April 2022 Minutiae
I thought it would be neat to start a monthly “minutiae” record – jotted-down observations from my life – since I find the minutiae other people have on their websites (e.g. Adam Cadre, saint-images) endlessly charming and wish to narcissistically pretend I can possibly produce a glimmer of the same effect with my own life. Also I need a lazy, easy way of letting people know I haven’t given up on this website entirely. (Hello.)
At a meetup with some pleasant and interesting folks I’m still getting to know, the idea of people communicating with each other non-verbally in online multiplayer video games with limited chat functionality came up briefly. For example, in agar.io, a way of signalling to a stranger than you are friendly and wish to ally with them is to send a small packet of mass to them; if they are happy to engage in cameraderie, they will send mass back to you, and you can go on your merry way together with slightly less fear of being eaten (at least until one of you betrays the other). Another example that came to my mind was crouching and blocking with your sword in classic Minecraft Hunger Games; the guy I was speaking to mentioned another game (I didn’t quite catch which) where it is/was common to turn in circles as a way of signalling friendship. I reckon the strategy of “giving someone an item and seeing if they give it back” generalises to a lot of games quite nicely. There’s just something so appealingly human to me about people figuring out non-verbal communication in a digital multiplayer environment.
I’m the benevolent dictator of a Discord server for people doing what is basically a Maths 101 course for nerds this term and there’s this guy on there who’s really helpful and answering almost everyone’s questions all the time. With the exam coming up, he suggested that we do a little friendly competition to keep our motivation up, since that apparently worked for him and his friends during the HSC. Basically you get a group of people, split them into two teams, have everyone do a past paper every day and get people from one team to mark the papers on the other team and add up all the points. It’s a really neat idea but I dropped out Day 2 because of how behind I realised I was on the content, i.e. I didn’t have the knowledge to actually complete quite a few of the exam questions. This can be attributed to procrastination and time management issues that I never fixed from last year! New rule – don’t skip lectures without explicitly scheduling a time to watch them later first.
Listened to this The Minute Hour episode again. Inspiring!
I watched another animated TMH video – There is a Prison on the Moon. I really like how maximalist the illustrations and animations in that video are, with every frame crammed with random doodles and jokes. I don’t know what you call this style of/approach to art, but I know I’ve encountered it before in my childhood, just being totally engrossed in following all the little flourishes of a densely-packed double-page illustration.
Went to the cinema with my dad to watch the new Nic Cage movie. It was actually really funny, I enjoyed it a lot. They had the goddamn Wish Nic Cage Reversible Pillow in the movie, they had a scene where this appears and Nic Cage touches it. I lost my mind.
Note to self: use firmer tofu to make pad thai next time. That silken stuff just breaks apart into wet eggy whites in the pan.
I’m naturally going to not include most of what’s going on in my life in these because I feel that they are personally identifying or inappropriate or somehow even more boring than what I do already have. I wonder if I will remember what they were if I read this page in the distant future… Actually, it seems kind of insane that I’m taking the time to write this document and not keeping any proper private journal for myself. Huh. Maybe I should get on that.
Been reading a lot of self-help stuff recently. I don’t know. I’ll write about it if anything ends up helping, I guess. I’m hesitant to talk about anything before I’ve actually seen results.
Meeting up with friends on a ferry platform surrounded by water, there’s a “KEEP CLEAR” zone painted on the edge of the platform floor. Someone joked “why don’t they just cut that section off, then you wouldn’t have to worry about it”. I found that particularly funny for some reason. Reminds me of the one about the farmer who gets asked why his fox-hunting shotgun is double-barrelled. “Son, it’s so that if I miss ‘im with the first shot, I can get ‘im with the second.” “Why don’t you just always shoot with the second, then?”
SMBC Comics:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha fuck.
Took the opportunity to catch up on Adam Cadre’s minutiae and other writings while writing this myself. Man I love reading what that guy writes. But they make me realise that the fun of writing minutiae seems to mostly stem from constructing vivid, concrete vignettes of the real world, which I feel that this debut edition has been lacking in. I’ll pay more attention to the concrete these coming weeks, I suppose.
See you next month.