Is It Halloween Today? {Week 44}

Boom, it's the week of Halloween! Hope you are all sufficiently spooked. Who wouldn't be? The world is in total chaos, there are right-wingers everywhere, and AI keeps oozing into everyday life more and more not matter how many times you step on it like a relentless roach. Oh, ghosts are nothing. I'd welcome a poltergeist right now. Or a zombie. 

On Monday I tried to get Oblivion on the 360 for my sister but no matter what I did it wouldn't launch... apparently it's notorious for some kind of issue without the Title Updates (which I cannot apply!). This is annoying. Surprisingly New Vegas runs fine. 

All of Tuesday we were helping Minnou and Jean Louis pack away some stuff for their move. There was a lot. Papers, stationery, documents, DVDs, VHS tapes, furniture, etc. He got rid of a lot of stuff. Guess when you get to that age it all starts to seem pretty trivial. We got a lot done and worked up a bit of a sweat doing it too.  

Worst day ever on Wednesday. See, I attempted to make a joke... in French. At a restaurant. With other French people there. In France. It was very innocuous, something about over-cooked steak because my sister eats her steak not well-done but well-turned into leather. Anyway, not only did no one give a light-hearted chuckle I was also loudly corrected with much disdain... there's probably two things that kind of annoy me about many French people and it's this understanding that the French language is borderline incomprehensible but also total disgust if you get something wrong. And spatial awareness. French people do not know how to get on and off busses/trains, how close to queue to someone in the supermarket, and not to stand in the middle of a busy passageway. 

At least the view was nice?

Emo teenager forced to go outside. 10 dead.

I am obviously taking this too seriously but I am incredibly insecure about my French so I did not make eye contact with anyone all of lunch, nevermind verbal contact. We communicated in discreet bodily gestures. I wish it would just click for me and that my oral French would just finally get good but I don't know why I just can't do it. I feel like a total ingrate. Even though it's so stupid... I am fluent in 2 languages (one of which is very hard) and I'm conversational in Mandarin. Well, maybe not much anymore because I'm so out of practice.

On Thursday we started Twin Peak. It's one of my favourite shows but Mo and Marta haven't seen it. So far everyone loves Agent Dale Cooper, it's hard not to. Also the house has been in Halloween stand-by for nearly two weeks now.

Spoooooky!

Friday was the 10th anniversary of Titanfall 2! I played a bit of multiplayer, chatted with some other pilots, it was nice. I heard Northstar had some gamemodes going on but I was a bit too busy to install it so I did not partake.

On Saturday I finally uploaded my blog onto my site. It was all done manually, page by page. Which might sound psychotic to actually programmers but the reason I decided to stick to pure HTML/CSS is longevity. I visit a lot of old sites via the Internet Archive and so often half the content is broken or missing because of script issues. Plus with the recent PHP vulnerabilities I think I'll rely on the security and simplicity of basic ass HTML.

Halloween supplies.

Saturday was also Halloween! We got a bunch of candy to hand out to kids but turns out we put to much work into it. So many people were giving kids candy without wrappers. Now, obviously less plastic is good but also... that's like safety 101, don't eat what strangers give you without wrappers. I like to think we live in a safe town but there's opportunistic freaks everywhere. Also some kids were crazy. Before I could get to the door they straight up would just try the door and walk into our entry room... like what?! Maybe it's because our front looks a bit like a shop so they think it's a shop and just waltz right in? But also where are the parents?! Bizarre...

Tom came over at about two, not in costume, unless the costume is gay Solid Snake in which case he's always in costume. We fucked around in COD and when Mo, Marta, and Yolanta when to the town event we started the Resident Evil 5 campaign on Veteran. Because Tom hates me. I usually go to see the town events but was okay sitting it out this year. By the way, I was Shaun from Shaun of the Dead this year. Yes, yes, I know, very lazy! But a costume is a costume. My sister did everyone's make-up. Professionally!

Bunch of nerds.

You've got red on you!

The... the undead!

I made pizza, this time for real, but the dough was not soft at all for some reason. It still came out pizza-flavoured so I guess as was fine. Tom was my co-chef. And by co-chef I mean he stood around holding things and giving out much advice. Often unsolicited.

When Cooking Mama has enough of your failure...

We had a dinner and Marta and Yolanta played some web version of FNAF which was nasty. I hate those robo-freaks.

Diva fell down.

Afterwards we watched the Faculty. Turns out Tom is an Elijah Wood hater. Crazy. I love this fucking movie even if it's kind of a piece of shit... just let Stokely be a lesbian! It's literally Clea DuVall...!

A picture tells a million words...

Happy Halloween!

Tom left pretty late and we walked him home. It was outright cold that night. I had a jacket and everything. 

Uneventful Sunday, I played some Dragon Age before bed. I need to actually stop myself once I finish Origins and NOT play DA2 or I will literally never get anything done ever again. Behind on so many things. And I feel unsettled. All the time.

This Week I'm Excited For...

We got a short work stint with the kiwis next week. That will be good but again, nothing long-term. I'm getting really hopeless. Like, do they really run your CV through a bot and that's it? I hate everything...

Song Of The Week... 

In celebration of Titanfall 2 reaching the age of 10, please enjoy Rifleman Cooper by Stephen Barton. He actually also did some of the music on Motorcity! How sick is that? Anyway, everything about this game is perfect to me, including the music. Masterpiece.

{November 2026 Start}

It's already November. I'm scared. This is gonna be a tough month, I'm going to try my best to get as much work done on the comic as I can before the end of the year. Usually I'd be doing Nanowrimo this time of year but ever since the downfall of that entire thing I don't really know of any other fun writing events like that. I'd love to get back into that.

To-Do... 

1. IN ORBIT CONT.

2. KIWI WORK

3. IRONSWORN CAMPAIGN

4. FINISH DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS 

5. JOB SEARCH CONT.

6. QUIZ PAGE

7. WATCH ALL MY 'UNSEEN' DVDS

8. READ, READ, READ 

{October 2026 End}

Goodbye October, you were kind of a hard month but probably still one of the best this year. It's gonna get harder from here on out too.

To-Do... 

1. IN ORBIT CONT.

2. SNAIL MAIL

3. TF2 ANNIVERSARY

4. START SW5E CAMPAIGN 

5. JOB SEARCH CONT.

6. FINISH KOTOR

7. HALLOWEEN COSTUME 

Movies

I actually didn't watch a single new movie this month, it's so embarrassing. From all the rewatches I guess my favourite was either Trick or Treat, Ginger Snaps, or The Faculty. Or Paranorman. Anyway, I need to actually watch new movies!

TV 

 

Twin Peaks I suppose! We haven't watched any other TV this month anyway but also very unlikely that anything can surpass Twin Peaks. 

Games 

 

Ah, the reason I barely read or watched anything this month: Dragon Age. Origins, to be exact. I'm actually still not done with the game, I'm about 40ish hours in and it's amazing. RIP to Bioware, who were axed this month by EA, the darkest stain on the gaming industry. I unfortunately am in love with Alistair so he was my first romance but I'm also so into Leliana. And Zevran. And Morrigan too, to be honest. Anyway, I'm gonna have to replay this and see everything that I missed.

Books

I'm gonna try and finish up the original four books from the Circle of Magic series. They are great and short. I've picked Daja's book back up so that's where I'm at.

Music

Listened to a bunch of stuff this month, mostly post-rock and DnB. But the highlight album has to be Crystal Method's Drive. It's so good and bouncy, but has one of my fave subdued melancholic electronic tracks too: Starting Line. Just pure fun.

Animation

Nada. 

Full Log: October 2026 

EA Should Go Die In A Pit {Week 43}

Hey. Weird week. I haven't been paying attention and saw like two days after, sometime in the middle of the week, that EA shutdown Bioware. What the fuck. This was such a stupid time to finally get into Bioware. Like walking into a building burning down: "where's the party at?". No surprises though, EA is a piece of shit. They killed Bioware with Anthem, a game about exosuit-wearing cool guys flying around with guns... sounds vaguely familiar. Almost like there's another EA subsidiary that developed a beautiful sci-fi game about advanced humans in some very cool gear which are also piloting some mechs... anyway! What a stupid move to make a studio that writes amazing stories do a drab action-"RPG" live service open-world (yawn...). I remember when it was revealed at like, Summer Game fest of whenever the fuck I was thinking only one thing: can we have fucking Titanfall 3 instead? I'm guessing Respawn is gonna get axed at some point too. The Jedi series has been amazing and what people actually wanted but Apex is a fucking drain on the Titanfall universe. And apparently all the OGs left to form Gravity Well anyway.

All of that to say I picked a weird time to really get into Dragon Age. I've always liked KOTOR but Mass Effect kind of soured me on Bioware. Not that it's a bad series or anything, it just didn't click with me as much. Dragon Age rocks though. And I'm sure that when a millennia has passed and everyone starts missing human writing all these scumbags that don't understand what pronouns are will be like, man, Veilguard was actually so underrated... I don't think Veilguard is an amazing game but it got shit on for completely the wrong reasons. 

So, Monday. Nothing much. In the evening we watched Ginger Snaps because Mo and Marta haven't seen it. And it's a teen girl classic. 

On Tuesday I made a test-pizza that was actually a regular pizza. I'm planning to make pizzas for Halloween and I haven't made one in ages. It turned out pretty good but I should have definitely not been lazy and kneaded longer. That's where the trick is!

On Wednesday we played some more Deadlock with Mo, Rost, and Tom. I am genuinely so old I have no idea what's happening at all in this fucking game. I also don't like 3rd person shooters... The art style and characters are awesome though.

Thursday and Friday, I've been working on backing up all the posts from this blog on my site. I'm probably going to move over to blogging on my site only at the end of the year. I don't have any plans to delete this blog but honestly fuck Google. I'm sick of it to no end. 

Nothing going on this weekend. I've actually been in a huge creative slump. Sort of. I've doodled some of the characters for my Ironsworn campaign which was going well but what I really want to work on is my comic but somehow the groove is fucked! The most important feature of a comic is actually making sure it's done which I am not even a little close...

No pictures at all this week. Sad. But it's because nothing's going on. And I'm sad.

This Week I'm Excited For...

Halloween and the 10th anniversary of Titanfall 2 that's coming at the end of next week. Much to be excited about actually!

Song Of The Week... 

I listened to a lot of God Is An Astronaut this week, I usually in autumn and winter. I actually didn't give their most recent album much time in the past two years that it's been out. Not because it's bad, it's actually very good and has some incredibly cool musical motifs that you don't see in post-rock often (the zither, sitar, and a tanpura!). All the songs are really great, and long, and I have a bunch of favourites but I'm going to pick Apparition for this week. 

It Has To Be A Pretty Dress! {Week 42}

Very unexpected stuff this week. Mostly a visitor who dropped in without warning. I don't know if this is my anti-social streak but one of my biggest pet-peeves is people showing up without warning. Even a message an hour or two ahead would have sufficed. I don't know... depends, I guess, because if we're deep in a friendship this rule no longer exists. Like, if Tom wants to show up whenever he totally can. But many other people... I guess I just appreciate a heads-up but maybe I'm being too picky. And also I lost many, many hours gaming this week. It's bad news for someone who already barely gets anything done.

On his throne.

On Monday I did a very serious room cleaning. I know I say I do that every week or two (as all people do, I would guess) but this one was serious. Things went into boxes and the like. Otherwise I did some more painterly art on the tablet to get a better grasp of it's unique features. Here's some simple thumbs I did for my SW5E PCs though, Jedi Master Kiyan Tansi and Jedi Padawan Maro Hari.

Kiyan.

Maro.

I made a grave mistake on Tuesday. So, last post I mentioned getting myself Dragon Age Origins on the 360 so that I'd have a Bioware game to play by myself when Mo didn't want to play KOTOR together. And he's played it before and he told me: wait, wait, wait... it's a very good game. I was, like, well, duh. Okay... but he insisted: it's a very, very, very good game. Whatever, man!

I need help...

I'm sorry to say it is indeed a very good game...I have lost hours... nay, days! In the short time I managed to do all the quests in Lothering and the Brecilian Forest I have become completely trapped within the world of Dragon Age... I sat down Tuesday evening for a short stint and before I knew it it was 4AM. My day, my sleep schedule, my life is ruined!

 I guess this is my life now!

And don't get me started on the characters... I was going in 100% sure to be romancing Leliana. And I like her a lot. But unfortunately you meet Alistair first and he said funny things to me and it was over! Fucking Bioware does it again... they imbue polygons with incredibly moving personalities. Apparently there is a way to meta-game the fuck out of everything where you technically end up with both of them as your partners/lovers but I couldn't do the whole breaking up/reconciling to either of them. Especially Alistair, he wouldn't understand. Look at how stupid he is! 

Don't mind the cursed gaming setup.

Earlier in the week my sister and her friend also went absolutely nuts with the Halloween decorations. She said she didn't want to do much and we ended up looking like Hot Topic. Nothing of note on Wednesday otherwise.

I bet you're terrified right now.

By the way, I've not mentioned this much on the blog but many may already know of the ongoing protests in France led by students. Obviously, I support completely (yeah, I don't give a fuck if they break windows or burn trash cans after how cops and their own faculty and the education boards treat them). My sister is in high school and has taken parts in walk-outs and honestly I should be participating as well and want to but there's issues... I'm not a French citizen, so participating is extra risky and also aid to talking points that conservatives are spreading that these protests are led by non-French people (total bullshit). I'm not gonna act like I'm doing the right thing, I am being kind of a pussy, but also I'm not just another European in France. I have an asylum seeker status and I do not want to lose it. The current centrist government is incredibly lax on upholding the law and human rights so I don't trust them to do right by anyone, especially non-French people. But if there's something I would say is that you should not fall for the smears the mainstream media is spreading about the students: they are highly organized and their demands are clear and incredibly reasonable.

I had a weird situation on Neocties on Thursday. A website that generates an exuberant amount of AI stuff followed me and was also apparently discussing me on their feed or something. Now, the recommended and my usual go to is block and move on. So I totally understand that I did not follow my own advice by doing the following but it just felt so, so egregious to me. Not only is it just AI slop but it was also NSFW and pornographic. I'm no puritan but AI porn is literally evil. It's the shit that makes CSAM and deepfake porn of real people, mostly women. AI generation is always so misogynistic in it's implementation, it really grosses me out. So instead of a block and ignore I left them a somewhat aggressive message to unfollow me. They whined on their feed that what they make is not slop which is total bullshit and delusion and that's where it ended. Not only is it slop, it's also not 'made' by anything: it's a recycling of existing works without permission. An offensively mediocre collage void of human thought, originality, or creativity. I'm not proud that I engaged with this, I really should have blocked and moved on, but it made me mad. 

My mum and some family friends left on a small two-day vacation so it was just the kids at home! Ah, yes, the 27 and 24 year old kids... Sometimes I think I should have more shame than I do but I can't juggle irrational fear, stress, and obsession with all that too.

On Friday a friend we haven't seen in a while visited. She stayed over for the night and told me of her woes. She recently broke up (sort of?) with a guy who's kind of a stalker and majorly controlling, like he won't let her talk to her friends kind of stuff. So I obviously said: dump his ass, never talk to him again. And she said 'yeah' but kind of halfheartedly. Straight girls... what are you doing? The options cannot be that thin. You are better than this.

On Saturday we dropped by the local recyclerie and I found three super cute tops. More on that you know where... before we left I already started up Dragon Age so after a super fast there-and-back from the recyclerie I somehow spent basically another 7+ hours submerged. This is becoming a problem... I did finally romance Alistair and the romance scene was painfully awkward and demented, just perfect! Our pixel touched...! My feet kicking, me giggling! ...I'm 27, by the way. 

Cat spheres.

On Sunday I sent out some more work applications. Also some kind of bizarre issue with France Travail that I need to solve. Did take some time for some important site stuff that I will likely reveal in the near future. Stay tuned.

This Week I'm Excited For...

Shamefully, to play way, way more Dragon Age Origins. And then I'm going to have to somehow physically restrain myself from playing Awakening or DA2 or Inquisition. I will have to put a stop to this!

Song Of The Week... 

Crystal Method's Starting Line is probably my favourite of their songs but High Roller is a close second. Much grimier and dirtier, it's got a crunch. Very cool song and album!