Tasks, and Such

I'm in a pure sleepy mode right now. I'm getting aggravated by small things, such as: the presence of dust. Does dust have to build up everywhere, all the time? Or is that something that happens just to piss me off? Will they ever invent a computer screen that stays slick and utterly clean? Or do I have to be reminded of the unstoppable grease and grime of living by my own gorgeous devices? Many of life's domestic realities can make one feel put-upon. I should not have born, I think, to clean stuff. I should be a worm writhing around in the soil, coated in the chunky ground I live in. Worms must be happy. They must surely live a life of envious dirty jubilance.

Anyway, lately I've felt good about my scheduling. I posted a video last month, and I'm on track to post a video this month too. This is my most important current goal - and I'm there. I can be the true video woman. I can post videos. Wow.

Another important task, of course: filling my sketchbook.

There are many distracting tasks, ailments, friends, and other things threatening me, always. You know, you've got to go shopping, and you've got to read Stephen King's Carrie. These are non-negotiables. And inbetween these necessary tasks, I must write and edit a video. Luckily I am equipped with great powers of focus, and the ability to just fart out words. Does the video have to be good? Well, no. But I do hope for that to happen. Mostly, though, it has to exist. This is the number one thing about it. It has to be real, just as I have to read thirty pages of Stephen King's Carrie. These are indisputable facts of life. I am powerless to alter them.

And it's also true that I have to play some sort of High School Musical DS game. Without this, I won't be informed enough to understand the world around me. That wouldn't be any good.

High School Musical: Makin' the Cut! (2007).

Please wish me luck with all of my important tasks. I will do my very best to attend to them. 

Neglected Retro Games

It's kind of insane and magical just how easy it is to play retro games. I remember my first time seeing an emulator playing one of the earlier Pokémon games on a friend's laptop in around 2008 and thinking, "hell yeah", but we've come way past that. You can play long-discontinued Java games on your computer, you can play any number of C64 games in-browser, and you can play Ring Rage and many other arcade hits in-browser too.

Mermaid Madness (1986).

Granted, these somewhat more niche formats often have awkward control issues and glitched audio and so on - they're not as beloved and supported as, say, Game Boy titles. But that's part of why it makes me so happy to see them so accessible. They're lesser-known chunks of gaming history that have plenty of their own charm.

Take Jack and the Beanstalk for example, a beautiful C64 game about climbing that stalk. I love its insane-looking screens, its joyful sun smiling vacantly from high above, and its chunky little player avatar.

Cute.

The game is a nightmare to play. You have to avoid various insects and birds as you ascend the beanstalk, and those creatures go shockingly fast. An insurmountable, horrifying challenge. I love it.

Many of this era's games become, through their unforgiving gameplay, more of a sort of surreal and bothersome interactive digital painting. You enter their world and you are unwelcome. It's unbelievably awkward and challenging to make progress, and so sometimes I start to think of this as more of a distant cultural experience than a game. I'm just here, looking on, with wide eyes and useless fingers. Help me.

Maggotmania, a game where you get insta-killed if you touch a leaf on the ground.

The world is a terrifying place, and none of us are making it out alive. 

I Hate Leggings

I have to reveal the truth, and I have to shock you all with my confession: I hate leggings.

The pose of fear.

In the 2010s, when leggings re-emerged as a trendy, soft alternative to the skinny jean, I was delighted. I had fond memories of wearing them as a child, and I was, as I still am, a major fan of all things elasticated. Sizing didn't have to matter as much, buttons and zips didn't have to be dealt with, I no longer had to suffer that thing that happens with bunched-up fabric at the crotch of many trousers, and relatively low-cut waists didn't threaten ass exposure quite as much with the steadfast body-hugging qualities of the legging waist. Many problems solved.

They are: ugly.

There were, of course, issues that took the place of all those trouser tribulations. The worst of them was the scourge of entirely see-through leggings produced by companies that I can only only conclude hate and want to humiliate woman - many of us didn't know we were showing full moon because we hadn't inspected our cheeks under full daylight while doing squats, because none of us knew we had to do stuff like that, and so the tiresome online debate leaked into our lives: are leggings pants? The answer is and always was yes, leggings were sold and used as trousers, that was the entire point, they were just also shit. The people were incensed. It was a hard time. But I think the leggings-wearers suffered more than the leggings-onlookers.

She's crazy for this.

At this point, leggings have massively replaced jeans as the go-to thing to wear in many areas. We have flared ones now (which I admit tempt me - I am remembering dragging my flared trousers through muddy puddles in 2006 or so, and I yearn for that filth), and we have the sort of fitness influencer world no-one could've predicted. Sports bras and other athleisure is everywhere, and it frightens me. Scrunch-butt leggings? No thanks, I'll just take the big cartoon suicide pill.

I will not fall for this.

This sort of overwhelming market saturation has lead to something of a sartorial fatigue in that leggings are the slobwear of choice, and so it's reached a point where just putting on some jeans can make you feel a bit put together. What was the height of casual now feels like a slight step above. I don't think I ever really used to notice if everyone was dressed just like me, but now I feel slobbish and boring in leggings. Maybe it's an age thing. If I was fifteen I would probably feel normal and cool in leggings, but I'm an adult and there's a vague sense of uncoolness that begins to pervade the doomed adult body. I am simply another bland woman in a Sainsbury's, and that's fine, but nevertheless there is something of an aspirational need to wear anything but leggings while I pick out my favourite two-pack of avocados.

Normal picture of me in my unassuming, nondescript outfit.

Mostly, though, my hatred for leggings comes directly from the feel of them. People used to say stuff like "leggings are so soft" and "my leggings are so comfortable". I remember this, and I used to feel it too. I used to feel relaxed and flexible in those things. But now I just feel vaguely constricted. I feel my temperature being trapped in the slightly too hot range, and I feel a prickling itch, always. It's severe enough that if I do wear leggings out, I'm undoubtedly ripping them off the second I get home. I can't do this anymore.

Not so with tights. I love tights. They don't make me feel itchy.

In the cemetery with tights on. Thank God.

Maybe it's just my leggings. Maybe something in their makeup is all wrong for little old me. Maybe different leggings would please and delight me. But I'm committed to my hatred at this stage. Leggings and I are over. I'll wear my single remaining pair until they spontaneously crumble into a fine dust, and then I will cheer and screech with joy forever. No more leggings. Set the legs free.

Freeing my legs in Seoul, April 2025.

The Pitt Frightens Me

Yes, I love The Pitt for its fast pace, its interconnected educational PSA structure, and its lovable goofballs, but I have found myself clutching the edge of the couch in fear and shuddering with each new episode. There is little more anxiety inducing than this stream of escalating injuries. I feel a deep fear rise from within.

When I was a kid I had a real fondness for hospitals. I once had to have grommets put in my ears to ventilate the middle ear because my hearing was a little bit off - the things that happen to the body are, sometimes, cartoonish - and I distinctly remember my excitement. The hospital had a pufferfish-themed info pack (which I think included pufferfish stickers - yay!) and I felt very taken care of and fascinated by the workings of the hospital.

Back then, hospitals seemed like magical places. This was the height of human knowledge, a locus of academic brilliance and cool machinery, and I was obsessed. The hospital is like a sort of library. Doctors and nurses were little sweeties, and all things clinical, instead of frightening me, comforted and impressed me. If anything happened that required a hospital visit, I felt relieved to be heading to and arriving at the place where you were almost certainly the safest.

I've had a few ambulance rides in my time. Once I had a random neck spasm in the bath, and two paramedics had to help me out and place me in a neck brace. The solution: a beautiful muscle relaxant that made me feel very relaxed (too relaxed) for a few days. The doctor told me: "sometimes that just happens".

I still have a great reverence for hospitals, and think they're very cool, but as an adult I steadily replaced my awe and excitement for them with straightforward discomfort and anxiety. I guess there was a sense of innocence to my love of hospitals, and now I've seen and heard too much. Instead of feeling relieved and joyful that I've made it to the best place for treatment, I've come to associate the hospital with OH GOD OH NO SOMETHING BAD IS HAPPENING. Now I gotta get outta there.

And so, when I watch The Pitt, I can't help but imagine all of those injuries and diseases happening to me. I can't help but remember that one day I categorically will die. And I think: oh. I don't want that. I actually really want to live and not be harmed.

But okay, I try to think of this sort of anxiety as a kind of test. If I watch a show like this, and I feel that white knuckle freaky feeling when something bad is happening to someone onscreen, but then after the episode is finished I can come back down to a calm baseline and accept the horrors I've seen, maybe it helps me to be better able to handle such feelings. After all, if you experience anxiety, but then you're okay, you can reinforce your ability to go through it. You have evidence that it's all gonna be okay. I'd say that sometimes I might feel a sense of heightened anxiety and worry for around ten to twenty minutes after an episode of The Pitt ends. My mind lingers on the bloody lacerations. I breathe heavily and I feel a bit shaky or tingly. But then it's over. Nothing's happening to me. And if something does happen, well, I'll go to the hospital. It's the best place to be.

Once I was in the cardiology dept. of a hospital and I heard the young doctors singing "boom, clap, the sound of my HEART, the beat goes on and on and on and on and", and I thought, God, that's beautiful. I love the hospital.

The Most Beautiful Game

A while ago I decided to play through Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 (My Summer Holiday 2, or Boku's Summer Holiday 2) when I discovered that this special little game had gotten a fan translation. It's a simple, atmospheric game about being a little boy visiting his aunt and uncle for his summer break, and you spend it wandering around the serene island, catching bugs, and chatting.

It's a very relaxed game with a laid back structure which predominently expects you to explore. You can see a little bit more of the island and maybe talk to a new person each day, but time passes and soon you have to go home and have dinner. I like the way this gets at the restricted, regimented feel of being a child, even though you're allowed to run off freely each day.

One of the main things you can do in the game is collect bugs and fish, and so it's often compared to games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, but Boku no Natsuyasumi is more of a relaxed, breezy RPG in that the focus is really on your conversations. It's all about gaining a little bit of insight into those around you, and the game makes it really satisfying to explore that narrative and environmental detail for its own sake.

Catching fish and/or bugs, though, is straightforward and satisfying. It just feels good to grab 'em.

Got one!

There are plenty of charming details and funny pieces of dialogue, but it's also this unique visual aesthetic that makes it really wonderful to play. I love the lush, complicated backgrounds, brimming with light, satisfyingly cluttered. There are streams, varied houses, and lots of interesting little nooks to explore. It's a beautiful game, and you end up really feeling like you're in a real place.

I also adore the cute 3D models of the characters. They contrast so nicely with the gorgeous, naturalistic, detailed backgrounds. Boku, the player character, is so cute. Look at him.

Aww.

It's a very sweet game, and I've never played anything remotely like it before. There is a subtle complexity to it, and a sense that Boku is at the edge of understanding in many ways - he's privy to a lot of conversation that is slightly out of reach to him as a young child, a lot of adult understandings that are passed over his head, directly to the player. It creates this wonderful feeling of nostalgia, as Boku's innocence is ever-present and colours everything that we see and hear.

It's a lovely look at all the joy and sadness and strangeness and silliness of being alive.

The entire world is a puzzle with no solution. And endless insects. How true.

Cool Stuff in the Louvre

Every time I go to a museum I find a few things that capture my attention and become the special objects of the day for me. So here are a few things I really liked the last time I visited the Louvre (on the 16th of October, 2025).

First of all, this wonderful painting: Pieta, by Rosso Fiorentino. This depicts the Virgin Mary fainting as her son's body is brought down from the cross, and I just love it. Mary's weird face and wide stance, the bundling of the whole scene, and that strange, half-desaturated, half bright colouring.

The composition is so astonishing, and I love how the horror of the moment is sort of stuffed under the necessity of completing the physical task of transporting the body. Jesus looks regal. A noble corpse on or off the 'fix.

Next up: some guys.

This man has had his nose knocked off, but that's okay. He's still happy. He literally doesn't care at all. Good for him.

This guy though, this guy cares maybe more than anyone else has ever cared. You can see the hurt in his eyes. It's okay though, because there's a third man who is more elusive.

Yes, this man may or may not care. The important thing to note about him, however, is that he is a lump. I really like his shape, and his huge, bulging pupils.

Those are the guys of the Louvre. The man trio. I love them.

 

And finally: an exhausted cherub.

He's seen it all. 

Complaining About the Aquarium

Here are some fish I saw in Paris' aquarium last year. The aquarium itself is tragic, a strangely dark, hollow, dusty place. And they had a flimsy collaboration with Sanrio going on at the time, which meant seeing some My Melody decals near the fish. Okay. Wow.

Looks great.

Fish themselves are always fascinating little creatures - I love when they're bioluminescent or when they look like little old men - but the enclosures were largely small and sad. You could believe this place was abandoned if not for the tourists clopping around sombrely and the few staff clad in dull black aquarium t-shirts looking vaguely bored. 

I have never really regretted visiting an aquarium before, although Japanese zoos and aquariums are pretty sad, you can tell immediately that the country has low animal welfare standards, but this one was simply crap. At one point I went to the toilet and found thick layers of dust in there. Can we clean our toilets please? Vous nettoyez les toilettes?

Fish and sea creatures are spectacular and weird. Their non-mammalian qualities and their fun colours make them really delightful by default, but in this dingy zone, I think I've come closer to knowing what it was like to peruse a Victorian freakshow. Don't these fish deserve better? It boasts "the largest collection of jellyfish outside Japan" according to its website. You really wouldn't know to look at it.

It used to look like this... wow.

This place used to be a knobbly Georgian grotto. Now it's a black plastic box with Hello Kitty peeling from the wall and a sad turtle. Stop it. Surely we can do better than this?

Desk World

I am a habitual bed-typer. I work fully in bed often, and I regret nothing. Being in bed with my laptop is natural and right. However, there is something to be said for a desk.

The thing about a desk is: you can put all kinds of stuff on there. It immediately enters a satisfying place when you add two things to the desk and it becomes a decoration challenge. As soon as that happens, I'm locked in. I am creating another ideal representation of myself. I am the desk woman.

Some dog pages in my onion skin journal.

Now, as we all know, a desk requires a drink. A special drink for the desk. This might be a delectable coffee option, or some kind of enticing nectar. Usually, you will find yourself graduating to two drinks. This is a sign of excess and pleasure. Follow that impulse. Go drinks crazy.

Me, basking in the glow of my wonderful desk.

There is also an unstoppable power that grows with each subsequent notebook or other paper object that gets added to the desk. Currently, I have two such items: a sketchbook, and my diary. I like to think of them as the dear friends and dark accomplices of my laptop. The computer is enhanced by the pen and paper. The system is complete. There are pencils and bobby pins nervously awaiting my attention.

I call her "Mangles".

I've been drawing feverishly in my onion skin journal here. At my beautiful desk. Creating a horrible bird. As I must. 

The Power of a List

I love a list. I save a lot of lists of media to check out, like this Guardian list of the 50 best films of 2025. I watched the top four from this list right at the end of the year, and I had a sensational time. It's a good list. I simply love perusing a catalogue of considered recommendations, or getting a good sense of the top-rated things of a certain type on a certain topic.

This is what a list can look like ;-)

Enter the 1001 Things series. These are big, chunky books going over the essential 1001 examples of a given medium, as decided by the all-knowing expert assigned to each book.

The five 'big ones' are: 

• 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
• 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
• 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
• 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die
• 1001 TV Series You Must Watch Before You Die

There are some others lurking in the ether, but these are what I'd consider to be the main series volumes. They are interesting reference books, made more interesting because each edition is frozen in time. The 2011 edition of the Video Games one makes a lot of references to the iPhone and how games are all coming to the iPhone these days. It's great.

I came across a video by emilitsa.mp3 the other day, talking about her mission to explore the list of 1001 Books. She chooses three randomly, and she reads those suckers. Cool.

1001 is a daunting number, and especially for books, it would be a huge undertaking to read every one listed, but I think it's a really fun resource to pull a challenge from. Maybe you choose five of them, and you enter a tantalising world of eighteenth century classics that you can never fully escape from. Maybe you just read one crazy book. But list-perusal has that magic. It gets me into stuff I wouldn't necessarily get into otherwise. It allows me to focus on a particular idea or genre. 

Like, I decided I wanted to read about some revolutionary American history this year, and so my first book of the year was Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis, a book I found on a Goodreads list of ranked American history books. And it was amazing. I felt like I was there with Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. I felt like I was the bullet that killed old Hammy. The writing style is sizzling and present. A glorious read.

But I don't tend to take a list so big as the ones contained in these beefy books so seriously. A small list you can run through quickly, cackling the whole way, but a big list like this is enjoyable in a different way. The fantasy of being able to read all 1001 books is nice, but I have to be realistic - that's not happening. So I like this person's approach of having a random number generator choose her next books to read, and I enjoy just flipping through the tome and bookmarking anything that interests me.

In 1001 Video Games, I bookmarked Loom, a spooky-looking MS DOS adventure game that has a musical gimmick. That thing looks crazy. Gotta add that to a new list.

Loom (1990).