poison for profit

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I need Botox, because my face is highly problematic.

I’m not particularly worried about wrinkles or aging – I’m just enough Asian to look 30 until I’m 65, and wrinkles are caused by sun which is only outside – but I need to freeze my face into a neutral or happy expression, and Botox is the least harmful (as non-harmful as injecting neurotoxins into your skin can be) option I can think of, assuming that Joker “Smilex” drug from the first Michael Keaton Batman movie (except maybe without all the death) isn’t available for purchase.

In my head, I’m totally mysterious and aloof. Unfortunately, the opposite is my reality: I am an open book with diagrams and Cliff Notes and cheat codes and level walkthroughs and voiceover narration provided by Morgan Freeman in a pleasing baritone, and I need to change. I could work at it and exercise my face muscles and learn to be more aware of what I look like, but that sounds like a lot of work so clearly I should just poison myself with botulisms so I am nothing but a dopey grin at all times.

Apparently, every emotion I feel and every thought I think is visible on my face. If I’m getting internally stabby, those stabby thoughts are clearly reflected for all to see. If you are stupid and I wish you would stop talking, I am unconsciously playing a game of face charades. If I think something is hilarious, I’m surreptitiously (except not) leaking glitter and rainbows all over the place. It’s no good, and does me no favours whatsoever what with the absolute lack of mystique and glamour and all.

This problematic face of mine was brought to my attention several years ago during an employee review: I’m awesome, but when I’m upset I glare and roll my eyes at things like a petulant teenager. I had no idea I was doing this (and was called a liar when I expressed amazement), but it’s true: I may FEEL those things, but I was completely unaware that the feels show up on my face. My boss at the time didn’t believe me and called me a lying liar who lies, but I really don’t think about my face at all. My thought process isn’t “I’m mad! Time to glare!” – it just happens. I was totally surprised and horrified when I found out that yes, everyone actually does know exactly what I’m thinking, and all those “secret” thoughts I have about flipping the table in a dramatic show of passion and rage are anything BUT secret.

You know it’s bad when you totally wish you had bitchy resting face instead of hyper emotional anime face.

So, where do I get a Botox? Is it something I can get at 7-11?

bring on september

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Well, that didn’t go as planned.

We were to leave for Seattle around noon on Thursday, but just before zero hour, Ed informed me he was sick. I was torn between sympathy and rage, with rage and self-pity winning the battle (I am a flawed individual and the world’s worst nurse). After waffling back and forth for almost 4 hours (“I’m fine! No wait, I feel like hell. No, I’m okay to go! Oh wait I’m going to barf. To PAX! er .. To BED!” and so on and so forth), we were on our way – I drove, while Ed was miserable and stubborn in the passenger seat. We questioned many times his ability to actually PAX and make it out alive, but he insisted on going.

We did one day of PAX, very very slowly. It was fun, but it left me wanting more – having the Saturday would have been nice, but I think I would have wanted the whole thing. Ed and I have been PAX’ing for years now (except last year), but this was the first year I actually knew other people there. Each year I try to talk my friends into going, but each year they bail so we end up doing PAX alone – fun, but ultimately lonely and kind of hollow. I’ve never been to a PAX party, have never been to a concert, have never done much more than one day of wandering .. and I’m tired of it. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to actually SOCIALIZE this year until it was taken away, and then I was sad.

We came home on Saturday, after selling our remaining passes. Ed is better – he was pretty much fine by Saturday morning, but by then it was too late to do anything about it.

I am so fucking glad August is over – it’s been just the worst month ever. I’m not normally one to wallow in disappointment, but they’ve just been non-stop for the last 5 weeks or so: never ending goodbyes at work, rejection, steamrolling, frustration, baffling references to cake and crying babies, small setbacks transforming into mega disasters, a stupid haircut that refuses to grow into something cute .. just bad times, seemingly for 31 days straight. Now it’s September, which is historically one of my favourite months .. interesting secret things are coming up, including something that might change things .. FOREVER.

Plus, those boots I ordered are awesome.

I barely saw PAX at all, but there were a few things that piqued my interest:

  • Extraction is an FPS made by the guys who did Enemy Territory, and it looks amazing. It brings back my beloved Stopwatch Mode, is set in London (albeit a sad and destroyed one), and will apparently be free to play
  • Neverending Nightmares looks CREEPY AS HELLLLLL and I love the art style. I Kickstarted it right at PAX coz I liked the creep factor so much.
  • New Adventure Time game? An RPG? OKAY!
  • Murdered: Soul Survivor looks kinda cool, and I totally got murdered
  • Maybe it started last year, but it seems like game developers FINALLY realized that nerds have a lot of money they will throw at anything containing references to their favourite games: many booths, small and large alike, had stores set up. I was pleased about this, because I was spending my sad away and also I got a Vault 101 hoodie from the Bethesda booth which I absolutely adore so good on you, game devs.
  • umm .. other stuff.

Tomorrow is Labour Day, but I’m working which is sorta appropriate (if dumb and my own fault).

what, me worry

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Another year, another PAX I am wholly unprepared for. Each year I question why I attend, and each year my reasons (beyond the omnipresent FOMO) seem to dwindle. This year, my main reason for going is downright sad: I want to collect all the Nintendo DS Streetpasses from other attendees. Show me your houses, people, so that I may purchase your furniture. All hail the Happy Home Showcase!

I really need to just hit myself over the head and try to forget about work, and getting out of town to be afraid of crowds is a good start. I’m stupidly worried about my two big projects (and several other slightly less big projects), to the point where I gave some serious thought to skipping PAX so I could stay and work. This is dumb for many reasons, but my ridiculous dedication was winning until I pulled an underhanded move on myself: I ordered new boots from Amazon and sent them to Ali’s place. If I don’t go to PAX, I don’t get my new boots (um and the 80 coconut bars and BMO figurine that somehow also ended up in my cart). Since new boots easily trumps my worrying that the universe will fall apart if I’m not there to be angry, I will go to PAX. I am easily manipulated by myself (and I may have volunteered to work the holiday Monday so we don’t fall even further behind).

I need to turn off my brain for a few days; enjoy PAX and new boots and Seattle. After all, next week is going to be even more challenging .. so why waste all this excellent worrying now, when I’ll have so much more to do later?

I think I may be turning into an ulcer.

the sweetest mystery

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This past Tuesday was probably the worst day I’ve ever had at work. It started out bad and almost immediately escalated to terrible, with some embarrassing Tears of Frustration and many, many things spiralling out of control. When I wasn’t crying with rage and humiliation, I was being steamrolled in a baffling 6-hour meeting. It was a long, bad day.

When I stopped at my desk late that afternoon, there was a card addressed to me on my keyboard: inside, an unsigned, hand-written note with the nicest, most uplifting and encouraging thing anyone has ever said to me. I’m not going to share it – I want to keep it inside my heart to call upon whenever I need a reason to go on – but I wanted to say thank you. I don’t know who left me the note, but it was truly appreciated, and I hope you somehow know how very, very much it means to me.

thank you thank you thank you

thank you thank you thank you

catch them all

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Someone stole my soul on the bus this morning.

I was sitting at the end of a sideways row of seats, talking about salami online. No one was sitting next to me, and only one woman sat across the aisle, two seats down. Suddenly and without a word, she pulls out an iPad, aims it at me, and takes my picture: I know this, because she briefly turned it around so I could see myself on her screen. Then she giggled, sang “Got you!” out loud, and put her iPad away.

WHAT THE FUCK?

Did she steal my soul?

Later, when the bus was more full and she had seat mates, she pulled out the iPad again and showed the lady next to her something. I may be paranoid on account of having no soul, but they both kept looking up at me then back to the iPad as if to compare my soulless reality to the likeness now trapped on her screen.

Seriously, I’m kind of freaking out. This is weird, right? Many strange things happen to me that I consider routine, but this is totally not normal, is it? Am I an item in a scavenger hunt? A Pokemon? Is she playing Dark Cloud? WHAT IS GOING ON?!

Joke’s on her, though: I took her picture right back. SO THERE.

omg wtf.

change

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If I could change one thing about myself – just one thing – it wouldn’t be my fat ass, or my disgusting body, or my broken personality, or my selfishness, or my facial scars, or my deformed feet, or my inability to feel loved, or my overall resemblance to the Michelin Man, or my evidently atrocious self-esteem .. no, if I could change just one thing about myself, it would be that thing where I CRY LIKE A FUCKING CHILD WHEN I’M ANGRY OR FRUSTRATED.

It is SO EMBARRASSING. I would love to be able to hold an adult conversation and use my mouth words to describe my feelings, instead of letting them leak out of my eyeballs. I’m not sad, I’m upset and I have a point and I would like to say these things, but BOOOO HOO HOOOO HOOOOOOOOO sob sob sob ARGH. Embarrassing. Frustrating. Annoying. Undermining.

.. and now I’m angry at myself, and totally in tears about it. :(((((((((((((((((

reality bites

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As we near the start of fall, I’m beginning to worry that I’m not going to get to go to London this year (as I have for the two years previous).

Even though I had no plans concrete cotton candy or otherwise to go to overseas this year, I’ve been quietly scheming in the back of my mind since last October, hoping that some way, somehow, I’d find a reason/the money/an excuse to go. I crossed my fingers and desperately wished that things would just sort of .. happen, but it’s almost September and no magical genie or raise or random strange happening has materialized. I’ve got no real feasible way to get to London, and that’s making my heart ache: I want to be back there so very badly I could cry. I’m drastically close to throwing caution to the wind and following my heart, even if only for a week or so .. I could do it, if I forgot about everything for a little while. I could take the cheapest of uncomfortable, no-frills, baby-packed flights and stay at a hostel or in the London equivalent of the Cecil. Hell, I could even be rom-com-style foolish and spend money I don’t have for an actual room; one with a lumpy bed and no hot water and a family of raccoons living in the closet. I could go a week without eating and live on excitement only; soaking up history and culture and things built before 1985 and not out of glass. I could do all these things.

But I probably won’t.

I don’t know when I gained a sense of responsibility, but I’m finding it incredibly inconvenient – it gets in my way and stops me from doing the things I desperately want to do: own a pug, go to London, adopt all the cats, eat nothing but tacos, travel on a whim, do crazy things for the sake of the stories I could tell. I want all of these things, but I also want a home to come back to .. so I can’t have them.

I wonder if I could use the “well, you got to go to Edmonton so now I’m gonna go to London” excuse.

I could sell all my things. I have a lot of things, and a flight to London is only $280 (plus $604 in fees).

I should get off the internet before I click buttons I shouldn’t click.

There’s still time .. this could still happen, right?

#longing

video game feels

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Did you play Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor? Did you love it, but really wish you didn’t have to play as a spider because spiders are terrifying? Are you still slightly annoyed that, after at least a half dozen play throughs since launch, you don’t actually know what the secret is?

You’re gonna want to go buy Gone Home, sit yourself in front of your computer, and play it all the way through.

I did just that this afternoon, and it was amazing. It gave me feels. It was what more games should be. It neatly wrapped things up (well, most things). It didn’t make me remember a random code I found 8 rooms ago to unlock a shed to get the wrench to open the cover of the well to find the missing puzzle piece. I loved this game.

Seriously, check it out. The voice acting is fantastic, the game tells a beautiful story, and Fullbright did an amazing job with the music, the ambiance, and the setting. I rarely recommend non-mobile games these days (Gone Home is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux) because my computer is little more than a big internet box I use to talk to strangers, but I am highly recommending this one. It’s awesome. I want to hug them all (and then revive my underground ‘zine).

Go play!

common cents

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So. The internet. You may not have noticed this, but I use the internet a lot. I am connected 24/7, and use the internet like an extension of my arm (an extension that just happens to have a great deal of porn). My internet use extends to meatspace as well: when I’m not in front of a computer, I use my phone to access any kind of information imaginable. I am one of THOSE people, and I make no apology for it: it’s just what I do.

My internetting does not stop when I travel. For this reason, I long ago signed up for Roger’s US Data Roaming Add On: for an extra $10 a month, I am charged $1 for every MB I use instead of the standard $3/MB. This sucks, but welcome to Canada where you pay more for connectivity (an intangible necessity) than you do food (seriously, I pay $215 per month for connectivity at home and on my phone, and it was an additional $100 until Ed’s phone was paid for by his work).

Recently, Rogers has updated their US Roaming Data plans. They’ve discontinued the $10/month add on, and instead will charge you $7.99 for up to 50MB of data per day the instant you use your first roaming KB. If you go over 50MB, they’ll charge you another $7.99. Many people are upset by this as they are Amish and only want to check email once a day but will have to pay $7.99 regardless if they use 1MB or 50MB, but it’s handy for those of us who aren’t 85 and refer to video games as “the Nintendos”. It’d be perfect for someone like me, because while I very well may use more than 50MB a day, it’d be unusual to go over 100 (and if I did, okay – if it happened regularly and/or I knew I was travelling to the US just to use the internet all day long, I’d make other data arrangements). $16 for a weekend of data use is reasonable (by Canadian standards).

SO. This past weekend, I was in Seattle for two days. During that time, I used 70MB of data, which should cost me $16 per the new rules. At most, it should cost $24 (assuming I used over 50MB on Day 1, and the remainder on Day 2). I can live with this.

Naturally, it’s not that easy. You see, I still pay the $10/month for a non-existent plan. Because I pay that $10/m (and have been doing so for the last 3+ years), I will be charged $1/MB .. to the tune of $70. All because I already pay more for my phone than most people. And because I was never informed that this new $7.99/MB/Day plan existed at all until I did some research on my own.

I am not happy about this. I reached out to Rogers on Twitter, and they confirmed that I’ll be charged the $70 for two days of internet use because of my existing non-existent plan. This really sucks, and is one of those things that will drive me to get a US SIM Card so I can be more in charge of my data use, as well as research alternative options so I can cancel my Rogers contract when it’s up next year. A little understanding in this situation would go a long way (and I’ll overlook the fact I’ve been paying a largely unnecessary $10/m for years), but if they’re going to stick their feet in the mud and abide by the rules instead of common sense .. well, then I’ll know where I stand as a customer.

Why don’t I live in Europe, again?