2025: I AM 30 OR 40 YEARS OLD
December 27th, 2025
Nearly six months have passed since I last did anything with this website, so I thought I should make some kind of blog update. Here’s what I’ve been up to. I probably missed some stuff, but this is a lot:
■ BIKE: I got a new (old) bike, a 2008 Raleigh Sport in great shape (a few harsh scrapes and scratches here and there). It’s a bit lighter and a better fit than my old bike, works like a dream, has all my crazy lights and stuff on it, yellow, fast, cost me a blessedly low two-digit number. I will someday want to get a bike that really fits me right, when I have the budget, but for now, I’m in love with this thing.
■ SWORDS: I went out and tried a boffer sports thing some months back, namely Belegarth, and had a great time. Really wanted to go again but kept having to work Sundays. It was interesting coming into it with some fencing background but also being way way out of practice, so I felt a little more open-minded than I would have back in the fencing days. Shields change everything. Foam changes the way the weapons [don’t] glide along each other, making most engagement and transport type things not work the same, but maybe still in some form? Everything is faster and more brute-force. I got near-collapse exhausted very quickly in a one-on-one spar with someone. I am 30 or 40 years old.
I’ve also been fencing my friend and my partner with some foam and fiberglass-core sabres I made. Similar considerations vis-a-vis the non-metal surface. My friend Joshua invented an interesting combo of two different techniques, on the spot, on the night I taught him them, which was very exciting. I was going to describe it here, but you know what, no, we’re keeping it secret.
■ COMPUTER: I switched to linux. I’m using Ubuntu and only sort of know what I’m doing and loving it. I do have a VM Windows 10 installation set up for a handful of softwares which will go unnamed.
My partner and I are playing Pentiment and loving it, taking way too long with it.
I am going to (I will) make a zine using pirated softwares I’ve recently unearthed from an external hard drive.
Slowly working on re-gearing my online veney presence toward a new platform, working on a video, working on loosening things up.
■ TRASH: At some point, not sure when tbh, I started a modestly successful little group on a certain proprietary queer app-thing [which I’m highly skeptical of for its anodyne, trendy-gentrified, monetized identity anxieties market-workshopped and consumed as as ersatz affirmation] ...thing where we share alley-junk/curb finds in the local area. It’s fun to happen across something weird or just plain good quality and have it posted with an address and coordinates within a few minutes. No idea if anyone has actually gone out and picked up anything I’ve posted, but it’s still fun. I find a lot of good stuff on my bike rides to errands and contract jobs.
■ CHESS: I played in a little fundraiser chess tournament last month. Been going to a chess group ~twice a month this past year since the summer. It’s a good time, but it’s at bars, and I’m not very good at being in bars. I’ve also played some games online that I was very happy with recently, but they’re mostly gone into the mists of time, and what can you really say about them anyway, at my level, I dunno. Chess is chess.
■ LOCAL NEWS: Glared at some fascists live and in-person and rode my bike around furiously while checking my phone.
■ FOOD: Ate a lot of seitan. Ate a lot of trout in jars, for reasons I won’t explain. Like ten or eleven jars over the course of a month and a half, home alone, eating trout. We also boiled huge amounts of stock from bones gathered from family and friends meals. Did not get to eat any paw-paws this year.
■ PEOPLE: I met a baby. I saw my family a few times and had a pretty good time. Played board games with my brothers and cousins. Friendsgivings. Cemetery walks. Making a lot of ruins and train tracks in Minecraft with my friends. My partner and I reared and released a monarch butterfly, lock-picked an heirloom tansu, went to the beach, played around.
I attended MFF 2025 and hung out with the furries, as is my annual tradition. Skipped rocks and made ice castles and ate food with a friend from afar. This year, for the first time, I attended the con in costume as PUMPKIN. I am thinking about running for president. I am thinking everyone loves Pumpkin and Pumpkin is the new me.
■ WOOD: I made another sort of chess board. It’s four 4x4 boards which can be either a traditional 8x8 chess board or a veney board. More on that later, once I actually sand and finish it.
■ BOOKS: I’ve been reading bits of The Fool and His Scepter, a 1969 study of fools and clowns and stuff by the Jungian psychotherapist William Willeford. It’s got some reach-y areas in that very mid-century psychotherapy way but is truly rich with extremely good shit. Unfortunately, I took too long getting started with it, and I’ll have to return it to the library this weekend. Available in the form of a regrettably underexposed scan here, on archive.org.
The Count of Monte Cristo ― Started reading this as creative research for a game idea. It’s massive and not great. Wondering how to approach it, because I do want to get something out of it.
The Legend of Kamui, Vol. I, which I discussed in a Swords Broken blog post. I just started reading the recently collected and published for the first time English translation of Volume II, the existence of which, as a story at all, is somewhat confounding and amusing and thought-provoking for spoiler reasons I won’t get into here. Might do another swords post about it.
The Invention of Morel (i.e. Morel’s Invention, i.m.o., is the better translation) ― A short science fiction novel(?) by Adolfo Bioy Casares, an associate and collaborator of Borges. I enjoyed reading this and sitting with it after finishing. It starts with heaps of atmosphere, giving Myst a bit, then the narrator is fairly despicable and miserable, and things get weird and dragging and loathesome and then it’s over like “huh.” Hm. You can read it perhaps as page scans of a book on archive.org or in text form on this dubious website.
V for Vendetta ― I’d never actually read this one before, despite the very lackluster 2005 film being somewhat formative for me as a freak ninja test subject teen of the War on Terror era. It’s good! I like it. I am not uncritical, but, y’know. I like him. I also listened to the Shelved By Genre discussion on the story, which was very helpful. [Part 1] [Part 2]
■ ME TIME: I’ve got three or four ideas for games I’m trying to work on and three or four things I’m trying to write. I’m a mess, frankly, in that department, and desperately need to find focus again.
■ W*RK: I designed a book for a library anniversary. It wasn’t technically published, but it was an interesting experience. I’m slowly making my way back to working as a graphic designer on my own terms. I’m still doing random tasks and handyman type labors for various rich ladies every once in a while. I’m working at a grocery store as a human widget in an app service. Money. Rent. Food. Augmentation of the body, struggling to live in this world. Redacted redacted redacted.
■ BAD: I experienced an extremely strange and unpleasant fungal sinus infection(?) after eating clearance bread from a grocery chain bakery, an experience which made all tastes and smells horrible for two days. I continue to try and engage as a person with the increasingly terrifying, enraging, disgusting, shameful, ridiculous, sad, overwhelming world that we live in, and to try to form a spiritual posture within it that brings me peace and hopefully does something to plant a bit it elsewhere for others. Things could be worse, for me. I have people I love.
■ ???: I find myself missing the summer, not for the weather but right at the start of June when things are getting a bit chaotic outside, people saying insane stuff to me on the street for no reason, fighting each other, crashing my bike, having nightmares, having coffee thoughts in voice notes to friends and laughing or crying, not sure which, holding my tongue, failing to hold my tongue, giving someone paper money or bread and apologizing stupidly, the nighthawks that swoop around our house, some new pestilence introducing itself into my life, some little things just trying to live, some new insanity, some new realization that I’ll forget later.