Now:

A page that updates periodically about what I'm up to and into right now. You are viewing the version of this page from April 29, 2025. When it's gone, it's gone.

Making

I have gotten a couple of things out the door in the last few weeks: an illustration I honestly really like, and a bumper sticker that I just sent up for preorder today. The sticker is gonna have to be a main focus for me because I got a quote from my printer and I will basically lose money if I sell less than 20 of them.

It's also Famicase season, which is always a fun couple of days. Genuinely I think it is really cool to make a little tiny artwork and get it displayed in Japan along with a bunch of other ones from around the world. One of these years when I have a real job I will fly over there and see it.

Doing

A lot of work, mostly. Did my taxes (filed, not paid, not sure when I'm gonna pay 'em) and I have not yet had a month where I can't cough up the bills (I'm just not allowed to spend more than $30 this week). But I'm afloat, as far as it counts, and finding time to make stuff for myself too. The weather's nice enough to go out and shoot photos again, which I keep meaning to set aside a whole day for and then doing chores instead. But it'll happen soon.

I spent Easter weekend in Richmond, which is a top-three American city for me easy. It's just so nice to walk around and hang out, even if it's swampy in the summer. Spent a lot of time talking to my sister about our common traumas, which got me thinking a little. I think the difference between her and I is that she was aware the whole time that our childhood was weird and stressful and made permanent marks on us, whereas I—a dumb guy—am only beginning to realize that now. Which isn't to frame our parents as bad people; they did their best and I love 'em. But you know how it is.

Also I got to see a buddy from Winston who just happened to be in town, which was cool. We all (me, buddy, my sister and her boyfriend, and my parents) got dinner at a place in the Fan and then a couple days later he sent me an Instagram post that said like when you meet bro's parents but the gummy got you nonverbal.

I did get to Virginia and back via Greyhound, which I always find myself doing for some reason. Nothing about it is good and it's not even cheap anymore—if I had the foresight to look up when is easter 2025 in February I could have hopped on a Spirit flight for about what I spent. But instead I didn't think about it at all until five days out, so I paid the Dunce's Penalty in the form of spending nine hours on the road and three hours walking around DC.

People will just talk to you on a Greyhound, at a level I have never experienced on a train or plane. I think it's because the experience sucks and saying This sucks, huh? is a great way to break the ice with a stranger in the same boat (bus) as yourself. One guy in the morning was headed to Harrisburg from Grand Rapids, Michigan and showed me his back tattoo of a huge sword. Nice dude.

I have been going out more now that winter is off, which is nice. Lauren took me to the theatrical re-release of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005), which I can't say is my kind of movie but I enjoyed fine. Someone else's boyfriend next to me was playing Clash Royale for the first hour and then just straight-up left, so relatively speaking I crushed it.

Thinking

Recently I keep thinking about how capitalism is trying to subvert the way humans evolved to be social, tribal animals. It finally clicked for me a couple weeks ago that the actual point of cramming AI automation into your emails and texts and DMs—the thing so enticing to the moneymen that they don't care if the technology is mature—is the idea of a world where no two human beings ever talk to each other, or at least never exchange an original expression not mediated and edited by machines.

Ted Chiang's assertion that the purpose of AI is to reduce the amount of intention in the world has really stuck with me, but I think the point is also to just dissolve the mesh of society. A huge portion of real-life conversations already open with Do you ever get served this guy's videos, and the technopoly already has control over which self-injuring freaks get seen on whose phones. Imagine having control over all information exchanged between any two people, because you hold the keys to the language model composing all their messages.

Plus, and I hate to wax current, I am seeing so much stuff about ChatGPT basically being rigged to tell someone in need of urgent mental help that they're actually in the right and it's good to flush all your meds and cut off your family, and that the morgellons growing out of your scalp from the 5G are definitely real. So that seems like a problem, at least for humans. It's great if your mission is to eliminate any sense of solidarity or trust between people.

Reading

I made it almost all the way through The Dinosaur Artist, which I picked up because it had a blurb from David Grann on the front. It was good and I enjoyed its extensive profiles of various weird fossil-collector guys, but I forgot to take it on the road with me and my momentum kind of died off. Instead I started Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear, because there are only a handful of Greg Bear books left I haven't read. It's good! I thought I had called how the A and B plots were going to collide before it happened and now I think I was wrong.

Listening

Not much new stuff, but Lauren bought a little MP3 player and she's been hauling home stacks of CDs to rip. I picked up a few at the library and found this really cool early-90s record that kind of sounds like if there was an Enya licensed puzzle-platformer for the PlayStation. So I've been spinning that a lot, in addition to being back on my city-pop shit now that it's 80 degrees out.