. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ the water cooler ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

you grab a cup. it's one of those awful paper cone things.

"my space-therapist told me to start keeping a diary. that sounds like way too much work, though. i find it easier just to trauma-dump on people while they grab a drink!"

the creature leans up against the tank, blocking you from that sweet recycled water...

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ so anyway!!! ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

31st October 2025- a nite of frite is no d-lite!

to celebrate halloween this year me and a couple of my friends connect over the web-o-sphere and watch a spooky movie.
i made the decision for us to watch Tokuzō Tanaka's obscure 1963 film:
Haunted Castle.
i love me some 20th century j-horror and the scrumptious practical effects one can expect to find within; so this was a no-brainer.

a few days before halloween, and because piracy is cool, i went snooping around the internet to see if i could find it for free anywhere.
unfortunately every route led to a dead-end. the internet archive didn't have it, no reputable streaming sites had it, not even any unreputable streaming sites had it.
still, i was determined to watch this movie.

i found a blueray collection containing the movie for sale online, but it was terrible over-priced and wouldn't even run on my computer anyway.
luckily for me, after a bit more searching i was able to find a website that specifically sold rare movies on regular old DVD-ROMs - and for SUPER cheap too!
i punched in my credit card information and prayed to that weird slime that grows on my ceiling that the movie would arrive in time.

that slime must be impotent omnipotent or something, because the movie arrived the DAY of halloween.
cutting it a little CLOSE dont'cha THINK??

(i think it is important to note that, at this point, i had not slept for around 48 hours, as it will help inform the reader of my rapidly declining emotional state throughout the rest of this entry. spoilers!!)

like any sane space-creature, i crammed the DVD into my terribly, terribly old external disc drive (my laptop doesn't have one built in) and loaded the file into VLC.
i obviously didn't wanna spoil the movie for myself or anything, but i wanted to check that nothing was wrong with the disc. so i skipped around the timeline a little and--
IT JAMMED!?!??!?!?
yuh... for some reason the disc would always jam after the eleven minute mark, and VLC itself would stop responding.
i began to ask myself if i had bought a faulty DVD (that website did look kinda shady, after all...)

if i wanted to watch the movie tonight i had to hold out hope that something else was the problem. perhaps it was the beat-up old disc drive??
i tried converting the contents of the disc to a single .mp4 file, but it consisntantly froze around a quarter of the way through every time. i tried dumping them onto my computer directly, same problem.
nothing was working at all. so i thought it must have been the disc drive and not the DVD itself.
just to make sure, i tested the disc on a games console, set a timer, and left it running while i made myself some food.

the timer hit fifteen minutes and the movie was still playing flawlessly.
THANK. FUCKING. CHRIST.
the external drive was the problem.
i started rummaging through old piles of junk that i had in storage looking for anything that could possibly run this god-forsaken disc, and there it was... a stack of old laptop computers in various states of disrepair.
by various states of disrepair, i of course mean that only one of the damned things was remotely functional - luckily it was one with a built-in disc drive!
i let it charge for a few minutes and once again prayed to our father who art in spackle, the glorious ceiling slime.

i don't know what i did to offend our lord, but it seems he designed this machine specifically to piss me off.
it took around six minutes just for the file explorer to load. that is fucking ridiculous.
then i had to open the internet browser which took another ten minutes, and download VLC.
once it had finally downloaded i double-clicked the installer and... nothing happened? i waited a few minutes and still nothing. i tried to open it over and over and over again but it simply wouldn't work.
except, it did.
after another ten minutes or so i noticed that the installer(s) were just hidden behind the browser, and for some reason didn't appear on the taskbar.
i don't know how many times i opened that installer, attempting to count them all on that lagging, freezing, hell-machine would probably count as some obscure form of torture, so i abstained.
once all but one were closed, i ran the installer and opened VLC. everything looked fine.

i'm sure it wont surprise you to learn that everything was not actually fine. i put the disc into the laptop's drive and for some reason the files just weren't showing up at all. even on my current computer they were at least showing up. i had no idea what the hell was going on. was it the DVD after all???
i found another DVD that i knew was perfectly fine and tried to load that up on the old laptop instead and... once again... nothing.
it was in this moment that i remembered why i replaced this laptop.
...
it was of course because its disc drive had broken.
:)

also, why the fuck do no modern laptops have disc-drives?? people still use discs, don't they? i don't care if it means my laptop is a little bit thicker, where am i taking it?
like how fucking hard is it to put a disc drive in a computer?
what is this obsession tech companies have with making each new product worse than the last? i mean for god's sake these computers are already extortionately expensive; how much are they really saving by not including a fucking disc drive?? whoever had this idea: fuck you. i hate you. die.
genuinely baffling.

anyway, i keep searching to see if i have any other disc drives that i can use and, of course, i come up short.
so i'm like "shit, guess i'll just have to buy a new one."
i look online and their being sold for like eighteen bux, but even then, they're not gonna arrive in time and i want to watch this movie TONIGHT.
so i'm like shit, guess i'll just go and get one in person. (which would costs thirty-two bux, for some reason. i don't know why me going to the shop in person makes it cost more money. that doesn't really make sense to me.)
so i land on the planet and walk to the electronics shop. it takes me an hour to get there. i would have taken the bus, but for some reason the route would have taken longer??
i go in to the shop and i do like five laps of the goddamn thing looking for a single fucking disc drive and wouldn't you guess, i can't find one!
i ask one of the employees if they have any and they tell me they do stock them, but they've run out.
WHO IS OUT HERE BUYING ALL THESE DISC DRIVES??
FOR FUCK SAKE, IF THEY BUILT THEM INTO THE LAPTOPS MAYBE THERE WOULD BE SOME EXTERNALS LEFT IN FUCKING STOCK
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

so anyway the guy tells me to check another location, as they might have some in stock.
i check my map and it says it'll take another hour to get there by bus. i'm just like "fuck it, i've come this far." sunk-cost fallacy and whatnot.
so i'm walking to this bus-stop for like twenty minutes and when i finally get there i can't even find the damn thing.
i check my map again and, because i'm an idiot and can't read, it turns out it was a train station NOT a bus-stop! and it's gonna take an hour by train to get to this other stupid shop!
i just want to watch this movie that i bought online for six bux. i'm already gonna be losing another thirty two bux on this stupid drive, i'm not spending even more to get an over-priced train ticket to ride for an hour to get to a fucking electronics shop, in the HOPES that they even have a drive in stock.

i stood there outside the train station and i thought "fuck it. i give up. i'm going home. i'll figure something else out."
so i walk ALL the way back to my ship, i'm sweatin' my tits off, it's raining.
i finally get home and i just put the disc back in my shitty fucking disc drive and i think to myself "i'm going to get this to work."
my brilliant idea is just to move every file from the disc one-by-one. that seemed to work fine until i got to the big files, at which point it freezes again about three quarters of the way through.
in my head i'm just repeating "i don't know what to do. i don't know what to do. i don't know what to do." until i'm like "i'll just clean the disc drive."
i open the drive, get the micro-fibre cloth that i use to clean my glasses, and i pathetically swipe it across the inside. i was so tired, i barely even touched the thing.
i plug the drive back in, i insert the DVD and i tried to move the larger files again.
it worked.
it worked.
all three of the big chunky files.
it took a while, but they fucking got through.

i could have done this the entire time.
i couldn't even see any dust on the inside, but apparently feebly dangling a cloth above it's surface was enough to make it work.
this is a laser that reads discs, but it can't even shoot through a microscopic speck of dust?
what?????
this is actually fucking ridiculous to me, but whatever.

i have the movie now, i open it in VLC, it's all working, it's fine.
but it doesn't have subtitles. and i don't speak japanese.
so i look online. and the only subtitles i can find for "Haunted Castle" are for a fucking 2001 movie. which obviously isn't what i want.
i did end up finding ones for the actually movie i wanted, but they were synced up weirdly of course, because nothing's gonna go my way.
like they're completely fucked up. some appear after the person has stopped speaking, others only flash on screen for a millisecond.
i didn't want to watch the movie like this, and i wasn't about to force my friends to either.
so i kept looking, and i think it was on the spanish version of OpenSubtitles that i found two english subtitles.
one of them was decent.
i say it was decent: it was synced up properly, i could actually read them, the problem was that they were fucking hideous.
i don't know how they looked like this. i don't know why. i don't know who signed off on these being okay to ship. but they were these huge, chunky, low resolution teal-coloured letters.
what-fucking-ever.
i opened them in an .srt editor and i fixed them.
the movie was finally watchable. it was incredibly late in the evening, so i had no time to even nap before watching the damn thing, but it was watchable.

and watch it we did!
it was honestly fine, but nothing to write home about. had i been made aware of the film's mediocrity before-hand i probably wouldn't have bothered with the whole affair.
oh well.

if you want to watch the movie too, i uploaded it to the internet archive, with subtitles, here. enjoy.
and have it be known that if you have seen this anywhere else on the internet, i ALONE am responsible for its conservation. and you are only able to watch it because of MY suffering.
unless you work in the field of copyright law, in which case: it wasn't me, i don't know who uploaded that to my account, i must have been hacked???
this whole entry is fiction, i made it up, i swear.

17th July 2025- for the gulls

sometimes i forget i don't need a specific reason to leave the stupitorium.
i can go out for the sake of going out. that is allowed!

i woke up at a moderately decent time this afternoon, and decided to visit a local piece of space-debris that's pretty well-known for its beaches.
when i got there it was SUPER foggy.
at my best estimate i'd say i could see within a perimeter of about 300 meters?
they have this thing on the promenade called "the i360", which is this tall viewing platform that moves up and down.
the top of it completely was completely obfuscated by mist.
i wondered what it must have been like for the people up there.
i imagined being entirely isolated from the reality of the city below, floating on the strange misty seas of a dreamworld.
i wish i could have seen it!

i bought myself a wrap at the supermarket on my way to the beach.
i was eating one half, enjoying the view of the sea, when a seagull swooped down and snatched it right from out of my hands!
i wasn't too mad. it must be hard being a seagull.
they don't have credit cards or anything.
even if they did, i'm sure most supermarkets don't serve birds.

i also saw a trio of crows walking side by side in a perfect line.
i wonder if they were gang members?

before i zipped back to the stupitorium, i did a little lap of the lagoon.
there was a scent in the air that reminded me of when i was but a little protozoa and my parents would take me crabbing.
i'm pretty sure the smell was fish guts, but it was nostalgic nonetheless.

16th July 2025- the sleeperrrr

i did NOT get a lot done today.

i guess i was pretty tuckered out from yesterday's interplanetary adventure, because i slept for SIXTEEN HOURS last night!
i literally did not wake up until 6pm.
the last time i slept that heavily was when i was super duper sick.
the crazy part is, i could still kinda use a nap...

*yawns*

still, i made myself some dinner and worked on some commissions, so it wasn't a total wash!

15th July 2025- an alien werewolf in london

today i met up with one of my friends on the metropolitan planet: lund'on!
it was really fun!!

in the afternoon we went an exhibition of yoshitomo nara's art.
so many little freaks there!
it almost felt as if i were back on my home planet <3
i bought some postcards in the giftshop to stick to my bedroom wall!

after the exhibition we got some lunch :V
i had an iced latte and a fuckin fire baguette.
the roasted tomatoes were heavenly, but i got CRAZY spinach stuck in my teeth.
my friend shared their cookie with me!
while we ate, we booked some tix for a movie that was playing later in the evening.

we had a few hours to kill before that started though, so we went to another art gallery in the mean time.
they had a lot of cool stuff there!
there was one room with penis wallpaper and a bag of donuts :)
we were gonna go to the giftshop too, but they KICKED OUR ASSES out onto the street like we were YESTERDAY'S TRASH!!!!! (they were closing)

it was about time to make our way to the theatre, anyway (◠﹏◠)
we slammed a coupl'a pints before going in.
*flexes* GRRR!! BEER!!! OHOHOHO!!!
when we got there the ushers informed us that we actually had tickets for a movie that was playing in TEN DAYS TIME???
fools, we were! and none truer!

we still wanted to watch a film, so we flopped onto one of the fancy couches in the lobby and decided to pirate something on my 'puter.
the staff was cool with it actually, and even gave my friend a refund!
we watched zu: warriors from the magic mountain!
it was a fun movie, but i had NO idea what was going on :P
there was a part with a silly little fish, though!
we actually didn't finish the movie, becuase we wanted to grab some dinner before all the restaraunts in town closed.

there was a wagamama pretty near by, so we went there!
i got a really nice and super spicy vegetarian katsu with some yummy kimchi on the side to share :3
we both also got some green tea and bloody marys to drink!
SCHLURRRP!! (っ˘ڡ˘ς)

after filling our gutz, it was about time to head home.
we said buh-bye and went our seperate ways!
i was really sleepy on the train spaceship home...

that pretty much takes us up to right now!
so... yeah!
*passes out*