Nonsequitur Life

I still don’t like February.

The last post was supposed to be the lead-in to the monthly Last.fm stats, but it turned in a direction I didn’t anticipate and dumping meaningless numbers at the end of it just felt stupid. But now I can fill up another page with things I thought I was going to write about last time.

… I was looking at the calendar, wondering why the 13th was standing out as something I should remember, and I realized that marks fifteen years since I got fired from the Toxic Shit Hole (TM). Maybe in another fifteen years I’ll finally stop having recurring nightmares about being forced to go back and work there.

… Our internet has been shoddy for most of the past week (Or two? I don’t even remember at this point.) and we keep hoping it will resolve itself because all signs point to a problem with the ISP and not us, but it’s irritating as all hell. Especially when Bob’s trying to work. Neither one of us wants to deal with tech support telling us to reboot the modem (done it, countless times) and unplug it/plug it back in (same), check all your connections, blah, blah, blah, and there really needs to be a support option to skip the first page of the script they’re required to read.

… I got the Spyro Reignited Trilogy for PC. I’ve played those games (or parts of them) before on PS2 and PS4, but I’m better with a keyboard/mouse set up with games. I lasted about 30 minutes before I was super nauseous and dizzy to the point I had to quit and go lay in bed catnapping for a couple of hours before I didn’t feel like hurling anymore. I didn’t have this problem when I played it on console—on a much bigger screen—so I’m not sure what triggered it this time. I’ll give it a few days and try again, but try using a controller instead of keyboard/mouse so I can sit farther away from the screen. I’ve had this problem with other games, but not this bad, and to my recollection it was usually a first-person view. Spyro is not, but the camera is hard to control (for me at least) so maybe the erratic movements were the problem. We’ll see. It’s been awhile since I’ve played anything other than FFXIV so I might just need to readjust to a different style of graphics/movements. But blurgh.

… We watched Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Bob pointed it out on Netflix (Singing critter, what like he knows me?) and the mention of it hit the nostalgia button stronger than I would have expected. Bob had never heard of it and I remember nothing about the book other than the fact that we had it when I was a kid (and that Lyle likes bubble baths) so I have no idea how much of the story matches up between book and movie. A lot of family movies these days just annoy me, but this one was actually very cute.

… After all of Basil’s HEY! WHATIF! on the monstrosity I’ve been working on lately, he was yapping away in the back of my brain, stopped suddenly, and came out with HOLD UP! I know I’ve been talking about THIS one, but remember that one idea you were working on right before you started all of this and what if you took these pieces from it and used it with THIS stuff and…… At this point he’s not a gremlin muse, he’s a fucking troll. This is really all just an epic case of Shiny Object Syndrome. And I’ll probably create another folder and another Word document, but will it go anywhere? Magic 8 Ball says ask again later.

… O.A.R. has been posting about being in the studio recording new music. That always leads to good things. Matt Nathanson released a new EP as an extension to his latest album. Nine Days has been promoting some kid named JORDY as he sampled? covered? re-imagined? Absolutely (Story of a Girl) into Story of a Boy. I was a little worried it was going to be a mess, but it was actually pretty good. Also, I appreciate that John Hampson has a cameo in the video. (Wearing a Nine Days shirt no less.) He’s still adorable after all these years.

… Fall Out Boy announced a new album coming out in March. They’ve released two songs for it so far and they sound like they belong on previous albums. That’s reassuring that they’re not going down some experimental concept album rabbit hole. According to Patrick Stump it’s leaning into a what if, if they had put out another album instead of going on hiatus like they did more than a decade ago, and I felt a sudden urge to muzzle Basil because he doesn’t currently need anymore encouragement or inspiration in all his what-if-ing.

… Panic! At the Disco has announced he’s calling it quits. He still has the European leg of the tour to support the latest album, but once that’s over, so is the band. He’s shifting gears to focus on his family as his wife is due to have their first baby sometime soon. When I read the article, I had a brief moment of WAAAAAAT!? (I learned this news when Bob was in the middle of a work call and I had to physically stifle myself so I wouldn’t interrupt his meeting.) But then it was more like…I’m…really not that surprised. There were a lot of things that seemed off about the last album release. He was very detached and absent, not doing much of any self-promotion for it aside from a handful of TV performances. In a time where record labels seem to demand artists whore themselves out to the point of exhaustion, it just didn’t fit. And maybe that’s part of his decision. Who knows. It’s a little sad and disappointing that he’s *ahem* closing the goddamn door, but I respect his decision to prioritize his family over a career. Nineteen years in the music industry is nothing to scoff at. Especially considering how young those guys were when they first broke. And if he comes back in some fashion somewhere down the line, I’ll be paying attention to see what he does. In the meantime, I’ll keep listening to Collar Full every time Youtube is like, wanna watch this again? (This also might be why they made a big deal of adding House of Memories to the set list for the tour. And also why he spontaneously combusts from burnout and dies in the video for Do it to Death. Or the path of self-destruction in the marathon of video releases for the album…)

Hmm.

I listened to more music in January than the previous two months. Still nowhere near “normal” numbers, but I’m sure we’ll get back there eventually. Most of it was the from the Wicked White Ryan & Hallie soundtrack. It’s currently 66 tracks and, much like the story it’s attached to, is nowhere near complete. Almost every song on the list right now is associated with a specific scene and listening to the playlist in its entirety further serves to highlight the gaping holes in the story as is. And I just went back and read where I wrote about it close to a year ago and I said pretty much the exact same thing.

Yes, I repeat myself. Ad nauseam. Have you met me?

Something, something, dead horses.

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Top 10 Most Played Artists for January 2023…

1.) Fall Out Boy … 91 plays

2.) Panic! At the Disco … 57 plays

3.) Tim Blane … 48 plays

4.) The Killers … 34 plays

5.) Nine Days … 28 plays

6.) Elton John … 25 plays

7.) The Fray … 23 plays

8.) Ryan Star … 21 plays

9.) Stroke 9 … 21 plays

10.) Survivor … 21 plays

Honorable mention: The Monkees, Jimmy Stafford, O.A.R., Sara Bareilles, Train, Gavin DeGraw, Ingram Hill, P!nk, Smokie, Toad the Wet Sprocket

Total of 543 plays of 299 tracks from 100 albums by 56 artists.

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This amused me more than it should have, but WHERE IS THE LIE.

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Bittersweet Panic! At the Disco