortable. A lot of folks would kill to have what I do. It is hard, going back to dating online after finally not eating alone for a solid three weeks, but that's just how things are right now, and there's much worse fates in the world. I definitely should remember how to enjoy myself on my own more. It's not that I don't, because for example, I love my art regardless of how other people see it, but just that I should really do it more. I don't fully remember how to—or maybe I do it so much, I've just have internalized it and now need a reminder of what that looks like. Either way, I gotta think of myself more, I really do. Indulge more. Draw more Prince, probably.

I've officially typed so much this evening that the corner of my desk has irritated my wrist. Enjoy, everyone! Here's to lots of good shit going on in 2024!