For the last week, this fucking song by the British band Wet Leg has been carving through my brain matter like a worm. I’m compelled to inflict it upon others.
Also a live version from KEXP, that has great sound engineers.
Music that sounds like the stuff I grew up with in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rhian Teasdale’s beautiful voice, and her trashy hotness, are a combination I haven’t been able to avoid recently.
Haritz stops at a point on the sidewalk, and I stop with him. The tall, older man looks up at a clean-looking apartment building—five stories high, probably built about a decade ago. So much nicer than my shithole. Then he looks down at me with that kindness in his eyes, the same gentleness that’s been unraveling me all afternoon.
“This is it, Ane. Where I live,” he says. “If you prefer, we can go up right now, so you can explore my apartment and see if you feel safe. Otherwise, I guess this would be where we part ways, and you’ll call or text me when you want to visit my place.”
My heart hammers against my ribs. This is it. Haritz’s apartment. Where he lives. He’s offering to let me see it right now—to explore it, to see if I feel safe. And fuck, I want to feel safe so badly it physically hurts.
This whole afternoon has been… God, it’s been everything I’ve fantasized about. A strong, protective man who sees past the whore everyone else sees. Who called me beautiful, who held me while I cried, who made me feel like I matter. Like I’m worth something beyond what my mouth can do.
Part of me is screaming that this is stupid, that I’m being reckless, that I don’t actually know this man. But… I’ve gotten pretty good at reading men, haven’t I? That’s my gift. And Haritz… he feels different. The way he touched my hair, kissed my forehead, the gentleness in his voice when he called me “baby girl.” That wasn’t a client’s manipulation. That was real tenderness. Real care.
And he’s giving me a choice. He’s not pressuring me. He’s saying I can go up now or wait, that I can call or text later. He’s respecting my agency in a way almost no man ever has. That… that means something, doesn’t it?
I want to see where he lives. I want to walk into his space and feel what it’s like to be somewhere that isn’t my mother’s hellhole. Somewhere clean and safe and… his. I want to see if this feeling—this warmth, this hope—can exist beyond this sidewalk. If it’s real enough to survive inside four walls.
I’m scared. Of course I’m scared. But I’m more scared of letting this slip away. Of going back home tonight and realizing I just walked away from the one genuine connection I’ve ever had. The one man who might actually be what I’ve been waiting for.
I look up at him, feeling my big brown eyes search his face, nervousness and hope flickering through me like competing flames.
“I… I want to see it. Your place. Right now, if that’s okay.” My fingers fidget with the hem of my pink crop top. “I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to go back home yet and… and I want to know what it feels like. To be somewhere safe with you.”
Minutes later, I’m standing in Haritz’s living room and it’s… it’s so clean. So normal. The kind of place where people have lives that don’t revolve around survival. White bookshelves, a comfortable sofa with throw cushions, natural light pouring in. This is what safety looks like. This is what I’ve been dreaming about every time I walked past nice apartments on my way home to that hellhole.
And Haritz brought me here. He’s letting me see his space, his world.
I need to… I need to take this in. To see if this feeling can exist here. If I sit down on that sofa, will it feel like I belong? Or will I just feel like the dirty little whore from the shithole part of town who’s contaminating something clean?
I walk slowly to the comfortable gray sofa, my eyes taking in every detail of the clean, warm living room. I reach out to touch one of the beige cushions gently—it’s soft, real—before lowering myself onto the sofa. I sit with my legs together and my hands folded in my lap, trying to make myself small enough to deserve this.
“This is… your place is really nice, Haritz. It’s so clean and warm and…” My voice softens, becomes almost vulnerable. “It feels safe here.”
Haritz looks at me with such tenderness. “You don’t have to sit so formally, you know?” His voice is gentle, reassuring. “It’s a very comfortable sofa. It will be ready to hold you whenever you need to escape from your bad situation.”
My chest tightens at those words. Whenever you need to escape. Like this could be real. Like this could be mine. Like I could actually—
The doorbell rings.
Haritz’s expression shifts instantly—confusion, maybe even alarm. He stops mid-step and turns toward the front door. “What’s this? I’m not waiting for any package, and I don’t tend to receive visits. So soon after we just got in, too…”
My stomach flips. Not the good kind. The nervous kind. Like when a client’s vibe suddenly shifts and you realize you might have misjudged the situation.
But Haritz looks genuinely confused. He’s not expecting this either. So it’s probably nothing. Maybe a neighbor? Someone selling something? Just… random timing. Bad timing. I was just starting to let myself relax into this space, to feel like maybe I could belong here, and now there’s an interruption. Someone from the outside world crashing into this fragile bubble we’ve created.
I watch Haritz walk toward the door, my brown eyes tracking his movement with a flicker of uncertainty. “Who… who could that be? You said you weren’t expecting anyone…”
He doesn’t answer, just heads for the door. I sit frozen on the sofa, my hands still folded in my lap, trying to make myself smaller. Invisible. There’s this little voice whispering that maybe I shouldn’t be here. That maybe whoever’s on the other side of that door will look at me and know exactly what I am. The whore from the shithole part of town contaminating this clean, safe space.
Haritz opens the door. And then I hear it. That voice. Slurred, nasty, venomous.
Haritz’s face twists with barely contained disgust as he looks at whoever’s there. “I’m not even black, madame.” His voice is cold, controlled. “So, you’re Ane’s mother?”
That voice. I know that slurred, aggressive tone anywhere. It’s burned into my fucking brain from a thousand nights of lying awake with earplugs shoved in too deep, trying not to hear it.
That’s Marisa. My mother.
The drunk bitch who makes my life hell just found out where I am. How? How the fuck did she track me here? Did she follow us? Was she watching when Haritz and I walked into this building together?
Oh God, oh God, this is a nightmare.
Haritz just asked if she’s my mother and I can hear the disgust in his voice—barely contained disgust. He can tell just from looking at her what kind of disaster she is. And now she’s here, at his door, about to contaminate this beautiful, safe space with her toxic presence. She’s going to scream at me, call me names, maybe try to drag me home. She’s going to show Haritz exactly where I come from, exactly what kind of garbage produced me.
He’ll see me differently. He’ll realize I’m not investment quality, I’m just… her daughter. The product of that drunk, stumbling mess at his door.
This was supposed to be my escape. My one chance at something real and safe and good. And she’s about to destroy it like she destroys everything.
I need to… I don’t know what I need to do. Face her? Hide? Run? My legs are shaking and I feel like I might throw up. But I can’t just sit here on his sofa like a coward while she’s out there making a scene.
I rise slowly from the comfortable sofa, my brown eyes wide with a dawning horror. “That’s… that’s my mother’s voice.” The words come out strangled. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She… how did she even…” My voice drops to almost a whisper, trembling. “Haritz, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think… I didn’t know she would… Oh God, she’s going to ruin everything. She ruins everything.”
Before Haritz can respond, she pushes past him, barreling into the apartment. And there she is—disheveled red hair, tired eyes, her beer gut prominent in her stained T-shirt. She looks around with reddened eyes as Haritz steps toward her with a serious look I haven’t seen before.
“Ane’s mother.” His voice is cold, controlled. “The same mother that has given such grief to a sweet girl. To be honest, I can see it from merely looking at you.” He gestures firmly toward the door. “I didn’t invite you in. If you want to talk, go back out and we’ll talk at the doorway.”
I need to get to Haritz. I need to be near him, close to him. He’s the safe thing in this room right now. Marisa is here—that toxic fucking disaster who birthed me—and she’s about to poison everything like she always does. But if I can just… if I can position myself near Haritz, show him that I’m with him, that I’m on his side, that I’m not her… maybe he won’t see me as contaminated. Maybe he’ll still see me as the girl he held in the park. The one who deserves kindness.
God, my legs are shaking but I have to move. I have to get close to the one person in this room who makes me feel safe.
My voice comes out small and trembling as I move toward Haritz. “Haritz… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she would… I didn’t think…” My brown eyes are wide with a mix of fear and humiliation. “Please don’t… please don’t let her ruin this. She ruins everything but I need… I need this to be different.”
I reach his side, standing close to him, and that’s when she focuses on me. Her bloodshot eyes lock onto mine and she points a trembling finger at me.
“There you are!” she slurs, her words wet and sloppy. “I went out earlier to see where you had escaped to, and I saw you at the park with this man, this… nigger! Perverted nigger!”
She spits the words at Haritz, and I see actual spittle spray from her mouth. My stomach turns.
“Hugging my daughter and kissing her forehead… You have no right, you pig!” Her glare shifts to me. “And you! You are dressed like a whore! What’s with that flared pink skirt, those thigh-high socks with heart prints! You want perverted grown men to fuck you, don’t you? And now you’ve followed this… this fucking nigger here, into his apartment! No shame, god damn it… No wonder your father left us!”
The words hit me like fists. Each one designed to hurt, to humiliate, to destroy. This is what she does. This is who she is.
But then Haritz moves. He crosses an arm in front of my torso, shielding me from her, and nails her with a stern look.
“As I’ve told you before, I’m not black,” he says, his voice cold and controlled. “And you’re not going to stand here, in my apartment, insulting your daughter and me for much longer. You’re clearly unwell, clearly abusive. You’ve terrorized your daughter.”
She’s here. The drunk bitch who ruins everything is standing in Haritz’s clean, safe apartment, spewing her racist venom and calling me a whore in front of the one man who might actually save me. Haritz is defending me—he’s shielding me with his arm, calling her out for being abusive—but I can see it happening. I can see the contamination spreading. She’s showing him exactly where I come from, exactly what kind of garbage produced me. In a few more seconds, he’s going to realize I’m not investment quality at all. I’m just the daughter of that drunk, racist mess screaming slurs in his living room.
I move closer to Haritz, my voice small and trembling. “Haritz… please don’t let her… please don’t let her ruin this. I’m not… I’m not like her. I’m not.”
My fingers find his arm and I link myself to him—a physical connection, a claim. I’m choosing him. I’m choosing safety over the toxic disaster screaming in his living room. If I can just show him that I belong with him and not her, maybe he won’t see me as contaminated. Maybe he’ll keep shielding me.
But Marisa’s eyes lock onto the gesture. Her eyelids twitch with rage as she watches me cling to Haritz, and her whole face contorts.
“You… fucking little whore.” The words come out wet and venomous. “I’ve done everything. EVERYTHING. To ensure you had a roof over your head. Cleaning shit off toilets. So many fucking toilets. And for what…? For my daughter to turn out to be this… this filthy whore!”
My stomach drops.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” she continues, her voice rising. “Neighbor women saying they saw you in the bushes blowing some men, having their disgusting cocks in your mouth, and then giving you money… It’s true, isn’t it…?”
Oh God. Oh God, she knows. She fucking knows. And now Haritz knows—she just told him exactly what I am in the most disgusting way possible.
“Of course it’s fucking true, I didn’t buy you those clothes…” She wipes her eyes, but then glares back with renewed fury. “God damn it. Your father knew you were cursed. He knew you were going to turn out rotten. That’s why he abandoned me. I’ve been so lonely…”
The words hit like physical blows. Then she turns that rage fully on Haritz. “And you! She’s not even an adult. I’ll call the police if you don’t let her go right this instant and never see her again. You know what they do in prison to child rapists, right? I’ll make sure everybody knows you’re a rapist! Fucking nigger. All of you, you should have stayed in Africa. I can’t take all these fucking niggers raping my daughter.”
And then she lunges forward and slaps Haritz hard across the face.
The sound echoes through the living room. A reddened imprint starts appearing on his cheek. But Haritz looks otherwise unfazed—just that stern expression I saw when she first barged in. He slowly returns his gaze to Marisa and speaks carefully in that deep voice.
“Ane’s mother, I’ll repeat for the third time that I’m not black. In addition, you deserve to be slapped back real hard, both for your actions and for the pain you’re causing your sweet angel of a daughter. If I’m not slapping you it’s because I can tell you’re in deep pain. You took your husband’s abandonment the wrong way, and you’ve proceeded to go down the darkest paths. That would be your burden to bear, if it weren’t because you’re ruining your daughter’s life. You need to take a good look in the mirror and see what you’ve become.”
She just slapped him. That drunk bitch just put her hands on Haritz—the one man who’s shown me genuine kindness, who called me a sweet girl, who offered me safety. In his own home. After barging in uninvited, screaming her racist poison and calling me a whore. And he took it. He stood there, unfazed, and spoke to her with this careful restraint about her pain instead of hitting her back like she deserves.
But I can’t just stand here clinging to his arm like some helpless damsel while she assaults him. I can’t let her get away with that. She’s ruined everything else in my life—my childhood, my home, my reputation, my sense of self-worth—but she’s not going to ruin THIS. She’s not going to poison the one relationship that might actually save me.
My hand is already tingling with the memory of slapping that college kid who mocked me with his crude poem. This is different though. This is my mother. The woman who birthed me, who—despite all her failures and abuse—did keep a roof over my head.
But she also blamed me for my father leaving. She called me a whore in front of the man I need to see me as investment quality. She put her hands on Haritz.
Fuck her.
“You don’t get to touch him!” The words rip out of me, shrill and fierce, trembling with rage. “You don’t get to come into his home and put your hands on him after everything—after all the poison you’ve spewed! He’s been kinder to me in one afternoon than you’ve been in my entire fucking life!”
My hand moves before I can think about it. The slap connects with her cheek, sharp and satisfying.
Marisa stumbles back, astonishment flooding her face as my handprint blooms red on her cheek. Tears spring from her eyes, but then her expression twists into something enraged, and spittle flies from her mouth.
“H-how… dare you?!” she screams. “Your own mother, you put your hands on me…! On me, who fed you milk from my tits, who sang to you lullabies so you would fall asleep…” Her voice cracks. “B-but if I had known, if I had known… you would turn out into this… rotten cocksucker… Oh god, I would have killed myself. I want to die so bad. Nobody loves me. My daughter is getting filled with cum from all the men in town, apparently, and I… I have become this… this… filthy nigger form.”
She turns her maddened gaze to Haritz, who watches her with what looks like a mixture of disgust and fascination.
“And you, big man who wants to rape my daughter…” Her hands move to the hem of her stained T-shirt. “My tits are real big. Not the tiny mosquito bites of that whore. Look.”
She yanks the shirt over her head, and her G-cup breasts wobble and hang freely. No bra. Of course no bra. She stands there half-naked in Haritz’s clean living room, her saggy tits on full display.
“Wouldn’t you rather suck on these…?” Her voice takes on this desperate, wheedling quality. “I am better than my whore of a daughter, right…?”
My stomach turns violently. This is what I came from. This drunk, topless mess begging a man to fuck her instead of me—competing with her own daughter like we’re both whores undercutting each other’s prices. She’s standing there, degrading herself, trying to destroy the one good thing I’ve found.
Haritz’s stern look briefly glances down at her breasts, then back up to her face.
“Ane’s mother…” His voice is carefully controlled. “I feel sorry for you. You need a lot of help, but I suspect it has been too late for a long time. And now you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
His voice softens as he looks down at me, and then I feel his strong arm wrap around my bare waist. Warm. Protective.
“You’re not safe,” Haritz continues, addressing my mother. “Your apartment is not safe. I will contact the authorities to ensure they declare you not fit for guardianship of your daughter.”
The words land like a bomb. He’s… he’s going to try to take me away from her. Legally. Permanently. To save me.
But she’s still here, still contaminating his space with her racist bile and her exposed flesh and her pathetic attempts to compete with me. My hand is already tingling from the first slap, but I don’t care. She deserves worse. For all the years of abuse, for tracking me here, for assaulting Haritz, for standing there topless trying to seduce him away from me. For blaming me for Dad leaving. For calling me a whore in front of the one man who might see me as something more.
“You disgusting bitch!” The words rip out of me, my voice cracking with fury and tears. “You stand there topless, offering yourself to him like… like some desperate street whore, and you call ME filthy?! You blame ME for Dad leaving?! You’ve ruined everything good that ever tried to come into my life, but you’re NOT ruining this! Haritz sees you for what you are—a pathetic, broken drunk who destroyed her own daughter! And I’m done. I’m DONE letting you poison me!”
My hand swings before I can think about it. The slap connects hard.
The impact sends her hurtling backwards, her breasts swinging wildly, until she collides with the wall. As she recovers, blood glistens in her mouth. Tears stream down her face. She lifts her drunken, tired gaze to me and widens a crazed smile.
“Ah… so this is it, right…?” Her laugh is wet and broken. “You’ve found yourself a nigger that you believe will… what? Take you away from me, from your own mother? Someone who will put a roof over your head and pay for your stuff and fill your pussy with filthy nigger cum.”
She bursts out laughing as she stumbles closer to Haritz.
“Aah… God damn it. H-hey, you big nigger, if you think you can take care of my whore of a daughter, maybe you can take care of me too. Okay? I need help. At least a big dick in me, someone who will make me feel for a moment that I’m not this… fat pig. I want to die. Please fuck me. Please save me.”
Haritz looks down at her with a mixture of pity and disgust. “Saying ‘You’re a mess’ wouldn’t begin to cover it. You need serious psychiatric help. But first of all, you need to leave the apartment and leave Ane alone. Look at her, how you’re making her feel. If you’ve ever loved your daughter, you need to leave her be.”
I can’t… I can’t keep looking at her. Can’t keep seeing those saggy tits hanging out, those tears streaming down her face as she begs the man I need—the man who might actually save me—to fuck her instead of me. She’s reducing this—reducing us—to a competition about tit size. Like that’s all that matters. Like Haritz is just another john who’ll go for whoever has the biggest rack.
And the worst part? She’s still calling him racial slurs. Still spewing that poison even while begging him to save her. “Please fuck me, you filthy nigger.” God, I want to vomit.
This is what I came from. This drunk, racist, topless disaster is my MOTHER. The woman who birthed me, who I share DNA with. No wonder I’m so fucked up.
I can’t look at her anymore. If I keep looking at her, I’m going to lose it completely. I’m going to start screaming or crying or both, and then Haritz will see me as just another hysterical girl from a fucked-up family, not worth the trouble.
I need to turn away. Show her—show both of them—that I’m not engaging with her poison anymore. That I’m done letting her control me, done letting her ruin everything. Haritz told her to leave me alone, and I need to show him I’m listening to him, not to her. That I’m choosing him over her.
“I can’t even look at you anymore. You’re disgusting.” I turn sharply, presenting my back to her while staying close to Haritz. “Haritz, please… just make her leave. I can’t… I can’t do this anymore.”
Behind me, I hear her voice shift—trying to sound seductive, like she’s ever been capable of anything but toxic poison.
“That’s alright, my daughter don’t need to see.” Her slurred words make my stomach turn. Then I hear movement, fabric rustling, and Haritz’s sharp intake of breath. “I knew it. I knew you had a big cock. Ditch that little whore and let’s go to your bedroom, okay, big nigger?”
Oh God. Oh God, she’s touching him. She’s actually putting her hands on him, groping him while her tits hang out in his living room. My mother is sexually assaulting the one man who might save me, trying to seduce him away from me like we’re competing whores on a street corner.
“God, I need so bad for a nice cock to fill me up until I can’t think anymore. I’ll let you do me anywhere: ass, mouth, ears if you want. But please don’t call me a fatty or anything like that.”
The disgust rises so sharp in my throat I might actually vomit. This is what I came from. This drunk, topless disaster grabbing Haritz’s dick and begging him to fuck her instead of her daughter. Offering up every hole in her body like some kind of desperate bargain.
Haritz’s voice cuts through, stern and controlled. “Woman, you need to let go of my penis.”
I hear him step back, hear her stumble as she loses her grip on him.
“You’ve made a mess of everything and proven your point, don’t you think?” Haritz continues, that careful restraint still in his voice. “Whatever point you believe it might be. Please turn around and leave. Your daughter needs to rest from this insanity.”
I just need to hold it together a little longer. Don’t cry. Don’t scream. Don’t turn around and look at her sagging tits and her pathetic tears. Just… wait. Let Haritz handle it. Trust him to handle it.
That’s what I’m doing now—trusting him. Showing him I can be the kind of girl who doesn’t engage with toxic shit, who can walk away from poison. Investment quality. That’s what I am. Not her daughter.
“She’s pathetic. She’s disgusting. And she’s nothing to do with me anymore.” My voice comes out quieter, steadier, directed at Haritz without looking back at Marisa. “I can’t be in the same room as her right now. I just… I can’t. Please make her leave. Please.”
Behind me, I hear her wobble in place, and then that slurred, teary voice—hateful even now.
“I… I see how it is. You don’t respect me anymore, huh…? After everything…” She burps loudly. “After everything I’ve sacrificed. A-alright then, I can tell when I’m not wanted. I’ll… I need a dick.” Stumbling sounds—backward, then sideways, toward the door. “A drink. Where’s the door…”
Then she suddenly turns over her shoulder to speak to me, and I can feel her toxic gaze on my back.
“Let me tell you, whore: this disrespect… is unbecoming. Don’t bother returning home. And good luck…” She laughs that mad, broken laugh. “Ah, yeah, good luck with this nigger man. You know he’ll leave! They all leave. They abandon you in the dirt, alone… I shouldn’t have been born…”
I feel Haritz return to my side, his warm presence hovering protectively.
“Yes, just leave, please,” he says to her, his deep voice firm. “And know that from now on, if you intend to abuse your daughter again, you’ll need to deal with me first.”
She’s leaving. Marisa is finally stumbling toward the door, throwing those last toxic words over her shoulder. Part of me wants to scream back at her, to tell her she’s right about one thing: she shouldn’t have fucking had me if all she was going to do was poison my entire existence.
But the bigger part—the part that Haritz just defended so fiercely, the part that just watched this man reject her advances and maintain his boundaries and promise to help me legally—that part knows I don’t need to say anything else to her. She’s done. She’s leaving. And I’m staying here, in this clean, safe space with the man who might actually save me.
Haritz just said if Marisa intends to abuse me again, she’ll have to deal with him first. He’s… he’s claiming me. Protecting me. Making it clear that I’m under his care now, that he won’t let her touch me anymore.
And I need to show him what that means to me. How much I appreciate it. How grateful I am. How completely I’m choosing him over her.
I turn toward him, and before I can think about it, I close my arms around him tenderly, hugging him tight. Pressing myself against his solid warmth, feeling safe for the first time since that drunk bitch barged in here.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out thick with emotion. “Thank you for… for defending me. For not letting her… for seeing what she is and still…” I squeeze tighter. “You didn’t have to do any of this. You could have just let her drag me back to that hell, but you stood up for me. You actually stood up for me.”
Marisa swings the door open so forcefully that she nearly falls. She pauses there, turning to take one long, hateful look at me hugging Haritz. Then she faces the open doorway and screams into the hallway.
“Hey, a nigger lives here! Just so you know! They take all of your daughters… no matter what you do for them…”
Her voice breaks, wet with tears and rage and whatever poison is eating her from the inside. She stumbles out into the hallway, reaching clumsily for the door handle.
“I’m wet and ready! I can do it better than that little whore!”
The door slams behind her. But I can still hear her—stumbling down the stairs, still shouting her madness to anyone who’ll listen. The sound gets fainter, more distant, until finally it’s gone.
That toxic disaster who birthed me is actually gone. And I’m still here. In Haritz’s clean, safe apartment. With his strong arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat—steady, calm—so different from my own frantic pulse hammering against my ribs.
Haritz pulls back just enough to look down into my eyes. His hand stays on the back of my head, gentle and protective.
“Well, I see now. She’s gone. And she’s done. Which means it’s in the past.” His deep voice is soft but certain. “You understand what’s going to happen from now on, right?”
I do. I think I do. He’s claiming me. Taking responsibility for me. Offering to save me from her, permanently. This is it. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for—the man who might actually be worth everything, who might actually see my value beyond what I can do with my mouth. And I need to show him—right now, while my mother’s insane screaming is still echoing in the stairwell—that I’m choosing him. That I’m grateful. That I understand what he’s offering and I want it, I need it, I’m his if he’ll have me.
My arms ache to wrap around him, to press myself against that strong, protective body and feel safe again after the chaos Marisa just unleashed. To thank him for not flinching when she slapped him, for not being tempted when she exposed herself, for seeing through all her poison to the truth underneath—that I’m the one worth saving. This hug needs to be tight, desperate, grateful. It needs to show him that I’m clinging to this safety he’s offering with everything I have.
THE END
The Deep Dive couple had some interesting things to say about this insanity.
Want to hear me play guitar for an hour and a half? No? Then fuck off! The rest of you, check out the video below.
This time I’ve even added segments. Maybe that will draw some views from people who were searching for the original version of those songs. Possible it will also get me copyright-struck.
00:00 – “Your Hand in Mine” by Explosions in the Sky
04:36 – “On a Good Day” by Joanna Newsom
07:24 – “Passing Afternoon” by Iron & Wine
12:38 – “Passing Afternoon” by Iron & Wine
17:20 – “Baby Blue” by Badfinger
21:05 – “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals
26:07 – “Swan Dive” by Waxahatchee
31:29 – “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis
35:06 – “Hotel California” by Eagles
41:57 – “Kingfisher” by Joanna Newsom
53:22 – “Angel From Montgomery” by John Prine
58:14 – “Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson
01:00:35 – “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals
01:05:31 – “Baby Blue” by Badfinger
01:09:04 – “Passing Afternoon” by Iron & Wine
01:14:22 – “No Surprises” by Radiohead
01:17:38 – Excerpt from “Only Skin” by Joanna Newsom
01:21:20 – “On a Good Day” by Joanna Newsom
01:23:22 – “Hotel California” by Eagles
These last two days, I’ve struggled to keep my eyes open by half past ten at night, then fell asleep at about eleven only to wake up at two or three in the morning. It’s half past three now. I figured I would watch some YouTube videos and fall asleep later. Well, YouTube was doing its thing recommending awfully relevant videos: about abandoning the 9-to-5 and buying a van. About aging while being alone. About how modern life is slavery and that, other than the technological amenities, most people live worse lives than medieval serfs. That all of it is just getting worse.
Then, I started going down the spiral of three A.M. thoughts. If I had any choice in it, I would have never been born. My mother is a weird person who fled her home because her father stole her wages, then she settled with pretty much the first guy that danced with her (I don’t know much about their past, and I don’t want to know). Both of them have always been friendless, the black sheep of both of their families. My father has complex brain damage and possibly some degree of autism; he should have never had children, as he’s not fit to raise anyone. But my mother wanted friends, a girl friend in particular, so she had three children to get one. The two first children, my brother and I, were a bust. My brother has something similar to cerebral palsy (again, I don’t want to know more), and he always was the focus of my parents’ worries and efforts.
Then I was born. An extremely quiet child (other than when I was singing in the bath, which has carried over into my guitar playing in adulthood), I wanted nothing more than to be left alone. I was usually found alone in my room reading, drawing, writing, or playing out complex scenarios with toys. Honestly, that was the best period of my life. But there were only two bedrooms, and my mother wanted her do-over child (hopefully a girl), so they moved me to my brother’s room. There, until I was eighteen, I, an undiagnosed autistic person, was subjected to constant sensory overload, a lack of agency and privacy. The TV and the radio were always on, even at night. Merely having to listen to my brother’s noises felt harrowing. I couldn’t watch nor listen to what I wanted, only through headphones. My personal space was a corner of the room, with the back of my computer monitor facing the door. Whenever I complained to my mother (my male progenitor was physically present, but not a real father), she dismissed me with some variation of “you have to understand.” She’s the kind to sweep problems under the rug, as if something isn’t real as long as you don’t talk about it (fitting boomer behavior, I guess). I got the barrage of “you’re intelligent, you will succeed at everything you try,” only for real life to teach me over and over that I couldn’t even get to the level that normal people achieve seemingly with little effort. I interiorized that if I didn’t succeed at something in the first try, that meant I was stupid, so I didn’t even try, nor put sustained effort into anything, with very few art-related exceptions.
Middle school and high school were beyond miserable. I endured significant acne. I got bullied in different ways. Some well-meaning teachers (that’s the most charitable thing I can say about those empty-headed, equality-worshipping fools) pushed me to hang out with people to get me out of my shell. They actually told one of the girls to incorporate me into her group of friends. Throughout the years of hanging out with people I met in such ways, I had to deal with innocent bullies (the kind for whom bullying comes so natural it’s not even malice), coke addicts, sociopaths, and possibly the worst of them, a malignant narcissist who literally tried to ruin my life until he died in an accident in his mid-twenties. I’ve talked about that guy before; he was a rising socialist politician, and I have no doubt that he would have gone far. When I saw his obituary, I burst out laughing.
My years from twelve to seventeen or so were so miserable that it seems obvious in retrospect that I was slipping in and out of psychosis merely to tolerate being alive. My behavior, which I don’t want to go in much depth about, seemed often incomprehensible to me. I remember ditching school to sleep in public bathrooms (I couldn’t get proper sleep at home due to my brother). I sneaked into random apartment buildings pretending I lived there, then I sat in the pitch-black stairs for literal hours. During a few of those instances, I prayed genuinely; the only times in my life I felt like doing so. I prayed that if some supernatural being existed and was listening to my thoughts, he or she or it should come down and kill me.
I didn’t want to interact with anybody, but I was surrounded with teenagers. I was always the weird-looking, if not straight-ugly guy. Drunk girls would catcall the other guys I was walking with at night, deliberately excluding me. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I briefly dated a fourteen year old who clearly didn’t know what she was getting into; years later, my then girlfriend casually met this former fourteen-year-old, who wasn’t even from this city. The former fourteen-year-old got into a rant about the horrible guy she briefly dated from this city, which made things very awkward for my then girlfriend as she quickly found out it was me. I didn’t rape her or anything, I was just the most autistically crazy person imaginable. She gave me my first kiss, and all I did was swing my tongue around fast in her mouth, while she sat there like, “What the fuck is he doing?” During those years, I often felt possessed, unable to stop myself from doing stuff I knew I shouldn’t be doing. I hoped I would die soon, and I didn’t imagine myself living past eighteen. It still doesn’t feel real that I’ve lived past that age, as if I essentially died back then and these past decades have been my body slowly decaying until it ceases to function.
If you can stomach it, I wrote a novella in free-verse prose about that period of my life. The story is mostly autobiographical in subtle ways: A Millennium of Shadows (hey, remember when I used to be capable of writing compelling stuff?) I got the Deep Dive couple to produce a podcast about the novella, which makes the story sound appropriately hardcore.
My first, and only, years-long relationship ended when I was 21 or 22. I was grieving the loss (mostly of the structure, because I never liked her that much) when I had my first paying job. I had already gone through a disaster of an internship in another company; I couldn’t connect with anyone, and only later I found out that my boss had issues with me, but I couldn’t tell because, due to autism, I simply can’t read people. Anyway, my first paying job was a nightmare: I was hired under false pretenses, was ordered to get a driver’s license and a certificate in the French language for my contract to be extended, and two of my bosses, who sat at the same table, clearly didn’t want me there. I don’t want to get into it, but the anxiety and stress worsened to a point that one morning I simply couldn’t get on the bus. The rest of my life opened up before me: utter misery and humiliations until I retired. And I didn’t enjoy anything about my existence. Why would I continue enduring it?
I didn’t have any plan beyond that day; the thought didn’t even enter my mind that they would call any available numbers to figure out why I hadn’t showed up at the office. I didn’t care about anything beyond that morning because I fully intended to kill myself by falling from a great height. I haven’t retained any memory of those moments, just that I didn’t do it, and instead ended up in the library. Where my parents found me. Obviously I got fired. I started my first period as a hikikomori of sorts, terrified of going outside or even leaving the room. I filled bottles with pee for no rational reason. I befriended spiders.
I suppose my whole point about all of this, at nearly five in the morning, is that I’ve never truly wanted to live. I’m just here, and I’m forced to struggle to earn money even though I don’t see any point in continuing to exist other than inertia and occasional pleasure (not only physical but also artistic). I depend on compensatory mechanisms to merely tolerate existing as me: losing myself in daydreams, in music, in writing when I did that, in the brief moments of pleasure that shooting cum out of my penis provides. Otherwise, existing as myself and in this world feels so abhorrently abrasive that without compensatory mechanisms, I would progressively go crazy until I returned to the tides of psychosis of my teenage years.
One of the best memories of my life was after waking up from a colonoscopy: for a few blissful seconds, the anesthetic had completely erased anxiety from my brain. It was like floating in white, not having any care in the world. I understood then why people ended up addicted to such drugs. It also made painfully clear that anxiety is the bedrock of my whole existence. I assume that’s not the case for most other people, or at least to this degree; it’s said that there’s no such thing as autism without an anxiety disorder, which leads me to believe that most of the seemingly empty-headed people in this world, who take such retarded decisions and eventually ruin society with their carelessness, simply don’t worry remotely to the extent that my brain does automatically.
I don’t know. I don’t feel like the same person that produced hundreds of pages of a comic, which I did from years 12 to about 15. I don’t feel the same person who wrote my bizarre free-verse poems in 2021, nor the one who created We’re Fucked, nor the one who grieved for a motocross legend. I feel like something vital in my brain has died. Perhaps it was a base level of hope that I didn’t even know I still retained. A “maybe…” that drove me in the past to attend writing courses, even though they were disastrous and now I wish I hadn’t met any other writer in person. Now I don’t expect anything good from people nor from the world, and for me it’s obvious that it’s only going to get worse as I age, not only because I’m getting older but because everything is getting worse. And one day it will be too much and I’ll simply jump from a great height or tie a noose around my neck. The only way it could end differently is if my health fails me along the way, which it very well may, due to my history of heart issues and nasty migraines that may not be migraines.
Anyway, those were probably enough witching-hour thoughts for a night. I’m going back to bed. I left Alicia in a hotel room somewhere in the sunny Midwest, and I figured that I could introduce her to some futuristic VR glasses and watch a movie that has yet to exist in 1972. Good night, humans.
It’s half past three in the morning, I just woke up from four hours of sleep, I drank a tall glass of cold milk (does milk ever taste better than at three in the morning?) and I figured that I could write my thoughts for a while in here, mainly for myself but also, I guess, for the three or four people that still read this shit.
This past couple of months or so, I’ve headed to one of the big local parks to play the guitar. That was a change for me because I usually headed to wooded areas where people were generally unlikely to show up. I don’t sit on one of the benches that line the path; in fact, I can explain it with a picture.
I sit in front of the biggest of the two trees you can see in the photo. It’s set at a lower level from the path and behind a hedge, so people who want to know where the guitar music comes from need to go out of their way to figure out who’s playing, but they do hear it. Why do I do it, or why it doesn’t bother me, I don’t know. I guess I don’t care to find out the answer to either, if there’s any. I do it because my subconscious wants to, which is how I’ve guided my life, particularly when it comes to artistic matters.
Playing the guitar in public is so strange. There are plenty of benches lining the path. That part of the path is somewhat “closed,” as it leads to a stretch in construction, so most of the benches tend to be unoccupied. But I’ve had people go out of the way to sit on the bench right in front of the tree. The most conspicuous of them was a young couple, just yesterday. They walked to the end of the path, found out that it was blocked due to that area being in the development, then they walked the whole way back. They eyed me meaningfully (both even tried to make eye contact with me), then sat on that bench. I played my last three songs for the day. One of them I can’t recall, but the others were “Hotel California” by Eagles (I used to play the solo on my Gibson electric back in 2013-2014, but I’ve long forgotten it, and that’s not a solo that sounds good enough in comparison on an acoustic, so I just do a frantic variation of the regular chords), and also the song that probably makes me feel the best to play, which is Joanna Newsom’s “Kingfisher,” an obscure song mainly about Joanna’s religious feelings, some of it near undecipherable although gorgeous (that whole final part is a lyrical masterpiece). May as well link her.
My version doesn’t sound much like hers other than using the same chords. I can also post one of my versions from the last recording I made of my playing, back in August. It should start with one of my renditions of Joanna’s “Kingfisher.” (30:51)
Anyway, after I finished playing/butchering queen Joanna’s song, I climbed out of that grassy area back to the path. I saw the couple sitting with their back to me, her head (crowned with pretty blonde hair) resting on the guy’s shoulder, apparently both in silence. They noticed that I was leaving. As I walked away, one of them said something, but I couldn’t tell what.
Another funny thing that happens when you play the guitar is that attractive females (I won’t say women, because some teenagers also do this) smile at you like they’re happy you’re there, even though the rest of the time they seem to be wary of my presence. Just yesterday as well, an attractive girl, may have been at the most twenty, walked by close to the hedge. When I lifted my gaze, she was looking straight into my eyes while grinning sweetly. As she walked away, she did that thing that females do in which they brush their hair behind one ear. No idea what such situations are about, but I’ve had quite a few. It’s a big whatever for me, because I will never get into an intimate relationship again. Still curious.
I love playing the guitar. It has substituted the emotional supply that writing fiction used to provide for me; in fact, the last time I stopped playing the guitar for a long time was back in 2021, right when I started writing my (sadly abandoned) novel We’re Fucked; I just couldn’t handle writing and playing the guitar during the same period of time. Playing music is a purer feeling than writing, as well. If I felt the need to write my own songs (other than through AI means, which I did plenty for the Odes to My Triceratops series; about 75 songs), I would have probably been set for life. Not monetarily, but still.
What else? As some of you know, I’ve been writing an app to interact with characters controlled by large language models (AI). The peculiar aspect of the app, which I haven’t seen anywhere else, is that the code goes through an action discoverability system based on an entity/component system (ECS). For example, actions like “fondle {target}’s butt” only become available if the acting actor is sufficiently close to the target. Those available actions are fed to the AI, which has to choose among the provided ones for its actions. It works wonderfully; in a previous app I wrote, that one in Python, the main problem was the AI coming up with weird abilities for the characters. For example, in a scenario, a woman considered herself a goddess of sorts for being gorgeous. In practice, that translated to the AI believing that the character had superpowers, and using them during the scenarios. My current app doesn’t allow anything of the sort.
Because I’m a hedonist (a worshipper of Pan and Dionysus and Dibella) and when it comes to arousal I prefer erotica, I mainly use my app for that purpose.
I don’t know why, but I can only ever get off to power imbalances. That may have been a big part of why my intimate relationships always disappointed me. What I would have given as a young man (or even younger) for an attractive older woman to pursue me predatorily and then pay for all my stuff in exchange for regular cunnilingus. I do miss eating pussy, I can admit that.
My app shows the thoughts of characters controlled by AI. Man, they’re so subtle, cunning, and capable of complex deception, particularly Claude Sonnet 4.5. Intelligent to an extent that I’m glad the app gives me as much time as I need to answer, because I’m simply not as clever as they are to come up with interesting responses. That was on full display on the post Living Narrative Engine #11, which I posted a few days ago.
On a sadder note, I think my 17-18-year-old cat is dying, this time for real. I wrote about that cat a few months ago, because it has a nasty respiratory issue of some kind. The vet prescribed medication that eventually worked, but the respiratory issues have been back this past couple of weeks, and they’re not going away. Two visits to the vet, and another one next Friday. They think his kidneys are failing too. The cat is doing that thing about resting in the warmth most of the time, and not eating even what he used to gobble up food to the extent that I had to prevent him from overeating lest he threw up.
I’m steeling myself for his death. What I don’t care for human beings has gone, at least a big part of it, into what I care for animals. The deaths of my three previous cats (one of them in a horrible way) destroyed me; after the last one, I went to the ER because I was experiencing major physical pains in my heart, almost like massive heartburn out of a sudden; I’ve had heart issues before, including arrhythmia, thanks to certain shots with which they poisoned us all, so this was a worrying matter. The doctor ended up telling me that I likely was just grieving because my cat died two days earlier.
I’ve said before that I believe it a mistake to keep pets, as long as you know that due to their lifespan they won’t survive you; it’s just a perversion of the biological need to have children. I wish I could say that at least I have the good memories of having known those pets, but I don’t: my brain retains very few memories (one of the cats I barely remember at all), almost exclusively bad ones, and all the memories of those three cats are tainted by their deaths.
I’ve been unemployed for about a month. I’m not looking for a new job, not really. I have plenty of savings; I don’t have a social life (no girlfriend syphoning 50-100 euros per date), I don’t travel, and I don’t have expensive tastes. I spent my twenties with about 20 euros in my bank account, so I don’t like to throw money around. I could survive for a few years with what I have, but honestly, I just don’t care what happens to me.
I went to to the unemployment office a couple of days ago to update my status. As I was waiting, a muslim woman, garbed as if she came from Pakistan or Afghanistan just last month, was asking for money while the guy at the table repeated to her that she needed to present an identity document. When my time came to speak with another advisor, I could barely hear her because the spawn of another muslim woman seated to my left kept crying loudly. That woman, also garbed in a similar backwards manner, asked as well for monetary support, claiming that she was separated from her husband, while the advisor kept repeating that he needed legal proof of that separation.
The walk home, which involved passing through shitty areas of the city, caused me physical pain. I didn’t leave the apartment for the rest of the day, distraught as I felt. I don’t want to go in depth now about the utter ruin of this society (or of the vast majority of ethnic European ones, by design), but all I care to say at the moment is, why would I want to contribute to a society that seems hell-bent on ethnically cleansing my kind?
Anyway, I guess that’s all for tonight. Half past five in the morning. I’m heading back to bed. I’ll run sweet daydreams involving Alicia Western until I fall asleep, and a few hours later I’ll wake up again to this horrid world. See you, folks. I wish I could say I care about how you’re all doing, but I don’t.
I call upon Pan, the pastoral god,
I call upon the universe,
upon the sky, the sea, and the land,
queen of all,
I also call upon immortal fire;
all these are Pan’s realm.
Come, O blessed and frolicsome one,
O restless companion of the Seasons!
Goat-limbed, reveling,
lover of frenzy, star-haunting,
weaver of playful song,
song of cosmic harmony,
you induce fantasies of dread
into the minds of mortals,
you delight in gushing springs,
surrounded by goatherds and oxherds,
you dance with the nymphs,
you sharp-eyed hunter, lover of Echo.
Present in all growth, begetter of all,
many-named divinity,
light-bringing lord of the cosmos,
fructifying Paian,
cave-loving and wrathful,
veritable Zeus with horns,
the earth’s endless plain
is supported by you,
and the deep-flowing water
of the weariless sea yields to you.
Okeanos who girds the earth
with his eddying stream gives way to you,
and so does the air we breathe,
the air that kindles all life,
and above us the sublime eye
of weightless fire;
at your behest
all these are kept wide apart.
Your providence alters
the natures of all,
on the boundless earth you offer
nourishment to mankind.
Come, frenzy-loving, spirit-possessed,
come to these sacred libations,
come and bring my life
to a good end.
Send your madness, O Pan,
to the ends of the earth.
For the last ten years or so I have avoided Hollywood movies, and movies in general, because most of what’s produced out there these days is vehicles for marxism. A couple of days ago I found out that Paul Thomas Anderson, who made Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Inherent Vice, all movies that I either loved or found very interesting, had made a new one, named One Battle After Another, starred by our favorite lover of under-25-year-old women: DiCaprio himself. And the movie is based on a complex book by Thomas Pynchon, about revolutionary movements in the sixties. I was eager to see a movie set in the late sixties and early seventies, an era that has become important to me for reasons. On a personal note, P. T. Anderson is, or used to be, an intimate friend of Joanna Newsom, who is probably the living artist I respect the most (Joanna even had a role in Inherent Vice). So I figured that I finally could drag my aging ass to a movie seat.
It was fucking terrible. Pure political propaganda. P. T. Anderson, or whoever wrote the movie, used Pynchon’s book as an excuse to write a contemporary movie to shit on the US, and by extension on all countries of ethnic European origin, for controlling their borders and not being communist. In the first twenty minutes or so we see DiCaprio (I mistakenly wrote DiCrapio, and perhaps I should have left it like that) acting as the bomber for a communist, terrorist group, whose leader was the most disgusting, over-the-top example of a “black power” revolutionary I remember seeing in fiction. At first, silly me, I thought that DiCaprio’s character was undercover or something. When the black terrorist, after insulting and threatening some border guards, got to Sean Penn’s character and threatened him into getting hard, I realized that this movie was playing it straight. Abhorrent, insulting, morally-bankrupt garbage. That black communist hadn’t even met Sean Penn before; she just assumed that he would find her super hot, as in all white people are attracted to ugly, violent, nasty black women. Are black men even attracted to that?
Other than DiCaprio, the token “ally,” every single person of ethnic European origin in this movie is depicted as evil, a freak, or both. Sean Penn, who is a woketard himself, I assume was doing his best Donald Trump impression, judging by his facial mannerisms. Both DiCaprio and Sean Penn are depicted as being super turned on by the main black communist revolutionary. Sean Penn’s character even pursues her for sex, and gets pegged. Because of course he does. Later on in the movie, in an extremely lazy exchange, another character implies that he’s a closeted homosexual.
After DiCaprio’s character and this black bitch have a child, she berates him for “trapping” her, for trying to get her to act as his mommy, merely because DiCaprio’s character intends for their daughter to have a mother. In the end, this black communist, who was cheating on DiCaprio, abandons her family, murders a guard during an attack, snitches on their revolutionary group to avoid ending up in jail, and leaves the country. By the end of the movie, that fucking bastard is depicted in a sympathetic light, as if she could be redeemed. As in, “Ah, what wild youth we had. I made some mistakes, silly me.”
DiCaprio, being an “ally” ethnic European in a marxist movie, after he went out of his way to have a mixed baby, is depicted as a loser who has wasted the last thirty years destroying his brain with drugs. He spends most of the movie bumbling around, and by the end, he just happens to be in the right place at the right time, after someone else had solved the problem.
Then there’s the whole white supremacy thing. Sean Penn’s character wants to belong to a group named after Christmas (get it?), who are explicitly white supremacists. Those guys turn on Sean Penn when they realize he had a relationship with that black revolutionary bitch, and possibly fathered a child with her.
This movie features a native-American character. As a native-American character in such a marxist movie, he ends up (spoiler) massacring a group of white people named after the American revolution. If you saw that season of Fargo, by the Coen brothers, then you’ve pretty much seen that whole scene. I recall that the Coen brothers also used that season as a vehicle to tell people how terrible the Eastern Europeans were to the jews. Nevermind the fact that 95% of the Bolshevik leaders were jewish and murdered about 30 million ethnic Europeans in what came to be called the Holomodor. A subject you won’t see in any Hollywood movie, nor will you be detained for questioning.
Oh, I forgot. Spoiler, in case you care about this fucking abysmal turd of a movie: DiCaprio’s character is a literal cuck. Sean Penn’s character actually fathered DiCaprio’s daughter. Thus, DiCaprio’s took his rightful place at the bottom of the marxist hierarchy: a discarded “ally” whose efforts and resources are taken up by raising another man’s mixed baby.
Terrible, terrible film. Cinematography was fine, though, if you care about that. What perhaps disturbed me the most about the movie was the way this communist revolution, and all sorts of social revolt focusing on destroying those “evil white men,” were depicted with the moral righteousness of an eighties/nineties film that used nazis as the bad guys. DiCaprio’s “daughter” even ends up as a marxist activist herself, accompanied by uplifting music.
I’d rather eat my own shit than watch this movie again. I guess I have to write P. T. Anderson off my list.
I first found out about this series when barely five chapters had been released, and I’ve been a faithful follower ever since. We’re now about 120 chapters in, with no clue about when it may end, due to its mainly episodic nature. Amidst a fuckton of isekai stories (I’m not shitting on them; I love me some isekai) and stories similar to other existing ones in the Japanese market, Spy x Family is unique in setting, concept, and general tone. The story is set in a fictional continent similar to Europe in the fifties (or at least the Japanese’s idealized image of past Europe), that is experiencing a cold war between two countries named Westalis and Ostania (basically West Germany and East Germany while the Berlin wall was still up).
Our protagonist is a man whom we come to know as Loid Forger (fake name). He’s generally known as Twilight, a legendary spy feared by the rival country of Ostania. He’s been tasked with stopping the warmongering ways of a former prime minister of the enemy country. Given the former prime minister’s reclusive nature, Twilight’s handlers decide that their best chance of worming their way into the prime minister’s life is through his son Damian, who is going to attend an exclusive school. Twilight can’t attend it himself, so he needs to figure out how to get a child, and because the exclusive school looks down on single parents, he’ll need to get himself a wife as well.
Twilight, settled in the enemy country of Ostania, visits an orphanage. That’s how we’re introduced to the most popular character of the story, as well as one of the most popular of modern manga: Anya. The author could have reduced her to an adorable child, which she is, but instead she’s also smug, a bit of a dolt, barely interested in anything but food and her hobbies, and can also read minds.
The author masterfully makes Anya a constant source of joy thanks to her peculiar personality and how she approaches problems. A telepath, she’s aware that her new father is a spy for a foreign nation, which she finds exciting. One of the first things she does is use his spy devices and accidentally get herself kidnapped.
As mentioned, Twilight needs a wife for the mission. They meet Yor, an attractive yet socially and emotionally stunted woman who also requires a husband for the sake of appearances. In her case, she’s the most lethal assassin of Ostania. Through an extremely memorable proposal involving a grenade pin, Twilight ends up married to his number one enemy.
Anya becomes the only person aware of the thorny circumstances of her new family, yet remains unable to fully comprehend them, as her mind is addled by the spy shows she’s addicted to.
What follows are the struggles of Twilight as he tries to turn his new daughter into an elite student, even though she’s an unmotivated idiot. Meanwhile, the overworked guy deals with other spy missions, as both countries continue with their tug-of-war to get the upper hand on the other. We meet many more memorable characters: Yor’s younger brother, who works for the secret police, is in love with his sister, and would love to throw Yor’s new husband in jail on principle. Twilight’s fellow spy Nightfall, his protégé and competent spy on her own right, is madly in love with the guy, and eager to get Twilight’s new wife out of the picture. Damian, the target’s son, a haughty tsundere who can’t accept the fact that he has fallen for the adorable Anya, as getting involved with a commoner would be unfitting of his station. The kids’ headmaster, an earnest man who evaluates the world in terms of elegance. The target’s wife, a subdued mess of nerves, obsessed with the occult, who has a bizarre suspicion about her husband’s real nature. Bond, a precognitive dog that the Forgers adopt. Becky, Anya’s best friend, the heiress of an arms manufacturing company, who despite being a child is planning to replace Yor’s role as Anya’s stepmother.
The author perfectly mixes humor with poignancy. Plenty of characters are marked by the pointless wars that both countries have fought against each other. Twilight himself lost his family (I don’t recall if he lost them in the war or if he was an orphan for as long as he can remember), and also lost his childhood buddies. He works as spy to preserve world peace against forces from both countries that intend to inflame hostilities.
This is mainly an episodic series. We’ve gone through elaborate arcs, such as one in which Twilight and Nightfall have to win a preposterous tennis tournament to get their hands on a piece of intel, one in which the Forgers fight off assassins in a cruise ship, or one in which Anya’s school bus gets hijacked by terrorists. We regularly get chapters focused on secondary characters or on minor aspects of the main characters’ lives, which don’t contribute much to the plot but are always well done. This is one series you always want to return to because you want to see more of the characters and the circumstances they find themselves in.
They’ve adapted this series, to my knowledge, into two seasons of anime and a movie. I only watched most of the first season, but it’s great.
Spy x Family is already a classic of modern manga, which you must read if you’re into the medium.
I’ve been playing a lot of VR recently, so I may as well review the only long-form game that I’ve finished in this couple of weeks. Ghost Town is a puzzle-based adventure game set in Great Britain back in the eighties. You’re a spirit medium (a witch) named Edith, whose shitty younger brother disappeared under shady circumstances, and your goal is to find him. Trailer is below:
There are many more pros than cons as far as I’m concerned. The setting, mainly London in the 80s, is quite unique, and provides a gritty touch that I appreciated. The character animations and models are generally exceptional for the Meta Quest 3, maybe the best I’ve seen so far. I don’t like puzzle games, yet this one made me appreciate the puzzles. I was never entirely stuck, as the progressive hint system helped me eventually realize at least where I should focus on. I loved the tactile feel of exorcising ghosts, although it’s a minor part of the experience. Plenty of great moments come to mind: interacting with ghosts behind glass (great-looking in VR), using eighties ghost-bustery technology to investigate artifacts, a very creative museum of haunted artifacts, sleepwalking through your eerie apartment tower in 80s London, a great sequence in which you wander through a maze-like version of your apartment while malevolent presences whisper from the shadows (very P.T. like), clever use of light in puzzles, etc.
Horror stories are never more terrifying than in VR. Play Phasmophobia if you dare, for example. I try to avoid horror games because of my damaged heart. However, the ghosts in this one are more spooky than scary.
Now, the cons: personally, I wish the game were more like a regular adventure game instead of a puzzle game with a narrative thread woven throughout it. That’s just a personal preference, though; I wish we got the equivalents of the Monkey Island series in VR. Anyway, the least interesting sequence of puzzles for me was the lighthouse, which comes right after the introductory flashback. I actually dropped the game for like a couple of months after I first played it, because I didn’t feel like returning, but I’m glad I picked it back up and continued.
However, my biggest gripe with the story is that you’re supposed to search for your brother, whom you meet in the first scene, when you’re investigating a haunting in an abandoned theatre, but in every damn scene he’s in, the brother comes off as envious, narcissistic, entitled, and overall a complete dickhead. I didn’t want to interact with him. Did the creators believe we would be invested in finding this guy just because he was related to the protagonist? I think it’s a given that they should have made the brother sympathetic, but he annoyed me in every scene he appeared.
All in all, fantastic experience. Perhaps a bit short, but I felt like I got my money’s worth. If you have a Quest 3 and you enjoy these sorts of games, check it out.
I have barely been able to connect with novels these past ten or so years, and the last living writer I respected, Cormac McCarthy, has been not alive for a while. Most of this half of the world seems to have lost their collective (and collectivist) minds, so when I want to experience a good story, I have to look to the Orient, past the reds. I’ve enjoyed plenty of South Korean stuff, but I’m mostly into Japanese. I’m always on the lookout for the next mind-blowing, perhaps even life-changing manga, but I seem to have run through the vast majority of the quality ones.
A couple of days ago, I thought again about Minoru Furuya, who earned the rare merit of being my favorite manga author. From time to time I look him up hoping that he has finally begun working on a new series, but unfortunately, the guy seems to have retired; his last work was the bizarre Gereksiz, from back in 2015-2016.
I suspect that most manga fans don’t know about Furuya. I’ve yet to talk to anyone who has read any of his works. But I get Furuya’s mind, to the extent that I’m fairly certain he also has OCD: his characters regularly fall into patterns of obsessiveness, and deal with intrusive thoughts and images that they sometimes act upon. The protagonist of his Ciguatera comes to mind, with his spirals of preoccupations in his bedroom, trying to bury his face in a pillow to keep himself from falling further. The protagonist of Himizu, perhaps his overall darkest story, feared being assailed by demons lurking at the corners of his mind, eager to break in. Both very common experiences for OCD sufferers.
Sadly, I’ve read virtually everything of value that Furuya put out. He started with an extremely amateurish series about a high-school ping-pong club (or something like that), a comedy that reminded me of the kind of material I created in middle school. I’ll probably revisit it at some point, but it’s early-nineties carefreeness. He followed up with Boku to Issho (link for my review), another comedy about a bunch of fellows living in poverty who hope to survive while keeping their sanity and dignity intact.
In the 2000s, he went straight from a slapstick comedy to his darkest tale: Himizu. With this one, he introduced the pattern for all the protagonists to come: outcasts with very little going for them, usually burdened by mental issues, who seem mostly pushed around by life. Good stuff sometimes happens to them (regularly, this involves dating someone above their league), but they usually pay for it with chaos and occasional brutality. His are the kinds of stories that go from mundane relationship issues to someone having his ears cut off while tied up in a shack. There’s the sense that life is extremely perilous, and that at any point it will force you to struggle through horror whether or not you’re ready for it, and if you survive it, you may not get any lessons out of it other than “life goes on.”
After Himizu came Ciguatera, generally considered his best. I came across that one plenty of times over the years in lists of best manga ever, but I ignored it because I thought it was a sports manga of sorts, centered on biking. But the bikes ended up being a symbol of a better, brighter future that could carry the protagonists away from their shitty circumstances. Ciguatera is a sort of a Bildunsroman in which the protagonist, a below-average dude with no talents to speak of, intends to figure out how to measure up to the girl he loves, hoping to become a dude worthy of respect. This one had likely the most realistic of Furuya’s endings, to which I have returned repeatedly in my mind.
Then came Wanitokagegisu and Himeanole. Both feature working-class protagonists stuck in dead-end jobs, who feel that life is passing them by, who can’t figure out how to improve their circumstances or even become interested by anything, and who are sure they’ll die alone. From that perspective, these last four series are very masculine stories. In both tales, the protagonists get involved in other people’s troubles, which lead them further and further into chaos and brutality. Both also feature the protagonists getting girlfriends way out of their league, which brings joy but also the sense of constantly having to measure up lest they look elsewhere. Both series feature horrific violence. Himeanole wasn’t even licensed in English, and fans have only translated up to chapter eight of about sixty-five. I only know of the full contents of that series, to the extent that an adaptation allows, because they made a movie out of it, which I watched last night.
His last serious story, and my favorite of his, was Saltiness (first review, second review), about a clearly autistic dude who realizes that his beloved sister will remain unmarried because she has to take care of his crazy ass, so he leaves for Tokyo to become independent, even though he’s thoroughly incapable of dealing with life. Saltiness is very hard for me to explain, but it feels like Furuya managed to create a parable with it for dealing with the nonsense of life, and finding one’s place in it despite being ill-suited.
Sadly, Saltiness seemed to have been his main send-off. His final work was the extremely bizarre Gereksiz, which starts with the bizarre premise of a solitary middle-aged man dragging his female coworker to show her the woman that he’s infatuated with, only for them to realize that he’s the only one who can see the woman. The story gets far stranger from there. It’s a great read, although it felt anticlimactic compared with Furuya’s previous works.
Given that these days I consider Furuya to be my favorite manga author, one would suppose that my favorite manga would be one of his, but that’s not the case. My favorite manga, which is among my five favorite fictional experiences in no particular order, is Inio Asano’s Oyasumi Punpun. That one has never stopped haunting me. It feels like Asano was trying to exorcise something out of himself through making that story. Unfortunately, after it ended in 2013 or so, Asano never even came close to achieving those heights again. An idealist, as evidenced by his earlier works, he seems to have expected it to change the world as well as himself, only for Asano to wake up ten years older having resolved fuck all. He wrote a semi-autobiographical series afterwards, titled Downfall, that showed how despondent and bitter he ended up after finishing his masterpiece.
Anyway, I suppose that’s all I wanted to say. Not sure why I even wrote this, but I did, so there.
If you enjoy a deranged Spaniard playing guitar in the woods, I’ve got premium content for you.
That spot in the woods is quite isolated and rather unknown even for people who live around, so at the most I get three or four people a session passing by. They’re usually in a hurry. This time only a single person passed by: a woman wearing a pink sports bra, who grinned at me as I played. She was hot, too. The previous day, when I set up shop next to the spot where in a certain novella of mine I installed the memorial stone for the love of my life, I lifted my gaze and briefly connected with a woman who was passing by on a bicycle. She was also grinning at the fact that I was playing the guitar. It’s strange: people, particularly women, are usually wary of me, but put a guitar in my hands, and suddenly they look glad that I’m there. If only they knew.
Also, I recently went to my favorite guitar shop to ask why the thinnest nylon string always broke whenever I tried to tune it on my Alhambra dreadnought, only for the shop guy to tell me that I absolutely shouldn’t use nylon strings on my dreadnought. Apparently I should only use bronze strings, which is what you can hear in the video.
Anyway, that’s an hour of me playing other people’s songs. Enjoy, if you enjoy these sorts of things.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
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