I’ve been thinking about updating a bunch of my electronics lately. I recently did it with my Switch in an effort to have a better experience playing games online and using the console in handheld mode, and my only regret is now I have to sort through the feelings that come up every time I think about giving it to one of my friends who doesn’t have one because my old Switch was my constant companion and frequently the sole source of comfort during the last few pandemic years. Plus, you know, all the fun I had with it before then, too. The drastic improvement in my user experience has inspired me to consider upgrading some of the other pieces of technology that are older than my Switch and far more worn, such as my TV, my stereo sytem, and my computer. I mean, I’m not particularly interestied in a smart TV and I never really felt the need for 4K quality, but then I got an OLED switch and I feel like I finally get why people are leaving their crappy old LCD TVs behind. Plus, most of my electronics were bought on a “Tax Refund” level budget, something I could only muster once a year and now I can actually budget ahead of time, set money aside, and save up for something I want in a timeframe measured by months instead of years. Suddenly, replacing my entire computer or just my monitors feels like a reasonable thing to consider.
Continue readingIncome
Rest May Be Productive (And Healthy), But I Earn Nothing Doing It
Over the past few years, I’ve observed a pattern in the way that I work and rest. Well, I’ve noticed a lot of patterns, but there is one in particular that I’ve been exploring more explicitly lately and want to write about today. When I have a lot to do and I’m either too stressed to do it or know I’ll need some extra time to get everything done, I take Fridays off of work. Even if it isn’t a personal vacation day but a federal holiday in the US, Friday days-off are always for being productive, getting things done, and making sure I’m prepared for whatever work needs doing. If I need to rest, if I need to actually recuperate, recover, and relax, I need a Monday without work. Mondays aren’t for rest in the same way that Fridays are for productivity, but they mean that I can spend my normal resting day (Sunday) without worrying about being ready for work the next day or combatting the urge to be productive.
Continue readingVideo Games or Vacations
It is incredibly difficult for me to plan and then take a good vacation. Specifically, I mean that I have never once taken a proper “leave my common sphere of activity” style vacation that wasn’t to a lake house owned by my grandparents since I left for college. Well, I recently had one exception to that, which was a camping trip with some friends, but a crown I’d just gotten not long before the trip broke on the first day and left me feeling pretty awful for the whole weekend so I’m not counting that due to the lack of actual relaxation or rest that one single moment caused.
Continue readingTabletop Highlight: How to Waste Your Time and Destroy Your Relationships
Are you tired of your peaceful and content existence? Do you have valuable relationships you wish to destroy via petty arguments and baseless accusations? Do you feel like you have too much time on your hands and not enough to spend it on? Do you find yourself desiring to feel either the same penniless destitution my generation finds so common or the baron-ish wealth of the landed gentry from a time before anyone but a blooded noble was considered fully human? If you answered “Yes” to any or all of these questions, then I have the solution for you, you potentially masochistic misanthrope.
The solution to your lack of actual problems is clear, stranger. Simply go to the nearest book or game store and purchase yourself a copy of Monopoly! If you can convince your treasured friends and family to play it with you, they will not be treasured by the time your game is through. If you’d prefer to draw out this revolting and evil alienation you so desire, you need not worry. Depending on how many people you have convinced to join you in hell, it may take several days for them to realize their burning hatred of everything about you from your smug grin to their mental concept of you as a thinking, feeling individual. A single game of Monopoly, if played correctly by a competent bunch of adults, can take in excess of three hours, and it is only that short when one or more players is excessively more skilled at deception, betrayal, and debauchery than the others.
Despite the seemingly innocuous nature of this chunk of cardboard, the game of Monopoly is actually a clever device that was created by distilling all of the worst things in the universe, such as war, hunger, income inequality, the housing market, police brutality, the abuse of power by elected officials, the stock market, and anyone who walks around in a top hat and a cane as a part of their usual outfit without being able to understand that they look like a bit of a jerk. After that, a few other awful concepts were thrown in for flavor (capitalism, gambling, and vanity), and now any child can cry themselves to sleep at night as they listen to their parents arguing over whether the banker has been skimming off the top or not. Both adults know the banker has had their hand in the cookie jar, but one of them has no proof and the other is the banker who will refuse to admit it because they have gone from the sweetest, most honest person in existence to a horrendous and unrepentant liar in a matter of hours.
Wars have been fought over money and land in the past, and this game now allows you to bring the horrors of war to your family and home. You may go the entire game without seeing a bloody corpse, but that’s only because verbal eviscerations and emotional destruction don’t leave corpses, merely the hallowed-out husks of once-vibrant people. Argue with the people closest to you with such reckless abandon that problems from the very beginnings of your relationships will resurface and raise the stakes at the start of every turn, from who wins a simple game meant to emulate land-ownership by the incredibly wealthy into a competition to determine who has the moral high ground. Such vile hatred shall be spewed that you will find yourself dwelling on both what you heard and what you said for at least several days afterward. If you cannot shake it off and make yourself believe that it was simply a game and not a nuclear missile shot straight at all of your relationships, then such feelings will consume you until there is nothing left of who you once where or you have gotten extensive therapy.
Despite the giddy anticipation I can sense you feeling as you contemplate this mental and emotional self-destruction, I must urge you to reconsider. You may revel is such depravity, but please keep in mind that innocent lives hang in the balance. Sweeter souls than yours can be destroyed by Monopoly, if only be being caught up in the wake of destruction that follows this foul pastime. Spare yourself and these poor beings the wrath of capitalism pretending to be a family-friend game. Pick up Settlers of Catan instead.