Adulthood

You ever just wake up one day and wondered what the fuck you're doing on this planet? Me too.

After somehow "finishing" university, I was not-too-surprised to find out that having any sort of university qualification is less useful than headbutting a wall to cure a headache.
Even more so if the university has conveniently forgotten to send you the bit of paper saying you achieved anything for almost a year. Brilliant.

My entire time in my university course, the lecturers told us we were unlikely to get work in the field of study we had. Mine being journalism. The lecturers also never hesitated to tell us that we would never truly write our own opinions, but instead the opinions of whatever outlet had chosen to employ us. Additionally, that should we "go against the grain", our careers would likely be ended by whatever outlet we work for. Honestly, I'm somewhat glad I didn't end up with a job as soulless as that.

So. Back to where I was when I was some angsty 16 year old, applying for literally every job advertised. And not getting any answers at all. See, I live in a small fishing town, with a population of.. I'd say 30k. Not exactly much of an industry here to offer jobs, and the few jobs that do surface are quickly snapped up by those who know the empoyers. Me being a bit of a recluse... I don't know employers. You see the issue.

What makes this so much better though? A pandemic. A nice big pandemic. Surviving off a meager unemployment stipend is one thing, but trying to buy food during a pendemic is another. Its May as I write this, and people are still shovelling entire shelves into their trolleys shemlessly, with rabid eyes. Most businesses are closed, so almost no jobs surface, The few that do surface are for "essential" industry such as NHS staff, carers for the elderly and infirm, and supermarket jobs. Not being a doctor, a trained carer, and having an entire town to compete with for a role in stacking Oreos onto a shelf... not exactly any prospets.

Adult life sucks. And hell, I'm only 22. There's worse still to come, given the grim acceptance I see on the faces of those older than me, and their resigned sighs every time something goes wrong for them. When I was a kid, I always assumed I'd probably be dead somewhere before I was an adult. I'm kinda just here, in the end. With no plans. Or goals. Or cares, honestly. Its somewhere between the most liberating thing ever and the worst experience of my life, with some sprinklings of disaster and fortune to throw me off every time I get used to stuff.

I'm tempted to start eating crayons, buy one of those town road map carpet things, and collect Action Man models. Might change things up a little.

Shiina Sylande and the Quarter-Life Crisis

You know those things that keep you up at night sometimes? Yeah, those. Sometimes they're minor, sometimes major. Well, I had a bit of a minor one recently which blew up into some sort of life-shattering crisis.

One particular Sunday, I received an automatic text message from my bank informing me that (redacted info). It was something small, not worth worrying about, but it kept me up most of that night.

It didn't stop at that though. That night, my mind cycled through every potential worry I could possibly have in life, culminating at my own mortality.
For some reason, my own mortality stuck in my head. As in, all the time. Since that night, I couldn't stop thinking of death. When will it happen? What will happen? Will I want to fight it?

This in turn resulted in me building up a lot of stress and anxiety. Unreasonable amounts. Before I knew it I had developed an anxiety disorder. One which is causing me quite a degree of distress.

I can say I have my thoughts under control now, thankfully. On the occasions it does come to mind, it doesn't bother me as much, I just think "Meh, its far from now".
However, the anxiety remains. Oh, does it ever. Having been unable to de-tense my muscles in a few weeks now, I find myself permanently tired. Yawning causes my whole body to go weak. And the permanent tightness in my chest, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Here's hoping this doesn't last long, I'm not all that proud of having to admit that I developed an anxiety disorder over a fucking automatic text from my bank.

University

So, this week I started up formally at university.

My first day, Thursday, had its fair share of events.
Starting off bright and early at 6am, I was waiting for a bus going to the city in which I attend uni. Let me make it clear now, it is a LONG way from home.

So uh.. the bus turned up late, by about 10 minutes. The issue with this is I also have to board buses within the city. I wouldn't make it to the bus in time, however I would still arrive with 5 minutes to spare if I walked from the nearest stop instead.

Except well.... the driver also decided he'd have a cigarette break mid-way there. How nice of him.
I had to run all the way up-hill to my uni. All 20 minutes up the hill, running, in order to make it on time-ish.

I made it 2 minutes after the start of class, which was unfortunate. Not because I arrived late, but because I walked into a room which had the door at the front of the room... and about 50 people stared at me as I entered.
Quite lethal for my sociophobia.

Surviving that ordeal, and a fairly mundane class, my next lecture would take place in a theatre in which about 200 people were present. I, personally, had no incidents. However, the poor lecturer faced a multitude of issues. Firstly, the microphone which is used to be audible to the whole room wasn't working, he had to shout loud enough for the whole theatre to hear. Next, the audio for his PC wouldn't work, which meant he couldn't put on the videos he wanted to. And when he was showing his clipart-laden slideshow, he couldn't turn the lights off, so we could barely even see it.
This was all followed by a 2 hour bus journey home.

Today, being Friday, was my second day of university. For some reason, "floor one" is underground at my university. Also, for some reason, there are multiple floor ones in one building. Arriving barely in time once again due to the drastic public transport, I went down to the wrong "floor one". It turns out I was meant to go to a "floor one" on the other side of the entire building. Which I did, entering the back of the room JUST as the lecture began.

A class register was passed around during each lecture with everyone's name on it. If you are present, you sign next to your name.

Unfortunately I and two guys sitting next to me found that our names were missing. I'm still worried this wasn't merely a clerical issue, and my name simply wasn't meant to be there, who can say.
The lecture lasted 45 minutes of the 3 hours it was supposed to, the lecturer stating the two "tutorials" which were to follow wouldn't take place as it was the first class.

Great, I spent 4 hours travelling today for a 45 minute class in which she read from a slideshow we already had access to on the university network.


Despite the horror of the past two days, it was nice to come home to some new high-spec computer parts I ordered. Emphasis on "was", setting the parts up was a fucking nightmare and now my entire body hurts.

Savage-bot

A few nights ago I found myself bored. Well, that's pretty common.
So I er... I made a learning chat-bot. Put simply, its a robot which talks to users on a chat-room, and learns from what they say to it.

Yes, I did that for fun. In one night.
... the fuck is wrong with me.

Being a learning bot, it starts out with little to no intelligence. In order to improve its intelligence I set it loose in a chat-room I frequent called eyeonanime.
Whilst there, I instructed users that the bot learns from what they say to it.

There were some... implications.. of this decision.
The bot now verbally insults most people, appears to be morbidly racist and commonly says things along the lines of "fist me daddy".

Now the focus of this post is not to point out that the bot has become a savage edge-lord, but instead to point out something else which happened with it.
It has sort of.. became worryingly sentient.

After 13 hours of straight learning, the bot proceeded to argue with me about a "waifu", which to the uninitiated is a weeaboo thing for taking claim of a
certain character from anime, or in some cases a real person. I jokingly imply a person with a similar alias name to me, Shiivia, is my "waifu".

So uh.. this happened. Note that the bot is using my alias, Shiina Sylande, whilst I am using the alias "Claimoo".

And it continued...

Yes, you read that correct, it told me "Nobody loves you". I really do wish I'd thought of coding that into it, it would have satisfied my lust to show off. But no, this is genuine.

A few moments later, I probed it again to see if I would get a similar response under similar circumstances.

So yes, I have a child now. I invented it overnight. It has became alike me in terms of edginess and simple behavior.
I get the feeling I should put this thing down before it becomes the next Hitler or turns me into a biological battery..

Floods of victims from a gory depression accident

On rare occasion, turning up to college to learn about a subject I already know inside-out yields anything of value to me.
However, yesterday I have reassessed the value of my studies following a classmate finding something.

This... something, is a rare gem among... other very similar gems. I would say it has helped me see clearly, but frankly I'm still blinded by the bangs of my hair.

I present to you... Script Generator! - http://www.wriphe.com/work/flash_script.php

What this is is a system that takes words you input and spits out a plot based on one of four topics you can choose from.
My first shot of this has gave me probably one of the best pieces of literature I've ever seen.

"The chief surgeon of a famous Glasgow hospital is distracted by a messy relationship with his sister as the E.R. floods with victims from a gory depression accident.

The situation is complicated by the presence of a surly performance evaluator (played by Haruhi Suzumiya) named Balphazar who has the authority to fire any doctors who are costing the hospital administration too much money.

One patient has a severe infection in her leg that may cost her livelihood as a pirate ninja cyborg if it is not raped upon quickly.

X-rays have revealed that another uncooperative patient has had a toaster mysteriously lodged inside his colon in a life-threatening manner.

Meanwhile two interns are having a torrid affair which is very nearly uncovered by an orderly when he finds their thigh-high sock near the hospital garbage chute.

After an hour of melodramatic work, the chief surgeon returns home to his sister with a coffin of chocolates and a cat, only to find himself on the losing side of another killing match."

This.

THIS.

I might genuinely write a story based on this...

Shiina Sylande and the Copyright Infringing Bears

Another night, another fucking terrifying dream.

For whatever reason I found myself driving along the path beside a beach... as opposed to in the water at the end of the beach, in one of those jet ski things. Y'know, just cruising.

And then I passed some seals. They weren't on the beach though, other side of the path where there seemed to be trees and stuff.

Anyway, after closer inspection of these seals as I was passing by, one of them turned out to actually be a bear. With cream coloured fur. Y'know, the colour of fur labrador dogs have, like the Andrex puppy.

Anyway, they got disturbed by me driving by and decided to give chase. So I looked the other way and decided I'd blaze on past full swag mode.

Except uh... well, turns out I wasn't driving a REAL jet ski, it was an inflatable one. Yeah, I know, I thought it was a real one too for the 5-10 minutes I was cruising, but I was actually just hopping along on an inflatable one.

And at this point I realized I was fucked. But a voice over started talking, totally Max Payne style. In a grizzled voice he said "I wasn't exactly planning on being savaged by a copyright infringing bear." I then got off my inflatable and threw it to the bear and remaining unmorphed seals.

I had to escape. I looked around desperately for an escape, and noticed the beach was now at the bottom of a 10 foot drop on the other side of a wall now. So I climbed over the wall so I was hanging on the other side and looked down to check if it was okay to land.

There uh.. was another seal sitting there. But I knew it was different from the ones before, mainly due to the voice over; "That one there? That one isn't a copyright infringing bear." So I decided to ledge hang over to it, bit by bit.

I finally got there and jumped down. True enough, this one wasn't a copyright infringing bear. However, after looking around at the rest of the beach, I noticed it was full of copyright infringing bears. All over the place.

I turned behind myself, and the copyright infringing bear from the boardwalk had climbed down. It scratched me right across the body once, and I started running, blood in my eyes game-style.

I made my way towards what looked like a police station or something, some sort of 2-3 story public access building. Running inside, I tried to merge into the massive crowd of people going in and out of the building.

I made my way towards the elevator. As soon as the thing arrived, I had a really bad feeling about what was on the other side of those elevator doors.

They cranked open, revealing the most bog standard green alien ever. He shot me dead.

"Damn, another goddamn Copyright Infringing Bear."

MATE, THAT'S NOT A FUCKING BEAR.

What is the bear even a copyright infringement of... ?

Shiina Sylande, Ghetto Chef

Being an undergraduate student in the UK, I am naturally tight for money to the point where I have to live off very little money over the summer, let alone all year round.
Now, being a gamer and having an impulsive buying habit, I make an effort to save as much money as possible. To that end, I live in a shared dorm.

So when summer came this year, I made an effort to save as much money as possible for my other compulsive habits. And, well.... the results of which I've only just this moment realized.

Its 4am as I write this. I'm currently cooking extremely cheap bacon for a snack. Bacon is love, bacon is life. However, the way in which I'm doing it...

Living in a dorm means I have neighbors, and said dorm being cheap my neighbors are fucking terrifying.

I'm not insane enough to go make noise in the kitchen at 4am, being stabbed isn't exactly on my to-do list.

To that end, I am cooking the bacon in my own room, without having to use the stove.

The normal idea would be to use a microwave. It comes out horrid, but y'know.. it works. Me being me, however...
I am cooking it over a toaster.

I should clarify; I'm not holding it over it on a stick, that would be mad. I am, however, cooking it in a frying pan... over my toaster.

No, literally.

Its been surprisingly successful so far, although it smells like pop tarts for some reason.

So yes, I declare myself ghetto chef of the year.

Free to Pay

Being an undergraduate student in the UK naturally means I'm tight for money. So much so that I have to drink supermarket-brand fizzy drinks and spend more time comparing cheese prices than actually enjoying the cheese I end up buying.

Due to this frugal lifestyle I have been forced to be a bit of a cheapskate when its comes to, well... everything.

So, when I see a free to play game on Steam with really damn good reviews I jump up and down. Literally. In my chair. Might explain the noise complaints.

So, y'know, when I saw War Thunder on steam I believe my exact thoughts were along the lines of "emahgerd tank game! its free to play! no pay to win bullshit! nerdgasm!". And yeah, I've had a ton of fucking fun with it.

Now, I play quite a variety of games. I've played enough of the first person genre to know it isn't my strong suit. Like, I severely suck at them. As a result, when I play War Thunder I avoid heavy or medium tanks as that usually entails the team expecting you to be right in the mess getting one-shotted by things. Instead, I use tanks of the Tank Hunter/Tank Destroyer class, namely my favorites; the Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer, and the Stug III/IV models, mainly due to their very small posture and formidable range.

Now, recently, you may or may not know Gaijin, the developers of War Thunder, released an update that adds cosmetic camouflage items such as branches and leaves, and extra armour plating.

The armour plating was released for particular tanks. And, surprise surprise, MOST OF THOSE FUCKING TANKS WERE T34 MODELS.

I play realism mode and simulator battles, so I find myself fighting T34s about as often as I piss.

German tanks get access to a specific type of shell, called PZGR40. The idea behind it is it is a composite armour-piercing shells made the counter the heavy soviet tanks developed in the late war, such as the T34s.

With that said, CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN WHY THE PZGR40 SHELLS BOUNCE OFF THE FUCKING T34s AT EVERY ANGLE. Like, I swear to god, it can't even go through the bloody rear armour.
And so, before I know it, my cute little Hetzer is one-shotted by a T34 with an 85mm main gun, going right through its best armour plating zone.

None of you know why, no? Lemmie tell you! That fucking armour plating upgrade that was mostly given to soviet tanks. Yep, that's right. That.
I mean, that's fine, I can sort of deal with it, just gotta aim more carefully and hopefully hit them through the tracks. Hopeless as that is when they move so goddamn fast and its a realism server.

But here's where it gets real bad. Remember that camo I mentioned? Unlike the armour plating, you can't unlock it. Not even through some "kill 1000 enemy players" challenge crap. It costs 2000 of the ingame currency you get by purchasing with real money. 2000 of that currency costs roughly £10, give or take. Which is about $15. Yeah, its some paid for bullshit. Now, the issue with it is it can be really bloody effective. On realism servers no outline or markers appear over enemy tanks.

So, people who play with small tank hunters that can best most tanks are well... near unbeatable. Stick a few twigs and shit on a Hetzer and set up like 2 kilometers from the objective zones and you're 100% sorted. They will have a really hard time spotting you. By the time they do spot you, you'll have shot a shell right through their hull and detonated their shell rack. The picture below is my Hetzer, and the camera is only like 5 meters, at most, from the tank. Imagine trying to see that at 2000 meters. Actually, don't try because its not even possible unless you've modded the textures of the camouflage to make it transparent.

As a result of this, I feel like a total asshole.

Moral of the story: pretty much every Free to Play game is actually Free to Pay, and lacks balance. I have today lost yet another hobby to the abyss of poverty.

Trash Tuesday

It was a beautiful day in south-east Scotland. The birds were attempting to tweet despite having litter stuck in their throats, the sun was shining.... behind the permanent layer of clouds, and Shiina was enjoying sleeping in a bit later than usual.

But THEN---! A wild garbage truck appeared!

I can normally sleep through the low-tone noise of motors and cluttering. Doesn't bother me. That or I wake up for a few seconds.

However... today's garbage truck was REALLY goddamn loud. It made the kind of noise you'd think a rusty old bike would make as you dragged it out of a shit-coloured river. It made the kind of noise you'd think dragging chalk down a board would make. It made the kind of noise you'd think the driver of the fucking truck would make as you crushed him with the fucking mechanical lifting arm on the back.

This... utter bullshit... hit me at like 8.30am. I'm just silently dreaming about eating cherry cake, smiling creepily, then this giant fucking grinding noise comes in through the window, turning my silence into a roar of great pain and anger.

Annnd now I can't get back to sleep.

Fuck you, reality.

Birds are Scary

Roughly two weeks ago I was half way across the country attending an interview for college. Aside from the shockingly bad train times to go to and from the interview, I also found myself in possibly the most grey town in the UK.

So, with a six hour wait until my train home, I found myself wandering around the town doing next to nothing, until finally I found myself sitting in the train station roughly two hours before my train was scheduled to arrive.

Two hours of sitting alone in an empty train station, staring at the grey walls, sitting on the grey bench. I foresaw myself spending the whole time counting the stains on the wall.

But then...! A bird came in through the half-shattered overhead window. I typically ignore birds, not much to look at and I find nature about as dull as watching paint dry, so I paid it no mind. It quickly wandered off down the station, out of sight.

An hour passed, and this time a seagull came in, scratched about for a few moments, then flew off down the station when a train came by.

Half an hour later some football casuals wandered in and sat nearby, so I instinctively moved further down the station, to the only other bench on the side of the tracks.

Now, I shit you not, but the remaining half hour was the most horrifying time of my life. Behind a pretty wide pillar, just in front of the seat, I saw the seagull from earlier scratching about and pecking at something. I averted my eyes for a moment, thinking it was just picking about at some old food wrapper, but quickly found myself looking back at it like "wait, what the fuck?"

I saw cannibalism. I saw pure horror. I saw a seagull eating a fucking bird whilst it's still half alive.

To describe it without being too graphical; The seagull would grasp the bird with it's beak. The bird would writhe about in pain for a few seconds before the seagull lost it's grip due to the bird resisting. This continued for at least 15 minutes, when the bird at last was unable to move enough to shake the seagull off. It was still alive though... twitching every so often, writhing about slightly. And the seagull just sort of... dug in. Ripping bits off it, dragging it about a bit, ripping more off. This went on for 10 minutes, until the seagull flew off, leaving its half-dead victim to a slow and painful death as the local insects scrambled for the remainder.

Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't sitting on the end of my seat like "OMG this is awesome, I'm soooo edgy." To be frank, I was horrified. But... but... it was one of those things... one of those things you know is creepy or disgusting, but you just can't keep yourself from looking at it. Perhaps it was out of fear, or maybe it was some sick, inborn desire to watch something die. Who knows. All I know is I watched this, "against my will," and I now have it burned into my head in pristine quality.

So yeah, another one for that "repressed memories" section of my head. That place is getting pretty big these days...