inroads outroads we're all traveling

august 22

as much as id like an infinitely scrolling website, i finally made a page 2. you can see past entries here.

what a month, eh?

sir, it's still august

thats been the vibe this month. what a wreck. I thought june was bad. basically been traveling back home and around. went on a cruise. went home to pack for way too long. moving again in a momth. it's not ideal for updating websites. but here I am

music

half the albums on my favorites list has been added in the past 60 days, so either my interest isn't actually waning or my standards are a lot lower. either is fine.

Karine Polwart - Seek the Light: really good spoken word. only 4 songs long but delivers a lot emotionally. highly recommend.
Siouxsie and the Banshees - The Scream: insane how influential this band is. now I know why is shoegaze, why is indie, why is emo, why is everything underground. if you listen to indie and care about its history, this is a must.
Soema Montenegro - CIRCULO RADIANTE: very good spanish music. sweet and folky. I don't know what they're saying but I think I can feel it.
The Beatles - Let It Be: wow let it be really is the only banger here huh.
Willi Carlisle - Critterland: very raw lyrics. excellent album. a real honest look into rural america (/california).
Windows96 - One Hundred Mornings: this is an iconic album with an iconic look and feel to it, but on relisten I didn't get the same impact. which is to say that he's really got better over time. but that title, that album cover, they just give vibes that are frozen in time. in a good way. one hundred mornings....
hey, nothing - We're Starting to Look Like Each Other: very good folk rock. pretty eclectic.
Temple of Angels - Endless Pursuit: good shoegaze. nice to listen to. sounds like a time capsule from 2010s indie in a very good way.
Kirin J Callinan - If I Could Sing: frontloaded with bangers, but gets slow and sappy toward the end in a way I don't really like.
Elton John - Caribou: sounds like tumblr music. will not elaborate. reblog.
Rezzett - Rezzett LP: really cool and crunchy idm.
Czerwone Gitary - Czerwone Gitary 2: really good polish rock. it's like a whole different take on 60s pop rock. recommend.
Ruth Anderson & Annea Lockwood - Tête-à-tête: aside from the weird frequency sweep of a first track, it's very sweet and I'm better for have listened to it. sapphic romance album. really recommend the writeup on bandcamp as well.
US Golf 95 - [Playstation] jungle.psx: title does not lie. enjoyable.
Jim Wake & Sleepwalker - Preaching to the Perverted: really good soul. black midi vocal style works way better with this instrumental. money in my pocket does loudness better than most other music ive heard--it makes you feel like you're at the party.
Drayton Farley - Twenty on High: good country. pretty standard instrumentation and vocals, but there's a sort of concept album thing going on about a battle of depression over a few songs, which I think is done well.
Dorian Electra - Fanfare: look, I just don't like nu metal. i'm fine with the revival. 100 gecs did it well, but nobody else is really doing it well. plus it's not as sexy as their other stuff.
Sunglaciers - Regular Nature: kind of like if king gizzard did weed instead of acid. lots of different styles of psychedelic rock. fun to listen to.
Filmmaker - Hollywood Cult: more awesome darksynth with your favorite anarchist producer. isn't falling into the trap of other synth producers of making the same stuff over and over, filmmaker is always innovating and trying new sounds within the synth genre.
DIM - Parachrism: progressive dungeon synth, if there were such a thing. sounds like a heroic quest where each song is a different challenge. good stuff.
Aldrch - would you like to go out?: excellent chiptune-infused pop punk. sort of like hey, ily.
Traveler - Prequel to Madness: more badass power metal from canada. great listen.
Hello Meteor - Shadow Boundaries: more excellent ambient vaporwave. I don't even know if it's still vaporwave anymore, the sample choice lacks the 80s aesthetic. definitely not a bad thing. regardless, cool worldbuilding.
Sferro x Tommy '86 - Remote Communications: groovin' synthy vaporwave. more like emotion engine.
Ithildin - Arda's Herbarium: A Musical Guide to the Mystical Garden of Middle-Earth and Stranger Places - Vol. I: I'm not a lotr nerd but this was really good fantasy ambient synth. I'm going to listen to all of these.
ParadymCoast - Experience: very hello meteor in a good way. sort of a light ambient chiptune ep.
Crisis Sigil - God Cum Poltergeist: God Cum Poltergeist: definitely feels like a followup to the other album. it's your classic screaming ada rook goodness, this time more consistent and somehow better.
La La Lars - La La Lars IV: feels like idm for jazz. very htoughtful but playful.
Metallica - Master of Puppets: really good and I can see why it's influential but I can't get over the guitar sometimes sounding like squeaky furniture.
GRIN - Hush: really good death metal.
meurtrières - RONDE DE NUIT: some great french metal. sometimes I feel like people do the classics better these days than the classics did.
Hotel Pools - Evenings 夕暮れ Vol. 1 : good chillsynth. add this to your playlists.
acloudyskye - There Must Be Something Here: much of the same sound as the last one but shorter instrumentals and more accessible. I liked it about the same as What Do You Want, which is to say I liked it a lot.
Parsnip - Behold: bandcamp really wanted everyone to listen to this. they were on three articles. to parsnip's credit, though, you can't get more jangle pop than this.
Winged Wheel - Big Hotel: very soft shoegaze. like the softest shoegaze can get. some cool and interesting sounds in it too.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - The Silver Cord: a love letter to 70s prog synth. good stuff.
Allie X - Girl With No Face: oh it's synth time for real now. synth was already a thing but this is SYNTH. we're deeper into the 80's revivalism than I ever thought you could get. this isn't your chvrches synthpop. great album, sounds great.
Pacing - Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen : quriky but in a good way. funny writing with some catchy bits here and there. relatable.
Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports: this is gas. I feel like if I wasn't thinking straight I would call this boring, but this was some of the most interesting and contemplative ambient I've ever heard. no wonder it's so influential.
Chappell Roan - The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess: super good pop bangers. so many catchy hooks. so horny... a must-listen for sure. I don't like slow songs but at least it kept it varied here. usually a pop album with slow songs makes them all sound the same like olivia rodrigo but they're all different styles here so it's nice.
Hello Meteor - Said Ghosts: more good vaporwave. this one has talking. lots of worldbuilding.
Weird Al Yankovich - Polka Party: not the best one so far. didn't really know which songs he was parodying on this which didn't help. christmas at ground zero is a great christmas song thouugh.
Nailah Hunter - Lovegaze: very pretty and low and slow soul.
standards - Fruit Galaxy: okay I think I figured it out. it's the guitar. the guitar makes the same six or so noises across every album and every song and it's distracting even when everything else is good.
Britti - Hello, I'm Britti.: awesome fusion of folk and soul. good lyrics and lots of fun.
Billie Eilish - HIT ME HARD AND SOFT: really great. more horny pop. very contemplative and personal.
Charli XCX - brat: I appreciate the aesthetic and cultural impact but I have never been into her music, including this. just not into the club and hyperpoppiness of it.
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach: this was a cool experience. feels ahead of its time.
Frog - GROG: some really cool indie rock. great melodies in here.
zweihandr - zweihandr: ambitious. if you like the more obscure internet genres you'll like this. what is obscurity now anyways.
Dan Mason - Florescence: very relaxing, very soft vocal vaporwave. really good stuff. hyacinths is such a bop.
glass beach - plastic death: no skips on this one. it's a really good, varied, and interesting album. I didn't really like the first glass beach album so I was surprised to like this one a lot more.

whew! that was a lot. although I have a bit more to say

brat, the rise and fall of a midwest princess, girl with no face, hit me hard and soft all coming out this and last year felt significant to me. at the time that I heard the rise and fall of a midwest princess, I felt really hopeless about the political situation in america, and all these albums (yeah i know charli and allie x aren't american) felt like a final shout, whether cynically or not, to queerness being in the public eye before a maniacal dictator comes into office and quashes it.

the albums felt significant in that way, like getting the word out before it becomes illegal. I know this all sounds dramatic, but I felt pretty hopeless. a lot of people did. but then biden dropped out and things felt good again. like we actually have a chance now. I'm allowing myself to feel hopeful, although I'm still cautiously optimistic. democrats are known for dropping the ball, trying to be honorable and all that shit. just hoping it doesn't happen.

also another thing. I just happened to listen to kiss me more while this was going and realized that black queer women have been pioneering horny and explicit music for years even in the mainstream, but some white women do it and suddenly it's a big deal. not to minimize anything but I can see why someone wouldn't be impressed with chappell roan's success.

anyway.

video games

other than helldivers 2, I've been in a big gaming slump. I bought a bunch of games, tried some, kept playing older games for something to do while watching youtube. you know the drill.

SWORDCAR looked fun from the iron pineapple video, but it wasn't really what I expected. I think it could be cool and fun, but I got stuck at a really early boss with no way to tell how to avoid attacks from it. should've waited for it to come out of early access.
personally was hoping for a more simcade driving experience but with battles. forza style. yeah yeah I know. still I think that would be cool, to manage your physics and all that
played rollerdome for 30 minutes. camera sucks. never liked score-based games. wouldn't let me refund. oh well.
back to playing my favorite overpowered mod civ in civ 5 as something to do while idling and watching videos. pretty sure I'm getting bored of it again though
did some hades runs to idle as well. I'm at heat 15 with some weapons. almost got to the first statue, but got in a losing streak and felt too depressed about it to continue. had a very satisfying aspect of hera run though. festive fog + chill with the 40% dual debuff damage boost makes for some great burst. I just like doing damage.
me and my partner are playing civ6 together which is a lot of fun. I got bored of stardew after I beat it so this is our new together game which is nice cause I don't have to worry about inventory management. I really like getting a strong economy. doing the gold per cities with your religion gets soo much money, although the game seemed to have balanced away money by making units sooo expensive even if you have a ton of money. actually pretty decent to play on steam deck.
still on that forza grind. still not buying those dlcs until they're on sale. although I have also done a condition where I'll get them if I get a steam gift card, but only if my forza buddy gets them too. wouldn't feel fair and I don't care that much about the car pack cars to have them alone.
finally got planet coaster. wow this looks complicated. can't believe I have to treat it like an actual sim and not an easily exploitable victory simulator. haven't played it that much but I'm slowly eating at it.
oh I guess pokemon go counts as a video game. I've been playing it a LOT, doing all the quests and stuff. always catching shit. always on that damn phone. I managed to do the daily pokestop spins for MONTHS but I think I'm going to calm down on that. the stress of running around the neighborhood is getting to me. I got accosted the other day, and even though I just brushed it off and kept walking, it wasn't very fun. much easier when I lived on one...
trying to unlock shit in vampire survivors. some of these playable characters are very hard to deal with. I usually try to do it without looking things up but sometimes the ingame hints are way too opaque.
really falling off lethal company but it's all my friends want to play. zeekerss took away those fucking foxes. god that was a stupid creature. I'm already annoyed enough at those birds on the canyon map (that they will NOT stop sending us to), and then zeekerss just ads a fox that spawncamps you. he took it away though so I guess I'm still in it for now. I just like hanging out in the ship and turning off turrets and monitoring. nobody wants to get walkie talkies to talk to me though.

my partner is playing through the fallout games. like started on 1. before last year the only games she played were the sims and various mobile games, but she beat fallout 1 on her own (while looking stuff up but who doesn't need to do that?). very proud of her. fallout 1 intimidates even the most hardcore gamers. she's on 3 now. can't wait to show her hbomberguy's video.

helldivers 2 is very much a best friend game right now. if you play it with me on my schedule then we're best friends. it has just enough pushback to be challenging but not overwhelming. lots of difficulty options even so. although 6 feels harder than 7 some days. lovely game. kind of wish it still had a million active players but as long as we can do those orders I'm okay.

videos

I tried doing this in normal chronilogical order but youtube history tab is not agreeing with my quick scroll speed. so I'm doing it reverse again.

on the plane I watched Achieving the Impossible on CoD's Most Obscure Zombies. it's a decent video. the editing falls off though, I wanted his floating head the whole time. could've been shorter. glorified let's play.
another armchair history by lextorias in Why is Adult Animation So Far Behind?. good video on why animation is like this now, with a focus on anime and western animation.
this is the first one I came across but Your Comprehensive Guide to Homelessness Grift (Housing Part 2) and Gentrification is a distraction (Housing Part 1) are both banger videos by street sweeper about housing policy. both are very comprehensive. must watch for anyone who cares about politics imo.
I'm What the Culture Feeling is a very good and super comprehensive video about the kendrick/drake beef. I would say it's the only one you need to watch, but todd in the shadows also has a good video on it that goes in an even different direction.
noodle and friend's The BEST Forgotten Racing Games is a nice retrospective on an obscure game series and a history of the company that made it.
huge bible school vibes from the narrator but The Weird Al Show: An Unnecessarily Deep Dive into a Forgotten Cult Classic - Video Essay is a good video about a show I didn't know existed.
another redlyne banger, Cults in Online Games humorously investigates some alleged cults online.
my favorite soundfont cover artist for the better part of a year has been unpragmatic covers, and their The Making of a RuneScape Soundfont Cover video showcases just how much knowledge, respect, and passion they have for music, and it's a miracle that they put that into runescape soundfont covers of all things. godspeed.
I analyzed 177 supernatural shows and this is the scariest state is a fun video by a small book tuber that goes through a bunch of shows and plots where they're from.
an important video in Racist Sundown Towns are mostly in the Midwest…not the South, that basically talks about the title and why it works out that way.
I resonate a lot with raymundo 2112's Quit saying "Un-alive".. I wish creators would have some respect for the subjects they talk about and stop using this playground shit. we literally have euphemisms, "passed away," etc. if I killed myself and somebody described my "sewerslide" I would literally come back to life and bring them back with me. otherwise, I resonate less with the conspiratorial angle of this being controlled or whatever. it sucks that corporations are controlling speech in these ways but there needs to be more evidence for it instead of a bunch of tubers just blindly believing what other people say and censoring "die" in their videos. god.
Why Western Designs Fail in Developing Countries is a very good and necessary video that talks about how charities and influencer types will have ideas that look good on paper, but generally go very wrong because they don't take into account the actual people they're serving.
another banger by ethereal worlds, The Ancient Weebs of the Amiga Scene is a great video that goes into more ancient internet subcultures. the audio is bad but at least it has subtitles.
cheyenne lin's The Parents Are Alt-Right: The Conservative Anti-school Iceberg is refreshing in how opinionating she is in it. I don't like how centrist her take on homeschooling is but the video is good otherwise.
minimme continues the james bond game series in The first 007 game on PS1, a fun video about a game that sucks, and why it ended up sucking. even includes some developer interviews.
whistlindiesel finally gets out his cybertruck duability test. it says #1 in the title but he ain't getting that thing back. turns out the cybertruck is very good at things that don't matter and terrible at anything that does. what a car.
wickedwiz misses with What Went Wrong? - Garten of BanBan. clunky script. could've been half as long. post-mortem on a game series that hasn't even died yet. 1.4M views don't lie tho, get that bag ig.
decent gaming vlog by smudgebap in understanding SONIC THE HEDGEHOG as an outsider. nothing too spicy in terms of takes, doesn't get into the 3D games. now that would be something to see.
CHUPPL knocks it out of the park again with Where Online Scams Come From. it might feel like it starts off weak but it gets better, way better.
li speaks makes a banger with A Comprehensive Categorization of Reddit Ragebait. I used to use reddit a lot, I feel like I've seen a dozen of every single one of these categories (other than the religious ones for some reason). super validating as someone who considered a lot of those subreddits to be full of fake stories.
if you haven't watched Fabio and the Goose, do yourself a favor. absolute killer video.
defunctland continues to fail to miss with another excellently written video about Kid Cities, something every gmod darkrper would've killed to be a part of.
moon channel makes a monster deep dive in Kawaii: Anime, Propaganda, and Soft Power Politics., a video that goes deep into japan's perception abroad and how it has used it to its advantage. the comments talk about how actually america is the #1 soft power country but that misses the point.
The Weirdest and Most Obscure Side of the Internet is a fast-paced list video by floodware that doesn't dig deep into any particular entry, but is still interesting either way. there's a let's play at the end.
I Don't Know James Rolfe is another great video by folding ideas that dispells the notions of james rolfe being some kind of creative genius for his show, along with having its own narratives and themes about creativity and stuff.
I've been going through majuular's ultima restrospectives, the lastest being the one on Ultima V, and it's been a treat. they are well-made, well-written documentaries on the development and philosophy behind the most influential games in history.
important, if clunkily scripted, video about Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music. goes really deep into how embarrassingly off the mark westerners portray middle eastern music. essential for anyone who wants to make art based in other cultural regions.
The Bizarre World of Fake Video Games is a recommendation for a book that's probably better read than experienced through supereyepatch wolf. the first hour twenty is him listing some fake video games and horror twist fanart of existing video games. didn't like this one much.
The Abyss of the Rabbit Hole Iceberg is decent noise. more of a general horror iceberg but it's competent.

I threw some shorter videos in there that I liked too since I'm not watching that many long videos these days

uhhh I don't have a lot of commentary or hot takes on greater trends right now. vinny's stream of kinitopet is more entertaining than nexpo's video.

misc

life has been really turmultulous lately, emotionally and financially. it's just one thing after another. you know how it is. been feeling really down lately, and it's been affecting my plans for being creative and all that.

I went on a cruise. I don't think I have enough to say about it for an article. it was cool, I liked it a lot. always have critiques but I'll say that the main one is that my partner was right in that it wasn't really "traveling" no matter what ports you go to, since they're all the same unless you do a LOT of planning and preparation. I'm willing to do that next time though.

went back to florida for way too long. we tried to drive 24 straight hours by swapping shifts, which worked, but the recovery time from that is like two days. we recompensed that florida is awful and we never want to go back, so hopefully the move to washington is smooth.

I'll have an article on tacoma up at some point. I made a tier list of all the places we went to, which overall wasn't a lot, but you know. gotta make content. but I'm hungry right now lol.