Gabe liked Destiny when it was very much not a cool thing to like. Kiko and I used to give him shit about it all the time. Kiko never got entirely wrapped up in it, but it had me pretty fucked up for a while - to the extent that I still maintain an active eye on lore developments even if I don't feel like grinding whatever new dust they've invented.

I installed the Demo for Tales of Arise, mostly to see what its vibe would look like in 4k, and I can tell you that in the fifteen minutes I played it the vibe was very good. I decided that, purely as a matter of considered chastity, I would save myself for Deathloop - a game that, even in the best case scenario, involves playing the same areas over and over again until they are utterly known to you from every angle. I've been impressed with how fresh they've managed to keep it given that, and I've also spent a lot of time hunting down other players, but I don't think I can do that and effectively grind a JRPG. Even if the vibe is very good in 4k.

Everything is good downstairs. Upstairs is a complete mess! But that's been true for decades.

I am ridiculously excited to announce that coming up on Saturday the 25th (my birthday!) I’m doing an ASUS x Gundam PC build with my son Gabe on the PA Twitch channel.  Thankfully Chris Barr from ROG North America will join us to supervise and provide valuable info.

What kids in the house watch on their own time is fairly constrained, but what we watch when we're together might be a little broader than what's considered normal. For example, Derry Girls is probably the piece of media most prized by our clan, and it's replete with filthy language, blasphemy, and references to the sort of intimate congress that - despite its apparently scandalous nature - produced every human being on Earth. Because of the way they experience the world, with unrelenting immediacy, I honestly don't even know if you could show them a piece of media they'd recognize as true if it weren't Rated R.

Warnett Humboldt wasn't a snake, but he got snakes. He was content to own the concept of a snake in his mind; he had no interest in having one in the house. That seemed a little too on the nose - or whatever a snake had. There, up front; two quick snake-holes that suggested a colon. Suggested a breath: literally and perhaps even figuratively.

Whatever you may think of me now - how I comport myself, what I "get up to" - I'm fried dough compared to my previous incarnation. He was not exactly done in the middle, and that is being diplomatic. I had to endure successive annihilations to shave down a variety of sticky-outy bits which made being around me complex and not in a Pinot Noir way. More like complex in a fuckin' shut up way. I see that Michael has rendered me with the teabag I would occasionally tie to my glasses because I liked the smell. This was around the time I started wearing sweatpants exclusively - I realized that while I was required to go to school, I was not required to wear uncomfortable pants while I was at school. The realizations only bloomed from there. I came to understand I was also wearing a host of constraining ideas that were of no benefit, either. It was around this time that I invented the hippo.

Dabe sent me a ton of cool shots of the table he made the custom skin for.  They are presented below, with my director's commentary:

I haven't played it in a bit, since they added Blissey - a few weeks, then - but Pokemon Unite is still a very frequent occurrence over at Chez Gabe's House. He's gotten to the point where… well, I mean, it's all in the strip.

I've had so much going on the last month or so that I haven't had time to even purchase Aliens: Fireteam Elite, let alone install or play it. I'm generally insufferable about Aliens shit, so insufferable that I often avoid games of this kind altogether just because I know that I'm exceedingly picky about this kind of shit. I've told you before: I'm "that guy" about it. It's not a point of pride for me. It actively diminishes the joy I might otherwise receive from substandard horseshit and is something I consider a net loss.

I've just had too much to do leading up to the show to catch it, and when I rest I fall into the dark sleep of prophecy - but the Doctor Strange episode of What If? is something I need to make time for. At least, that's what I'm being told by Gabriel, except he told me in a weird way that doesn't map onto any known sayings. Please let me emphasize that this is something he really said. It was probably a slip of the tongue, but now it's out here and we need to contend with that.

The designers love making this stuff, and it's not hard to tell.  Just look at it! This year's Camp theme is a blast, and for the first time it's available both at the show proper and up on the Online Store starting Friday, September 3rd.  Here's the banners from the show:

I spent most of today thinking it was Thursday. I don't have a newspost on Thursdays! That's the important piece of information you should know. Not for any particular reason. Certainly don't look at what time the post went up. It was also the first day of school. And two days before PAX. Plus I had to go to the dentist! So, hey. How was your day?

Once the app became available in English I bit the bullet and ordered myself a Digimon Vital Bracelet. I posted a quick photo of it last week on Twitter and many of you were curious  about what exactly it was. Now that I’ve spent almost a week with it I feel comfortable telling you all about it. I’ll go into detail but basically it’s a fitness tracker that lets you raise and battle Digimon. The device itself is a lightweight bracelet and the Digimon come on separate little cards called DIMs. Each one is a unique digital monster that you evolve through a combination of moving your real world meat body and battles that take place in the watch or on the companion app. 

I can see a universe where something like an NFT is enduring and normal, provided the externalities of their proliferation and use can be tamped down. Most of their current incarnations seem incredibly dumb, or are so not-my-thing that I can't tell the difference. What I can't figure out is why, when NASCAR decided to get into racing NFTs, they went with horses instead of cars…? That's a wild fucking (conceptual) ride. That's Mr. Toad's wild fucking (conceptual) ride.

We really want Lexcalibur II out this year if we can swing it, so he's gonna be drawing shit like this today instead: