01-24

writing this one a bit late, due to various reasons ranging from the mundane “i just didn’t feel like it” to the more existential “i feel as if i’m living through the prolonged collapse of all things”. i’m laying on my bed, writing this section of the opener on my phone because i kinda just need anything to keep my mind occupied for a little while, so it might as well be something other than reading the comments on news articles. i mean it’s awful. over 20,000 dead, and no signs of stopping. where is their justice? will there ever be a reckoning? i fear it’ll turn into another one of those things where, in 10 years or so, everyone will have always known it was wrong. the perpetrators will go on to live healthy and full lives, and the lunatic sycophants who propped them up will go on to have very successful careers providing cover for the next set of perpetrators when something like it happens again.

COVID is still happening. i don’t even know what to do about that. i wear an n-95 nearly every time i leave the house, and will switch back to the respirator if/when fire seasons starts up. i still haven’t contracted it yet– or if i have, i never experienced any symptoms. i think it’s incredibly stupid and short-sighted of us to let things get like this (i feel like i’m going to be saying that exact sentence for the rest of my fucking life).

the moral majority is back again, as if it ever went away. it’s the same playbook, made worse by botfarms and the other various mechanisms of the online radicalization machine. i could talk at length about what i think should happen to the people stoking the flames, but not over a medium that could possibly be submitted as evidence. just a little joke (:

this is about as pessimistic as i let myself get. part of it is winter, but most of it is my experiencing the horror of reality. i’m writing all of this down because it’s happening, and it’s dangerous to act as if it isn’t. if we live through this, if we make it to the other side of whatever this time in history will eventually be called, we need to make sure it never happens again.

because of this and much else i carry a feeling of doom with me everywhere i go, a type of despair. i think it’s a very reasonable reaction to the various stages of collapse that we’re witnessing, but it’s a feeling i don’t want to learn to live with. it makes me sick. having carried it so long now i can often get my hands around it and turn it into something useful: i go out for a walk, do some dishes, i write a blog. sometimes the feeling weighs me down to the degree that i just… stop, lose all momentum. it all becomes too much, so i need to sit on the couch for 6 hours playing elden ring (faith/dex) and eating sour candy until my mouth is raw. thankfully i’m getting better at managing it.

i’ll be honest, it’s very hard to get a sense of what to do. something straightforward is to donate to eSims For Gaza. go to protests if they’re happening nearby. but don’t bring your phone, wear nondescript clothing, and be safe (and/or discreet). past that, idk, do what feels right. but do something.

the worst thing we can do is give in to the despair, to become inert.

music helps

[take a deep breath]

you might be able to tell that i spent a lot of time in january listening to music for the 2023 finale post. i thought it wasn’t that much but it turns out: it was.

i’m going to continue fiddling with the format of these posts, and the eventual website overhaul will inform some of those changes. that’s still planned, but caring about coding is hard at the end of the world (and possibly all the time).

albums

shoelace & a knot – yungatita

this is the first album i downloaded in 2024! we got any dariaheads in the audience? (one solitary ‘woo!!!’ rings out) this album feels like if Mystik Spiral was actually making music and i mean this with all the love in my heart! it’s angst! it’s defiance! its shouting “i’ll bite your hand / you don’t feed me!!!!!” over and over again. if that ain’t the energy this year then what is?

⭐️: Armchair, Descenda, 2 Cigs
 

plastic death – glass beach

this is the second album i downloaded it 2024! i will admit that yes it was because of the album art alone. it’s like ummm … emo-tinged prog rock? like if you took parts of Emery and Underoath and made them good ? (the me that existed in 2008 wants me dead for even typing this out). rare animal especially i just knowwwww 16 year old jade would have been listening to while skating, melancholy, because a girl at youth group sat next to someone else. speaking of that time of life, i just paused writing this to watch a Zutara fan edit 10 times in a row. i still believe.

⭐️: rare animal, cul-de-sac, the CIA

faith and the vessel – kinoteki

from the bandcamp: “”Faith and the Vessel” marks the first project in Kinoteki’s new creative initiative, “The Sacred Vessel Program”, aiming to detail the many sides and many lives of the [somewhat] fictional cultural capital known as “The Vessel”.” love an album with a story! i don’t know what any of that means really, but the music is good! complex, dense, an auditory delight. i’m wearing my headphones while listening to the line and it’s pinging around the inside of my skull in just that right way. to me it’s healing, like when you put a graphics card in the oven for a little while to hopefully get it working long enough for you to raid Molten Core later that same night. drum and bass does that to my brain. there are many varied genre shifts within the album, but it all manages to capture an audio aesthetic that feels like it fits together. interested to see where the rest of this project does.

⭐️: Struggle (But I’ll Try) , Foreverfaith, everything_x2 (Yours To Love)

songs

rare animal– glass beach

i’m reading the youtube comments for this (hard hitting music journalism) and it seems like this song struck a chord for many people in the same way it did for me. stylistically this song, and the pre-chorus especially, manages to harness a sense of yearning nostalgia for a different time and place, a past that barely was and a future that can never be. to me that’s peak teen feelings.

armchair – yungatita

the live recording of this song goes so crazy. she’s so cute!! look at her go! i mentioned earlier that this album sounds like Mystik Spiral made an album (again, i’m saying that as a positive, i think it fucking rips) but this song especially is the one that made me go “ohhhhh Trent Lane would eat this up”. at 3:12 she lets off this big reverby scream, the rhythm guitar comes in laying strong distorted eighth notes, and she starts yelling “i’ll bite your hand / you don’t feed me” over and over again as the guitar dissolves into absolute auditory chaos. IT’S GOOD AS HELL. i’m taking that minute and synthesizing it into my worldview forever.

furry– patricia taxxon

“dreams of wind rushing through my fur”. patricia taxxon makes music for different moods. her bandcamp says she lives in santa cruz, a town i once lived near and have been to many times. during the prolonged evenings of summer, in that place near the water, where you take the road along the coastal cliffs and watch as the shadows grow until the only thing you can see is the wide open expanse of the sea………. that’s the mood to me.

picasso – wednesday campanella

i know wednesday campanella has a new album out, and it’s very good, but i can’t get enough of this track. i’m having a hard time articulating what i like about it so i’m going to let one of the greats speak for me

elk.blood.heart – all them witches

the youtube comments for this song almost make me not like it anymore lol. but i do! it’s stoner rock, and if you like stoner rock then it’s good stoner rock. ok semantic satiation is setting in and i can no longer use that phrase. i found this song while trawling the depths for music to listen to while running a session of ULTRAVIOLET GRASSLANDS AND THE BLACK CITY, conceptually the coolest tabletop rpg i’ve ever read through. even if you never plan to play it with others, it’s worth a read-through, the ideas contained within are phenomenal. and if you’re reading, you might as well be listening to this song while doing so.