#oneaday Day 247: Enjoying things as we used to

One thing I'm becoming increasingly conscious of as time goes on is how my attitudes towards enjoying my hobbies have… well, they've stayed the same, really, but other people are changing around me, even people who are older than me who I would have thought would be even more set in their ways than I am.

I'm thinking of two particular examples when it comes to this. First is the "I don't have time to play long games any more" person, who no longer wishes to commit to any game over the 20 hour mark because they'll "never finish it", ostensibly because they are "much too busy" now to be able to commit to it.

In some cases, this may be true, particularly if the person in question has started a family in the interim. But realistically speaking, I know a lot of people who say this actually have pretty much the same amount of free time as they had 20+ years ago, and are thus talking bollocks.

Why do they think they have no time, though? Because daily life has changed. We are so overstimulated with our daily lives — and particularly the ever-present nature of the Internet and its endless reams of Content™ — that it's easy to feel overwhelmed, like you simply don't have time to just switch off from all that and enjoy something that takes your full attention. What if you miss a pithy tweet from someone? (To that I would say "get off Twitter, it's a Nazi bar") What if you don't see breaking news happening as it breaks? (To that I would say "we used to do just fine with news bulletins on the TV at 1pm, 6pm and 9pm") What if you miss a message from someone you like? (To that I would say "most forms of online communication are inherently asynchronous, meaning it doesn't really matter if you reply now or in 6 hours' time")

But I get it. It's easy to get locked into that "loop" of cycling around the same three websites, hoping something interesting happens. And before you know it, several hours have passed — several hours you could have (and should have) spent doing something much more enjoyable. This is one of the biggest reasons I've tried to curtail my own social media activity as much as possible, and why I'm still not entirely convinced that signing up to Bluesky wasn't a big mistake. But we'll see on that. At least Bluesky isn't a Nazi bar now.

The other situation that gives me pause these days is when coming across people who won't even consider starting to watch a TV series if they don't have access to every piece of information ever written about it immediately. In a couple of Discords I'm in, there are people who won't start a new TV show if there isn't also a YouTube channel of some boring GenZ type holding a lapel microphone in their hand (clip it to your shirt, for fuck's sake) giving "summaries" of what went on in a monotone drawl.

This latter one is absolutely alien to me, because it makes watching a TV show into a complete chore — to say nothing of how much time it adds to the complete series' runtime if you insist on watching BrackityPoop420 read out an AI/Wikipedia summary of what you literally just watched along with each episode. I watched all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine last year and the only time I looked at a wiki or any sort of commentary was to see if the actors I thought I recognised actually were the actors I thought they were. (They usually were.)

I feel like our overall sense of media literacy has taken a real tumble over the course of the last 20 years, and I feel it myself at times, too. Last night, I watched the first episode of The Wire, and I found it enjoyable, but a little hard to follow to begin with. By about halfway through, I'd settled a bit more into the rhythm of things and I think I'll find the rest of the series a little more palatable, but that first half an hour made me think "have I made a mistake here?"

20+ years ago, we would quite happily pick up a box set of some show that we liked and watch it repeatedly. This was partly down to how media was relatively expensive compared to what you can pick it up for these days, but I feel it also helped our overall sense of media literacy to be more willing to do the work ourselves and watch something again to see how we responded to it second time around. Today, there are two things standing in the way of that: one being the crippling fear of spoilers, and two being the constant desire to consume new content.

I've talked before on here about how much I object to the use of the word "content" (and "consume", for that matter) when we're talking about creative works and art. And nowhere is this more apparent than with folks' media literacy. It's not about watching something and understanding it deeply any more; it's about watching as much as possible, as fast as possible.

And this isn't an exaggeration; Netflix has gone on record as saying that numerous shows and movies on its service are specifically designed to be "second screen experiences" that people don't really have to pay attention to, and the proliferation of people who will quite happily admit to watching everything on 1.5x normal speed "just so they can get through more" is… well, I don't like it.

Just recently, I picked up a few box sets of DVDs from CEX because they were dirt cheap. I've grabbed The Wire, Angel, Scrubs and Friends — all complete runs. I already have Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica (which, probably 10+ years after acquiring, I must shamefully admit I am still yet to watch) and there's probably a couple of other series I might nab at some point (notably some Star Trek series, maybe Frasier and House) — and then I think I might be happy with just that. Watching new stuff is cool at times, but it can also be overwhelming — and it can also cause things you once loved and thought were a fixture in your head to just… fall out. I can't remember a lot of what happened in Angel, for example, and I fucking adored that series when it first came out.

I think it's okay if you don't "get" something first time you watch it, or if it takes a little while to get into the groove of a new series, like I suspect I'm going to be with The Wire. I'm going to consciously try to resist running straight to a wiki wherever possible, though; we used to live without these things and still be able to enjoy our media, so I'm pretty sure I still can live like that.

Also I still have time to play long RPGs. And I suspect I always will.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 246: They don't tell you anything

One thing I have been gradually coming to realise — or perhaps more accurately, accept — since I was diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder in (checks) 2017 is that… you seemingly don't get any help. At least not by default. I probably could get some help if I went and asked for it, but I sort of feel like being diagnosed with a condition should probably be some sort of automatic trigger for someone to get help, or at the very least, advice.

But no. While I am glad I got my diagnosis as it helps me understand a bunch of things about myself that I had always been a tad frustrated by in the past, there is still a whole lot that I don't know — and if I hadn't specifically gone looking for the information myself, I probably wouldn't have found out.

Now, I'm kind of hesitant to do this, because I simply don't trust the Internet at large to provide reliable medical advice these days, but there are sources that, one would hope, set themselves up to be reputable and authoritative, so if I do go looking for information, I seek out those sources wherever possible.

One thing I learned about today is known as a "shutdown" or, to some, an "autistic implosion". This is where an autistic person, when confronted with an uncomfortable situation, a high level or stress or overstimulation in general, closes themselves off, puts their shields up and seemingly becomes quite non-responsive in terms of interpersonal interactions, emotions and suchlike.

I've been aware that I do this for a long time — up to and including very recently — but it had never really occurred to me that it, too, is a symptom of being on the spectrum. But sure enough, as I read this piece from an Australian autism charity earlier — one of those sources that I judged to (hopefully) be reputable — I found myself recognising more and more things, including behaviours that I had engaged in long before I knew that I was autistic.

Experiencing a shutdown is very strange, because you're often conscious that you're doing it. You're aware that everything is becoming too much, but rather than wanting to lash out at it (which leads to the opposite, but equally possible, reaction known as a meltdown) you just want to… retreat. Hide. Get out of there as soon as possible.

And this reaction, this desire to flee the situation I was in… that is all too familiar. I'm pretty sure this also ties in with the bouts of depression I have where I just feel like I'm suspended in a bubble, barely aware of anything that is going on around me, only half-conscious of the fact that I'm just staring into space, my mind constantly going around and around and around the same thing over and over, even though doing so is what is driving me deeper into that shutdown.

I kind of wish that, having been diagnosed, I could have had some proper time with a therapist who knows and understands autism, who could explain the various situations and behaviours that I'm likely to encounter and be more conscious of, now I better know who I am — and perhaps how to cope with them. Because there's no "curing" these situations; it's just part of the person I am. But there are ways to manage my environment and the situation I'm in to make them less likely to happen — and to cope with them more effectively when they do arise.

Perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and seek out some sort of private therapy. Two things have, up until now, discouraged me from doing that, though: the cost, and the choice paralysis that comes with deciding exactly who would be an appropriate therapist for me. Because it turns out there are a lot of them. I've also not really been sure what I'm looking for when seeking a therapist — but I think today's revelations are telling me that what I should really be seeking out is exactly what I describe above: someone who knows about and understands autism, and who can help me understand the behaviours and feelings I'm likely to experience, and suggest some ways to manage and cope with them.

Food for thought. I will mull it over.

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#oneaday Day 245: Unplug

It is the end of what has been a long and stressful week, but I think today was actually reasonably productive, so hopefully next week I will feel a bit better about things. I still want to take a bit of time off sometime soon, but I'm feeling somewhat less in the "I need to get out right now" panic that I feel like I was in the other evening.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the world is still burning around me, but at least in my own little haven of calm here, things are pretty peaceful. Andie is painting the stairs, the cats are sitting either side of me napping, I have no other commitments besides this blog this evening, and I don't have to get up tomorrow if I don't want to. Not a lot to complain about there, really.

It's important to take a step back from the chaos of life in the 21st century every now and again and consider How Things Really Are. A good means of visualising this is imagining what life would be like if you unplugged the Internet and had no means of being contacted besides someone calling you on your phone or stopping by your house. If you can look at your life from that perspective and see that things are, for the most part, Okay, then you should probably do your best to keep seeing things from that angle when you plug the Ethernet cable back in.

Because ultimately, as shit as some of the stuff going on in the world can be, there's little you can probably do about it, particularly if you're far away from the Bad Things. Take the situation in America, for example; I am concerned for the safety and wellbeing of the people I know over there, of course, but practically speaking, there's absolutely nothing I can do to affect that whole situation. Things are different for those in the middle of that whole shitshow, of course — and I'm gratified to see that at least some folks are waking up to the fact that posting disapproving messages on a social network is not the same as getting out there and Doing Activism — but from where I'm sitting, all I can really do is be a supportive ear if people need it and not be a jerk to those who are Dealing With Shit.

It's difficult to keep your mind trained to think in this way, particularly when the buzz of Online is always there, encouraging you to check in on things and "just see how bad things have gotten". You can tell yourself all you want that you're doing it because you find it darkly humorous rather than utterly terrifying, but deep down, you, of course, know that all you're doing is deliberately and wilfully making your own mood darker for no real discernible benefit to your life as a whole.

That may sound callous. That may sound uncaring. But at some point you have to disconnect. At some point you have to focus on yourself and the people directly around you. At some point you have to remember that as enriching and fulfilling and exciting as an online life can be, it will always have to play second fiddle to your Real Life. Your Real Life is in the here and now, surrounding you, defining you. Your online life can be made to go away by just pulling out that Ethernet cable. And, as long as you haven't stumbled into any situations where your online life has seeped into your Real Life — which is an increasing risk these days, I will concede — you can just go about your day.

That's what I'm going to attempt to keep telling myself, anyway. The alternative just feels like perpetual misery.

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#oneaday Day 244: Is "best practice" the enemy of expression?

I, as you probably know, have a YouTube channel. I have had it for a grand total of about seventeen years at the time of writing, though I would say I've only really been actively, semi-regularly using it since about 2018, initially to host video versions of a podcast I was doing, and subsequently to kick off the series that I'm still running in one form or another to this day.

Over the course of those 17 years, I have picked up just over 3,600 subscribers at the time of writing, with the vast majority of those showing up since 2018. While that is obviously a drop in the ocean compared to big, successful channels out there, I am pleased with it, and honestly I don't particularly want my channel to grow any faster.

In order to acquire those 3,600 subscribers, I have done… nothing particularly special, to be perfectly honest. I have steadfastly ignored the advice of YouTube "gurus" to pursue trends, to be clickbaity with titles and thumbnails, and to "edit for engagement". In short, I consistently reject what is supposed "best practice" in favour of just doing whatever the hell I want — and I have seen some success doing just that. Could I see more success if I was following the supposed "rules" to the letter? Quite possibly. But then I don't think my channel would be mine any more.

One of the things I object to most about online culture in general these days — not just YouTube, but this applies all over — is how no-one really seems to have a personality any more. Everyone says the same things, everyone responds to things in the same way, everyone uses the same bank of reaction GIFs when they can't be bothered to use their words. In YouTube, this is best exemplified by the way you could watch five randomly chosen videos from five moderately sized channels, and I bet you'd hear the exact same sound effects and music clips, and see the exact same visual memes, in at least half of them — if not all of them.

This is because these things, supposedly, work. But in using that "best practice", you are eliminating a lot of the soul from your own work. You're making something that caters to the mysterious "algorithm" — or rather, an imaginary audience — rather than expressing yourself, as yourself. It's the same with the way people talk to one another online; because those reaction GIFs and snippy retorts like "skill issue" are universally understood by everyone, everyone uses them because they're seen as an efficient means of communication.

But, again, there's no personality there. Any time someone comes out with "skill issue" or "tourist" or whatever the derogatory term-du-jour is, I lose all interest in getting to know that person, just as I lose interest in a YouTube video the moment they start busting out the Metal Gear Solid alert noise, The X-Files theme and Spongebob "a few moments later" interstitial cards… and just as, at some point in the last 20 years, you've probably lost interest in someone who won't shut up about bacon, won't stop saying "the cake is a lie" or thinks declaring that pineapple on pizza is "weird" is a daring and brave opinion to express.

People like that don't have a personality of their own; their personality is The Internet, Circa 2025. And, as we've pretty comprehensively established at this point, The Internet, Circa 2025 is not someone you'd want to bring home to meet your parents. It's someone who deserves to be kicked into a ditch 50 miles from the nearest town and left to rot.

So, as much as there are probably things I could do "better" with my YouTube channel, I choose not to do them. I don't feel the need to. I didn't create that channel to be famous, I didn't create that channel to be a huge "thing", I created it as a means of expressing myself and sharing my own, personal enthusiasm for things that are important to me. That's it. That 3,600 people like what I do enough to want to follow it without me resorting to "best practice" says something to me: it says "if you're happy, just keep doing what you're doing".

So that's what I intend to do.

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#oneaday Day 243: I think I'm stressed

I think I am, as the title says, stressed. I yelled at the robot vacuum cleaner earlier because it was being a dimwit and chewing up loose threads rather than going back to its charging base. I get infuriated by stupid little acts of clumsiness that really shouldn't be as annoying as I am feeling they are right now. And at work today I felt more overwhelmed than I've felt for a long time, for a variety of reasons.

I probably just need a good break to get away from… everything, so I'm going to see about getting a bit of time off in the not-too-distant future. Everything just feels like… a lot to deal with right now, and I'm not coping with it very well. It's the combination of a particularly busy patch at work, coupled with a few annoying specific stressors related to that (which I won't go into now), with The Situation in the world (particularly America) piled on top of that, and a general sense of helpless frustration at how, with every passing day, I feel less and less like I really "belong" in the world we're apparently building.

Take the AI thing. As time goes on, more and more people seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that the lake-boiling plagiarism machines don't appear to be going away, so we "might as well" embrace them because you shouldn't get "left behind". As far as I'm concerned, the ones being "left behind" are the ones wilfully giving up their own skills — and the opportunity to learn new ones — in favour of typing a fucking prompt into a dumbshit autocorrect that hallucinates complete bullshit a statistically significant proportion of the time.

Earlier on, someone posted (mockingly, thankfully) a "tool" that allowed people to generate Bluesky posts using AI. If you're too much of a lazy cunt to think of 280 characters you want to share on a social network, you shouldn't be using that social network. Now, granted, I absolutely fucking hate the vast majority of the time I have to spend doing social media posts for work, but I'm still not going to use AI to generate them, because I know it'll be just as much work checking through all the dross it produces to ensure it's not saying anything fucking stupid or completely fabricated.

I checked in on LinkedIn for the first time in like 15 years the other day, and was horrified to see how much generative AI is all over the place on that platform. LinkedIn is already a place that joy goes to die, so it doesn't surprise me to see tools for generating vapid slop placed front and centre there. I can't think of anywhere I want to hang out less. It was already insufferable before people could just get a machine to generate their "inspirational" posts about what the coffee they had that morning taught them about B2B sales, and now… God.

I'm wound up, I'm irritable, and I just want to… escape for a bit. So once I've dealt with my most pressing commitments, I'll be doing everything I can to ensure that I can take a bit of time to get my shit together and calm down a bit. Because feeling like this probably isn't good for me. I've seen the endpoint of feeling like this, and it's not pretty. I don't want to end up there again.

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#oneaday Day 242: City of Angel

I finally got around to starting to watch the DVD box set of Angel I nabbed for cheap from a CEX a while back.

Aside: I still object to the use of "box set" to describe a run of something being on a streaming service. One, because there's no fucking box. Two, because "box set" implies that you own it, and we all know that streaming services often "lose" shows with little to no warning. And three, because there's no fucking box.

Angel and its predecessor Buffy the Vampire Slayer are two of my favourite TV shows from "back in the day", and I haven't revisited either for a long time. To be honest, in recent years I'd been feeling a little odd about them given that Joss Whedon is apparently not a very nice person, but at some point you have to 1) separate art from artist and 2) remember that Whedon was just one part of what made those shows so good.

And so it was that I found myself watching two episodes of Angel back-to-back last night. And I enjoyed them a lot. It's always a pleasure to go back to what is probably now considered "old TV", because it's a reminder of how much things have changed… and how, although we do have some legitimately great series these days, I still, on the whole, prefer that blissful late '90s-early 2000s era. And y'know the really great thing? You can nab DVD box sets of the complete runs of all these series for a fraction of the cost buying one season of them would have cost back in the day.

Sure, for that price you probably won't get a fancy-pants Blu-Ray version, but in many cases I think that honestly might be preferable; there have been all too many examples of Blu-Ray upscales being a bit of a mess, and while standard definition shows can look a bit grimy at times, that sometimes adds to their appeal somewhat. It certainly does with Angel, and I'm sure it will with other shows, also, such as The Wire, which I've never seen, just remembered I'd never seen, and now have an £8 box set of the entire thing headed my way before I'd even finished writing this post.

But anyway. Angel. On the off-chance you're not familiar, here's the gist. Angel was a recurring character in the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was a thoroughly good-looking young man in the "smouldering, brooding" mould and, of course, he was a tragic hero in that he was a vampire who had been cursed with a soul. That effectively put him on the side of the "good guys", and our heroine Buffy ended up falling hard for him. One thing led to another, they boned, and we learned exactly what the release conditions of Angel's curse — that he would return to his vampiric form if he ever experienced "one moment of true happiness" — really meant.

Long story short, Buffy managed to successfully re-curse Angel, moments before he was dragged into Hell for quite some time, and when he came back he quite understandably decided that he probably needed a bit of space. So he left Sunnydale, the setting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and headed off to Los Angeles to start his own spin-off series. There, he became a sort of supernatural private investigator, initially supported by Doyle, a demon that has premonitions supposedly sent by the "powers that be", and Cordelia Chase, the "spoiled rich girl" character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer who had something of a humiliating crash back down to Earth when she, too, moved to LA, hoping to find fame and fortune.

It would have been easy for Angel to simply become Buffy, But Somewhere Different, but it quickly distinguished itself with a much darker tone. It went heavier on the gore — though not excessively so — and didn't shy away from looking at the bleaker side of life in the city. Don't get me wrong, Buffy got pretty dark, too, particularly in its later seasons, but Angel's 18 certificate is there with good reason.

I can't remember a lot about the complete run of Angel, which is why I'm keen to revisit it, and I really enjoyed the couple of episodes I watched last night — particularly since, as you can probably tell from yesterday's post, I was feeling pretty bleak and dark myself.

In some respects, it's obviously aged — no-one in Angel has a smartphone, for example, because it predates them, and any computer use is on a big chunky desktop PC with a CRT monitor, which is always a delight to see — but that's no bad thing. The nice thing about Buffy and Angel when they originally released was that they felt very much "of their time" — not in a way that they would age poorly, but in that they represented a good snapshot of what life was like during the years they were broadcast. Retrospectively, that makes these shows particularly interesting to look at, and contemplate quite how seismic some of the changes we've seen in society in the last 25 years have really been. (And not for the better in a lot of cases, I'd say.)

Anyway, I'm not going to rush through Angel — I'm probably going to put it on a rotation with the aforementioned The Wire and some other things I nabbed in an impromptu CEX order not ten minutes ago — but I am going to enjoy it. And if you've never seen it, I'd encourage you to seek it out; it's a great example of TV from that era, and deserves more recognition than it tends to get.

And yes, I heard the recent story about there being a possibility of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. Not sure quite how to feel about that right now, but we'll see. For now, the original (and Angel) still exists, and is still good, and whatever ends up happening with any sort of modern reimagining won't change that.

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#oneaday Day 241: So very tired

I don't really understand what is happening in the United States right now, but it seems… worrying. And it's just one of many things going on in the world right now that is just leaving me feeling completely and utterly exhausted, wondering how the world went so very, very wrong, and how on Earth we can drag ourselves out of this pit we appear to have willingly dug ourselves into.

You've got an unelected billionaire apparently being given free rein to gut the actually useful bits of the U.S. government, ostensibly in service to his senile God-Emperor, whose answer to anyone disagreeing with him is to impose 25% tariffs on them. You've got the scourge of generative AI perpetually over… everything, and seemingly more and more people taking the defeatist attitude that "the genie is out of the bottle" (that's the exact phrase they all use) rather than actually making a principled stand against it. You've got the gradual decline in usefulness of everything on the Internet, and the concurrent decline in behaviour from people who feel emboldened to just be a shithead at every opportunity. And you've got just… the general struggle to exist in the world of today.

Some of these things, like whatever the fuck Elon Musk is up to right now, are well out of my control, and probably will not affect me, personally, directly — at least not immediately, anyway. But I can't help but worry. I have friends and family in the United States, and what is going down right now makes me feel quite afraid for them. I know there's nothing I can do, but that doesn't stop me worrying.

Some of these things, like generative AI, may well be a "genie out of the bottle" moment, but I've read enough well-considered criticism (and outright condemnation) of generative AI to know that in its present form, I want no part of it, and seeing people I know and respect involved with it gives me a significant amount of pause. In this instance, I can do something; I can not use it, and I can endure those who would brand me a "Luddite" for feeling that way. Frankly I'd rather keep my integrity and my ability to think for myself than stand alongside the odious techbros who have had Silicon Valley in their grasp for years now.

Likewise, in terms of the Internet, I can do my best to stay out of places that I know will be counter-productive to my mental health — except I can't really, because I have to Do The Social Media for work — and, at the very least, try to be as decent a person I can, as much as I can.

As for the struggle that is existence… well, I've been through personal struggles far worse than this before, and my own life has been in a far worse place than it is right now. So I should probably be grateful for what I do have, and how long I have been able to enjoy a relatively stable existence in my own little bubble.

So why, then, do I want to burst into tears rather than getting out of bed every morning? Why am I sitting here feeling as bad as I've ever felt? Why can I not just "switch off" from the Bad Things that, we've established, have little to do with my day-to-day life?

I don't know. If I did, I wouldn't be writing this post.

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#oneaday Day 236: Ode to Yanagi

There's a chap on YouTube. I think he's Dutch, if I remember rightly. (Checked. He is.) Continental European, anyway. He goes by the name Yanagi19871. And I don't mind admitting that his videos have helped me through some dark times by bringing a smile to my face every time I see them.

What is Yanagi's specialism? He must be a brilliant analytical critic, exploring underappreciated games on obsolete and forgotten platforms and giving them the love and attention they deserve, surely? That's what Pete must be into.

No. Yanagi burps really loud.

I don't remember exactly how I stumbled across Yanagi in the first place. It's entirely possible that I was specifically searching for videos of people burping, and he was, for several years, the leading player in the "burping really loud on YouTube" space. He somehow manages to achieve this without being disgusting about it, because for the most part he doesn't combine his incredible emissions with things like, say, chugging gallons of a drink at a time or whatever — though he has satirised a couple of notorious "challenges" from a few years back, such as the 2 Litre Diet Coke No Burp Challenge, which went about as well as you might expect.

Yanagi's bio on YouTube reads "although burping is considered rude in many cultures, I find it amusing and noticed there are a lot of people out there that also can appreciate my talent", and I have to respect that. The man found a thing that he was good at, and he made the most of it. He even appeared on a couple of television programmes around the world at one point.

You'll notice that I'm using the past tense when describing him, though, and that's because a few years back, he just… stopped. I don't think he's dead — at least I hope he isn't — but from looking at a few scattered comments here and there, it seems like he felt unable to continue going about his usual business, much of which involved belching thunderously in public places, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the subsequent mess that made of the world, and he's just never picked things up again since.

Ultimately, I guess one could argue that this doesn't really matter, that a guy who gained a small amount of notoriety by being able to burp really loud almost entirely at will probably only really deserves fifteen minutes of fame at most. But I have to admit that I came to genuinely like Yanagi. He always came across as a thoroughly affable individual, despite his occasionally antisocial belching behaviour, and one gets the impression that he would be a lot of fun to hang around with.

But I guess the age of Yanagi is over, and he's gone on to do something else with his life. I wish him luck, good health and good fortune with whatever he is up to now, because even though he's stopped making new burp videos on YouTube, his existing ones still always make me laugh to the point of crying on a fairly regular basis. And in this fucked up world we live in, anything that can do that is something which should be treasured.

I don't mind admitting at all that, at the age of 43 and a bit, I still find burping and farting absolutely hilarious — always have done. Flatulence and related expulsions were part of my familial culture growing up, and so I guess a hearty belch or a deep, sonorous fart is one of those things that reminds me of simpler times that feel increasingly distant with every passing day.

I salute you, Yanagi. You were a master of your craft, and I'll be in the front row if you ever decide to make a comeBURRRRRRRRRRRRP.

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#oneaday Day 232: Memories of Me: Lost love

Since I deliberately cut myself off early yesterday for fear of going on for ten thousand words, I thought I'd pick up where we left off.

I previously introduced you to my Halls of Residence, Hartley Grove, and my erstwhile flatmates: the perpetually absent Chloe, my neighbour-for-a-brief-period Beki, my longer-term neighbour Katie, psychology student Steph, Geography-student-who-didn't-really-care-about-Geography Sam, and scientist Chris. We talked a bit about how we'd often go down to Chamberlain Bar and remain encased in our own little bubble, too afraid to approach anyone that we hadn't been thrown together with — and absolutely, definitely not someone as intimidating as Breast Girl.

For those who have never been to university, your first week as a student is typically set aside for "Freshers' Week", which is an opportunity to get to know the campus and perhaps choose a club or two to join. We had a busy week; off the top of my head, we tried Karate-do Shotokai, ninjutsu and rifle shooting, and several of us decided to join the former for the longer term. (The rifle shooting was terrifying, but I enjoyed it. The ninjutsu trial session primarily consisted of people doing forward rolls for about an hour non-stop, which I found inexplicably amusing.)

Throughout Freshers' Week, it is sort of expected that you will spend a significant portion of your time inebriated and getting laid. I did one of those things. I had never been particularly into the idea of a one-night stand, so it is not something I did — not that I really had the confidence to pursue that sort of encounter, anyway, and as it happened, at the time I was already Quite Into someone specific who I've previously mentioned, but I will refrain from mentioning by name in this context to spare their (and my) blushes. I shall, instead, refer to them as Special Someone.

Being a socially awkward autistic person (albeit not being aware of the "autistic" bit at this point in my life) I was, of course, having great difficulty in actually declaring my feelings to this Special Someone in question, but I resolved to myself that I would tell her how I felt and ask her to the "Freshers' Ball" on the last day of Freshers' Week. Although described as a "ball", it was actually just another pissup where people tended to dress slightly nicer than the other pissups throughout the week, but it was still considered to be something of a special occasion, so I figured confessing in time for that would have some sort of special symbolism.

However, my plan did not go according to… err, plan. Special Someone ended up getting together with someone else, hereafter referred to as Other Bloke, and thus I recall embarrassingly vividly spending a fair bit of time sitting in the big window of our flat's kitchen, all dressed up nice, with the lights off, doing what can only be described as "brooding". Ostensibly I was being alone with my thoughts to process what had just happened and attempt to pick myself up a bit, but I was also secretly hoping that someone would come in and I could unload all my emotional baggage on them.

Someone did — Steph, as I recall — and I explained the situation. It transpired that everyone thought I was already together with Special Someone, as we had been spending a lot of time together, but no, it was not the case; now she was with Other Bloke, someone we knew from the flat downstairs from us, who had sort of "attached" himself to our group because he was one of the people who had ended up lumbered with a flat full of foreign students he didn't really know how to talk to. (Other Bloke ended up becoming a good friend and remains as such to this day, so again, I will refrain from naming him explicitly here, but he probably knows who he is, and anyone reading this who was There At The Time also knows who it is.)

Steph encouraged me to just sort of suck it up, these things happen, and I should probably just go and get pissed and shag a rando. She said it in a more empathetic, understanding way than that, but I got the idea. I agreed that I shouldn't let something I sort of did to myself stand in the way of enjoying what was, one week into our official time as students, the biggest social event in our calendar. So I tidied myself up a bit, downed a shot or two of vodka and set out for the Student Union. I don't remember anything else that happened that night, so it must have been all right. (I did not, to my knowledge, shag a rando.)

Within a day or two, news of my lost love had spread around the flat, and I was surprised to discover everyone rallying to my cause. Not to such a degree that they were going to split up Special Someone and Other Bloke, of course, because we were all much too nice people for that, but they helped me keep my mind off things, and we had a lot of fun expressing my frustration in a not exactly malicious way, but which was somewhat at the expense of the person everyone had decided had done me a great injustice.

Usually this involved us getting pretty drunk in the kitchen, then doing something that involved the window to his flat's kitchen, which was directly below us. The most memorable of these was when we attempted to write "DIE" in tomato ketchup on the window, discovering shortly afterwards that ketchup is not an ideal medium through which to express half-hearted death threats, particularly vertically and while battling against gravity. The attempt to pour jelly onto the gentle slope of the open window beneath us was, likewise, unsuccessful, but it did make an absolutely magnificent noise when it hit the pavement below; we were on the third floor, and that gives jelly a good amount of time to pick up speed and explode with an incredibly satisfying "splatter" noise when it impacts an immovable surface.

Time heals all wounds, as they say, and, as I have hopefully implied already, all of the above passed me by surprisingly quickly. I remained friends with both Special Someone and Other Bloke, and they remained in a relationship for a good few years after university, so there was clearly something good there for quite some time. They're no longer together and each have their own lives with their own special people now — as do I — so all's well that ends well, I guess.

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#oneaday Day 231: Memories of Me: First Days at University

A while back, I talked about how when I think back on what the happiest times of my life might have been, I am inexorably drawn to two specific and closely related periods: my time at sixth form, and my time at university. Having previously talked about the former, I'd like to talk a bit about the latter today.

As always, I have almost certainly written about this before, but I don't care. Let's face it, you're almost certainly not going back through the archives to read nearly three thousand posts just to see if I've previously said these things before, and I wouldn't expect you to. So just, y'know, indulge me, even if any of this sounds familiar.

As my time in sixth form came to a close, I was excited but also terrified to go to university. I was going to a university far away from everyone I had ever known, and I didn't know how or if I was going to be able to cope with that. My mind filled with all manner of irrational anxieties, often emphasising things that I really didn't need to think about — like if I should take the opportunity to rebrand myself with a cool nickname when introducing myself to people — but as the big day ticked ever closer, I started to feel a little more at ease about things.

I spent my first year at university, as do many people, in a Halls of Residence. For those who have never been to university, this is basically like an old people's home, but for students. You have your own room plus some communal areas; the exact facilities and how much you are "waited on" (if at all) varies quite a bit from halls to halls, even within the same university. The halls I was going into, known as Hartley Grove, were self-catered, because both my parents and I agreed that it would probably be a good idea to learn how to be self-sufficient in a reasonably safe environment, and they were a new build, meaning (I think) our year was the first to stay in them.

And they were nice! Our rooms were a decent size, and they were en-suite, meaning we each had our own shower and toilet, which was nice. There was enough room for what little stuff I had to my name at that point in my life, a nice desk with space for my computer and hi-fi, room to put a small television to play games consoles on and a relatively cavernous wardrobe to store clothes in. It didn't take long for my room to feel like "home".

I started university in a slightly strange way compared to some of my peers in that I went there a week early to attend a "pre-term" orchestral course with the university symphony orchestra. Over the course of a week, we learned how to play movements from two symphonies — the first movement of Beethoven's 7th and the last movement of Shostakovich's 5th, as I recall — with the intention of performing them both for an audience of our tearful parents at the end of said week.

Because this course was prior to the regular term starting, those of us in halls (which was most of us) weren't able to immediately move all our stuff in to our new homes for the next year, so we had to travel light and take up residence in what was probably the grottiest halls in all of Southampton: a crusty old tower block known as Stoneham which, although shit, we all came to regard with some fondness by the end of the week. (It has since been knocked down; I'm not entirely sure when, but I was a bit sad to learn it's no longer there.)

Basically what we'd do was spend the day in Stoneham's large dining hall area rehearsing, then clear out, have dinner and then be free to do whatever in the evening. Sometimes we'd hang out, sometimes we'd investigate the local nightlife that was easily accessible within walking distance (not much) or a bus ride away — though of course, very few of us knew Southampton well enough at this point to know where was worth going, and where would get you stabbed.

Initially, I found my worst fears coming true as I wasn't sure how to approach new people and make friends with them. But, to my credit, one of my proudest moments as a human being came when I finally plucked up the courage to talk to someone in the lift that was taking us up to our rooms. Her name was Cat, and she was kind enough to give me the time of day. I don't know if she recognised I was struggling, but she became a close friend surprisingly quickly, and I was extremely glad that I at least had someone I could "rely on" during that initial week.

Through Cat, I met several other people — she was a lot more affable than me, but most folks were happy to include me in conversations if I sort of tagged along — and they all became good friends, too. It helped that most of us were going to go on to study music at Southampton for the next three years — though I was doing a split English and Music degree — so we had something in common. But it was still interesting to note how different we all were from one another.

The pre-term course came and went; our performance of both symphony movements went really well, and I ended up having a great time. By the time the course was over, we were able to move into our "forever homes" (for the next year, anyway) — it was still a few days earlier than most, but it gave us a chance to get properly settled, and to minimise the number of trips our parents had to make with cars full of crap.

My flat in Hartley Grove had six rooms. I was the first to arrive by several days, as expected, so by the time my flatmates started arriving, I was already quite comfortable and settled — to such a degree that when one particular flatmate named Chloe came in for the first time, she was greeted by me cooking a bacon sandwich in my dressing gown. She confided to me later that she thought I was a mature student and not, in fact, an idiotic 18 year old whose entire cooking repertoire consisted of bacon sandwiches and toast.

My flat eventually filled to capacity. I was in room number A333. To one side of me at the end of the corridor was the aforementioned Chloe; my other neighbour was the frankly gorgeous Beki, who sadly dropped out partway through her first year. Our mutual friend Katie replaced her in short order; previously, she had lived in another flat with foreign students that weren't particularly sociable, so she was glad to be among friends at last.

Further down the corridor on my side was Chris, a science student who we initially assumed to be one of the most stereotypical science nerds imaginable, but who came to be a close friend and confidant to all of us. On the opposite side was Sam, who had, for some reason, been the subject of a newspaper article about him "not studying Geography due to any burning love for the subject", and who became one of my best friends during my time at university and beyond, and Steph, a psychology student who, again, formed an important part of our overall "group".

The majority of the time, it was me, Chris, Sam and Steph in the flat. Beki left after not very long, as previously noted, and Chloe was an absolute socialite, to such a degree that she barely slept in her own room and often brought strange and interesting men back to our flat. Our collective favourite of these was probably "Raf", a charming and pretty chilled out gent who, it occurs to me now, I really don't know anything else about.

We enjoyed socialising as a flat, particularly if said socialisation involved going to Chamberlain Bar, our nearest drinking establishment. Hartley Grove didn't have its own bar, but Chamberlain was attached to one of the other nearby halls, so it was open for all of us to make use of, and we did. Several of us even spent a few nights working there; we didn't get paid in anything other than beer tokens, but it was a good experience.

Chamberlain Bar was pretty shit, but it was ours. All of us from the flat had a certain degree of awkwardness to us, so we didn't really interact with people from outside our group much, and took to referring to other people by nicknames based on their most prominent characteristics. The one that sticks in my mind was a young lady known only to us as Breast Girl; a conventionally attractive and moderately well-endowed first year who seemed to hang out at Chamberlain Bar almost as much as us. We never exchanged a single word, though I believe Steph, at one point, learned what her actual name was.

Chamberlain Bar occasionally held special events. Two of these stick in my mind: firstly, a '70s night, where we all went around the local charity shops and party stores to find the most hideous clothing and wigs we could; and secondly, a "Hawaiian" night, where all they did was turn the heating up full, and where our flat were the only people who came in fancy dress.

Chamberlain Bar's specialism was shit cocktails. The two we spent the most time drinking were the Juicy Lucy (pint glass containing a shot of vodka, a shot of blue curacao, a double shot of Taboo, then topped up with equal parts lemonade and orange juice) and the Passion Wagon (a shot of Passoa topped up with a bottle of Reef, possibly the laziest cocktail ever invented). I don't know exactly where Juicy Lucy originated, but we got the impression it was a "Southampton" thing; notoriously shit but popular watering hole Clowns and its companion nightclub Jesters would serve them by the 4-pint jug for less than a tenner, making them a great way to get absolutely off your fucking face for not very much money.

So yeah. You can hopefully see how all this was a good time. I will hold that there for now, since I've rambled on for nearly 2,000 words and I haven't even started talking about my actual time at university yet, let alone some of the funnier happenings that transpired during just that first year.

I really miss those magical first few weeks, though, and would give anything to feel that way again. But with each passing day, they feel further and further away to an exponential degree. At least I'll always have the good memories of them.

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