I am having a really tough time lately. I took a mental health day today, saw Jurrasic World, (it was glorious by the way), and marched up to the home plate in League of Legends only to be defeated every game I played. So now I am updating this blog.
I want to start posting some stories I write on here, and also some pen/stationary reviews. Maybe a few more personal rants, but I am thinking about cutting it down to 3x a week. Thoughts?
So today is one of those days, and yesterday I am slacking off. I am just tired. I am feeling strung out, and restless, I need more caffeine.
So my stock of photos from Japan is dwindling, but here I am wanting to write. Where My blog will go I don’t know but today, I am going to sip on coffee, and contemplate how much I hate cloudy weather.
I awoke after my first night in Osaka with a fresh set of eyes and a roar of excitement. My hotel was in the heart of Osaka, and I wanted to race out into the day, but first I had to face the continual challenge of my trip, breakfast.
The breakfast in the states varies by location, but for me it was always a bowl of cereal or a piece of fruit. I’d grown tired to scarfing down rice balls for breakfast, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find the hotel offered breakfast.
Japanese breakfast is really interesting. Rice is a big part of it, but then there was fruit, eggs, salmon, and salad. It was quite delicious and without further ado I headed into the streets of Osaka.
The hustle and bustle were everywhere, but it seemed more personal, more real as if the people I was watching were more than just their job. It was a stark difference between the mornings in Tokyo and the ones in Osaka. 
This wall of vending machines was one of the many I spotted. I really wish stuff like this would catch on in the US. So many cool little bits and bobs!
Like these underpants for your phone. 
or whatever this is…do I want to know? 
As my journey wound on I found myself wandering Den Den Town, which is Kyoto’s local electronic and geek district.
Yes, those are all body pillows, and yes the are used by fans to cuddle up to their anime crush. 
Osaka tower! I don’t know why every major city in Japan has some sort of tower, but I am guessing it was a fad at one point. 
uh….wait?
I’ll end with something I spotted as I headed out of downtown Osaka in the redlight district, (though at the time I didn’t know it was the red light district.).
Quite a few of the manhole covers in Osaka were painted! They are a beautiful little example of how even the urbanest areas can add culture to themselves. More tomorrow dear readers!
(Have you seen my Bear Tibbers?)
Riot Games is the company that designs and Implements the massively successful League of Legends. The game is a team-based game where you pilot a Champion who uses unique spells and powers to defeat other players in both combat and in the completion of objectives. It is addictively fun. Lucky for me I was treated to the rarity that is visiting their Los Angeles Headquarters.
DISCLAIMER: I signed an NDA, I am not going to discuss why I was at Riot games. What I am going to do is describe how awesome the company is in general.
I was invited to Riot Games for reasons I will not discuss here, and I wanted to take a moment out of my normal posting schedule to send a sincere thank you to my hosts. The level of warmness from such a massive company was unexpected and refreshing. The time I was shown was professional but cordial.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, I respect the company too much for that, but there Los Angeles Campus is one of the nicer company headquarters I have ever visited.
Here are the images I was okayed by Riot Staff to Snap. Thanks again Riot. See you in the Rift
I have recently been doing the impossible. I have been editing my previous stories. While to many this might seem like a simple exercise, to me it has been a long time struggle.
That being said I realized after editing about 10 of my shorts what my stories lack. They lack struggle and real challenge, and I am reminded of what my story professor told me at school.
To Paraphrase “This story (talking about a novel except) is more of an outline, it just has characters doing things, but they seem to know they are characters, and they don’t seem to have any trouble doing any of the things your having them do.”
The stories are just that stories, they lack the life of real fiction. The characters do not grow. I can’t believe I never noticed this before, and now I sit in preponderance looking to slowly rectify this mistake.
It will be done but it will have to be done slowly.
Goku is my childhood hero. Goku is from Dragon Ball Z. Well, he’s from Dragon ball and GT, but for me his essence can be found in dragon ball Z.
Goku is to me one of the great examples of hard work, honesty, and fun.
Many people look at Dragon Ball Z and see little but a violent mess of a show. It features fantastic action, a memorable cast, and fun albeit predictable plot lines.
Goku, the show’s main protagonist isn’t the common hero. He isn’t a dark brooding hero, he’s a family man. He’s motivated to train because he enjoys it, not to overpower people. He works hard, isn’t unbeatable, hell he dies a few times in the show.
He never gives up, despite being knocked down, defeated, killed, his friends destroyed Goku, never gives up. He just gets back on the horse, tries something else, trains more, or gets new information and help.
Goku’s dedication to his friends, and family is what powers him. He fights not for power but to protect the people he loves, and sometimes for the pure joy of the contest.
Finally, Goku doesn’t take himself seriously except when he has to. He fools around plays with his children, and others, makes jokes, asks stupid questions, and helps people. He’s slow to anger and merciful to his opponents. But rile him to the cause, hurt his friends or threaten his family and watch him destroy you.
So to end this silly albeit fun jaunt. Be Goku
Before I read On Writing By Stephen King, I’d been in a fragile loop of discontent. It stretched along something like this. I’d try and write, then compare myself, my process, or the work to something else, and then flounder to write. I’d freeze up like something had grabbed my hands, and head, and shoved them all into cold water. It was the kind of cold that pierced deep, and stayed with me for days after. Eventually, Pavlov won and I’d given up any dream on being a writer. Then King taught me to love the process.
Not just King, I’d grown as a person, I’d decided I wanted to control my feelings not people outside me, I wanted to be in charge of as much as I could. I’d had a run in where I’d lost all power to do anything of substance. That is a hell I don’t want to touch on, but nonetheless, I think King was the final shove that set off the land slide.
Before king, I envisioned writing as some sort of dreamy process. In school, hell in life, they teach you to find something you love, and you will never work a day in your life, and that I must say is a monstrous load of bullshit.
Things you love demand more work out of you. They also demand you commit to the act.Good writing is not like eating an icecream cone, where it’s all good, then it’s vaguely tasty, and finally you feel gross when you’ve finished. It’s the reverse of that. It’s jarring hard work, that you have to commit to. Not to the actual moment, I don’t suffer from erotic glee when I type up words, but from the very act of creation without rules or strings.
The main thing I picked up from King was this. Write your way. That’s it. Don’t try and write for the world, don’t do it for money, don’t do it for fame, do it because you want to. Not because it’s the only thing you can do, ect, hell I could sell cars, but because on some deep level you know stories.
Fuck formatting for first drafts, fuck deeper meanings in first drafts, fuck everything in the first draft. No one ever talks about drafts. Artists don’t talk about thumbnail sketches, or studies they do. They just show their finished product, and hell that’s what you should do.
To write it to commit to a higher power the power, and yes I am speaking of a goddess. This is the goddess of getting shit done. She’d a cruel mistress, and she demands you never give up, but please her and you’ll sleep at night knowing you did.
People, all people, are creative, it’s just about dentangling this mess of societal hang ups we all fall into in our school years, and getting ourselves to a point where we can hold ourselves accountable. Not out of some fear of being disliked but out of the belief that I can write, and I can finish things because I am worth it.
Believe me, you are worth it. It’s only you that doesn’t belive that.
Thanks Mr. King.
For the first time in nearly 3 years I haven’t visited Reddit for 3 days. I can’t go back after realizing that Reddit has become little more than a propaganda/ advertising machine.
This is upsetting. As an information junkie, I adore Reddit, but that being said this isn’t my first flight from it. When I was younger I worried that anything I liked I was addicted to. This wasn’t the case, I simply had impulsive draws towards these things, like Reddit, Fallout 3, or Magic The Gathering. So I often ran from these things, in grand spectacle, making a show of going. I acted like I was the main character of a show, as many in their youth tend to emulate.
As I got older, and developed my self control muscles, these things held less sway over me. So I returned to things I loved.
This time I leave reddit simply because I discovered a grim truth. It’s little more than fluff. This is predictable, based off something I call the Cycle of Cool.
I am sure there is a more scientific name for this and I doubt I will be the first person to deal with the idea, yet here we are.
The COC starts when a novel thing is introduced in earnest. Sometimes its a website, a store, or a hobby. People flock to it craving something about it. I think it is the authenticity of it. For a small time it stays hidden, in hipster territory, eventually emigrating to the golden plains of popular. Sometimes it remains in this popular stage without getting bloated or corrupted, the Vlog Brothers are a good example of this, but more often that not, the thing begins to phase out the more divisive elements of itself.
First, the barrier to entry is effectively lower, and the specificity of the thing is disregarded, or to put it another way, the Vanilla stripe in the Neapolitan becomes markedly larger.
Next comes, the influx of capital. Living in a capitalist economic structure, the monetisation of popular things is near inevitable. Adverts pop up among the thing, and people begin to seek ways to eek a living out of it. This churning of the waters eventually attracts big fish, who buy the whole thing out, and often gut the heart out of it.
Those who were true to the original begin to leave, their passage is quiet, trickling, and decided. While the site might bloat and continue to grow, it grows without those people who loved it for what it was. Those people, march on, through the wastes of the new in search of a new promised land, in search of the next cool patch of ground.
We are losing. Friendly Fascism is winning. They understand it now. The internet is losing its wild west status. As I dig just a little deeper I see it. Arron Schwartz died, and Reddit soon decayed into a propaganda machine, 4Chan’s moot left the site, leaving it to moderators, why did he leave? Did he sell out? Was he threatened out? Who knows. What I do know is there is an unsettling manipulation of daily content, and that sites that used to tell the truth, are now bending it, and stifling descent. It’s unsettling how much like 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 the internet has become.
Websites are not immutable. This is one of their largest draws. They like so much of today embrace change. That being said I have seen websites crash and burn. Cracked.com used to be my premiere website, that site that was always open in a tab no matter what. Then, it began a long slow descent. Articles got less and less reliable, with the facts being cherry picked, and the sources interpreted more and more loosely.
This is the nature of things. as they become popular to grow more and more bland, and eventually turn into little more than hollow specters of their former selves. Sure, cracked.com still exists, but it isn’t the same goofball place it was. It’s dead inside.
Unfortunately, it seems the internet’s mega giant Reddit, has begun to make it’s steady decline into nothing more than a facade of its former self.
Reddit, is a website that touts itself, unofficially, as a harbinger of democracy. Those posts that are most popular get pushed to the heap of content. Sometimes those posts are little more than fluff, other times they deal with much more serious claims. But for the average user you can rely on the idea that the community has chosen the frontage content for better or for worse.
Or is it?
I have been a long time user of Reddit with several accounts. My newest one was an effort to cultivate only content that I wanted to see, so I started by unsubscribing to all of the default sub-Reddits. A sub-Reddit for those who do not know, is a smaller section of Reddit, that tends towards one specific subject.
One of the more interesting sub-Reddits I came across is called Undelete. This particular forum’s self prescribed task is to track down popular content that was for some reason deleted by the administrators.
One of the posts most recently deleted outlines the descent of Reddit from haven of democracy to little more than a puppet of administrators. The veracity of the statements outlined in this post have yet to be tested as true, but the post is reinforced by Reddit’s covert punishment of the author.
According to the author she or he has been shadow-banned. Meaning that while he or she can see his or her posts, no one else can.
The points discussed within the post are troubling, and the reaction, the deletion and suspension of the author in a covert way, are troubling. One can say the website has some explaining to do.
Max W Beaulieu 
