This is Biggles, my friend’s cat. Biggles is sixteen years old and pretty much blind.

From the moment I sat up in bed this morning, Biggles suctioned himself to me.

He is adorable.

which is definitely not an omen

Welcome to my humble tumblr, @a-matter-of-yeet - I assume you've found me through my tma relisten posts, so I hope you enjoy my The Magnus Archives tag!

i think the single greatest example of environmental storytelling in video games is in Unpacking. it's a game with no dialogue that consists entirely of unpacking your stuff out of moving boxes and placing it into the correct places around the place your character is moving into. there are a lot of subtle storytelling beats, like the same stuffed animal coming with you through every single move, but there's one level in particular that takes place right after your character graduates college and moves in with her boyfriend that goes normally at first.

but then you get to your framed diploma.

you go to hang it on the wall in the kitchen, but there's a bigass painting already there that you can't move (presumably your boyfriends) that takes up the entire wall.

you go to hang it on the wall in the living room, but there are already a bunch of posters there - again, presumably your boyfriend's. there's clearly space for your diploma if the posters were scooched closer together, but again, you can't even move them.

with a growing sense of dread and desperation, you move to the bathroom. this room has the only wall space in the apartment for you to hang your diploma: directly over the toilet.

but if you try to place it there, it gets a red outline, indicating that it's in the "wrong" spot and the level won't finish.

you go to the bedroom.

there is no wall space.

you click under the bed.

the level finishes.

the next level has you moving back into your childhood bedroom.

Day 24/61 of the busy times

... and I didn't think it would be THIS period that has me on the brink of a breakdown, but I guess maybe if I get my breakdown in now, I'll be all stable when things get serious (... wishful thinking, I know).

At any rate, neither my work situation nor my health situation have really improved. In fact, both of them at least briefly got MORE stressful. Fortunately things seem to be slowing down at work and (... TMI coming up): I did conveniently have a gynecologist check-up scheduled MONTHS ago for today that I can hopefully convert into "Please tell me something I can do about my situation because it is kinda making me want to hack off my lower half and exist as a torso right now" (I do think things have improved slightly from a few days ago when everything just felt like somebody had taken a cheese grater to my nethers. Now it's just specific areas that do, which is still rather unpleasant. And I've tried the usual remedies and they've only made things worse so now I'm all out of options aside from wait it out and hope or cross my fingers hard that this doctor will be neither dismissive nor clueless nor pissed off that I'm showing up despite now being on my extremely inconveniently timed period, which obviously makes the whole general check-up thing moot...) TMI over

Anyway, I cannot be productive in this state, nor a supportive partner (though I'm trying. I really am. I did successfully ferry my partner to another appointment and set up more future stuff for her today and I'm trying to get my work-work done but household chores are sorta not getting any attention and I got like five hours of sleep, tops, and I'm two seconds from snapping at everyone at every moment and I hate this quite a lot).

This starts out as a nice gesture, then quickly becomes absolutely ridiculous.

1,024 dice. Man.

No see results option, I'm forcing you to perceive yourself. rb for more results plus

Oozy

Today's aesthetic: cosmic horror tabletop RPGs from the 1980s whose creators wrote the "madness rules" by simply plagiarising a list of disorders and their descriptions from the DSM-II and turning it into a d100 lookup table, except the DSM-II still listed "homosexuality" as a mental disorder (it wasn't removed until the DSM-III), with the result that there are several published tabletop RPGs where there's a small but non-zero chance that seeing Cthulhu will make you gay.

I hope you feel better soon!

Hi, so... I'm in the hospital. I'm not, like, dying, but they've already kept me for a couple days.

please send cat pics?

Fun Things to do with your pet: Green Bean Test

One of my neighbors had a REALLY FAT golden retriever she adopted, that needed to be put on a diet, but even super-low-cal food wasn’t working, becuase Ella was still hungry and would open the cabinet to eat the whole bag.  Vet suggested that she needed a filler Food so she could feel full without the extra calories, and suggested canned green beans, which are mostly fiber and lean protein.

Ella fucking LOVES green beans.  She does a dance for them if you mention them.  Her ‘sibling’ the police academy washout shepherd, thinks she’s insane.

Even if your pet doesn’t like green beans*, offering them a canned green bean is inevitably HILARIOUS becuase they’ll either be thrilled or otherwise make strange faces.  Results so far:

Ella (golden retriever): Overjoyed.  gets up on her hind legs to dance without prompting.

Sampson (Black shepherd): Offended, yells until you give him REAL treats.

Cody (Gentleman shepherd): is concerned, becuase this is Obviously Not Food.  Gently takes it to be polite, leaves it out in the yard.

Minx (Domestic Shorthair cat): Smelly Toy Is Hilarious, batted under the couch.

Tiger (Really Fat Domestic Shorthair cat):  Total disgust, hissing and sulking in the Prosciutto box.  Came out and ate it later anyway.

Wanda (corn snake) we didn’t expect her to be interested but she spent like three minutes licking it.

Sadie AKA Marquis De Sade (Hyacinth Macaw)  ignored bean in favor of dumping can on the floor, sticking head in can and screaming.  Did not attempt to bite, which is Very Nice for her.

Arwen (Australian Kelpie): ate bean, waited until humans were out of the room to consume rest of the can, got costco-sized can stuck on face and pooped green for three days.  Regets nothing.

Empanada/Anderson Cooper/#3 (Plymouth Hens): Excited screaming, kickboxing tournament over possession of beans/can.  #3 was ultimately victorious, becuase She is Fattest.

Big Angus (scottish highland cow, I know, ironic): very polite and delicate acceptance of beans for appx 1700 lbs of beef, will now run full-tilt across pasture to meet me, which scared the crap out of me tbh.

Will post further updates as I am allowed to try.  

*Please always cionsult a vet before making any dietary changes or offering your pet new foods, but green beans are pretty safe for most pets you can keep in America

German trailer for The Thing (1982).

Day 20/61 of the busy times

Actually so far this weekend has largely been board games, cuddle piles and good food. (Although not with the full greater queerosphere, as my sibling-in-law's partner had to postpone his visit).

Admittedly also a bit of work to get ahead of Monday and continuing health troubles, but all in all it's been pretty relaxing.

Next week, however, there'll be 3 doctor's appointments, 1 class and my lingering pile of work to get through. Dread levels are ... present.