i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Scene: bed, midnight-thirty, lights off

Me, trying to get to sleep:

My brain: So if you had a recipe with couscous plus duck meat, probably also a bunch of vegetables and spices idk, you could call it "duck duck cous (cous)" ~~~~



So POTO on Broadway is closing, and I have ~feelings~, because Phantom was ... not my first obsession (that would probably be My Little Pony), not even really my first fandom (Star Trek), but it was something I listened to on repeat* and fundamental to my adolescence and college and entire fandom experience.

(* to the point that I literally wore out a cassette tape version, while I was away from home at a summer camp (for number theory). The minor meltdown I had makes more sense through the lens of probably-autistic. Luckily I was able to acquire a copy fairly quickly.)

I spent most of teenagerhood convinced for some reason that I was the only weirdo who liked Phantom, so when I showed up to my college dorm and there was another person down the hall a) in a wheelchair b) with a service dog c) whose dorm room was already plastered with POTO decorations ... well, she and I kind of became bffs. And we may have seen the show a lot.

(I mean, c'mon: we were like half an hour away from San Francisco, which had a standing (not touring) production, and the theater had no elevator (and thus no accessibility for the cheap seats) so wheelchair users got bac-of-orchestra seats for nosebleed-terrace prices. How could we NOT go a bunch?)

She/we also organized online fandom things, including a mailing list; o the people I met through POTO, several got me into Buffy (both show and fandom) and Stars War (ditto, especially prequel), and those two led to way more fandom shows and communities. (I may have found myself there anyway, through different paths, but it wouldn't be the same.)

POTO fandom also introduced me to the concept of recordings in other languages. For years now my favorite recording is German (my language skills are rusty but I follow along well enough and know the story anyway) and second favorite is Japanese (language skills abysmal but the voice qualities are excellent.)

At one point I was working on a project to compare translations of Music of the Night. For each language, have a line by line analysis of the text, the literal translation, and the English counterpart. (It was inherently English-centric, though I considered trying to find someone for each language who could do a literal translation the other way.) I never even got finished with the German version, which at the time I was fluent enough to do myself. (I wish I'd considered translation as a major, or at least focus, because I was interested but didn't realize it was studyable.)

I've been listening to (the German) POTO for the last few days, and one thing I keep coming back to is translation. Sometimes it's just minor word choice, sometimes it's appreciating that the rhyming banter in Notes had the same tight pattern (and equal frustration that the equivalent care wasn't taken with the wrote/written error*), and sometimes just fascination with how the meaning changes.

* English version: "Isn't this the letter you wrote?" / "And what is it, that we're meant to have wrote? (Pause) ...written." Which works because "wrote" is the direct rhyme but "written" is grammatically correct. But the German recording has "Schrieben Sie an mich diesen Brief?" / "Nun verraten Sie was steht in dem (Bruf) -- Brief" which doesn't work because... I'm not sure if it's even a word, and it isn't required by the rhyme and aaaahhhh why.

...anyway. The biggest thing is the Phantom's last linse, which

[Shit, I have a cat on my lap, lol. Maybe I'll finish this tomorrow instead. ]

...which in English is "you alone could make my song take flight / it's over now, the music of the night", which calls textually back to the end of Music of the Night (you alone can &c, help me make the music of the night) but is also very ... it never quite made complete sense why Christine was the only person in the world with a good enough voice. (I know, I know, love/obsession on his part plus gullibility on hers plus he's now got murderous mobs after him, so it's harder to start over, but anyway that's not the point.) German version it's "Du allein hat mich von mir befreit, nun endet die Musik der Dunkelheit" -- that is, "you alone have freed me from myself" (same last line). Doesn't call back, does rhyme, and also just feels ... better somehow? More poetic? I just *like* it better.

Anyway I've been working on this entry for three days so I'm gonna shut up now...

I was listening to Christmas music earlier today, and "have yourself a merry little Christmas" came on. Now, I have what seems to be a permanent association between that song and the xfiles episode, but that's not the point here.

Singer, with me singing along, gets to "Through the years we all will be together / If the fates allow," and while I know quite well that the next lyrics are "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough", somehow my brain decided to go with cow as the rhyme.

"Hang a shining star upon the Christmas cow..."

...'cause ... that's normal... *snicker*

Edit to add what I just spent two hours doing, because dork:

So ... I may have acquired an animal crossing themed Switch as an early birthday present.

And I may have decided to create another AC island instead of transfering data over.

Because, erm, utter dork.

I am doing a specific theme: holidays, with one area that's (non-Christian elements of) Christmas with a penguin resident (Sprinkle or Aurora or both), and one area that's Halloween with Lucky the mummy-bandaged dog as resident, maybe a fall-thanksgiving-y area (not sure if phoebe, who's a phoenix, counts as turkeylike?), one area that's (non-Christian) Easter spring stuff with a bunny resident, probably a cherry blossom festival area with Pekoe. I don't have a summer thing -- I considered Independence Day, with fireworks and red/white/blue color stuff and Apollo the bald eagle, but I'm not very rah-America right now.

It's going to be a Project. Especially looking for particular residents. On my first island I could just look for anyone cute, but this requires specific individuals. Plus specific furniture.

But first, I have to get through the story parts of the game.

I set things up yesterday. It took several tries to get a layout I wanted plus a suitable airport color (which I wouldn't care about except for the thing where the color of your airport affects the color of some of the items you can buy). But the island is going satisfactorily, and today I got stuff done such that tomorrow I will have a house and also a Blathers arriving.

It's kind of interesting doing early game stuff now that I know what's going on. A little frustrating at times (e.g. very early on it didn't let me pick things up until I'd learned how; I also couldn't memorize diy recipes until I'd learned how to diy) but also I better understand the context for various things.

If I pause while breathing, my cpap mask hums at me. I don't think it's intentional, just some function of a specific air pressure level causing resonance somewhere in the mask or near tubing (I suspect the thing I call an "exhale port" that allows my out-breaths to go out or something, idk: all I really know is that if the tube isn't at precisely the right position, I get warm humid exhale breath on my face). Maybe it's the exhale port complaining because the cpap-pushed air can't go into me if I close off air passages?

It's not enough to wake me, but if I'm awake and breathing in a certain pattern (in, out, pause) it's very noticeable. In, out, hum. In, out, hum.

I finally had to pull up a virtual keyboard to figure out what note it is. (F#, slightly under pitch.)

...I'm not a dork, what are you talking about... 😂

I have been productive, this weekend, at designing knitwear with a political bent.

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You know the "Obama is the Ant Christ" meme?

Yeah, I designed a hat..

(Marked as mature for potential offense value, not because it contains naughty bits. I've still gotten a few outraged comments, but mostly they get deleted immediately.)

It occurred to me that the ant motif would make a good hat for any budding entomologist; I plan on designing/releasing that version, separate from the political version except in addition to "hat with ants marching around the brim" version, I want to do a more complicated design where the ante actually spiral around. (Which probably involves 8 segments each starting at a different chart row, though I'm going to have to do some jiggering so the end of round jog gets incorporated.). So basically easy mode and hard mode.

Ant hat will get tested, though. It's only smartass response-to-drama patterns that I post asap.

...I am ridiculously tempted to learn Swahili.

Well, "learn". Use duolingo for, anyway.

Edit: the duolingo course has no audio. Sadface. Back to something else.

I was going to complain about how my brain keeps trumpifying the songs going through my head. "Oh, I stuck my head in a little trump's hole" and "hey, mr tangerine man..." and the like. (As opposed to skunk and tambourine.$

And being awake at 1:30 and feeling smartass, I was going to jokingly refer to the first of these songs as "the song about boundaries skunks"

except

I realized

it really fucking *is* a song about boundaries

and this is somehow (see also the fact that it's 1:30 and I should be asleep) blowing my mind.

(For those not familiar with the song -- there are several tunes, and some variants, but it starts: oh I stuck my head in a little skunk's hole, and the little skunk said well bless my soul, take it out, take it out, take it out, remoooooove it. Well I didn't take it out, and the little skunk said, if you don't take it out you will wish you were dead, take it out, take it out, take it out, remoooooove it. ...and tl;dr the narrator gets sprayed and "phew! I removed it ,,, too late". As a kid this is the epitome of hilarity. As someone who is struggling with enforcing boundaries? It's ... kind of profound in a weird way.

Games

Okay so a few months back, I was going to post about the games (mostly iOS) that I was obsessed with, only then I decided I had to do the Best And Most Thorough Recs Ever. Which sort of made it such a stupendously monumental task that I never did it.

I still may do a more in-depth thing later, but these are my current or recent iOS games. (Some may be available on other platforms, I don't know.)

The Game Formerly Known As Abyssrium

I'm sure they had good reasons for changing the name from Abyssrium (which evoked the premise of a deep-ocean virtual aquarium) to "Tap Tap Fish" (ugh) but the change very nearly kicked it off the list. But ... eh.

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#

Zen Koi

Here, fishy fishy fishy. Pretty fishy.

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Merge Dragons!

This game has taken over my life, I think. I even get the Tetris effect of closing my eyes and seeing MD stuff.

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I have more, but this is enough for one post /) I'm not sure whether the remainder will be one post or two.

Feel free to ask me any questions about any of these apps.

I get absurdly mopey and self-disliking and altogether generally crappy-feeling on days when I don't have any creative output.

I can't produce creative stuff (yes that's the technical term) when I am feeling mopey and crappy.

...p ∴ q is not the same as p ∵ q.

(yes, I am enough of a geek to use logic symbology. even though it's more effort. hopefully I've done the html right so that screen readers don't choke on it; if not, a) let me know, and b) the first is 'therefore' and the second is 'because').

Or, using more different logic symbology, p ⇒ q is not the same as q ⇒ p and neither one by itself is the same as p ⇔ q.

Or, using actual english wordy things, I don't know whether the problem is "crappy mood stifles creative output" or "lack of output creates crappy mood" or "the mood and the lack of output coexist".

This may seem like pointless dithering, and/or an excuse to use logic symbology in an entry, except that ... well. The difference between p ∴ q and p ∵ q is primarily theoretical if you don't have any control over either p or q, but it becomes practically vital, if you can control one factor, to know which side of the causality that factor is on.

If it's the first (or to some extent the third), since I can't exactly will myself into a good mood, the best thing to do is to not frustrate myself trying to do creative stuff, because it either won't happen or will come out tainted and unusable. If it's the second, forcing myself to ignore the mood and create stuff will make me feel better.

Sigh.