Rynling R&D

Last week, a few of my students told me that my Japanese fiction class has inspired them to visit Tokyo this May, and they asked for recommendations. I’m the sort of boring nerd who loves bookstores and bases my travels on a foundation of finding nice cafés to sit down and chill out, but I did my best to make a list of places that might be fun for people in their early 20s. This was a labor of love, so I thought I’d share it here too.

So here are some of my favorite spots in Tokyo:

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And now for some daytrips:

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It snowed on Sunday night all through Monday morning, so I got a nice snow day. I took the dogs to a nearby dog park that someone made out of an abandoned lot (bless), and I think they enjoyed themselves. My camera isn't great, but I managed to get a fun photo of the Pomeranian.

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Behold the tree I have sacrificed to bring back the sun:

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It's a bad photo, and I did a lazy job putting on the fairy lights, but this is a nice thing to have in the house. It smells lovely, and the light is legit bright enough to read by. Fucking magical.

The sudden decrease in daylight hours has been fucking with me. This is the part of the year where I have to be super organized if I want anything to get done.

So I have everything ready to go when I get back from work, I put my ongoing projects on my desktop, and the thought occurred to me that I have become a caricature of myself.

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It’s very cool to have gotten a Lovecraft pastiche accepted for publication (fingers crossed). When it (hopefully) comes out, it will be the third Lovecraft story I’ve published in a fiction magazine.

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I sincerely believe that people should write whatever they want, but a part of me still worries that I’m going to be judged for aligning myself with the work of such a problematic author.

The truth remains, though, that these Lovecraft stories only occupy a small closet in the house I’m trying to build with my writing. What I’d want to say to anyone who judges me is not to be like the small rural library that only had room for Stephen King and HP Lovecraft, but to create space for original work that does more than facilitate a feedback loop of preset responses.

Oh! I forgot to mention:

The Comics Beat, which I now write for, just got its first ever Eisner Award nomination.

For my work at WWAC, I'm (technically) already an Eisner-winning comics writer, and now I (technically) might win it again. Nice!

Also, this past week there a huge social media crashout about Lee Lai's graphic novel Stone Fruit being mediocre and getting undue attention solely because of white guilt. Because my review of the book appears at the top of a Google search, I got a bunch of nasty mentions. I was busy disappearing into the woods, and I totally missed all of this. So much the better honestly.

Disappearing into the woods is great btw. Highly recommended.

I should probably say that my experience of internet-stalking people is limited to, like: How do I figure out who owns the abandoned funeral home on the street corner? And how do I contact them? Because you can't call the police in Philadelphia (true story) to report a noise violation, and the fire alarm that's been going off for 24 hours straight has been driving everyone on the block insane.

ETA: You may be thinking that, if the funeral home is abandoned, why didn't I just go inside and turn off the fire alarm myself. The answer is that I have seen horror movies, and I know how that story ends. Thanks for asking.

Also, when I worked at a public university, formal background checks were part of the portfolio of candidate information I was given as a member of various hiring committees. We did our best not to look at this information, but its inclusion was required by state law.

Regardless, despite my limited experience, my one piece of advice to anyone who wants to protect their privacy online is don't put your age on any social media profiles, especially not in the United States or Canada. Your age will link you to medical and educational records, and that's how they get you.

For the record, this is my position on spending $500 I don't have on a stupid gaming console I don't need:

In May 2023, I got so annoyed and frustrated by Tears of the Kingdom that I put down the Switch controller, walked out to my car, and immediately drove to Target to put a PlayStation 5 on a credit card. The only game I intended to play on the console was Bloodborne. And let me tell you. I sure did play several hundred hours of Bloodborne. It was fantastic. Two years later, I've had my fill of the game, and I don't really touch the PS5 anymore. Still, I have no regrets.

In conclusion, I hope everyone reading this is granted $500 to spend on an unnecessary purchase that gives you hundreds of hours of joy. May we all be financially comfortable and have access to things that make us happy.

A Beginner's Guide to Street Art
https://lu.ma/53ks8h33

Come learn the basics of how to do two street art methods: stickering and wheatpasting. We'll cover practical how-tos for creating and install stickers and wheatpastes and considerations for messaging within your work.

This hour-long class is free to watch on Zoom tonight (March 3) at 8pm Eastern. At 8pm I'm either outside writing (if it's warm) or sitting in the bath playing video games (if it's not), but I'll do my best to tune in. I'm too much of a coward to actually do street art,* but I'm curious about how it's done. The presenter, a professional science educator, is more of a writer than an artist, but I'm interested in her thoughts about how to combine words and images into an effective message.

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ETA: Yeah, I didn't make it. Idk man, I wake up early to write before I go to work, and by 8pm I'm in no mood for a Zoom call. During the daylight-savings months I can party until dawn, but I should probably stop kidding myself about how mentally and emotionally available I am after dark during the no-sunlight months.

I’m proud of what I accomplished this year:

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People like to say that “you create your own luck,” and I’m doing my best. Still, I hope some actual luck comes my way in 2025. Good luck to all of us in the new year. I hope we all make it.