[Current Mood | drained ]

[Listening To | the breeze through the open doors ]

TGIF, bitches. Podrick is stalking around the house, Pippin is in the bedroom eating her breakfast, Shawshank is looking up prices to Country Thunder, and I’m just here. It’s warm as hell already, and I’m loving it. I’m finally having comfortable sleeps.

Yesterday was the worst night on Chaturbate since the first week I started. It’s been so bad lately. I know I need to just stick it out. It’s a fucking pain in the ass to sit there yapping at an empty room. I made an HTML file that rotates through about 100 “messages from the spirits”: someone in here’s aura tastes like expired yogurt, or you’re giving off big soup energy, and that soup is canned chowder, or you deserve forehead kisses. When I realized I had nothing but anonymous viewers again, I switched into TV show mode, and started riffing off whatever rotated onto the laptop screen. I grabbed a deck of playing cards – dramatically pulled out with the warning “there’s something darkly sinister about a deck of cards first opened in a cell” – and would flip them over dramatically with each of my proclamations.

I’d been streaming for about two hours when I heard a big thunk from the living room, followed by a second thunk, which meant I needed to log out and see what the fuck happened. I couldn’t tell if someone was at the door or if the cats were on the run, so I pulled off my wig and put on my robe (the spiritual opposite of “I put on my robe and wizard hat”) and went to look. Fortunately, nothing was out of place. I think the “thunks” were simply the cats running and jumping off their cat tree. Between the absolute shit time I was having in chat and the thought of having to redo the wigs I had on, my mood was in the toilet. I logged out, made dinner, and played Civ until Shawshank came home.

We’re both back to the grind today, but today’s the last day of our work week. Today is supposed to be a little cooler than yesterday, which will be nice.

[Current Mood | unbothered era ]

[Listening To | news, and it's never good ]

Hello, world. It’s a sunny Thursday, and we’re all up and out of bed. Podrick was up early this morning. He’s very interested in sniffing the breeze that comes in under the edge of the shades, and kept trying to slip his head under the Velcro edges.

The week of boring nights on Chaturbate continued last night. I streamed using my data instead of the wifi, thinking a better connection would keep people in the room, but it didn’t help. I still languished at the bottom of the pack, just me and a handful of anonymous viewers. With nothing better to do, I switched over to cable access mode, and amused myself by pretending to be just a little 🤏crazy, getting secret messages from a dildo and “answering the unasked questions”. I think I’m going to go with a wig today, and open the shades a bit to let more natural light into the room.

After I logged off, I smoked a big bowl, and decided to make a TikTok. Every time I fucked up, I hit the vape. After about 4 minutes of attempts (and some accessory changes), I had successfully channeled Macho Man Randy Savage and hit POST. Then, too high to do anything else, I watched ER until Shawshank came home.

The weekend is almost here, and it’ll be good.

[Current Mood | amused ]

Good morning, world. The sunny weather continues today, and we’ve got the windows and doors open. Even the bedroom window has been opened, blackout shades be damned.

:cb: sucked yesterday. I’m still clawing my way out of the depths of the rankings. Before The Crash™, I was streaming from the bed. I think I managed to do two streams after we bought the beanbag, then I was forced to take 3 weeks off while I waited for my upgrades to ship. Since then, I’ve pretty much changed the whole look of my “set”. According to some models, :cb: removed the “view next cam >>” and “<< view previous cam” links on cam pages, and I think that also cost me some traffic.

I’m using my dead room to teach myself about the shit that OBS can do. I made myself a BRB screen so I can take breaks. My biggest lesson was learning how to add scenes and applying filters to the webcam that only affect one scene. Applying filters to the webcam source carried across scenes: exactly what I didn’t want. It took forever to figure out a way to make the filter stick to each scene rather than to the cam. In case anyone needs a solution, put the cam source in a group, then apply the filter to the group, not the actual source.

The multiple scenes let me take breaks and switch into retro mode. I tweaked the colors a bit, and I’ve got a couple of filters that can make it look like an old VHS tape, or CRT mode. I’ve also downloaded some fonts, so I can have that authentic cable access show feel– once I figure out what my “show” is, anyway. Either way, I’m going to have fun.

[Current Mood | creative ]

Good morning, netizens. Happy fucking Tuesday. I’m up, Shawshank is up, the cats are doing cat shit. Pippin is in a window, Podrick is trying to entertain himself and pissing off Shawshank at every turn. It’s sunny as shit today.

I’m getting faster at setting up the bean streams. It usually takes a week or two to figure out the best “order of operations” for setup and breakdown. I’ve got a milk crate full of cables and cloth, that’s most of the gear. Without fail, the most finicky part of the setup is getting the beanbag in a good position. No matter how I have it positioned, that shit settles and I have to readjust regularly. Everyone likes that, because it’s a free look at my ass.

I stayed on the wifi last night and things weren’t too bad, and I made it through a full shift. While I love the blackout curtains, the loss of all my natural light feels almost like I’m rebranding. In my opinion, it looks less “bored milf at home” and more studio-like. In my case, that studio is vaguely public access. I feel like I need a fake fern.

When I logged out, I played with some retro OBS filters to see what they looked like with my watermark and the menu. The CRT option was my favorite, and I absolutely loveloveloved how it looked. Between the graphic glitches I can add and the scan lines, it’s fabulous. Like a commercial for a 900-number back in 1994.

I really need to figure out how to make a BRB screen. I want to be able to take a break and pee and not lose my ranking in the process. I’ll work on that this afternoon.

[Current Mood | blah ]

Good morning, world. The new week is here. It’s sunny, and the back door is open for Pippin. Podrick is on the table beside me, snuggling up to a mug of coffee.

We went out to Shady Acres yesterday afternoon to help move boxes out of the house. They’re downsizing, and the realtor will be there this afternoon to take some pictures of the house. They have a lot of things packed up with the expectation they’ll be moving out sometime soon, and a lot of stuff for the town yard sale that’s happening in a couple of weeks. Shawshank‘s mom thinks they’ll have one yard sale with the rest of the town, then a second one after a move.

Naturally, as the ones actually doing the pick-things-up-and-put-them-down, the two of us get first dibs on anything in the SELL boxes. Shawshank found a bin with his childhood Gameboy, plus a few of its games. There was also a bin with a Wii, and no less than 3 Nintendo DS systems. We left those. As much as they’d be fun to play with, neither of us would play with them for more than a couple of hours. Shawshank‘s going to try to sell them to one of his coworkers.

I left the house with some embroidery hoops, so I can make my own shit. His mom gave me some of the little plastic things to wind my thread on, which will be super helpful with the next kits. She offered a few cross-stitch kits from Gran’s stash, but I declined. I can’t be constrained by a graph.

Shawshank is closing all week. I’ll be running bean streams all week. The last time I promoted a full week, all the systems updated, broke my stream, and I was offline for 3 weeks.