The Blog In Yellow

9. Youtube. I don't like TV. Stephen King says its a noise box and I tend to agree. I can't count how many hours I wasted infront of the boob tube watching rerun after rerun. I wish I had spent my time reading instead but regret is unprofessional, what's important is what you do now. Youtube is a different story. There's plenty of audio books to listen to that people have legally and illegally posted online. There's also my favorite: the documentaries. People make videos of their opinions in a form of video diary. These are facinating to listen to as I'm playing games. I've listened to Clive Barker's Hellbound Heart several times which is always a treat. If there is something I dislike about Youtube is that forty five percent of the income from ads goes to Google which is a rip off. I mentioned how I've made playlists before but this is a different thing. This isn't collecting so much as discovering. There's lots of people my age who talk abo...

Yesterday was bad. I wrote for my Cain story and my body and mind rejected it so much that it stressed me out. It was so bad that I went with a headache and the stress only built from there. Why can't I be like I am right now? I feel fine but I just want to relax. I almost left work because of the stress and had to do my job feeling like I could yell at someone at any moment. Not a good day.

7. Personal. There's somethings that are too personal to talk about here but I do enjoy doing. I won't be mentioning that one since I don't want to talk about it. It's personal that's all I say. 8. Collecting Junk. But there is one I will talk about. When I was a kid, I would pick up the clothes pins and other stuff I found on the floor at the clothes shop which was usually Kohls. I remember I took picked up stuff to the airport and they patted me down. I had screws and stuff, the kind of things they would taser you for, at least post 9/11. I would also pick up stuff that was under the shelves at the Lowe's stores. The question was, what should I do with them. My folks used to throw them out but when I went to my new school I could use them to make my own action figures. Nothing like the Batman figures I had but they had their own powers and abilites and story that pretty much followed the Transformers story or whatever I was watching at the time. I made my own ...

Several things happened yesterday. I got to meet another James who seems like a nice guy. He's the second James at the place that I work at. During my break on the bench outside we talked for a while about hopes and dreams and stuff like that. He want's to go back to school and earn more money as a sports massuse. We talked about other things like video games and how he's waiting for the next move from God. I'm waiting for the same thing. Now that I have disability I wonder what's next for me. After that, I announced to the nurses and aids that it was time for dinner. They all celebrated at my arrival which is a sign of a bad day. If I'm the "first good news" they hear then it must have been a tough time for them. Last night I dreamed I was at a huge school with three floors. I drove over there to visit a local school just for the heck of it and because I had an urge to visit a school. I knew that it could be illegal to walk into any school but I thoug...

5. Youtube Playlists. I have a pair of playlists that I like to update on Youtube. The first one I created years ago called "Mental Masochism 2.0." It's a joke on myself because I like watching stuff that causes me to cringe. There's a wealth of bad cartoons and things that make me wince, and for some reason, I enjoy it. There's cartoon openings, Fortnite trailers, bad movie clips like the Resident Evil movies (which I love for some reason) crappy AI videos, terrible video game trailers that are blatant lies, corny "as seen on TV" ads for cheap products, really bad earworm songs, ads to games I'll never play, TV show clips of things I rarely or never watched, more ads, and plenty of throwback nostalgia parts. Over three thousand videos of crap that somehow gives me enjoyment when I watch them. I use these videos as pre-sleeping watching material. Nothing turns off my brain like watching something stupid. On the other side, we have the "Good Stuf...

3. Finding old games. I love, love, finding lost games. There's a long history of video games that come before my time. I was born in the NES era but I grew up playing SNES and Genesis games. But as time went on, the game industry changed. There was the world of 3D games that came out with the Sega Dreamcast, the Nintendo 64 and the Playstation. Soon there were more games than I could handle. And it all came down to money. I didn't have the money or the time to pursue every game that came out. It was fine, there were a lot of games I didn't want to play. But I hear people talk about certain games like Chrono Trigger like it's one of the greatest games they've ever played. Me? I know about it but the game but I know nothing about the story or characters. I wish I had that experience growing up so I could have those good memories. I know people who were excited when Nintendo announced a remake for Super Mario RPG for the Switch. I never played that game, another game ...

I've been learning about building the a practice and a routine. Take right now for example, I could give up because I didn't get my words in the morning like I usually do. But I'm trying to make it more of a practice rather than a routine. It might work but I don't feel like wriring much after a long day. I visited my sister and we watched the end of Puss in Boots 2 and the first episode of Mighty Nein. It was fun to explain this stuff to her. It was also good to get a refresher on the previous episodes. We talked or hours while she fed me soup I didn't like. She said it was okay, and it would be good for me to learn to cook something new. I have such a small tolerance for foods that I can't adjust myself to try new things. Instead I eat the same three meals, Pizza, Hamburger and Noodles, and Chicken and Rice. I can eat other stuff but that's the main food groups. I don't want to die from lack of nutrition. I think I'm too panicky right now. I think ...

I suppose I should wish myself a merry Christmas. I had a nightmare last night. It must have been a powerful one if it stuck with me. I'm not writing much today because I want to focus on Cain today. I was in college and the due date for three projects was coming up by the end of the week. Seven days. That's all I had to work on a project that I hadn't studied. I could barely remember reading the material for the class but it was filled with notes which means I must have been paying attention. That didn't help me, the project required me to study the physics of a car but I didn't have enough time to rent the car and test it out, which meant I was doomed. If I couldn't get access to the project's main objective, I couldn't do the work. And there were two other final projects I had to take which left me out in the cold. I remember I was planning to call the teacher and ask to be taken out of the class in hopes that it would prevent my bad grade. I have a l...

I'm supposed to make a list of events that take up my time to figure out where it goes. I'm not interested in doing that but I'll give it a try. It's hard to stop and thing about what I like to do because there are specific things that give me a smile and in the attempt to fill the page I want to think of things I would probably like or things a "normal" person would like. So I'll try my best to be true to my own interest. I think I may add on to this once I figure out more things I like to do. 1. Pinterest. I love going onto art sites and finding pictures I can add to my collections. I was introduced to Pinterest when I was studying game design and the instructor suggested that we make our own collections to inspire us. And it worked. Sites like Pinterest are filled with other people's art work and other postings that inspire. When I first started, I took an interst in bottles. It sounds weird but glass and procelin fixtures seem to comfort me somehow...

My folks and I celebrated Christmas yesterday with presents and a quick Bible read. As soon as I got home I popped the game I received into my console and waited for it to load. While I was waiting, I played a little bit of Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, a favorite of mine. Usually Jak 2 is the one I consider the best but recently I've been admiring the original game more for it's asthetics and the love put into it. There's a vast gap between the two games. Jak 2 features guns, sexy women, violence, slavery, death, and grand theft auto. A vastly difference between the first one. It's as if Jak 2 is wearing the first game's skin like a wolf wearing sheep's clothing. I got a hold of the first Jak game after reading a magazine about the second one. I couldn't play the second without playing the first so I went to my local Gamestop and picked up a copy. Jak and Daxter is the old tale of two friends going on an adventure. After Daxter falls into a pot of d...

I'm going to have my toolth put in a few minutes. I'm worried about the pain. I think I'll be out of it for most of the day so now's the time to write. I'm at my folks place and we discussed finances now that I'm on disability. These might change a bit once I make more money but it seems that I'm getting a 50% increase. I can finally save up for a few things like a new TV or new console. I'm fine right now but there are items on my list that needed repairs or some attention. I'm also going to see my sister this Friday which will be nice. I'll fulfil my duty to tease her when I visit.  Today is going to be boring, I can tell. To fill out the rest of the day maybe I should write out the rules I wrote out yesterday. I'll do that after my implant.  Welp, that didn't happen. I was supposed to be in for the xray not the implant. I'll write more tomorrow. I don't need a day off but I feel like I can't get much done today and forcing ...

I just thought of this so I think I'll give it a shot. I miss my school days. There's something creatively magical about schools. Outside the building is firm but inside it's full of wonder. There's these paper cutouts and pictures hanging on the walls that invite you to look. Young artists post their works next to encouraging messages urging the students to read. On the wall next to the principal's office you'll see a notice board with all the upcoming events listed. There's never a dull week and rarely is there two days that are the same. And as you walk down these halls again and again, you start to feel the familiarity seep into you. The walls become as familiar to you as your own house. In times of boredom, you've ran your fingers on the walls and memorized each bump and curve. You don't know it yet but you understand the building, like it was made for you. There are still secrets to the whole. Rooms that haven't been or will never be explor...

I've finished the second part of The Artist's Way after two weeks. I'm not going to beat myself up over this because I had things to do and a life to live. There are two major take aways I see in this: the distractions, and paying attention.The distractions seem to focus more on the outside area such as people telling you that you can't be an artist. I don't think I've ever had that kind of problem. My friends mostly leave my writings alone and don't judge me. It's my inner critic and the lack of motivation that kills me. The inner war is worse than the outer one. I hope she will go over that in a later chapter. The later half of the book focuses on the importance of paying attention, a flaw for me. Autism does not lend itself towards paying attention. The ADD in me jumps at the first distraction. So, to help myself, I decided to write down the Rules of the Road as part of the exercises prescribed to me by the book. In order to be an artist, I must: 1. S...

Tomorrow I meet up with my folks to talk about the money I'll be receiving from disability. It still doesn't feel real, I know that my life won't change that much but now I'll have some breathing room incase I lose my job or do something stupid. A chunk of that money will be going toward a car and the rest will be going towards expenses like food and bills. In time, I should get enough money to get the smaller things that I want like a game console here and there. It's strange but part of me is finally maturing enough to know how to spend money. No, that's not true. I bought a game on a whim yesterday and I don't regret it. I should but I don't want to be full of regrets. Instead I'll just play it and see what comes up from my experience. It's called "Dying Light: The Beast." It's a third game in the Dying Light series in where you have to hunt during the day and hide during the night. I enjoyed the second game, I spent hours on it ...

I think I might have to uninstall Palworld. It's taking too much of my time and I've got other games to play and books to read. King says you can't be a good writer if you aren't a good reader and I believe that he's right. I brought back a bunch of books from my folks basement and now my house is filled with boxes. I found two of my favorite horror books by Nick Cutter, The Deep, and The Troop.  Let's start with The Troop. I found this novel back before I was working for Walmart. Nick Cutter wastes no time getting under your skin as he tells the tale of four boys and a scoutmaster who have a strange encounter with an extremely thin man. The scout master and the boys soon fight for their lives as whatever is affecting the man affects them. I'll just come out and say it, worms. The man was invested with a home made parasite and escaped the lab. And while it doesn't sound scary at first, the way the characters react to the events are horrifying. It reminds...

I've heard people debate about what makes good cosmic horror. There's a thin line that has to be navigated that boarders on belief and disbelief in the story that makes the impossible seem possible. Strange Harvest is one of the genre that gets very close to doing it perfectly. The movie is a documentary/found footage film that I had been dying to see for the past few months. After searching online for a pirating site to provide me with the goods, I bit the bullet and spent seven dollars to watch the film. And my money seems to have been well spent. The mockumentary follows the case of the Mr. Shiny Murders and focuses on the two detectives who profiled the case and how it affected them and the victims. From the opening I was drawn in by the documentary style footage. A lot of out of their luck TV channels will have marathons of dramatized accounts of police tracking down killers, rapists, and every other kind of scum bag. The editors always do a good job of jazzing up the the ...

I've been trying to get into disability since I was eighteen. That's almost twenty years ago. We never went full into trying until we met with my current psychiatrist. A lot of events happened today and yesterday. I got a notice that my food stamps were going down by a hundred dollars. This was devastating because I depend on those stamps to get my daily bread. Or I should say my monthly bread. I try to shop only once a month to avoid the strangers. I told my mom and she reassured me that I would be fine because my housing bill was going down which meant I could pay for more food. It didn't make me happy and sent me into a spiral. The same day, I also received a letter saying I would need a benefactor to help me with receiving payments from Social Security. I was confused because I didn't receive benefits, at least not yet. I showed my mom the letter and we went to their offices today. I was underdressed with only two layers of clothin in thirty degree weather. Add in t...

I'm only doing a little better. I think the weather is getting to me. The cold darkness eats away at me but I'm still trying to get through. If I wait for inspiration, it will never come. I've posted on Royal Road but that was mainly to vent. I don't think I'm ready to write KIY yet. I'm trying to work on my Cain story but it's hard in this weather. I'm just so down that I don't feel like I can get back up. The last time I felt this way was when I went to the writer's convention in another town. I felt different there, so different that it affects me in a way I don't understand. A gloom held over me in that small, quirky town. It was nice to see another part of Ohio. But something went off in me when I was there. Something that required more medicine to heal. And I've been on stronger drugs ever since but I still feel that haunting gloom.  So, to combat this I've been discussing ideas to help me get through the gloom besides taking mo...

I wrote this on Roayl Road today. I've been a fan of Lovecraft and his predecessor's work for many years and I'm trying to write a novel about characters who are drawn into a cosmic horror experience. My protagonist is sent to a school in another state after a certain incident he is blamed for at his old school. This traumatises him to the point that he isolates himself from his new school. Another kid approaches my protagonist with a proposal to escape the school through a god called the Repairer of Reputations. Anyone who's read Chamber's King in Yellow knows this reference. The other kid promises that the Repairer can restore their old lives. And through some shenanigans they attempt to perform a play which will cause a ritual to happen that will allow them to visit this god. The problem is...this is too direct. Lovecraftian horror is wishy washy. Maybe it's real or maybe it's the protagonist's imagination. That's the problem with my story. I'...

I had three days off due to a schedule conflict and the weather. I couldn't go in thanks to the harsh winter snow frosting the roads. I fish tailed my way home once, I'm not doing it twice in one year. But that's not what I wanted to write about. I've got a mountain of anxiety. I had all that time and I told myself I would use that time to write. And I did write, but not the stuff I wanted. I wanted to work on my Cain story. But there's so much fear in it that I can't help but stop sometimes. I look at it the way I would look at a circuit board, I have no clue what I'm looking at. And with that realization comes fear and freezing. I freeze under my own pressure. I can't write because I don't know what to do next. I know how the beginning starts and how I want the story to end, but the middle, that's the hard part. I tell myself that there needs to be more happening but I don't know what to put in there. This is supposed to be a short story, h...

Lets rewind the clock a bit. I was on a vacation with my folks and there was a game store I was visiting. Inside, a collection of the Metal Gear Solid games one through three was available. I picked it up and thought about buying it. It was under forty dollars, three full games for the price of half of one. Seemed like a good deal. Only problem? The rating. Rated M for mature. I was seventeen so I could handle it, right? I offered the game to my folks and they shot me down. Expecially for the sexual content in the game. I left that game store empty handed but I still wanted it. I had heard of the Metal Gear series and wanted to check them out. The series was famous for their great gameplay and even better story telling. It was a good time to play it too as the fourth game in the series was coming out. I left without a game but I persisted. I waited another year and asked again. This time, my folks let me buy the game series. For the record, the only "sexual content" in the ga...

Something strange and sad happened today. No one died but a part of our lives was taken to the trash today. My dad and I sat down and discussed what chores needed to be done today. One of the tasks was to bring up some documents from the basement in garbage bags. My dad talked about the books and documents he had downstairs. It was a lifetime ago but it was documents that he worked on. My dad worked on computers for nearly forty years of his life. We piled that legacy into black plastic bags. It was a paper trail of printed documents, files, and books that made up his life. He told me he felt a little hurt by the action we were about to take. It was difficult to look at all his work being thrown out. Forty years of notes and highlights tossed in less than half an hour. As we dragged three bags worths of notes and books, I wondered when I would have to do this again. I have my own collection of notes that I'll need to throw out one day. If not me then my next of kin, if there is any...

Today is a bit different, I'm staying home to avoid the snow. Yesterday, I fishtailed my way home at night with a bunch of idiots who thought they could drive better than me. And faster than me. I''ve now got three days off which is bad because I need more work and I just don't like it when I'm by myself that long. I need company.  I finished another game on my list, Promise Mascot Agency. It's a silly game made by Brits about a Japanese yakuza who has to manage a mascot agency to raise money for his boss. After transporting a large amount of money goes poorly, the protagonist Michi is forced to move to an island where a curse resides that kills any gang member that sets foot on the island. There you meet Pinky, a mascot in the shape of a severed finger. Ironic since you severed your pinky finger as a symbol of recompense. Thus begins a long, twenty plus hours game where you drive around getting new jobs and helping the residents with their various tasks. But th...

I'm burnt out. That Outlast game must have taken more out of me than I thought. I'm finishing another game called Promise Mascot Agency which has a lot more personality than Outlast. Now that I think about it, I know what I hated about Outlast. It was so monotonous and didn't give me a chance to recover from the horror. The jumpscares become expected instead of dreaded. And the enviroment doesn't tell a story. But what can you do with such a concept? The dilapidated rooms only go so far in an asylum. The same issue happened when I played The Suffering. Same idea but in a prison instead of medical ward. If they had added some more personality rather than adding shocking content like a crazed man trying to clean a dead body or having my fingers cut off, they could have made a more memorable game. Maybe I'm jaded because the game is old and I've played it before. I've been in the world of Lovecraft for so long that I expect deep horror, not jumpscares. It doesn...

After sitting down for three hours I was able to speed through my second run of Outlast. It...lived up to my low expectations I suppose. The biggest issue I have is the numerous jump scares, the crutch which the game uses to beat you over the head. The fear of someone staring at you or chasing you down loses it's effect after the fifth or so time. It feels like the developers didn't know what scary was and instead of letting things build up and let the tension go up and down like a wave (like Soma or Amnesia) the game keeps you on constant edge. The story follows a reporter who gets info that an insane assylum is doing "bad things." I'm paraphrasing, there's a bigger story dealing with nazi technology and nanomachines that haunts the assylum and subjects driven mad by the experimentations. There used to be a game jam, a get together for devs, called Assylum Jam with the intent of posing the story away from the cliche mad patients attacking the player. I'm ...

I've dived back into the dark world of the Outlast series. I recently bought Outlast 2 and Outlast Trials. The two games were missing from my Steam list. I must be careful, I've spent forty dollars on games. I need to save money, not spend it. Let me say that I won't be spending any more this month on games or fast food. That should boost my bank account.  Going back to the Outlast games is a little hard because the games are so gory. In one instance, if you get caught by this giant of a man, he'll rip your head off. The game is set in a first person angle meaning that you'll see your body on the floor as your head dies from decapitation. Both the first and second games have lots of other disturbing moments including implied necrophilia, cannibalism, and insane religious devotion. The first game has the player infultrate an insane assylum thanks to a whistleblower email sent anonymously. Armed with only your camera's night vision as a form of light, you descend ...

A lot of good happened yesterday. At work I saw that the schedule had changes which caused me some concern. I sent the updated dates to my folks who were as concerned as I was. There was clearly a communication error when I was working more than two days in a row. I get stressed if I work more than two days in a row. It's due to my medicine. I've been adjusting to the new dose which is keeping me sane but interrupting my sleep. But the issue isn't my sleep but how much work I can handle at a time. Two days on, one day off was our agreement but yesterday the schedule had me working on a day when I was getting a tooth implant.Technically I could come in that day with a busted mouth but I thought it would be better if I let myself heal for a day. I told my boss this and she agreed but seemed to be a little upset. I hate it when she's upset, it makes it hard to talk to her. I'm in mortal fear of upsetting people or letting them down. I went back to my job having the too...

I've been reading more about Lovecraft's life and how he dabbled in amatuer astronomy. His letters show an interest in science and he's published a few books and magazines about the stars. All this is to say that he sounds melacholy when he's writing about the unknown. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown" as quoted by the man himself. There is this frustration in his words, a desire to understand and yet being unable to put the piece together. To quote Lovecraft again "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind ot correlate alll its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowlege will open up such terrifying ...