PERSONAL

4

523

Various Distractions

9 months ago1,841 words

I've been unable to work for the past few days due to dogsitting, though I've been unusually social via phone calls with friends. Also: canine social networking, R-CPD as a possible explanation for my lifelong inability to burp and recent chest pain, an intriguing game called Cocoon, a film called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Patreon porn profits.

My parents have been away on one of their long holidays for the past few days, and I've been looking after the house, community hall, and dog (they actually want me to stay living here because I'm conveniently available for times like this, about which I have very mixed feelings).

As with every time I've done this before, the dog's been the most time- and attention-greedy, since it doesn't know why they're not back yet and has been anxiously fretting if I leave it alone even briefly. So I've been sitting downstairs in the living room with it - where it's used to sitting so it actually settles down - away from my computer, unable to do any productive work. Which has been quite frustrating.

If I just ignore it and try to work anyway, it won't stay in my room and just barks at me, then pees or craps on the floor somewhere. If this were a long-term thing, I could train it, but I suppose this behaviour mostly stems from my parents being suddenly absent and it not understanding why. Which is something that'd take time to overcome.

Dogs communicate using urine, don't they? They encode information in it in some alien way. Whenever I've taken dogs for walks, they spend most of their time sniffing the sides of the path or piddling every now and then rather than all at once as they might if the aim were to actually evacuate their bladder. It's interesting that for humans, the internet is very new, but dogs have always had this 'canine social network' they can 'post' to and read the posts of others.

This dog went and peed in my parents' ensuite bathroom the other day, which I thought was it acting up, misbehaving, but it's since gone to the place it peed and sniffed around several times a day. I wonder if the aim was to post a message somewhere my missing parents might see it, and it's been checking for any replies to see where they are. I find that fascinating, but sad. I wish I could just tell it they'll be back soon in a way it would understand.



While away from my PC, to my surprise I've been more socially connected than usual! In a long-distance way, anyway. Physically meeting up with anyone is annoyingly impractical.

The first day after my parents left, I got a call from a friend, and we talked for hours before I got another call, from a person at the cancer hospital asking about my general wellbeing. I mostly talked about mental health issues and some chest pain I'll get to later in this post. Then after talking to both of them, I got a message from my other uni friend asking if I wanted to do a video call, and we talked for hours. And we've done other hours-long video calls every single day since then. Very unusual for me! And she's the one asking, too; I never would since I'd assume everyone would be busy or uninterested in talking to - ugh - me.

I'm still very much playing the role of the Nice Guy Friend who listens to his female friends go on about their relationship issues with rougher men, but I've been wondering whether this amount of contact would be all I could manage rather than a full-time romantic relationship. Ehh. At least they ostensibly listen to me ramble about my thoughts too.

As usual whenever I step out of my cocoon, I've been feeling lighter, like a weight's been lifted, and more human, less like some stunted troglodyte. I know it won't last - the main reason we've been talking so frequently is because she's currently off work - but it's at least it's something to do while sitting with the dog away from my PC.

...I wrote much of this yesterday (in a rare few minutes the dog was settled), and as I read back over it now, I'm probably more 'bleh'-feeling again. Shame how it never lasts.



I've been experiencing some minor chest pain lately, which I've been concerned about, though I don't think the sensations are anything new. They're probably only bothering me because I'm not distracted enough and my mind keeps focusing on bodily sensations. I've probably had them - or similar issues - for years; I remember going to the doctor for them or similar problems years ago, and getting diagnosed with GERD and prescribed proton-pump inhibitors. And I thought I had IBS for ages.

Apparently I can't burp! Don't know if I've ever mentioned that in this blog before. Even if I try, I can't. And I have a bunch of other issues that are no doubt related; I remember joking with people in uni about the 'frog in my throat', heard through loud gurglings soon after eating.

I did some googling that led me to a Reddit community for people with something called ∞ Retrograde cricopharyngeal dysfunction, or R-CPD ∞, which included this dry video about the symptomology that I'm including here mostly for my own future reference (I'd be very surprised if anyone reading this was interested in watching some doctor ramble on about an obscure medical condition for an hour!):



I don't know for sure whether that's what I have, but all the symptoms match, and it'd be a relief from the heart issues I was worrying the pain might be indicative of (especially since the many headaches I dismissed years ago turned out to be due to brain cancer). I'll go to the doctor about it anyway, but I'd have to go to my local GP, and the surgery seems understaffed and overworked so they're only accepting urgent issues. Plus you have to contact them during some narrow window that opens at 8am and closes within minutes, and isn't open at all on weekends.

Interestingly, my friend she can't burp either, but hasn't noticed any other issues like chest pain. If you'd asked me any other week, though, I would have said I don't get chest pain from it either. Odd coincidence if both she and I have it if it's rare.

Can YOU burp, O reader of this??



I've also been trying to fill my away-from-my-PC time with games and films that I'd ordinarily be too busy to play or watch.

I have a bunch of RPGs that I want to play, though the time commitment makes it so difficult to start any. Since my Switch was the only portable option, I just searched for 'top switch games 2024' or something and picked a game that seemed relatively short, cheap, and intriguing, which was a thing I'd never heard of called Cocoon.



I'm guessing based on the presentation and mechanics that it's an indie, though I don't know anything about who made it or anything. It seems to vaguely fit into a niche I'd personally called 'Journey-esque', after the first game in that style I played; a couple of other indie games I played a while back (OMNO and Timelie) felt similar. Environments with flat or gradient colours in lovely palettes, ambient music, scant (if any) dialogue or story. Immersive in a dreamlike way.

Mechanically it's a puzzle game, where you can warp out of worlds into a parent world, in which the other worlds exist as orbs you can pick up. The orb you're holding activates some novel way to interact with the environment, and you're able to carry orbs into other orb-worlds and I find it all rather conceptually fascinating. I'm also especially intrigued by the designs of the environments and the few bosses I've encountered so far. Very alien, in a dark, techy sci-fi kind of way. I've been enjoying it.



While looking for a film to watch, the thumbnail for this odd thing caught my eye; I couldn't really understand what I was looking at, and wondered why it was listed among the top hits for the day.

It's also an indie project, which blends live action with stop motion, which I assumed from the story was likely based on some popular YouTube short films or something (some quick googling confirms this). The film is shot like a documentary filmed by a guy who's moved into a house which is already occupied by a tiny sentient creature which looks like a shell with little shoes on. It's mostly made up of back-and-forth informal dialogue between him and the shell, Marcel, about the loss of Marcel's family and how he might find them again.

I liked the loose, unscripted feeling to the dialogue, the cosy feeling to it, the stop motion, and some surprisingly moving moments. It explored some emotional ground I didn't expect but did appreciate. I'm glad I randomly decided to select it despite having no prior knowledge of it.

(Though I mentioned it to aforementioned friend in one of the video calls, and she said she'd at least seen marketing for it before, so maybe I'm unusual for not having seen any of that.)

I also watched a couple of bigger-budget things, largely due to their availability on the service on my parents' television (Sky Premier).

One was Minions: Rise of Gru, because I've seen the others and I like animation. My main thought was 'who is this for?', though. People who grew up with the first might find it childish, but young children wouldn't be familiar with the characters or world? Though I suppose toddlers aren't overly concerned with the deep lore anyway.

Another was The Flash, because none of the other options stood out to me, and I'd heard it flopped, was received poorly, and the actor, Ezra Miller, was quite the scamp in the real world, to put it mildly. I thought it was alright. No better or worse than most superhero films I've seen. I was particularly impressed by how far technology's come with having the same actor play two characters in the same shot.



Another thing I did was ask Patreon users how they're making their money:



Turns out the best way to make money on there is by making porn. Too bad I don't want to make porn.



My parents will be back in a few days, and I'm looking forward to getting back to work when they return. Based on how this has been for me mentally, I should probably also start looking into moving out more seriously. Ehh.

(Actually that friend and I were discussing some options for that... Maybe I'll discuss my options more with her.)