Poor sleep

Why can’t I sleep? I can’t even think about whatever is bothering me.

Time is weird. Every time I look in the mirror I can barely remember what I used to look like five years ago. My beard is so thick now. I went on a road trip; I went with my folks to visit family on Thanksgiving week and finally got to visit my nieces who’s names I couldn’t remember when they were only on the other side of screens. Now I know their names forever, they’re too funny and while we were visiting I got them whatever gifts they were asking for since it was the middle kids birthday. The youngest was writing a song in her notebook and kept singing it to me. I had to ask if she got that from anything, because it was pretty good song about food and such. Maybe it was on some animated show I hadn’t seen or heard of, but we did take them to see the new Trolls movie and I didn’t hear it in there. My sister’s oldest kid was mostly an aloof teenager, but even she wasn’t above s’mores at the campfire. I had to buy her two youngest their own hats, they kept stealing mine.

We had an AirBnB camper for the trip, which wasn’t that bad, except for when the toilet was clogged. You can’t use a plunger on those toilets, you got to jam a long stick down the plumbing. Fun. There also wasn’t any gas on in the trailer until the second day of trying to get ahold of the owner. We also left the camper clean, but they tried to tack on an extra cleaning fee. My mother leaves things clean and she’ll be damned if they try to charge more. My parents are great. I didn’t have much else to do that week besides visit with family, so I was mostly just driving around doing errands with my dad.  My dad is retired and it’s fun to hang out with him and assist as his henchman if he needs one. That’s been most of my life with him though, “…come with me for a ride, I need your help moving something. It’ll be real quick.” Which usually was a real quick move of some bulky cabinets that takes a few trips or a fridge. By the time I got back from the trip my refrigerator needed to be replaced, it’s good we’ve always been so used to this. 

My cousin is dating one of the guys from Disturbed. That blows my mind. I really hope she can get me some passes, I only got to see them live one time. She’s partying with rockstars and that’s pretty sick. Her mom had a 12 hour back surgery and went partially blind. My mom was mad at her for not being there for her mom after hearing the news about the blindness, she cares about her sister. She sent her some messages and guilted her into getting on a plane right away. In her defense, she was partying with rockstars. I don’t blame her and my dad and I had to convince her she’d done enough and won, I think he wants Disturbed passes too. Thankfully my aunt seems to be doing better though she’s got blind spots all over her vision, but that’s better than complete blindness. 

I guess things have been exciting maybe that’s all it is.

help me help you help me help you


Trying to collect myself so I can do yard work.

How are you?
I wish I was only bored.
That’s the easiest thing to fix.
west suburbs
you?

Well, if I ever head over there we can totally hang out.
why?
really?

I hear that, a pair of hot strippers got me for like $500 last night, and I let them. It was great.
Don’t be I’m a legit maniac and I wanted it to happen. I was in mourning, every year.
You live in MN? I have strippers here.

I literally went to a strip club last night, you have nothing like that to offer me do you? You’re too far away. We can hang out at the club.
You live hundreds of miles away, no.

No, you won’t.
Did you join my onlyfans or something? You trying to see this weiner?
too far
I really want you to. You won’t.

Definitely not.

Fine, drive here to Chicago and we’ll get pizza.
I promise you pizza.

Yes, if you want pizza drive on over.
If you’re insane enough to make that drive, I’ll be crazy enough to buy pizza.

I’m tough but fair.
I’d imagine that would be a problem. You should figure that out if you want pizza that bad in Chicago.

Just Giordano’s pizza, they got that deep dish.

I know, me neither. I gave it away last night.

I was saving it for fun dates, but I haven’t met fun women.

So I spent it all in a fun night for me.

The only thing to me that would prove how serious you were about some pizza would be you driving here. We can meet at the restaurant.

I need to get motivated to do housework, well just yardwork.
I’ll wait here to see you then.

Shit, will you help me get my yard under control. I almost paid a guy $200 to do that, it’s been too hot.

I’ll pay you to trim the bushes here for sure.

And for that I’d definitely pay you the same as him especially since you’d be driving and he was right at my door.

Then I’d feel bad and help you cut too. I got tools and a lawnmower I should get to using.

I might finish it before you get here, so hurry.

I just offered you the time of your life. You could have trimmed my garden and we could have had pizza.

You were bored, and I offered you my help.

You’re welcome.

help me help you

If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

I want my cat to stop shitting in my bathtub. That little bastard does it like one a month. He probably hates sharing the litter box with the other cat, or maybe they were using it and hissing at him. I get that, maybe it was an emergency that comes up every month. I know when there’s company over I don’t even like using my upstairs bathroom, so I get that. It’s my own home, but I don’t want to blow it up with guests around. Its up to guests to blow up my bathroom and embarrass themselves for me!

Survival game Sherpa

I have more time for gaming and hanging out with my online friends. A couple of my friends keep getting me to try games I had passed up or forgotten about, they got me playing Red Dead Redemption 2. That game is freaking pretty as hell. Not as hard as the last game they got me into, Scum. They don’t want to play Scum anymore until they release some big base building updates or the new permadeath mode. Honestly, we kind of felt like we beat the game and did everything everywhere. I’m still playing Scum though, because I got my characters stats pretty high and it’s fun as hell to run around in a hardcore punishing survival game with a character with high stats when everyone else is limping along over encumbered everywhere they go barely surviving. Even so, it’s way more fun to play the game with friends on your team. One of my friends is pregnant now, so she’s had way more time to play. Her computer needs a small video card update, but it’s managing loading up the game with only a crash here or there. She likes the game and thinks it’s hilarious and spooky. I’ve taken up the challenge of keeping her alive while we do all the hardest things in the game, like stealing planes & cars, raiding other players bases, and hunting other players while they’re trying to snipe us. Doing all this solo is not as fun, it’s like going to the Renaissance faire, I’ve already seen and done it all and I would rather bring someone new and show them everything. Hearing her freak the hell out over anything stressful in the game makes me laugh too hard. It’s also great that she’s not stealthy at all yet and players see her first and I can usually kill them before they get close enough to kill her, not a bad decoy. Some of my other friends who are super great at this game don’t have the patience to play with new players, you got to play at their level to be on their team. Not me though, this is some of the most entertaining things I’ve seen in video games. Player interactions are way more fun than just killing computer controlled enemies. I think I have more fun trying to “arrest” other players than just killing them on site. New players don’t think that way, because they got to get them points since they just started. I’d rather run right up to a fresh looking player when we find them and say to them “This is a robbery! Don’t make it a murder!” saying “Freeze!” doesn’t work, people never freeze and they force you to shoot them. I think maybe shouting “freeze” is too loud and scary for them, but “this is a robbery…” makes them think more before they react. We “arrested” a guy just yesterday, we were riding by and spotted him jump into a toolshed to hide from us. We said “we saw you, come on out and get robbed. Don’t make this a moida!” I think Three Stooging my “murder” and maybe the way I said it got him to use voice chat too. The “victim” sounded older like 30’s or so. Sounded like someone on their Thanksgiving day off just running around on a fun game trying to explore and survive. He was like “I’m a fresh player I don’t have anything to steal yet.” He wasn’t worth robbing or killing so I just gave him food and some supplies to survive a while. Hope he doesn’t think everyone plays like I do, that’ll just get him killed. Hopefully he builds a base we can rob later. It must have been karma hitting us next because we found somebody else’s base not too long after with a truck we stole, good times.

I’m more of a defensive player normally. I like building and defending bases. I feel like a lot of the newer players get into this game after playing other similar games like DayZ, Rust, Age of Conan, or Ark. Closest thing I played like it was probably Fallout 4 first. It seems like a lot of the newer players aren’t used to the roguelike style of play of Scum and cannot deal with losing everything upon death, which happens a lot especially if you are a solo player. I really wonder if adding permadeath will make more people just quit before even trying, so maybe they should tweak it before release. If this game were bigger and made by a more popular big company they wouldn’t have as much fun violence and nudity in it, I’m sure they’d really tone it down until it feels as safe as Red Dead Redemption. If it did become very popular and people started paying people to help them survive in the game, I’d probably take that job. I like escorting silly people to dangerous locations.

accumulations

People worship accumulations of things.

I tried to accumulate the feelings of the sublime.

Look at how small and laughable all of our problems are, it’s silly

You’ll feel small looking at something vast

barely matters

Oh well, I’m going to try to give it a dent

For a while people will see that dent and say “damn”

Control

“Ever hear of a man who has too much control?”

Ever have someone adjust all your settings? Maybe they move all your furniture in weird ways? You could complain that they fucked up your fen shui. At work, sharing workspaces sucks. Everyone has to set up all their shit; got to be able to hit buttons without getting too annoyed or uncomfortable. Next person comes on shift, they move it all and set up for the day and so on. People got to change up all the lights and the chair settings and heights. I’ve seen some big dudes sitting on some tiny low chairs, it’s weird.

I like to use default settings on most things. I kind of feel like “Well, if that’s the way the creators wanted you to experience it. I should just do it like that.” People are monsters at making mods and addons for everything, but too many of them feel like they spoil the experience. Too much like cheating.

Sucks dealing with cheats. People want to cheat you and it gives them a thrill like shoplifting, I guess.

Experts

These guys are good.

Everyone has some game or something that they do all the time. Some hobby or maybe a neat trick. A friend and I just started playing a game called Scum with new people that are just pros, experts, or enthusiasts. I’ve played a couple thousand hours on Scum myself, but I take long breaks from games here and there. Coming back and relearning is fun. Normally, I only play with a small group of the same friends. I always try to include more people, but not everyone likes everyone. People complain about people a lot. I don’t think I complain about anyone I play with, except for maybe one guy, but that dude convinced me to try some SWAT team game called “Ready or not” only to kill hostages we were supposed to rescue. He wasn’t even trying to play and just kept talking about how high he was getting. I’m trying to enjoy the new game, he convinced me to try, and he keeps resetting the level and making the rest of the party leave. Fucking dumb. I was trying to get into that game too. Seemed visually great, there were some cool looking strip club levels we didn’t even get to try. I was so annoyed, I uninstalled.

Scum though, is hard. A tough game to get into. People like to play solo, understandably, anyone on your team can easily rob you of everything you have. Which is fun. My friend and I got recruited to a group of hardcore Scum players on an official server. We decided, “…why not?” We’ve done everything we could do securing an entire island to ourselves. We planted as many minefields we could until we felt cozy. Visitors to our island died and we’d get all their stuff. Then people stopped visiting, we were doing too well.

The guys we joined raid everyone’s base on the server, but not ours, we were way too inconvenient. No one wants to get blown up on someone else’s island. The survival game is all survival and logistics. To raid our setup would take some skilled people with mine detectors, a few sail boats to float boxes out, a few hundred lock picks, a couple dozen protective gloves… just everything, but mostly time.

Their base is a maze using every silly tip and trick that stops cheaters and negates exploits. It sucks to have to learn to play against cheaters, but for the longest time I’m pretty sure there weren’t any admins watching or doing anything about people spoiling the game and generally ruining other’s time. They rob everyone and have everything, they’ll sell vehicles to other players all day, just to steal them all back later. Fun stuff. They can pick locks and defuse bombs so quickly and accurately that I’m always impressed. A few of the have been banned, accused of cheating, they had to clear their names with their own recorded videos of their actions. Got me recording too, I don’t want to get banned I’m having fun.

Lately, I decided that the game didn’t have enough bosses or mid bosses. I like just riding around on motorcycles while all armored up with just a handgun. I’m trying to make my character level up their motorcycle skill, but I also want to shoot other players while my character is drunk or on shrooms. Just being a wandering monster, the game only has a few different zombies and a couple different robots, I’m helping out. If an other player can manage to kill me they can have everything, I really don’t care about the loot. I remember when I just started playing, if I would have killed a guy, got a bunch of nice loot, and got a motorcycle that would have made my day. I don’t know how much the guys I’m playing with would care about me playing this way, so I’m keeping that part quiet. Hey though, a wandering monster has got to drop loot, right?

Some games are some people’s 200 year old bonsai tree. They just focus on their hobby, one guy also is an administrator on an unofficial server. He records players cheating and submits the videos to get their accounts banned. That seems so fun, If I were an admin, I’d probably watch what people were doing all day too. I even got to help him catch a suspected cheater, I made a character, he instantly moved my character to a hidden spot somewhat nearby the cheater only to see the cheater’s character’s head face directly at me right after. I ran around and he said the cheater was just locked on to me through walls and cover just always looking right at me. He spawned a dozen exploding zombies on him to let him know he was banned. I’m sure he’s got the video saved. I want to watch all these fun admin videos.

People take games very serious. It takes time, skill, and teamwork to do and see everything there is to see. Just like most MMOs, however, this is way more punishing like a roguelike game. It’s fun and exciting, but explaining it to people makes me feel like an idiot. I did get chuckle out of my dad though, I showed him some video clip where a cool youtube streamer and his friends failed to kill me. I swear I wasn’t stream sniping, I was just out being a wandering monster on his server and it was all self defense when I unknowingly got ambushed three to one. They three stooged it up, one guy sniped me in the back too early as his friend was just getting close enough to shoot. I always try to get a bulletproof vest ASAP, so I quickly spun around emptied an entire 9mm clip-azine into the first thing on two feet that I saw.

Fun stuff really exciting. If there wasn’t the risk of losing it all, there wouldn’t feel like there was any real stakes. How do you sell that kind of excitement to people? The absolute rush. How do you explain it? How can you appreciate it? Well, if I had no eyes, I probably wouldn’t appreciate paintings. If I were deaf, I’d probably only like songs with a lot of bass. People that don’t play chess do not really appreciate it. I had art classes in college, but I’m not an artist. These games are painstaking works that take a degree of skill to appreciate, but not everyone has the time to develop the skills. The subtle differences between like games in the genre will be lost on most people. To play with people that talk about similar games like Rust, ARK, DayZ, or Conan Exiles is always fun. Play covers of other people’s music and change it up in a way that isn’t noticeable unless you really know the song or really know music, that kind of feeling.