Sunday | 06.25.23

The air show was in town recently. It's pretty funny -- tickets were $40, but all around town, you'd see people sitting out in their backyards, in parks, in fields, in front of businesses, parked on the side of the road watching the planes go by. They've also been practicing all week; it sounds like thunder as they go over your house...

A while ago, I saw the following meme and just can't stop thinking about it:

(By the way, if you were curious, this scene is from Pokemon Chronicles (2002), episode 22, about three minutes in. I found it on archive.org, but the link might end up getting deleted or something eventually, idk.)

Those are the ~cutest~ cookies I have ever seen! I need them!

I started out making a few from polymer clay:

They turned out pretty well, but I just really want to actually bake them!

So, I've been looking at various recipes. It seems like the sort of cookie I want would probably be an Icebox / Slice & Bake? There are various Youtube tutorials for making different characters / designs / etc, like this Totoro one. This technique seems fairly similar to caning with polymer clay, so you could look that up for more ideas of how to achieve certain effects. It seems like it would take a while to fully assemble a cookie log, but you'd end up with several detailed copies of the same design. Additionally, it seems like to make small details like faces your options are: a) add them as you're making the logs (complicated...), or b) tempering then piping chocolate on each cookie. There are also food-safe pens and markers, which might be something to look into.

Daydreaming, daydreaming, daydreaming...

While I was researching this, I also have been looking at the semi-popular calico cat cookies. Obviously, it wouldn't be optimal for this specific project, but I do think they're very cute! I also found out that there a bunch of sites, Etsy pages, etc that will make 3D printed custom cookie cutters for you.

(Also, the Pharm Tech position fell through. Applied to a thrift shop. Let's see how that goes...)

Saturday | 06.17.23

Jumped back up to season 8 of Project Runway (because it seemed like there was a lot of drama, based off the subreddit, lol). One of the contestants, Michael C, looked uncomfortably similar to my horrible uncle. My mom and I made jokes about constantly about how much we hate him (and everyone else on the show seemed to hate him, too) and how he seems fake. In an old interview, Peach says that he was putting on an act to try and get his own reality show and was generally just an ass. My mom said she was only watching because he broke down crying at the end when he was "auf'd" just before Fashion Week.

Everyone on the subreddit talks about how much they hate Gretchen and Tim even chastized her in front of the group: "Why are you letting Gretchen control, manipulate, and bully you?" Bit of backstory: during a team challenge, they didn't do too great. Gretchen started out saying, like, "Oh, I think it was great, we worked together well, I'm proud of us," etc. Then, the judges asked her directly who they think should be eliminated. She said Michael C, and everyone else followed. People criticise her for saying something and for backtracking on "loving it," but she was literally asked a direct question. Sometimes others in the same position will say themselves, especially if they're the team leader, but sometimes it just comes out, like Vanessa from season one who said she was the worst sewer. There is no correct answer to this question! Like, obviously, this is just artificial drama created to add interest to the show, but people genuinely hate her!

A few more things to vent about re: Project Runway --

1. Off the top of my head, I really liked the vibe of Elena, Alicia, and Dimitri (S10)! I always like the slightly more "gothic," darker contestants and I also thought their personalities were interesting. Alicia's "Joan of Arc" dress was cool, even if everyone else hated it...
2. On that note: I wish they allowed more... gender flexibility, I guess? Like, designers are criticised for making women's clothes that are "too butchy" and during the challenge where they were designing for Tiki Barber (S4E3), Heidi said she "wouldn't let her husband wear" one of the outfits. Yes, it was from a different time, but still very upsetting to see. (Also, the constant use of slurs through S4 was uncomfortable, as well.) And the kilt-thing during the infamous Ping Pong challenge (S11E2) -- it's just boring to say, "Oh, no, men can only wear pants," and vice versa. Like, who cares? Clothes are clothes...

There are other things to say, of course, but honestly, after binge watching this show, I think I'm completely Project Runway'd out for the next several years, at least! It seems like the sort of show that's fun in small doses, but I definitely OD'd!

Oh! I almost forgot: whereas in the previous installment, the secondary topic was forum nostalgia (though I guess I didn't actually mention that explicitly...), our new topic du jour is LiveJournal nostalgia. I did read through the APH Kinkmeme quite a bit back in like 2013, but never actually participated. But the LJ community at its peak seemed "nice" -- alive and interactive, at the very least.

Nowadays, internet communities really aren't structured the same way. They say Tumblr is LJ's closest living relative, but I kinda like the idea of it being (as I understand) sort of a mixture of Reddit and Tumblr, with structured groups that you can restrict outside access to and have nice conversations on, etc. Like, again, there are ship weeks on Tumblr and fic collections on AO3, but it just isn't the same vibe, y'know?

I've kinda been looking at Dreamwidth, but it seems like almost no one has used it in, like, a decade....

In other news: I applied to a position as a Pharmacy Tech at a hospital. You can start with no experience, but by the end of your first year, they expect you to get a certificate. They also provide all / most of your training. Seems to pay well.

I live with my mom and have a decent amount saved up, so getting a job isn't particularly urgent.... but, I feel like I'm rotting...

Tuesday | 06.13.23

My mom and I have been making little crocheted things to leave around town. Here's one I worked on (she did the magic rings, while I made the petals):

(Forgive the bad pics, they were taken in the car just before being left at a park.) This is basically my first time crocheting -- once you get into the groove of it, it's not as hard as I thought it'd be! I really wanna make some birds or Pokemon plushies!

Also, we've been watching Project Runway while making them. This whole kick started from watching a random episode from season 14 on cable and remembering how long it's been since we last watched it, so we started over from the beginning. Now we're on season 10 (I skipped from 5 to 10 because I wanted to see Christian (the "blood orange" guy)), and I have to say: honestly, this might just be the fatigue from marathoning speaking, but I think season one was the most exciting and memorable. I liked how the models were more humanized and how they were more relevant and also having their own competition. Wendy's whole saga was also interesting, how she thought it was going to be more of a competition / psychological-based show rather than just talent. Which makes me think about a couple of things...

1. what if the show (or maybe a different fashion-y show?) had a premise like Cutthroat Kitchen, where contestants buy sabotages for each other? "I could sew better than you with a hand tied behind my back!" Yeah, well, prove it, then! I also kept waiting for a challenge in the show where they had to switch halfway through and finish someone else's design -- hasn't happened yet, but I think that'd be so cool! Or, swapping fabrics after shopping or getting your fabrics exchanged with random stuff that has to be scavenged from the forest or something? Also, in season 10 of PR, there was just an episode where they had to make little craft projects to sell and fundraise their own fabric budget and that was also a really fun idea, but they didn't really show much of the making or selling? How can you get $800+ from spray painting a couple of t-shirts??
2. Also, on the note of Kitchen shows, it'd be cool if for certain unconventional challenges, they had access to a kitchen. Like in S10E2, I think there would have been so many more opportunities if they could have melted / spun sugar or tempered and shaped chocolate for their designs, rather than just using whatever they had straight out of the bag. There isn't really much transformation you can do there -- the best is like, best case scenario, weaving things together or crushing them, and worst case is just straight up hot gluing a bunch of candies to a piece of fabric. I think Ven's dress would've been much cooler if he could have melted the rock candy down and made actual panes of "stained glass," y'know?

Oh, I have so many Project Runway thoughts, but no one to share them with....

Honestly, I'm kinda disappointed in myself, but I've been, like, completely devastated by the Reddit blackout / protest-thing! I had been lurking on r/projectrunway, looking at the discussion threads for each episode, but now I can't! It also seems like the subreddit is like the only place to see all the outfits lined up nicely without having to take your own screenshots and everything. :(

Technically, the problem here is how centralized the internet has become in recent years... Everyone on this site, it seems, has their own manifesto about this, so I'll just say: this model, with what seems like only five major sites that everything depends on, is so unreliable and certain to collapse. What happens when Twitter falls? What happens when Google falls? What happens when archive.org falls? We'll be left with nothing. There will be no historical record for our times.

People are already trying to "change the past" -- covering things up, "reinterpretations," straight up blatant lies... It really makes me so scared for the future.

(Also, I said I was going to change this journal layout up a bit, but I didn't, lol. I still do think it's cute, though! Like the previous, it's based off the mail designs from Pokemon RSE. You might end up seeing a couple more from this series, I just really like them!)