I'm doing some light revisions to my Patreon essay about Breaking Bad to put it up on clockworkavocado.com, and it's making me miss Albuquerque. ABQ is a small city, but a really pretty one with amazing food, including The Candy Lady. www.thecandylady.com

Memes of the Prophets Book 2: The Crimson Labyrinth is the DriveThruFiction.com Deal of the Day! Snag it in multiple ebook formats for only $2! Featuring the Museum of Earth, Alyssa's mom, and the party's first dungeon adventure! #isekai www.drivethrufiction.com/en/product/5...

My desire to make fun of fictional secret societies throwing guys away for revenge against like John Wick led me to start a Xeroverse short story titled "Killfile Kills the Crimson Circle," where he ends up killing a villain org down to the last man because they just won't stop coming at him.

Thinking of that time when $4/gallon was a weirdly high gas price even in California.

I still want more people to share their "Prophetsonas," how they imagine themselves getting on after being isekai'd. #isekai www.clockworkavocado.com/whats-your-p...

DUNC PART THRUNC! www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_9v...

Alyssa (from Memes of the Prophets) is a half-elf (on her mom's side), but still.

Did Yud miss how we’ve had a superhero every few months for the past 20 years or so? Also hey, most of my novels are about good people trying to do good in the world. My superhero protagonist butts heads with the establishment because he’s more compassionate.

I dunno why I decided to make dragon-worship the most annoying religion in Memes of the Prophets, but hilarity ensues. #isekai

I wonder what it is about the color that everyone I know who likes purple *really* likes purple.

I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33! No spoilers, but it's a profound exploration of grief. Also, the devs really like big damage numbers. In the final battle I got off a Level 3 Gradient attack that did about 540,000 damage. I'm pretty much down for whatever they do next.

Got a bad performance rating at work, which may be the first time I had something bad happen on a Friday the 13th.

I canceled a bunch of subscriptions to save money, and canceling Patreon memberships was definitely the most painful of those. I don't feel the need to apologize for canceling Netflix after all.

New on Clockwork Avocado Press, a lengthy chronicle of how I designed my Lexicon, a 65% hobbyist mechanical keyboard for writing prose. www.clockworkavocado.com/the-lexicon-... #mechanicalkeyboard

Daily #1976 - Mood

The full Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack (as it appears on Apple Music) has 154 tracks, totally 8 hours and 10 minutes, and I've yet to find a track that wasn't good. There's also a boxed set of 8 CDs, a best of 6-disc vinyl version, and more besides. www.lacedrecords.com/collections/...

Abar, the First Black Superman (1977) is arguably the first Black superhero movie, though it's kind of a blaxploitation movie where a Black radical gains godlike spiritual powers, reminding more more of The Psychotronic Man (1979) than a superhero movie per se.

Looked around the Five Below near me just because, and for whatever reason they had what looks like a cute D&D-themed teen romance novel.

I got inspired to get back into My Hero Academia, and it's wild just how different the superhero genre is when filtered through a mangaka's sensibilities instead of Hollywood. There's a lot more worldbuilding, and of course the usual emphasis on cooperation and working hard to better oneself.

I dunno why, but a switch flipped in my brain and I decided to rein in my irresponsible spending and take better care of my health. This happened to come after I bought a bunch of 3D printing filament for a commission, so I can make most any plastic crap I want myself at least.

Plus One (2013) isn't *amazing* but I was entertained. At a wild party, a strange phenomenon creates duplicates of everyone. Some people freak out, a few murder their doubles, and the quiet girl gets along with her doppelganger just fine.

A really good critique of Joseph Campbell's monomyth: lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

Randomly remembered how Critter Commandos had a follow-up called Critter-Tek, which was literally just BattleTech with funny animals. I remember that I had the idea to make a version of Elementals for it called Elephentals.

My new favorite YouTuber is this Irish guy who yells about food. www.youtube.com/shorts/WVk69...

For my Lexicon keyboard I'm thinking of adding some chords that use multiple numbers and a number and letter, like pressing 1 and 2 simultaneously would give you "twelve" and A8 could be "ate." Then I realized that obviously pressing 6 and 9 should output "nice." github.com/nekoewen/lex...

I tried Turkish coffee with sugar and it wasn’t bad but it was a reminder of why (health concerns aside) I don’t normally put sweetener in my coffee or tea. If it’s quality (which this is), it doesn’t need sugar.

Clockwork Avocado Press now has its own domain name (clockworkavocado.com), and I have a new post, a meditation of the loss, the Wizard of Oz, David Lynch, and the isekai genre. www.clockworkavocado.com/home-again/

An Etsy customer is having me make custom macropads for sorting vinyl records, and I finally finished 3D printing the keycaps. I ended up using 14 types of filament in all, and had to order 5 spools of additional colors to get all the shades of yellow and green.

It turns out there's also Turkish tea (çay), usually a variety called Rize, named for the province of Turkey where it's grown. It seems like a fairly typical black tea, maybe a little smoother than English breakfast tea, but Turkish teacups (ince belli) are kinda gorgeous so of course I ordered some

I was already giving Marathon a pass on account of it being a multiplayer-only FPS, but this sounds truly awful. blog.aurahack.ca/marathon-rep...

I'm really liking Clair Obscur overall, but even playing on Easy I'm going to have to go grind at least 10 levels before I take another stab at taking on the second Axon.

I think I need to have fewer parts of my life be mediated by technology, mainly because technology somehow lost the ability to work consistently. It used to be that stuff basically worked until it died, but now most tech will just kinda forget how to do its job now and then.

If he thinks 115g of sugar is too much (and it probably is TBH), I have bad news about, you know, food in America in general. Dunkin is not an outlier except insofar as donut chains don’t normally have cult followings.

Does Satya Nadella *want* people to switch to Linux? Is he trying to boost sales of Macs? Apparently Microsoft is doubling down on everything people hate about Windows 11. www.pcworld.com/article/3068...

I want to see about getting some proper Turkish coffee cups, but I have successfully made Turkish coffee at home (or successfully by my newbie standards).

Next on the Clockwork Avocado Press blog/newsletter, a look at Stardust the Super Wizard (one of the strangest early #superheroes) and his creator, Fletcher Hanks (who was a terrible person). clockwork-avocado-press.ghost.io/you-shall-be...

HBO's really pushing some dark fantasy show called "GOT."

I got Baldur's Gate 3 since it was on sale on Steam, and I'm about ready to request a refund. So far it's wrongly decided every press of the A button is another player wanting to join, doesn't want to let my warlock cast spells, outright crashed, and is now installing an update.

As if I hadn’t had enough coffee, I’m trying the cafe la olla at the Mexican place near home, and it’s also great.

This is a really interesting essay about how Black American fans relate to DBZ. San Jose doesn't have a ton of Black people, but around FanimeCon, the Black fans were very much a part of the community and contributed a lot. That's before we get into Black creators like Fred Perry and Mike Pondsmith

I belatedly thought to look up what "Clair Obscur" means, and it's French for chiaroscuro, which is a term for strong use of light and shadow in painting, which actually makes a lot of sense for the game. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaros...

Sue-chan (sue-chan.com) surprised me with fanart a *third* time, this one of the characters from my Best Worst Isekai short stories! www.royalroad.com/fiction/1046... High Priest Taywyn, Alara and Baz, Quentin Begana Charlotte, Shiroko, Kuroko, Sir Bort, and Begati

Turns out Turkish coffee is pretty great!

New on Clockwork Avocado Press: An essay on my approach to writing fiction. I ended up writing Apocalypse World style Principles. (I'm gonna slow down with the posts, I promise.) clockwork-avocado-press.ghost.io/the-ewen-met...

“Far-left” is now a meaningless snarl word, just like what “woke” has become. Also, an ethical AI company should just not deal with the military, because generative AI is nowhere near secure or accurate enough for use in national security.

The latest in the series "Ewen buys a very niche book for his latest obsession," a scholarly book on movie novelizations. Apparently they've made a comeback due to Hollywood's current obsession with franchises that span several media.

New on Clockwork Avocado Press: A review of Philip Wylie's Gladiator (1930), a sort of proto-superhero story, a melancholy tale of a man with superhuman abilities. clockwork-avocado-press.ghost.io/gladiator/

Got to the point in @nekoewen.bsky.social’s “Memes of the Prophets 2” where the Eitanian versions of Letterkenny’s Barts, Yorkie, Shultzy, Fisky, and Boomtown make their reappearance, and I’m once again wishing I’d been the one with the idea of basing an NPC adventuring party on them.

I finally remembered that I wanted to look up the guy who plays the Onion's current news anchor, and it's Joshua Johnson, who is an actual news guy. His deadpan delivery is just perfect. www.nightlightshow.com/p/why-i-anch...