Underneath my yellow skin

A somber look at my fifth re-birthday

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I’m still fucked up in my head about finding out my fake-hubby, Yutsy died last December. In addition, it’s my fifth re-birthday, so I’m meditative about that as well. It feels both much longer and much shorter than that. Simultaneously one year and ten years. I have some thoughts on that as well. Yesterday, I talked about Yutsy and how we became a thing. I want to talk more about that and what it means to me now.

I hadn’t talked to Yutsy in some time, but I knew he was having health issues of his own from the last time I talked to him. He was always in my heart because he is my fake-hubby! Where else was he going to be? We met on a political blog and clicked because we shared a wacky sense of humor, were queer, and a few other reasons. Mostly the queer thing, though. He was gay, and I’m bi. We both were passionate about advocating for our civil rights and pushing for equality.

I think we became fake-married during the debates asinine arguments fucking bullshit about marriage equality. During that time, I was mad a lot. Not only because we queers acutally had to debate our humanity, but that the bigots acted like the injured party when we weren’t as “civil” as they demeed proper. I can still remember a Vikings player mewling about how people should be respectful as we debated the issue. We could agree to disagree, blah, blah, blah. (And, yes, I remember who it was. I just don’t want to dignify his bullshit by naming him.)

It makes me see red when someone in the majority wants to tone police someone being actively hurt by their bigotry. They want to act as if they’re the aggrieved party when they’re the ones deny our humanity. I said at the time, “You want us to speak civilly to you while you do uncivil things to us” to highlight the hypocrisy. Oh, your feelings are hurt? Well, tough shit.

This bullshit has been thrown at minorities my entire life. “Yes, we’re doing atrocious things to you, but you raised your voice at us!” Tone policing has been used to put minorities in their place probably ever since time began, and I’m not having any of it.

Here’s the thing. There’s no argument that is good enough in their eyes to change their minds. Let’s take marriage equality since it’s coming under threat once again. (BIG sigh.)

Oh wait. Before I get into that, I wanted to say the other thing that really rankled me about the marriage equality debate–it wasn’t something I personally cared about. I realized in my early thirties that I did not want to get married and that I had many issues with it. Actually, it wsa earlier than that, but it was my early thirties that really solidified that marriage was maybe 972 on my list of things I gave a shit about.

What I do give a shit about, though, is equality. That’s probably in the top five if you were to press me about it on that same list (of things I give a shit about). If straight people can be miserable yoked to one other person, then queer people should be allowed to be just as miserable!

So it made me angry that not only were the bigots bigottng as hard as their bigoted hearts could bigot, but that I had to care about an issue (marriage) that I didn’t care about at all because it affected an isssue (equality), I did care about.

You can probably tell that I have many negative thoughts/feelings about marriage, at least as how it’s usually defined as in America. Monogamous one-to-one union of a man and a woman for their whole lives to the exclusion of all others.


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An elegy for my fake-hubby, Yutsy

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As I’m writing this, it’s my fifth re-birthday. Just. I should have declared my re-birthday to be the day I woke up from my week-long coma (which would be almost a week from now), but I chose my re-birthday as the night I literally died–twice!, and that’s right now. So, happy re-birthday to me. I have never cared for my actual birthday, but I’ve gone from hating it to being truly neutral about it.

My re-birthday, on the other hand? I’m all about it. I have nothing but the warmest feelings for it, and I loudly proclaim it when it comes around. Hell, why not?

That’s not what I want to talk about, though. I have a much more sobering post for today, but it’s related, somewhat, to my medical crisis.

I used to be a member of the Balloon Juice community (political website). This was before the Obama days, and into his first term. Maybe longer? I really liked most of the regular commenters, and it was a great place to talk to other lefties. I was still probably one of the most left-leaning as ideological, I am very far left. At heart, though, I’m a pragmatist. I would rather get half of what I want actually passed into law than nothing. To a certain extent.

One person had the ‘nym Yutsano, and we became fast friends. We were both queer (he was gay, and I was/am bi), had a very dirty sense of humor, and clicked on several levels. I called him Yutsy, and he called me wifey. He was gay, but as he said, who doesn’t like boobs? He praised mine to high heaven (likening them to pillows), which always made me laugh.

I don’t remember how we decided to get fake-married–probably as a way to protest the inanity of the whole marriage equality debacle, er, debate, but we had a great time with it. The whole site was in on it, and we brought another gay guy into our fake family. Yes, we were a fake-throuple before it became a thing.

Yutsy and I kept in contact after I drifted away from Balloon Juice (politics were starting to really weigh me down. Ironic given what’s happening now). Any time BJ’s proprietor posted a picture of his cat, Tunch (who was the blog’s mascot. I have merch with His Royal’s roundness on it), Yutsy would tell them that the proper authority had been notified (me) and then message me.

He was much better at keeping in touch than I was. I’m not good about it, especially since my medical crisis. He would reach out every now and again (three-to-six months), but I had not heard from him in much longer than that.

I gave up completely on Twitter when it became the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and I barely used Facebook. I had a Bluesky, but I rarely checked there, either. In fact, after my medical crisis, I effectively gave up on social media. So if he wanted to reach me, it would be through FB. I did check my messages there, but that wasn’t how we normally communicated.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review, part four

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I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review (Spry Fox). I am aware of the irony of me calling it a quick review when I’m on the fourth part, but it’s funny (at least to me). Plus, the new season started today so let’s goooooo with new items! The game was released on July 15th, and the new season (fall) started on September 1. That makes me wonder if they shortened the seasons in this game (again, in the first game, a season was two months with a month between two seasons) or if it’s just because of when the game was released. My hunch is that it was the latter, but we’ll see when the next season starts.

I really like the start of a new season because it means a ton of new resources. New critters (bugs, insects, and butterflies), new trees and flowers, new seashells, and new fish. I had not gotten anything new in a while. The thrill of seeing that ‘new’ in the deescription in bold black ink really perked me up just when I’ve been dragging my ass in the game.

It’s the same as it was in the last game, yes (new resources at the change of seasons) except they cut out the in-between month this time. Again, we’ll see if that’s just because of the release date or if they choose to cut the seasons short. I think it’s the former because they like to have things link up with the real world. Which, again, I appreciate for the most part.

I talked in the last post, well, mostly about plats and why I hate them so much. It was related to this game, yes, but it was more me just needing to go off. I hate plats, and yet, I feel compelled to get them after I obtain a certain percentage of the achievements. Usually it’s around the 65% that I start noticing what I need to get the plat.*

Back to all the delicous new resources in a new season. If this game holds true to the first game, this means I’ll get new bears and new recipes, too. I’m not sure about the latter because the specificity of an ingredient doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is you don’t make anything with, say a blueberry. It’ll use fruit jam, wnhich you make by burning the fruits. Same with nuts. No recipe will ever ask for a pecan, for example. It’ll just need nut flour, which you get from burning the nuts.

I actually like this because it makes the cooking fairly simple. I just have to gather all the resources and burn the ones that can be born. Easy-peasy. I don’t like how intensive some of the  master recipes are (highest tier), but that’s not unexpected.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review, part three

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I have more to say about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). In the last post, I mentioned my issues and frustrations with the resource gathering/management as well as my excitement for a mystery thhat is happening.

I do think if someone has not played the first game, this is a fine place to start. But, I also think overall the first game is better.

Here’s the thing with sequels. They are in a Catch-22 because they need to have the same charm as the original to appease the fans, but they also need enough new and fresh ideas in order to expand that appeal. I saw it happen with Dark Souls II (FromSoft) (which was a good game, even if ti wasn’t a good Souls game, per se), and I have seen it with other games, too. I liked Torchlight (Runic Games) better than Torchlight II, and I liked Hades (Supregiant Games) better than Hades II. Dark Souls is a more original game than the successor, obviously, but is it better? I would say the first half is, but not the second half.

All of that is to say that so far, I would say that I prefer OG Cozy Grove to the sequel. It was so fresh with its real-time gameplay, and I really gelled with the format. I couldn’t wait to play every day and to learn more about the bears. Even the excessive resource gathering (and the tiny inventory space). I only started getting frustrated when I went for the plat, which had some truly egregious achievements. So far, this game has tedious ones, but not any that are terrible. There are four locked achievements, though, which means that I’ll hold out as long as I can before giving in and looking them up.

Side note: I don’t really like hidden/locked achievements, though I understand why it evolved for them to be a thing. It’s because they are related to the story, and the devs want the players to be able to have those moments organically. At some point, though, I start worrying that I’ve missed an achievement–which means I will usually look up the full list before I get too far in a game.

FromSoft games have scarred me in this respect. I like to experience them unspoiled as much as possible, but I also don’t want to miss out on NPC questlines. Which are byzantine, obtuse, and really difficult to figure out without a guide–at least fgor me. But if I look up an NPC questline, I will get spoiled on other questlines. That’s just how it works.

It’s the same for locked achievements. I will hold out as long as possible, but at a certain point, I will give in. Otherwise, I’ll hit the achievements and get mad at how I wasted time by not looking them up earlier. That happened in Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) with a very specific achievement that meant I had to play the whole game again just to get it. Well, not all of it, but a good chunk of it. Which infuriated me and left a sourr taste in my mouth. I still loved the game, but my enthusiasm for it was very subduued by the end of the plat run.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review, part two

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I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). This is the second part of A Quick Review, and we’ll see how many posts I write about it. I have a lot to say, so strap in and let’s go.

In the first post, I voiced some of my frustrations at the way the game deals with inventory and resource management. It’s similar if not exactly the same as the first game, and it frustrated me then, too. I detailed how the upgrades work, and it’s tedious AF. As I said in the first post, give me a permanent upgrade to an unlimited inventory. Make it astronomical like a million coins, but just do it. I hate having to go back to the  fire (Flamey) to endlessly stash things, usually after burning them. (That upgrades a lot of the items to a higher tier.)

Also, and, yes, this was also something that happened in the first game–the placement of items is so frustrating. It starts with being hard to click on the item or the NPC if the NPC is near lots of items. And, given how limited space is, most of the NPCs are near a lot of items*.

I said yesterday that the cooking machine was the same as in the first game. That is not quite true. In the first game, you had to talk to an NPC bear in order to cook things. This is much easier, and I appreciate that I can just go to the cooking machine to make what I need/want. That’s a definite upgrade from the first game.

Let’s take a minute to give praise to the changes that I appreciate. One, there are ghosts/apparyitions of your troop members (who are also lost somewhere like you) that show up to help you farm resources. They help with the same chores you have to do anyway, but if they help you, you get a ton more resources. I like that.

I also like some of the different things that you can turn your basic resources into via fire or recycling. In fact, I wished they had done more in this vein.

One thing I’m very curious about is…hm. How do I put this so that it’s not spoiler-ific? There is a mystery that started at a certain point of me doing one of the new things. Which I’m not going to say exactly what it is because it’s very different and unexpected. After doing it for several days (like weeks), I got a letter in the mailbox admiring my work. And encouraging me to do more. Which, despite my misgivings, I did. And I got another letter commending me for what I was doing. And I felt even worse about it. They said they’d send me another letter soon, but I have yet to hear from them.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review

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I have played Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) every day since it came out on Steam (July 15th). I have enough time with it to review it in A (not-so) Quick Review.

First of all, let’s talk about how it feels. It’s very much in the same vein as the first game, which means it feels very familiar. I have a routine set up that I started in the first game, and it serves me well, here, too.

I wake up and got to Mr. Kit, the main merchant in the game.

Note about Mr. Kit: I really wanted to learn more about him in th efirst game, but that did not happen. I am not holding out much hope that we’ll get more in this game because nothing is pointing that way, but it would be nice. He just appears out of nowhere selling ihs wares, and I’m supposed to trust that he has my best interests at heart?

Well, I do, actually. I just want to learn more about him for his sake. Meaning, I find him an interesting character aand would like to know more about his background. Was he a scout once? Does he have a family? Why is he on the campground selling his expensive wares? I assume because he’s a big fox that he’s meant to represent the company?

I sell all the stuff that I can. I have around three hundo (thou) right now, and I’m trying to save up to expand the store for the third time. I think that’s 450,000 monies, which is a lot. I’m getting there, but there are other things that I want to buy, too. In fact, that’s what I do when I got to Mr. Kit’s store. He sells clothing, and I like to see what I want to buy. One of the issues, though, is that they have expanded the clothing–but….I’ll get to that later.

After I viisit Mr. Kit’s store, I go to the cooking machine and make all the foods I need to feed my animals. This is also the same as in the first game. The animals need to eat so they can level up and give me better rewards. The thing is, though, it can get overwhelming to see that I need to make seven to ten dishes, especially if I don’t have the ingredients for some of them. There are different level to the cooked foods, and when you get to the higher tier, it takes so many resources to make a dish once.

The problem is that it quickly feels like a burden to do the daily chores. This was the same in the first game, and it carries on to this game. One of the biggest issues is the item-carrying capacity, and the storage space capacity. This was also a problem in the first game, and a top-five issue.

You start with something like twenty-five or thirty spaces in your backpack. I’m not even sure it’s that many. You can buy another four spaces for…I want to say it’s 200,000 monies. Ok. I just looked it up, and it’s way more complicated than that. The first extra four slots are 4,000 monies. Then, you have upgrade the store (which, as I said is pretty pricy). With each upgrade of the store, you can buy one more packet of +4 slots, but it goes up exponentially each time.


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Angry at the world, part two

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Let’s talk more about unbridled rage and what I plan on doing about it. Nothing. The end.

Not really, of course. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how angry I am almost all the time right now. I like to use the Hulk’s infamous line, “That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry” with a wry smile like the Hulk because it’s true. I’m always lowkey angry about something or the other, but previously, on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 1 or a 2. Now, it’s a 4 or 5 at all times, and that’s only because I’m suppressing it.

When I was younger, I kept a really tight rein on my anger. I was taught that my anger was simultaneously too much and unacceptable. Only my father was allowed to be angry and only my mother was allowed to be depressed. And, boy, was she deeply depressed. She used to cry and sob at me for hours about how much my father wsa hurting her by cheating on her. I don’t remember when she explicitly started saying the last part, but I knew it from a pretty young age.

Recently, I talked to my brother about it. We both had a defining moment when we realized that my father was brazenly having affairs with women from the Taiwanese church. Both of us were in our teens when it happened (he’s three years older).

For me, it was when he and my mother were with another Taiwanese couple playing tennis. A woman from the Taiwanese church called and asked to speak to him. I said he was playing tennis, and I would give him the message.

When my parents camehome, I gave my father the message. Unfortunately, I told him that I told the woman he was playing tennis. My father got made and scolded me for telling her that he and my mother had been playing with the other woman. I was so confused because why would that be a big deal, and my father gave me the inane reason that the other woman would feel bad about not being invited.

I mean, she’s a grown-ass adult. If she wanted to act like a thirteen-year old, then that’s on her. It was just an excuse, though. I realize a few decades later what the issue actually was–that the other woman was either an ex-mistress or a mistress-to-come of my father’s, and he did not want to upset her. I didn’t think of it because she’s not his usual type, but maybe he’d run out of candidates.

My brother’s example was when a woman called and asked to talk to my father. My brother didn’t say Taiwanese woman, but since that’s all my father liked, I just assumed. My brother told her our father wasn’t home. The woman asked who he was, and my brother said, “His son.” The woman gasped, “His son?!” and then hung up the phone.


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Owning the bitterness in my heart

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I want to talk about how burned out I feel right now. Emotionally, I mean. I talked in yesterday’s post about how I hated my fellow countrypeople, and I’m not even trying to tamp it down. In the past, I would try to talk myself out of it or give reasons why–no, not the latter. I could not excuse the hate even if I tried not to hate back. The thing, though, is that I hated back, regardless of trying not to.

Wait. I’m not sure hated is the right word. It’s more like raged. And wanted revenge. Which I am even more invested in now. I don’t like that about myself, but I’m also not doing much to block it. Look. If you’re trying to take away my civil rights, then I’m going to be happy when you get smacked down by your own hubris. I’m not proud of it, but I’m also not feeling too bad about it.

For a long time, one of my favorite GIFs was the one in which  Angela Bassett sets her cheating boyfriend’s car on fire after piling all his stuff in it, turns arround, and flicking the ashes of her cigarette, walks away. It’s based on this clip. Rewatching the clip, you can see how worn down she is and how much pain she’s in. But, more importantly, you can see the rage in her eyes. Even though she keeps her movements very controlled and deliberate, I can feel the anger behind each gesture. And hurt.

That’s how I feel right now. I’m trying to keep it under control, but I’m furious. I’ll candidly admit it. I have two instances that I like to trot out when I want to make this point clear. After the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, I read a story about a Texan woman who had a wanted pregnacy. The fetus died in her womb and because of the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the fact that she lived in such a regressive state, she could not get the fetus removed.

She had to drive to another state in order to get the procedure done, which meant burying the fetus in another state. In the interview, she said that she had been pro-repeal, and she never thought shewould be affected by it. She went on to talk about how traumatic it was, etc. My first immediate thought was a vicious, “Good!” I was shaken by how deep the depths of my anger was, but I was so tired by that point. I mean, if she didn’t know what the repeal would mean, maybe she shouldn’t have fucking supported it?


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Me and double empathy, part three

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I have more to say about bias, the double empathy problem, and whatever else happens to be on my mind. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I have no heart because there is so much hatred in this country right now.

In the Discord I’m in, we were arguing about politics. Well, not politics themselves, exactly, but whether or not America is hopeless. There were those who said though things were bleak right now, there was a brighter day coming. I, on the other hand, was just done. I did not come back from the dead (twice) for this bullshit!

Someone in the Discord was saying that to believe it was hopeless meant ‘they’ won. I knew what they were saying, but at this point, I just couldn’t care. I have been a Democrat since I was old enough to realize what the parties stood for. I was a Democrat by default because I loathed them a little less than I did the Republicans.

Yes, you understand that correctly. I have never been an enthusiastic Democrat because there is just so much wrong with the party. I’m not going to enumerate their faults and flaws here, but suffice to say if I could have found any other party to vote for, I would have. Any other party would have done (except the Republicans, obviously), but that would have been a folly in a two-party system.

I’m also not going to rant about that because I’m not in the mood, but I will say that I have never voted  Republican, and I most certainly will not now. When I was on the dating apps (back in the Stone Ages), I had a bio that said I didn’t care about gender, color, religion, or anything except that I would not date a Republican. This was thirty-some years ago, and I feel it even more now. You cannot be a part of the Republican party right now and not have hate in your heart.

Do I have hope? Honestly, I don’t think that’s a revelant question for me. Hope doesn’t pay the bills, and it doesn’t help people in any tangible way. In fact, I would say unreasonable hope is wores than no hope at all. I get it. You don’t want to take all hope away from people, but I don’t want to hope for something that isn’t going to happen.

There is a very thin line between being hopeful and toxic positivity. America is heavily into the latter, and it’s working my last nerve right now. I do know that people have to have some sliver of hope, but things really are dire right now. And I know we have to keep fighting, but it’s so hard. Where is the good news? Where is that spark of things can get better? There is none. I have a hard time even checking the news on the daily because it’s unrelenting grim news.


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Let’s talk more about the double empathy problem, part two

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DEI training is worse than useless if it’s not done well. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I was unwillingly dragged into being a DEI trainer when I was a ‘mere’ admin assistant for a DEI department (or the equivalent thereof before DEI was officially a thing).

I was supposed to just deal with paperwork, more or less, but my boss discovered that I’m really fucking good at other things–like writing and computer-related things that she did not want to do. As I said in yesterday’s post, she was in over her head and really should not have been in the position.

The one thing I learned while doing DEI training was that most of it was shitty. This was thirty years ago, and while it may have gotten better since then, I think it still probably sucks. I mentioned it at the end of the last post that I came up with an idea for a diversity town in which people who are now in the majority (cis het white Christian dudes) expreienced life as the minority for a month.

I want the actual minorities to treat the people in the majority the way they themselves have been treated, no holds barred. It’s nearly impossible to explain to someone what life is like as a minority, especially as a multiple one. There are some people who have empathy, but there are more who do not. And there are a big number of people who haven’t had to be empathetic. The same people who would benefit from diverrsity town.

The reason I dismissed it was because, well, there were several reasons. One, it’s not very ethical to fuck with people like that. Two, it would take an astronomical amount of money. Three, it would be really difficult to govern. Four, crimes would happen. I’m just speculating on the last, but I’m pretty certain that it would happen. Or rather, there would be no way to guarantee that it wouldn’t happen.

Those ore the four off the top of my head. I am sure there are many more that I haven’t thought of–such as not being allowed to do any such thing. Also, people who are in the majority are already afraid of how they’d be treated if they truly were in the minority. This certainly would not help in that area.

I think it would be a good way to really open people’s eyes to prejudice, though. And I would make sure that they got to experience ALL the harrassment, microaggressions, gaslighting, and other delightful bullshit that minorities have to go through. Which, again, is neither ethical nor moral. And probably not legal, either.


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