new (old) job

On yesterday's morning train to work, I watched an older lady with a fresh hospital bracelet on chug—and I mean CHUG—the dregs of a plastic gallon bottle of vodka, so I had pretty low expectations for the rest of the day, but then the big boss turned up unexpectedly after lunch, so we got to catch up and talk shit plus he got a fresh reminder that I'm extremely good at my job, so it turned out a pretty good day.

Oh yeah, so I've gone back to work IRL after a few years freelancing from home and my new job is the one I had pre-pandemic, just in a different location. I got a hefty raise for coming back (though I'm still poor by NYC standards as I'm getting what minimum wage should be, and that's a whole 'nother discussion), I get to bring my dog to work, and I'm working in an industry where I get to make people's lives better every day and the world better in general. The planet is still burning and we live in the worst timeline, but I'm doing what I can, okay?

In other personal news, perimenopause is doing a number on me and I've gone from a lifelong champion sleeper to someone who needs help sleeping. Trazodone makes me feel like a zombie in the morning and melatonin makes me remember my dreams (I don't want to remember my dreams), so I was floundering for a while looking for an acceptable substitute till my friend Sarah gifted me a tin of Floral Farms Bedtime Blueberry Sleep Gummies. They work, they're tasty, and they're available at reputable dispensaries all over the city and state, including Travel Agency!

R.I.P. Steve Albini, legendary musician and audio engineer who recorded Nirvana, the Pixies, PJ Harvey, and the Breeders. My friend Matthew put together a playlist on multiple platforms highlighting his best work:

I started playing video games in the 80s and the first game I was irredeemably terrible at was Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia—I loved watching people play it but could never ever get the timing right myself, so instead I stuck to click and point games like those made by Sierra On-Line. Those became the games I played the most until Diablo launched in 1996 and I discovered the joy of eradicating hordes of monsters with your mouse.

Anyway, Mechner's on Instagram to promote his new memoir about the creation of Prince of Persia, and he's been posting videos of how he took videos of friends and family to rotoscope into the character animations for the game. This one of his younger brother doing the prince's jumps sends me straight back into childhood every time I watch it.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jordan Mechner (@jmechner)

Note that there's also a new game in the series called Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which came out just a few months ago. I played the demo and immediately bought it on the Switch when it went on sale, but it's also available for the other consoles. If you're into Metroidvanias at all, it's easily the best one I've played since Hades and much longer to boot—I'm only 30% in!

I was sitting inside an Upper East Side Dunkin Donuts a few weeks ago and saw a shiny new Winnebago Revel parked outside, so of course I googled it out of curiousity and I about lost my mind to find that it starts at a whopping $245,463. Granted, it's very nice, but I need to know WHOMST is buying these things. If you're buying one for retirement, you could get a large, lovely new villa with all the modern conveniences in almost any Southeast Asian beach paradise, with enough money leftover for a rental property to keep your lifestyle nicer than it would ever be in the first world, including medical care. I know what I would do!