Still alive

But on the path of 邪道

Dragged kicking and screaming from part-timer paradise, I've been working 50 hour work weeks since May, having at most one off day every 10 or so days. Some sacrifices had to be made in order to balance all my responsibilities and this webpage fell to the lowest priority, as time spent working on it is time not spent exercising, practicing piano or japanese.

However, a touch of shame has been building up over the fact that I haven't updated my webpage since May. This hasn't stopped it from getting visitors, which in turn adds to the shame. So here I am with a quick entry not only to show I'm alive but also to write some quick updates and shoot some quick opinions on recent and not-so-recent events so I may claim ownership of them as my original thoughts. I might develop these into full-blown pages later down the line, when things calm down.

- The reason why I am working so many hours is because I wanted to buy a top of the line computer while feeling like my savings didn't take a hit. I have since bought a new computer to replace my 15 year-old faithful Familiar, and I expect my hours to decrease soon, or to resign if my demands aren't met.

- A new computer means a fresh start and I decided to try some new things, such as ungoogled chromium. I then realized chrome-based web browsers don't support animated favicons. I am still stuck to the browser as I haven't had the time to migrate back.

- The Olympics came and went and what I saw as the most dangerous attack vector against the cultural Galapagos that is Japan was culled by outside events. If the conspiracy theories about the virus being made by the PRC to kill the Hong Kong riots and sabotage the Japanese Olympics are true, they made the critical mistake of giving Japan the breathing room necessary to safeguard their local cultural hegemony for at least another half decade.

- On the other hand, the very outside events that took the media lens off of Japan were the very same precipitating the first-ever release of a mainline Touhou game primarily via digital marketplaces. This would be no big deal were ZUN to choose a native platform, but he chose Steam instead. Western scum has been trying to infiltrate the doujin scene for over a decade and ZUN has been one of their primary targets. This marks a decisive milestone in one of my many Prophecies of a Fallen world.
Time will tell whether this will be as, if not more damaging than a fully media covered Japanese Olympics.

- I have watched kumo desu ga, nani ka. It both entertained me and bothered me immensely, as it proved I am one y○○tube video away from becomming addicted to the taste of VTuber poison.

- Daniel Bryan finally quit pro wrestling. I have nothing against the greatest enhancement talent of this generation save for the fact that he refuses to scrape himself off the main event scene years after his flash in the pan of relevance. This along with WWE's current restructuring makes the future of pro wrestling so much brighter. Fire the whole writing team and bring Russo back and we're guaranteed a new boom period. Do away with Paul Heyman forever and I'll buy WWE stock dollar-on-the-penny.

- Finally getting a computer good enough to play current-gen games has not changed the fact nothing interests me. Admittedly, I had little time to snoop around, but I still had time to play a game or two of bcrawl.

- Cristiano Ronaldo's water faux-pas in the Euro cup finally made him tolerable to me. Even if it was yet another convoluted marketing stunt.

- Messi leaves Barcelona, closing the final chapter to the last era of football I cared about. I don't see nor care to know what the path forward will be, but the combination of mercenary mentality, club and sponsor pressure to kill any trace of individuality in favor of a manufactured image and the obsession with gimmicks like tiki-taka will probably switch the spotlight to managers. Which reminds me,

- Mourinho moves to Roma, cementing his claim to football's own Daniel Bryan.

- I read cheating detective Satori. A beautifully illustrated work that shows how little ZUN matters to keep Touhou moving forward. I doubt it could carry on as strongly if he disappeared right now, but projects like these would at least have the leeway to carry on to a proper ending.

There are likely a couple of other things that I can't remember off the top of my head that I'd like to comment on, along with some nontroversies that may have been hot last week but don't matter today. Whatever the case, I want to publish this proof-of-life as soon as possible, so I'm ending it here.

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