Exciting stuff! Three packages showed up for me today:

We got a copy of Minecraft Volume Alpha, to complement my copy of Beta from Christmas, a 3DS flashcart (half for novelty and half because I need it to ntrboot Caby's 3DS next time I go over there), and the best part, another swag package from Patrick at Midwestern Dirt! I just figured he was sending me a shirt, but he actually sent a buncha really cool stuff over, Sayonara guitar picks, stickers, a tote bag—a lot of stuff that they don't sell online since they're just a little indie band, so I'm the only one in Pennsylvania with any of it. Neener neener.

They've got a new record coming out August 18th called Twilight at a Burning Hill, which I've already heard and I think it's their best one, full stop. His new band is incredible, and they've really got a sense of dynamics and push and pull that the old band didn't have. I have a review of this one already written up to go on mari@macintosh.garden, along with a buncha new reviews for the rest of their albums, and I'm really just waiting for the day (or closer to it) to drop it. (You can already go grab some singles from this one for free over on their Bandcamp if you're interested.) Funnily enough, Savannah got recommended "The Aaron Waters Show" on Spotify totally organically outside of this little ongoing friendship I've got with Patrick, so hopefully that means they'll start getting some actual attention and it won't just be me trying to get my friends and whoever listening to them :omegalul:

Some other updates that I can think of:

• I'm really thinking this new job is gonna be a winner. Everyone there's been really nice, they've introduced themselves, shown me how to do things, complemented me on how quick I caught on and how confident I've been, we've chatted about flying and airports and music and old jobs and games, just everything. It's a total 180 from the grocery store I was busting ass at. This place also dies out hardcore at night, so last night I was able to sit in an aisle and listen to Karl Jobst videos under the hospices of dusting shelves (which I also did, I'm not a freeloader :marf:).
• I have been scattered putting together some new pages for mari@macintosh.garden. Two album reviews I did and then never linked anyone (Autolux's Transit Transit and Earlimart's Treble and Tremble), some more catalog reviews I need to finish that aren't posted (the aforementioned Midwestern Dirt one and also one for Beck's back catalog), and then I'm porting over my old Rediscovering posts from the Scratchpad, dusting off the little essays I did, and rehoming them since it was a lot of work to cover those thirty records and a lot of reading that's kinda unfortunately buried at the moment. I've also been relistening casually to the albums to see if a year or three has made a difference in my opinions, and I'm pleasantly surprised to say I like a lot of it more than I did back then. (I've also been reworking my old Quake and modding pages (please don't tell me about broken links, I know)--good lord, I've started a lot of web projects that need to get done. Uh, something something trip diary.)
• Speaking of Treble and Tremble! When I was listening back through that album to write up a review, I was watching a supercut dcb put together of footage taken around his college campus with an old Canon PowerShot and thought the two worked strangely well together. I decided to make my own music video using "Tell the Truth, Parts 1 and 2" from that album and surprise dcb with it, and I think it came out weirdly wistfully melancholic. I kinda love it (and he did too!). I thought it'd be cool going in, but it turned out to remind me of that weird period of time back in 2019 when I was still living on campus, but I knew I was dropping out, so I just stopped going to classes, used my meal plan, wandered a lot, and wrote tons of stories. Hanging out in our own library, using Mini vMac in fullscreen, quietly hoping someone would ask why Microsoft Word got so big and pixelated on my screen before spilling out onto north campus at closing for a walk set to, funnily enough, Midwestern Dirt and Sebadoh. New girlfriend, new characters, trying to grow up a bit and it still taking a couple years. It's a video about being fond for a time in your life you shouldn't be fond of. (I've sent Aaron Espinoza of Earlimart the video, and I'll let you know if he replies and what he thinks. Hope he likes it! 2006 camera, 2004 song, it works out in my head.)
• We put together a new bookshelf! Funnily enough, it was on clearance outside my new job when I went in for the interview. My old music-storing setup was a fucking disaster—I was using these weird wooden garden crates before to store my CDs and records and I was always paranoid about the slats crushing the corners of the sleeves and whatnot. It was also hideous. When I saw this thing, I knew I had to have it. It fits so perfect and it looks great, take a look:

There's still some CD overflow—I'll be buying a little plastic storage crate for all the extras and eventually I'll figure out a way to store them all together and get rid of the CD holders I've been using for like a decade now.

Man, I couldn't tell you where I've been mentally lately. Art Fight kinda didn't go so well (but enough about half the staff quitting, bazinga), so I've just kinda been making some here-and-there progress on site stuff—Beck catalog review in the works, modding section with rewritten Quake level postmortems in the works. I'm excited to say that mari@macintosh.garden is about halfway towards having all the stuff I want on it, which means then I can turn my attention back to design fully and get mari_v4 going proper. Afterwards, whatever is on mari@macintosh.garden will stay on there, but I'll add a banner to the top telling people to go see the new site instead.

Really, I'm just popping in to say hi and also to announce I am gainfully employed again! I'm not saying where just yet (having a mid-functioning pile of cartilage try to get you fired in an act of revenge will do that to you—enemies of the bulb still lurk these parts, after all), but I'm making slightly more than I did at my old grocery store for the same amount of hours and far, far less work in a more specialized retail environment. It's looking seriously tits. It's not what I wanted to do with booze, but that's alright, this is probably better on my back, my joints, and my happiness anyway.

God, I can't wait to get my savings rebuilt. Pay down some loans, build up a warchest again, buy me a new desk and some retro computer stuff, and get my life back on the road after the good long vacation in Wales. (Trip diary also slowly still coming together, I promise. It's like half done and I have to draw a Bunny and Setter for it.)

Oh yeah, and Pokémon Blue! I've been playing a lot of that lately. 115/151 currently, and I have to play through Red to get the version exclusives and a few that I missed (I knocked out both Snorlaxes like an idiot, not realizing they're missable, because I couldn't manage to catch one for shit). I have a CD of the soundtrack arranged for piano coming in a couple days. Seriously, give this a shot. There's something so lovely and wistful and atmospheric about hearing the "Welcome to Pokémon" song arranged for piano.

I've experienced a little bit of a breakthrough lately. Have a look:

Yes, I've finally started putting real, proper eyes on my characters! I've known I really need to do that for, like, the entire time I've been drawing, but it's been hard finding a way to consistently do them that I like. I basically tossed out that Maldwyn ref from a few months ago because I thought his eyes were still too tiny and freaky looking.

Well, finally it clicked. I was toying around drawing Rocco some more, and I thought that if I had enough space in the eye region for two long lines (as I've been used to drawing eyes), I had enough space to turn them into proper eye shapes. Turns out I was right! You take the dot/line eye, draw the cheek dividers extending outwards, and you curve them over. Then just draw a big circle in the shape you made. The only thing that can get iffy is the far eye, but that's where giving lads a proper snoot as opposed to just implying it in the head shape comes in handy.

I've already used this to a pretty crazy reaction on the Kapy I drew for Caby a couple days ago--most of my deviations stall out around 6-8 favorites, and this girl got 22. No doubt that's also because tigers are just adorable and highly recognizable, but my God. Two big things that evaded me for so long with art, snoots and eyes, have both clicked. I'm unstoppable now.

So yeah, expect me on Art Fight in a couple days! I want to redo Setter's ref, as you see up there, and then I'll rejoin and add new characters one by one. It wasn't just the eyes that made me want to redo his ref--back then, my linework was still a lot shakier (I think I was still using a light stabilizer, which I turned off a while ago to great effect) and I just think he's a little rough looking and stiff. This? Oh my God, so lively! So cute!

Super super excited where I can go with my newfound art skills now. Perhaps drawing you gift art soon???