About Me
I go by Ditch and I'm just an internet entity like you.
I go by Ditch and I'm just an internet entity like you.
it sucks, and I know it's going to suck and I know I might fail. My quit date is the March 15 and I'll do the patches and gum and sleep all day. I picked that date because no one in history has ever had something go wrong March 15th while trying to achieve anything
So one project I wanted to do on this site is recreating my old webcomic. Well, I decided against it, most people really don't want to remember their old MSPaint comics if had one. Tonight I did find proof that it existed:
with a message from 14 year old me
"Leave the past where it belongs"
I actually remember why I made that whole description. I made a filler comic was just a poorly shopped mashup of Clerks and The Boondock Saints, two movies that I hadn't seen at that point in my life and someone left a negative comment, which I attacked and then deleted the whole thing. So much for 'Reviews are ALWAYS appreciated' eh, teenage Ditch?
And the "Well drawn kung-fu, Undead, and stuffed zebras" well I chuckle at 'well-drawn' part, but the undead and stuffed zebras was because, I can't believe I remember this after two decades, I had a dream that I was in a haunted house, fighting zombies and trying to rescue a stuffed zebra and thought that would be an awesome plot point.
Well anyway, leave the past where it belongs. The future? Well I still want to make a webcomic for this site. Maybe I'll just draw that zombie dream.
So I've been playing oldschool Everquest again via Project 1999. The thing that sets old MMOs apart from modern ones is how incredibly slow they are, which I like, getting 10 lvls every hour while flashing light fly out of your characters dick and bombard your dopamine censors isn't for me. It's chill, but my character, an Ogre Shaman has another disadvantage that makes an already slow game even slower: he has meditate after combat to recharge his mana, and it recharges at a snails pace (turns out I was doing something wrong but more on that later).
See that blue bar? It takes about 20 minutes to refill if you made my mistake
So, while waiting for that to happen I started reading The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge recommended to me by my mom. It's a (probably fictional) journal following a man who engages in psychedelic experimentation with a Native American guide. Well the first two-thirds of it is, in the last act the author proves he completely missed the point of what he was supposedly taught and tries to explain everything in a pompous academic way. It's a good case for why Natives keep their culture secret.
So yes, Everquest got me reading again. After I finished the book something happened though, I was looking for a way to get XP and one of my guildmates invited me to a zone and taught me that I was meditating wrong this entire time, it's actually a skill in the game you need to buy to advance. It shouldn't be that slow. He showed me some tricks and helped me out, I'll probably hang out with him more. So thank you Tapbreed of the Friendly Druids, you're my Don Jaun.
Well nothing from my last post happened. Didn't go to gencon and went on a months long bender. Nothing apocalyptic, but this is not the time to be wasting my money and brain cells on booze. I'm more disappointed in myself for abandoning this site and blog, but I won't dwell on it, just pick up where I left off.
I'm going to Gen Con this year. This'll be my first real time at a convention, and the first time for a long time I've been out of the city. I'm hyped.
Most of them were dead, places I grew up going to, no surprise but they weren't just dead, they were abandoned, it was a wasteland. It felt like I was in the post-apocalyptic D.C from Fallout 3. The hatred I had was replaced with depression. That's when I came up with the term Terminal Nostalgia, it's what killed this city. Older people will talk about Baltimore like it's still the 70s, they'll talk about The Block like it's still an active red light district and not one diner, one strip club, and an army of junkies. They'll recommend tourists visit bars that haven't been around in decades. That could just be chalked up to people thinking back to the "good ol' days" or local historians being historians, but it's actually having detrimental effect to the city. Modernization is the only way this place would be worth living in, but now it feels like paying full price for second best. Actually second best if you're lucky. Because people act like it's still its golden age, back when the "Charm" of Charm City wasn't ironic, and the "grit" wasn't literal, we're doomed to squalor, and Baltimorons revel in their squalor. They take delight in pretending that it's "just like The Wire", laughing about their rat infestation, sucking down Natty Bohs and rooting for their mediocre sports teams while people who actually want to live in civilization can't get a place to shop or hang out that's not a 2-hour drive, or even half decent internet, medical care, entertainment. Don't think I exclude myself, I was like that too, I thought it was funny living in a John Waters film. Now seeing all the jokes about our crime and detritus are like watching special needs children smearing themselves with their own feces for attention.
I'll leave them to it. Everything I do now is to get away from this tumor. I know there are worse places in the world, like maybe Mogadishu or Pyongyang, but the fact that I need to make that comparison says a lot. That includes this rambling little blog post. This is the last thing I'll say about how deplorable Baltimore is. Terminal Nostalgia should be something positive, and there's nothing harmful about trying to revive the old internet, I won't be holding back anyone's progress by revisiting Web 1.0
I'm one month alcohol free today. I don't usually tell people because I don't need the congratulations and support people think that entails. It's not like I dragged myself out of rock bottom or I was living like Ben from Leaving Las Vegas. In my 20s that was the case, but now I can say I can quit whenever I want. The AA people would disagree, but I don't care one iota what that antiquated cult has say. I'm still considering getting a chip though.
So I got a free Fitbit as part of a research program I'm in, it's pretty neat. It'll help me count calories so I can hopefully gain weight for once in my life.
One thing that was irritating though is the "food plan" option doesn't support weight gain, which reminded me of how hard it was in the early 00s to get weight gain advice through the internet, all the results would be for weight loss and the ones for what you wanted would be body building forums and fitness blogs full of broscience. 4chan's /fit/ was the best option, and when 4chan is your best option you've got problems. Things are slightly better now, but not by much.
My current method is just make up my calorie deficit with protein shakes, I do not want to be a skeleton all my life
Better late than never, eh? Journaling has been good for me over the years but I never keep at it, hopefully this will keep me on track while I gain more HTML and CSS experience.
To do: