Random rhetorical question: why does Microsoft Outlook 365 bother to save a draft, if you click “New Mail” but then close it without entering anything in any of the fields?
One more song left to record for the next album, which finally has a name. (It’s not a catchy name but it does have a certain lame sense of humor, I guess.)
On the weekend we had an Easter lunch with my parents, and also stayed for dinner. Monday was my dad’s birthday, and we took him to Creve Coeur Lake for a picnic. The weather was great, there were rowing teams practicing in the lake and this waterfall nearby, so my dad took a ton of photos.
(Kids kept climbing this thing, and their parents kept letting them despite the warning signs. Those rocks are wet and slippery, and the total height is maybe 25-30 feet. At one point a park ranger came over and told a little girl to (carefully) get back down, then chewed out her dad.)
This Sunday is Worldfest, which includes a performance by St Louis Osuwa Taiko, so we might go to that. I had to do a little internet sleuthing to find more up-to-date information about the event, and the schedule is a 404 anyway.
I don’t mean to keep obsessing over shaving products, but… I had been ready to order a couple of Southern Witchcrafts varieties but they were “on vacation” for a few days. As of last night this changed to “we have closed our business.” Supposedly their remaining stock was available at Maggard’s Razors, but that stock was already pretty well wiped out. I managed to get a bottle of Druantia aftershave at least, along with a couple of things from other brands to try out.
If I’m willing to branch out of vegan shave soaps there are a lot of intriguing scent options I’m missing. I haven’t been vegetarian since the mid-90s, but the idea of beef tallow on my face is unappealing somehow. I guess I’ll see what I think of these other soaps.
I’m still not sure about that GFT Coral Skin Food. The rose-based scent is inoffensive if I use a TINY amount, but at that point I’m uncertain it’s enough to do anything useful. It contains menthol, which on my skin feels hot, not cool and soothing — this apparently is rare but not unheard of — and I also feel sometimes like it’s drying out my face rather than moisturizing. While my face is happy the next morning, that is likely due to the other things I’m using — so I’m going to skip this stuff for a while and see what I think.
In Guild Wars 2, I’ve been key farming — that is, starting a new character every week, running the level 10 personal story and a couple of zones. A little bit more in a few cases. This gives me random chances at some rare loot, eventual unlocking of the crossbow pistol I was wanting, and (thanks to Weaponmaster Training and bloodbound weapons) a kind of fun way to try lots of different play styles while also completing some daily/weekly tasks for the Wizard’s Vault stuff. It’s been a fun alternative to sticking with one or two main characters.
Also, a big update for Soulstone Survivors just dropped. A fun new game mode and a new class, with all the attendant extra skills and runes, as well as some graphics and UI tweaks. They are aiming for, finally, an official 1.0 release this summer. So much has changed in the game since I originally picked it up; it’s recognizable but much shinier, faster, and with a lot more going on than it used to have. Honestly at this point it might be a little overwhelming to a new character.
I feel like this is the way games are now — if you get in at first release or even early access, they are generally comprehensible. Over time, so much more stuff gets added that it’s information overload. Trying to enter a well-established MMO, in particular, is often confusing as hell. There’s six million things vying for your attention — many of them advertisments for add-on content of some kind or special events — and you don’t have the context to sort out the small amount of important stuff from the massive amount of things you might (or might not) care about later. It’s rare to just be shown basic gameplay. There’s some attempt at tutorial-like content, but it’s almost always inadequate (and often tedious, especially for seasoned players, and frequently irrelevant).
It’s like deciding in 2025 that you want to read X-Men comics — even the guides advising you where to start are going to present you with a bewildering list of choices.
The protagonist of I Wish You All The Best is a nonbinary high school senior, who comes out to their parents and gets kicked out. The rest of the story is them dealing with their trauma and falling in love with a guy who is (very obviously to the reader) queer but nobody in the story seems to fully realize it for quite some time. Aside from the parents, the book is almost too innocent and pure and warm-hearted. (It’s a small-town high school and nobody is homophobic? Riiiight.) But I still kind of enjoyed it.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is the opposite of that. It’s not YA, is quite explicit, and sometimes pretty gross. The protagonist is an omnisexual (and always horny, always looking for some new experience) sort-of-shapeshifter. He ends up going to the (infamously TERFy) Michigan Womyn’s Festival in 1993 as a lesbian, falls in love with a girl, and realizes there’s some stuff about his gender. At least so far, he has stuck with masculine pronouns and done a surprisingly little amount of on-page reflection on this. He’s also shown a shocking lack of curiosity about the origin and limitations of his shapeshifting ability, and not that much in a stranger he encountered who also seems to share that gift — which combined with the myth?/backstory? of a twin sister, is particularly intriguing — and less interest in his girlfriend’s uncanny communication with animals than it deserves.
Obviously, shapeshifting has clear significance for trans, nonbinary, and gender non-confirming folks, drag, etc. But an observation I’ve had is that Paul is almost never honestly himself, always hiding who he is and what he wants/likes in some way, in order to fit in, attract people or please people. The arc of trans/enby stories is more normally becoming more genuinely oneself and/or allowing that self to be seen.
The book was written before “nonbinary” was in usage, and set before “genderqueer” was seen outside of a couple of zines, but I still keep expecting Paul, dullard that he can be, to have a big realization. But I also want to know more about those mysteries than his sordid sex life — this is really frustrating me. Maybe it’ll get resolved, but really I don’t think this book is my style.