Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Or maybe this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMv6P23WWWM

But honestly, this is a much more charitable and accurate account of what really happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHsip5xOenQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lpw3yMCWro #moodsnapshot #forthecommongood #zebrastew

Oh, and of course Mojave 3. This is such a pretty song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6nKbDzLEgg

Brace yourself, I'll probably be doing this all day. :)

Oh, and Mazzy Star. A lot of Mazzy Star. A lot of Mazzy Star songs about sisters and moonlit nights and raven-haired women drinking very heavily.

🎵 Well it's not long now till it's over
🎵 Nothing much changed we're just older
🎵 But if I see you again back in detox
🎵 Put my remains in my snuff box

#moodsnapshot #snuffbox #mattberry #WHISKEY

Also featured on therapeutic moping playlist:

Fleetwood Mac, "Landslide"

Jefferson Airplane, "DCBA-25"

Grenadine, "Ticket"

Game Theory, "Seattle"

Grateful Dead, "Touch of Grey"

Jethro Tull, "Skating Away"

Komeda, "Cul de Sac"

Laika, "Breather"

Matt Berry, "Snuff Box (title theme)"

Modest Mouse, "Gravity Rides Everything"

Morcheeba, "Friction"

Men At Work, "Overkill"

Olive, "Outlaw"

Pylon, "This/That"

REM, "Sitting Still"

Carole King, entire career :)

God, I'm so fucking old.

Meanwhile just kinda grasping the emotional nettle, making the mopeyest playlist you've ever heard. I knew having 12GB of shoegaze would come in handy. :)

Also, no idea I had so many different covers of "Everybody's Talkin." :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzEY6ZqkuE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jeeY80n99Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7mSJ508mDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upEkQn1XaLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBAOjKBLpqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yk4PjA1NAs

When you don't even have the energy to do a big rambling emotional post, so you just leave a placeholder.

Fuck it, I'll work it out when I get home from Ohio. Packing tomorrow, leaving Tuesday, back on the weekend, just in enough time to leave my household of, what, six years and see if Peg and I can stand each other long enough for me to find something more permanent.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna let myself be numb today and soldier on through some work for the comic shop and my day job.

(Yup, I'm fine. Just had to document that little health scare last night juuuuust in case...)

Yeah, think I'm fine. :)

Let's see. Lasted a split second. Minimal pain or discomfort, not sharp at all, more tense and surprising. No unusual shortness of breath. No dizziness or nausea. No sweating at all.

Mayo Clinic seems to say "don't tough out symptoms more than five minutes." Mine were more like 0.5 seconds.

No unusual fatigue at all. In fact, I did quite a lot of walking today and felt pretty good about it.

OK, I'm giving myself a clean bill and writing it off as one more Weird Body Thing in the series.

For what it's worth, I just had a physical a few weeks ago and got a pretty clean bill of health. This is mostly just me needing a place to fret.

As always, if I do keel over... I really tried to Not Die, I love you all, thank you for a really warm and interesting life, and I'm really sorry I left so much stuff hanging.

Sorry, I should probably CW all this, but frankly, it's late and I'm mentally exhausted. If anything else weird happens I PROMISE I'll consult someone.

Okay, that was weird. That really freaked me out. Big twinge in my upper chest. It didn't really *hurt* and it was over really fast, it just felt like a squeeze. I've never felt anything like it before.

It could very easily have just been a big muscle twinge, or some bit of my digestive system or something. But yeah, I'm a tiny bit scared on general principle that it was my heart. That's a chronic fear of mine, 'cause that's how we lost my dad.

I THINK I'm okay? Hasn't happened again.

We actually sent Coach Z to do the deed. It was swift and merciful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNP-poEdf8M

Okay, it was swift, anyway.

Argh. Getting earwormed, I can stand. Getting earwormed by an agonizingly maudlin song, one about losing the people you care about, is not what I need right now.

I'm sure there'd be some lesson or catharsis to be gained by going and listening to it. It's really a beautiful song and if I had a slider board for my emotions I'd be able to just love it.

But nope, no time for stoicism or pensiveness. Time to get the bucketful of Strong Bad and the funnel.

Another influence for Mayté: Lydia Rodarte-Quayle from Breaking Bad. For those not familiar with the show, she's a late-series antagonist, a corporate executive who gets tangled up in the methamphetamine trade, in what she hopes will be a very "here, if I give you this, will you just deliver the profits and leave me out of it" capacity.

I can very easily see Mayté cutting a deal they think is Just One Round With These Assholes, Then I'm Out.

Mayté's not evil, nor even necessarily sociopathic. They're just empathetically unreachable. They've gotten so good at playing manipulative social games as a career that they can't stop seeing every interaction as a tactical challenge.

They're generous-- sincerely, impulsively, dangerously so-- with people they like, but can't stop thinking of it in terms of investments and board positions. They don't lack a moral compass, but it's abstract, macro-scale only, and more than a bit doctrinaire.

A short mediography of Mayté influences:

Cosima from Orphan Black

Juanita from Snow Crash

Avon from Blake's 7

Javert from Les Miserables

Nikki Swango from Fargo Season 3

Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time

Malory Archer from Archer

Poison Ivy from Batman (DCAU)

Gina Linetti from Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Tak from Invader Zim

Dolly from Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy

Unity from Rick and Morty

Councilwoman 1 (aka Dr. Mrs. The Monarch) from Venture Bros.

Anthy Himemiya from Utena

Let's see. Mayté. Non-binary. Genetically XX and/or ZW. Male & female turacos are equally fabulous anyhow.

Rich family, started poor, lots of intellectual relatives who lost everything in political purges. Great education, lots of youthful experience in 22nd-c Adulting, whatever that may be. Refined "citizen of the world" with Heinz 57 ancestry, cheerfully abandoned for feathers.

Essentially works in weaponized sociopolitical marketing for "good guys". Their work has made them very cynical.