Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: RetroStrange TV got a big upgrade, and now we run a phone line.
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In this issue we’ll talk about my Brain Problems, RetroStrange LEFTOVERFEST II this weekend, and The Good Links.
Mind-lord: The Brain Master
I have a complicated relationship with inspiration and motivation. Inspiration happens to me randomly and without warning. Whatever is weird about my brain makes it so I connect a lot of unexpected dots, and those dots connect to other dots, and before I really notice it’s happening I’m halfway through a task I was putting off.
This is RARE shit, though, and so you almost have to ride the wave when it happens because you don’t know when it’ll be back. You can’t walk away for 5 minutes and come back to it, it’ll be long gone. Case in point, this newsletter. It was supposed to be my grocery list.
There is this thing I do a lot, where I am staring at a blank page and not moving a muscle but my mind is racing back and forth between the 12 different things I _could be_ starting to write regardless of what my original intent was.
Is it a newsletter? A TODO list? Is it a blog post? Is it a press release? Is it a script? I can have any/all of these in progress at a given time. It’s not that I’ve forgotten what I sat down to write, it’s that I haven’t decided yet.
Stated that way it almost sounds exciting, and it sort of is in the way that chaos is exciting yet scary, but it’s more annoying than anything to be so… dependent and beholden to this randomly occurring inspiration to get your best work done.
The old advice is you force out a draft, then the real work part of writing happens as you revise and cut and add. That first part is really hard to do if you have executive function problems tho.
RetroStrange presents LEFTOVERFEST II
We’re still having some scheduling issues over at RetroStrange HQ. We oughta be promoting things more than 3 days in advance. Rest assured the parties responsible have been fired and then re-hired at a significant pay increase.
LEFTOVERFEST was started last year as a way to showcase content that doesn’t fit our normal scheduling- industrial shorts and documentaries and little animated bits. It’s a fun, loose, marathon and a good time in the Discord chat as people cycle in and out over the day. You’re invited!
Sticks & Fists Battle SNES (Switch Online)
Me and John got back to it remotely with a new episode of Sticks & Fists on our new Monday at 7:30pm PST time slot. We were GOING to play Brawl Brothers but called an audible and went with The Peace Keepers. It was a good choice! Peace Keepers fuckin rules. We’ll be back next Monday with another shot at it.
Phil’s Good Links
The good links don’t even get Thanksgiving off.
Just a good ‘ol fashioned tale of a town being overrun by armadillos
Wirecutter writers say: Don’t use Wirecutter this Black Friday.
A playable mod for Super Mario World in which the game was from-scratch remade by memory including music and sound effects.
Defunctland goes into serious detail about the famed Disney FastPass in this over 2-hour-long video: “Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History”
That’s it for this week. I’ll see you Sunday for Leftoverfest, Monday for Sticks & Fists, and Thursday for OpenCV Weekly Webinar.
— Phil Nelson
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
11.26.2021