On the Rocks

Two posts in one day, holy shit! Decided I'd also post a far shorter and less sappy update on what happened to me today.

Today wasn't too eventful, much of it was spent hanging with a local friend of mine. We met through politics earlier this year. He lives walking distance away, so I was shocked I hadn't met him sooner. Incredibly similar to me, down to us having the same first name, but with a very different political journey (even if we both ended up at the same spot). It's always really insightful getting to hear what he has to say.

We met at my place, drove around for a while, and got burritos from a local place before driving over to a nearby beach. Once there, we bravely did the Long March across the beach and onto a nearby lighthouse island. I have little to no coordination and am petrified¹ of falling so walking across an incredibly long and rocky breakwater was not exactly the most fun thing in the world but it was super cool to see the old lighthouse that was there. Felt like Skyrim, honestly. Just instead of going into the Helgen towers we kinda just stuck our heads into a slightly smelly abandoned lighthouse. Not worth doing it ever again but cool to say I've done it! After that we walked back, got ice cream, and chilled at his place for a while talking politics before I went home. 

All in all, a low-key but fun day. I hope for many more of these this summer.  

I've noticed before that when I say "I'll post more" I never do so I'll close off this burst of posting energy by saying I'll never post again and this blog will forever stand as a testament to my folly. Hopefully that reverses the jinx.

Song of the Day:  Allen Toussaint - Southern Nights

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1 I was far happier to accidentally come up with this pun than I should have been^↩

Everything Stays, But It Still Changes

Ignore the lack of posts for a year, thanks! 

TL;DR of my life since: graduated college, became even more of a communist dirtbag, threw away childish things like OZMA and the idea that your musical idols are good people, became obsessed with Rilo Kiley. Not much else. 

I started writing a diary, physically, in the time in between. I actually was far more successful in keeping things consistent there. Unfortunately, it seems as if writing it was a bad omen because nearly immediately after I started the united states invaded Iran. Now as I write this, we seem to be on the advent of an invasion of Cuba. I sincerely hope this does not happen again. Death to imperialism, as always.  

A year ago I wrote I hoped things would get better, that a trend of things continually getting worse would "reverse". That has clearly not occurred. Things are awful now. I will not say anything to jinx it like last time, but I will say I stand in solidarity with all those trying to make things better. A better world is possible: a world without imperialism, zionism, racism, transphobia/transmisogny, and all the other evils that have infected us under the diagnosis of capitalism. We just have to fight for it. 

This post is not just intended to revive this blog and talk about how everything sucks right now, however. I actually had something really cool and meaningful happen to me that I wanted to write about.

Earlier this month I got back into contact with an old friend of mine from middle school. I had not seen this person in eight years, but thought of them often and decided one day I was tired of just wondering what they were up to. I followed their Instagram, fully expecting no response, but to my surprise they immediately got back to me and sent me a message. We continued talking and eventually set up a date to hang out and catch up. That was Sunday.

I was incredibly anxious going to see them. What seemed likely was something incredibly awkward, some sort of short interaction where we briefly discussed being pre-teens before sitting in silence for an hour and going home. I've never been happier to be wrong. From the moment I got into their car it felt as if no time had passed at all. In fact, it felt even more natural to talk to them then then it ever did as a teenager. We got lunch, walked around the city (including going to a cool comic shop) and just talked about life, memories, and what we're into now. Happily enough, much of it is quite similar! It's really cool being able to talk about Fanon with someone you have vivid memories of talking about Yuri On Ice with. I am happy to report they are among the sickest people I have ever met :)

What fascinates me about all this is the fact that we are essentially strangers. We had no contact between 2018 and 2026. Outside of a meager two years, our lives were entirely separate. Yet because those two years happened to be two of the most vulnerable years in any one's life, we are forever bonded in some weird fucked up way. That's crazy to me. It's also crazy to me that they vividly remembered me. Which I suppose it shouldn't be, since I remembered them, but I somehow never even considered that possibility.  

It also just feels good. I left the 7-12 school I went to middle school at because we couldn't afford to continue going. I intentionally distanced myself from those I was friends with in the aftermath. I guess I thought that would lessen the pain from not being able to see people I thought of as friends. Clearly it didn't work, I just ended up constantly ruminating on this time of my life and what these people were up to. To be able to hang out with an old friend like this feels like giving 14 year old me a bit of closure. I wonder if my friend felt similarly, they told me every couple of years they'd wonder where I was. 

I keep thinking of Everything Stays, from Adventure Time. We talked about Adventure Time early in our meet-up, as we were walking to the coffee shop we got food at. My friend talked about how they had watched the series in full during their second year of college, and how it had deeply emotionally affected them. It's message that growing up sucks hits hard when you are actively being essentially thrown out of your youth. We are two incredibly different people now that that's occurred. They found themselves, I'm still trying to do the same. Yet despite all that, here we were. Two people laughing their asses off about fandom culture and middle school memories as if it was 2017 and the only things we needed to care about were Tumblr and when the next episode of Steven Universe was coming on. It's funny how things work out. 

I hope we continue to stay in touch, even if just through text. I don't know what the future holds but it would suck if it takes another near-decade to see them in person.

Everything stays right where you left it
Everything stays, but it still changes 

Song of (that) Day: Olivia Olson - Everything Stays

      

Do I Look 40?

Eventful day today!

Went out canvassing at a local park with some TRUCT pals. People seemed very receptive, turns out people like free things and improved public services, who knew? Hot as hell though. I wish I could have been running around in the water area like the kids there were.

When talking to one guy I mentioned my age (part of a usual spiel about how as a college kid I would like more access to public transit) and the dude said, "21? I thought you were 40!" He clarified he was joking but damn lmao, first time I've ever gotten that.

For the record I think I look like an average 21 year old. Maybe a slightly worse hairline than the mean.

I'm going back to canvassing on Thursday, and we're building our first bench Saturday. It's stuff like this that really makes me happy. I adore my city and helping actually make things better here (instead of just sitting there angry doing nothing) is good. Hope I can continue helping TRUCT out.

After getting home, I played some Ace Attorney 4 with some friends. Very fun game. We used to voice act when we first played (which was like a year ago at this point) and I didn't realize how much I missed doing shitty voice acting with friends. It really is fun as hell.

Been getting back into the Beach Boys. Or rather, Brian Wilson. Not as much the others. Just adore his voice. I need to continue my SMILE research. Thank you to Morgan for putting me onto this and pushing me to watch Brian Wilson Presents Smile. Needed that kick in the pants :)

Song of the Day: Brian Wilson - Heroes and Villains

Oops.

Oh yeah, I had a blog, didn't I?

Oops.

I realize I kinda abandoned this quickly. My fault. I think I just overthought what I was writing. When every blog post has to be some big deal it's easy to just not write. I forgot that that's not what most blogs back in the day, my inspiration for this blog in the first place, were about. They were dumb, they were daily or weekly or whatever updates on the authors life. Not every post had to be a essay on the complexities of existence.

So I intend to get back to this, and to do that I'm going to be transforming this into that sort of daily (Or almost daily, à la Itoi) blog. Sometimes it might be essays on the complexities of life but far more often it'll just be updates on what the hell I'm up to. 

Things have changed a lot since I last posted. For the worst. Very much for the worst. I hope that trend will reverse as I keep writing. At the very least this may be an interesting time capsule of a horrible time to whatever poor nerdy kid finds this 27 years from now.

For those wondering about what I've done today? Nothing. Just lazed around. But that at least gave me time to do this, so worth it I suppose. 

I promise future updates will be more interesting, lol. Everything's gotta start somewhere.

Song of the Day: The Inbreds - Any Sense of Time

Webcomics

 This blog post is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan

      One of the weird things about being on the internet for a bit is seeing entire mediums essentially die out. And for me, one of the saddest deaths is the death of webcomics! I don't intend to write this as some sort of in-depth look into how they died - I think I can make an educated guess and say it was probably just the rise of social media and the lack of interest of consumers to support webcomic merch as they did in the past. I more so just want to talk a bit about them in general. Late night webcomic thoughts™.

    My all time favorite webcomic is still to this day Brawl in the Family (which has a kickstarter currently active!) This was a webcomic themed around Smash Brothers Brawl, active from 2008-2014 (Realizing the death of BitF was over a decade ago now is something else!!!) I have no clue how I originally found it, probably the Super Mario Wiki forums? I was an active lurker of those as a young kid. Once I did find it, however, I became an obsessive reader. I have vivid memories of reading all the comics, watching all the videos, listening to the songs on repeat, etc. Some kids had Charles Schulz, I had Matthew Taranto. 

    I thought it was super funny, and honestly looking back? It was! I still think it was incredible, especially as most video game humor (and video game webcomics especially) was so hacky. It's easy to fall into stupid "lol this isn't realistic" or "lol what if Mario had a gun???" Dorkly-type humor (and I say this as a kid who watched more Dorkly than I should have). Brawl in the Family was no Calvin and Hobbes, but there was a layer of professionalism there. It was clever! There's a reason my Dededoll, which I begged my parents to buy, still sits across from me as I write this.

     I also spent way more time than I should have on the BitF forums. Also just on forums in general. I was too young to contribute so I just read lines and lines of what random adults were talking about. It's a weird feeling knowing that unlike most forums I read as a kid, such as the Mario Wiki forums or Zelda Dungeon, the BitF forums are just completely gone. Sad stuff. I tried looking for it just now to check, and any guest just sees a "you are banned" message from vBulletin. Image verification doesn't work so you can't register a new account either, I tried :(

 

    Of course Brawl in the Family wasn't the only gaming webcomic I read, just the only one I gave that much of a shit about. I read my Awkward Zombies, my VG Cats, my Brentalfloss comic (please tell me someone else remembers that????) I read a lot of them more so on other sites. I was a big Dorkly kid, as mentioned before, so I read a lot of the comics posted on the Dorkly website. (Side note: I wish more people had nostalgia for the website because honestly I spent more time there than the channel, need to talk to someone else about PWN Up!!)

     There's something so poignant about webcomics to me. There was no Comics Code for the internet, so you could make a comic about or containing practically anything. And people did! The internet was like the world's best and worst indie comic shop. In the 2000s and early 2010s there were so many different people making webcomics, from kids making sprite comics about Mario and Sonic to professional stuff like the Perry Bible Fellowship. You could make a comic centered around some serious story, gag-a-day strips with random humor, political satire, parodies, porn, and so much more. I think it says something that XKCD, arguably the biggest webcomic surviving, is mostly about science and math. You could really do anything. And there was no need for publishers!! (Unless you wanted to make a book out of your strips)

    And each of these comics had bona fide communities. Not just fandoms, communities. The intimacy of the 2000s internet combined with the popularity of message boards for basically anything meant nearly every comic had a fanbase constantly in communication with each other and the author(s). I saw this first hand with BitF. Most of those forum posts weren't about the comic, they were just about random shit. You couldn't do that with physical media, and you can't really do it now.

    It's a shame. Webcomics meant so much to me as a kid. I used to spend hours daydreaming about writing my own (Smash-centric, of course). I couldn't draw then, but I assumed I would be able to in the future. I still can't draw but even if I could it'd be pretty difficult to build the webcomic empire younger me dreamed of. The medium that gave me hours of fun, the medium that helped me go through my days as a lonely nerdy kid, the medium that made me feel like there were people like me out there, the medium that introduced me to so many different artistic ideas, is mostly dead. That makes me sad.

    Then again, blogs are dead too and yet here I am writing one. Maybe the idea of a Liam webcomic isn't too out of reach after all.

Song of the Day: The Squish - You Once Said

Hello World

10 days ago I officially turned twenty-one years old. I figured for this milestone I would finally do something I've wanted to do for years, the proper rite of passage all people go through - I would start a 2000s style blog.

Unfortunately, LiveJournal is long dead (unless I intend to learn Russian, anyway), so Blogger will have to do.

So why do I want to do this? Three reasons.

    1. This can essentially be a diary. I think preserving my day-to-day thoughts and experiences will be useful to me in the future. My memory isn't the greatest and I don't expect it to suddenly improve, something like this can be immensely helpful in that regard.

    2. I need to write more anyway, why not use a medium I have always wanted to use in order to do so?

    3. I like talking :)

I have no idea how often I'll return to this, or what the subject of most of my posts will be. I want to let that all happen naturally. Writing is best if left to occur on its own, I think. But I'm sure you can expect copious amounts of talk about 90s and 2000s power pop, vintage internet, and esoteric politics. Those do seem to be things that follow me no matter where I go.

Finally, before I close things off, thanks to my buddy Deckra for letting me steal his blog skin. True friends encourage creative theft. He runs a killer blog looking into very obscure bands which I heavily encourage folks to check out. Also just a killer person.

Song of the Day: Chemical Bomb - The Aquabats