Metal Mondays

What a week, ammirite?

I have freshly returned from San Diego, where I enjoyed the sun, the zoo and the navy boys in my grindr feed.

YT Obsessions

DR. RIP VHS is a channel that deserves more love and followers. The channel posts VHS tapes ranging from cringe- worthy celebrity workout videos to home videos found in yard sales. The latter always yields some melancholic voyeurism, like looking through an estate sale and finding family picture albums.

One particularly creepy found-footage tape appears to be a FBI evidence tape that was found in a goodwill bin.

They post regularly and always worth checking out.

Reading?

Turns out losing my phone for a week (read more below) has really helped me up my reading quota. Waiting for a return email at work? Read. Going to the bathroom? Bring a book. Long bus ride? Kill a chapter or two. It’s actually shocking to remember that before 2014 I read everywhere. The ease of consuming youtube or podcasts have really changed how I interact with media, especially outside of my home.

ANYWAY! I finished reading The Big Break by Ben Terris. Y’all, this book is so cunty. And I mean that in the best Truman Capote expose kind of way. Ben tells the stories of several “Washington Types” and their weird culture of money, ego and power. A great read and I highly recommend.

Watching?

Chip and Ironicus Let’s Play Kingdom Hearts. I will eventually end up writing more about Chip and Ironicus (and Let’s Plays in general) sometime soon as they are absolute the best in the genre and this series tackles one of the weirdest collaborations to come out of the 2000’s.

GAMZ

I’ve been playing through Dead Island 2. It’s wild to think that when Dead Island came out in 2011; I was was still drinking. I hazily “remember” playing Dead Island and enjoying it.

If you don’t know, Dead Island’s creators had a split in ideologies so they made their own sequels: Dying Light (one of my favorite games of all time.), which focuses on movement and the large discoverable open world, already has a sequel out.

Dead Island 2 centers on a more guided experience with lighter RPG elements than its counterpart. The semi-open levels are filled to the brim with cool set pieces and environmental hazards/kill zones. However, the skill drip feed is really dragging the pace. I definitely feel like I’m playing someone else’s weak character and that’s not fun. I’m willing to stick it out because of the unique locations and gory zombie kills but I would recommend y’all wait for a sale to pick this one up.

Anything Else?

On Saturday July 15th I lost my phone and my debit card got stolen. It is amazing how little I can do without either of those things. Otherwise its been an absolute joy not having a phone.

I’ve been off social media -other than twitter- for years now and not having a phone was really just not having twitter. It’s rad!

It’s also put in perspective how many folks I talk to regularly that actually care about me. People have been reaching out to my family and close friends to check in on me. It’s wild how I can put myself on an island (a Dead Island perhaps?) sometimes, feeling like I don’t affect people. But that is just not true. I have a wonderful and genuine friend group and I don’t think social media has any part of that.