Category: books


Feb
2023

I came, I saw, and none of it surprised me at all.

categories: books, RPGs

word count: 306

So, yesterday I joined the official Hogwarts Legacy server on Discord.

I have no intention of buying or playing the game because of JK Rowling’s anti-Semitic, transphobic remarks (nor do I have any intention of funding the franchise in any way, shape, or form), but I wanted to see the excuses that people were coming up with to justify playing this game. And let me tell you… I saw a lot of them. I also saw a lot of good people coming onto the server to try to spread awareness about why we should not collectively be lining the pockets of someone who has said these things who will go on to donate proceeds to anti-trans charities like she’s admitted to in the past, even though the majority of those people got banned from the server because people want to continue to keep up whatever flimsy pretenses they have to in order to justify continued consumption of this game. One of the things that I saw that bothered me, and stuck with me, was how guilty a lot of people felt about continuing to consume JK Rowling’s work in light of these comments being public knowledge, how they were desperate for other people not to find out about this, and how it was in many cases literally making them sick. If someone is such a bad person that consuming their media makes you have this kind of reaction, you need to consider… well, not consuming it.

At this point, it’s worthwhile making friends out of the people willing to risk being banned from the server for speaking up, as is it worthwhile to continue to inform people as to why they should not play this game or partake in any more media consumption from JK Rowling. That’s about it, though. The rest is not worth it.


Jan
2021

Some of the books that I’ve been reading.

categories: books

word count: 210

Books that I’m reading right now:
· The Adventurous Eaters Club: Mastering the Art of Family Mealtime by Misha and Vicki Collins
· The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I am also occasionally flipping through Anton LaVey’s Letters to the Devil, although the really small font is off-setting. I want to get through it at some point. It would be easier to read if the font size… isn’t what it is, even if making the font larger added pages to the book. So that one sits on the back burner for now, heh.

Ironically, I had started to read the book by Siddhartha Mujherjee before my mother had even been diagnosed with cancer, but this was around the time that Pokemon Go came out, and I spent more time playing that than I did reading any books. But now that we are being faced with a global pandemic, I’ve begun to pick up reading again with the intent to finish all of the books that I start. Reasonable, isn’t it?

That new Kindle that I got for Christmas will make things even easier to do, too.

I just need to figure out how it works since it differs from the old 3G Keyboard that I had.


Jan
2021

Why are subjects so hard to come up with?

categories: books, personal

word count: 286

At some point, I’m going to be replacing this computer sooner than later. I have my eye on one that has roughly the same specs (specifications) as this one, and I can just take my 16GB DDR4 RAM out of this one and put it into this computer. It’s also… smaller than this computer is, but I think a lot of the newer computers are being made to be smaller than their counterparts, and that doesn’t bother me any. Sometimes the fan runs just fine in this, or nearly fine, and other times I can hear the fan spinning from across the room even though I’ve used compressed air on it more than once. I wish this computer wouldn’t be on its way out, which it kind of is by the sound of things, because that would save me money. I already got a slightly newer Kindle for Christmas because my old Kindle Keyboard, complete with 3G, was lagging badly or just plain freezing to the point where it had to be put in standby mode or restarted numerous times to do anything…

Meanwhile, I’m reading The Adventurous Eaters Club by Misha Collins and his wife. First of all, it’s Misha Collins, the actor who played Castiel in Supernatural. Secondly, it might give me some tips and tricks that I can use to make mealtime fun and more palatable for my two children than it already is, even though both of them are autistic. One day in the future I might just write my own book on that though. It’s a thought here.

At the end of the day, these books can help a bit, but autistic kids tend not to eat like neurotypical kids do.


Aug
2020

In which the Internet says, “damn, spoil yourself”.

categories: books, personal

word count: 383

You have to love it when you call in a refill for something and are not even told that the medication in question requires prior authorization, wait… wait… wait, and then after more than a week passes call the pharmacist (my favorite line here is “calling to inquire about the status of this medication”), just for the person on the other end of the line to cheerfully say, oh, that medication requires a prior authorization.

At any rate, I did spend some more of the economic stimulus payment. I got a ring light and tripod for our camera (camcorder? camera? yes, I’m a nineties’ child) so that we can actually get more use out of it, and I was actually able to find those two things for affordable prices off of Amazon. As mentioned, I’ve also gotten a few candles as well… one from The Satanic Temple’s actual website itself, a few really nice looking regular-sized candles from a vendor on eBay, a few adorable tealight candles from another vendor, and some Satanic literature. Surprisingly, we were not in dire straights prior to this pandemic, so I decided to use the money from this payment to get things that we would otherwise have had to wait on. As mentioned, I got myself a pair of prescription sunglasses for when I’m having migraines (amber-tinted, and 80% sunglass). I also decided to spoil myself a bit since this pandemic did not actually put us in dire straights at the time that I got the stimulus check given our unique financial situation, although by no means did it make us rich or would I ever have considered us in any way rich or “well-off” from it… I got myself magnetic and thermal nail polish, two things that I’d been wanting for awhile, some other cosmetic items, and some items of clothing.

All told, I didn’t get a lot of things, because this wasn’t a lot of money.

And I would like to see a second stimulus check passed by the government, because there are other things that I would like to get us. I wouldn’t even mind the same amount. I’m not going to get my hopes up with a GOP-controlled Senate or Mitch McConnell. I’m frankly still flabbergasted that I even got the first check, heh.