The first day back from Spring Break went off pretty well all things considered!
Last night I expressed some concern about a Cognitive Psychology exam that would be greeting me after a week of lazing around.
My feelings were mixed about it. On the one hand I gave the material zero attention over the break because I was busy hanging out with friends and doing internship stuff, so I couldn’t help but imagine walking into a nightmare. On the other hand the class’s first exam was very easy, so I didn’t feel the need to spend a lot of time studying.
Luckily the lazy side of my intuition won out.
The test was rather easy, and even though I haven’t seen the official grades come out (we took it at 1:00 p.m. today), I did my own basic calculations off of what I didn’t know and figure I’ll get a 92 percent at the lowest.
Unless I’m wrong about what I don’t know, of course. But my intuition is usually solid.
The thing that got me about the exam was how haphazardly our professor seemed to handle things. Firstly, she decided to announce that she added extra free response questions to our docket only five minutes before passing out the exam.
Would’ve been nice to get some advanced notice over Spring Break… But then again, she promised to post the kind of scantron we would need and didn’t get around to that either.
So who knows. Teachers need a week to relax too.
There was also a stretch of seven questions at the beginning of the test where every answer was “C,” which made me second-guess my choices despite knowing they were correct.
I don’t have proof that it was on purpose… But that kind of trickery always felt like a joke on behalf of professors to stress us students out.
After finishing up the exam, everything else was smooth sailing clear to nightfall.
I managed to secure my Commencement tickets, another topic I touched on last night. Even made a fun little Tweet out of it:
I’m not sure what’s weirder, the fact that I needed to watch a video and take a quiz to get Commencement tickets or the fact that they called it a graduation “tutorial.”
I know academia is a game but that’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?
Spent a little bit of time in the Honors Center after that, finding out some more about another event I’m taking part in this Friday and working on my novel.
Felt good when I sent the next chunk of the story to my mentor tonight, even if Spring Break wasn’t as lucrative for the writing process as I wanted it to be. At least I’ve done something, and the more I write the better I’ll look come my presentation in May!
That’s really all I’ve got to say for the night, though. It’s been another lukewarm kind of day with a lot of work and not much else.
Tomorrow I’ll be able to break things up with a Fire Emblem Heroes post (as exciting as I’m sure that is for you all), and Friday I should hopefully have something to write about my next Honors event.
But until then, I’ll just be here keeping up the ‘mundane day-to-day’ posts train that the end of the semester has brought out of its station.
“Kill Count,” a new series I recently discovered by the channel Dead Meat — hosted by James A. Janisse — fits the latter.
Yet it fills a different niche than I usually focus on: Horror movies.
Specifically appreciating the often creative, over-the-top kills in horror movies. Or, as the pendulum tends to swing, also lampooning the uncreative and lazy sides of horror.
When the channel first appeared in my recommendations, I was a bit misled. I expected the videos to just be montages. A Buzzfeed-esque “top ten kills” kind of premise. Specifically my first experience was for John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing, a video of his I watched because I’ve been interested in the film’s practical effects recently.
But that video, and the “Kill Count” series as a whole, is much smarter.
It’s essentially a series of spoiler-laden reviews, talking about movie plots, development cycles and places in history as much as they focus on the kills.
Every video also includes a break-down of the victims in each film (showing the interesting bent toward male deaths in cinema), a specified “best” and “worst” kill distinction as well as a live bit playing on events from the movie.
However, I think one of my favorite things about “Kill Count” is how funny the series is. The videos are nearly satirical movie reviews that provide great commentary and mile-a-minute jokes.
Janisse breaks the fourth wall a lot to remind the audience that they’re watching a review for yucks more than a serious catalog of deaths.
“I just do these videos to make jokes, y’all. I’m not an official dead body census taker.”
I’m in the midst of binging through his reviews of classics like the Alien movies, and they’ve been wonderful background noise while working on Gladeo pieces.
Pieces which should be published by the end of the month, as far as I’m aware. Just so you all can keep it on your calendars.
Janisse also has a podcast that I may have to be on the lookout for now that I’ve blown through The Dropout.
So that’s my recommendation for the day.
If you like horror movies, comedic takes and creative deaths, “Kill Count” is worth a watch. Just as long as you don’t mind spoilers.
Tomorrow I have a St. Patrick’s Day party to attend over in Fullerton.
Both of which are great social things to do, so I cannot complain. However, my first paper for Gaming in American Culture is due tomorrow, so that became an assignment I was unable to push-off.
That impossible choice wound up landing on Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, my favorite game in the turn-based tactical RPG. So far it has been a great one, as I’ve had a ton of fun analyzing how Sacred Stones is arguably one of the most replayable games in the series due to its unit variety, random stat distributions, intentionally restrictive player choice options, multiple pathways and Permadeath concessions.
All wrapped up in a polished, 32-bit handheld bow that I adore.
Perhaps when all three parts of the paper are finished, I’ll try to compile everything and post it on the old blog here. Seems like something that would fit.
I’ve also spent time working on my essay for Cognitive Psychology, which involves analyzing a study that corresponds with the presentation I gave in-class last Thursday.
While the paper was easy to pull together, having a 3-page maximum limit, I’m still kind of struggling with the finishing details because of how confusing the professor has made certain instructions.
Something that has helped me work through all of this essay writing is a brand new investigative reporting podcast I recently discovered called: The Dropout.
Helmed by Rebecca Jarvis, the Chief Business, Technology & Economics Correspondent for ABC News, this podcast discusses the rise and fall of a company called Theranos and its female CEO Elizabeth Holmes — which basically defrauded millions of dollars from investors in promising a miracle medical test, also putting millions of people at risk.
Sounds like an ad, I know. But it’s not an ad.
Though… It could be an ad?
Hit me up, Rebecca. I’m sure you’re dying for these 10+ views/day.
Seriously though, it’s a fascinating story. I’m about three episodes deep and really looking forward to finishing the rest during my next couple commutes.
It’s another great addition to my growing collection of one-shot journalistic podcasts. Joining the ranks of Dirty John and The Butterfly Effect.
Because I could listen to Nando and DJ discuss movies on Mostly Nitpicking or Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman discuss celebrity news on Hollywood Babble-On for hours. But sometimes the real, raw journalism is far more of a fascinating subject to absorb.
Everyone always talks about the book being better than the movie.
But where do most people stand on the audio book compared to the book?
That’s pretty much what I’m going to be sussing out for myself in the next couple days as I listen to the Orson Scott Card classic Ender’s Game on Audible.
Not an ad for Audible, but could be an ad for Audible?
Hit me up, Audible. I could stand to listen to more books and it might help if I had extra motivation.
Anyway though. I will be listening to Ender’s Game over the next few days.
I’ve actually read the book before, years ago — sometime just before or after I blew through my Dad’s big physical collection of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series (condensed into one publication).
I was having a hell of a space phase back in Middle School/early High School, apparently.
However, as a part of the curriculum for Gaming in American Culture, I must read the book again. Apparently it fits in well with the themes of video game use by the military, our discussion for this upcoming class.
As much as I enjoyed the book years ago, and certain scenes continue to stick in my head (mostly the bursts of graphic violence and groin kicking oddly enough), I don’t exactly have a lot of time to sit down and read ~350 pages in the span of three days.
Midterms have stolen that from me.
So I’m going to be listening to the story instead. Work it in during my drives in place of podcasts for a while.
I don’t listen to audio books too often, so it should be interesting to see how the experience lives up to my time with the original book. Will I retain more? Will I notice things that I never have before? Will I use that momentum to finally go ahead and listen to/read the sequel novels past the quarter of Ender’s Shadow I read back in the day?
When I was picking up my sister from school, there were so many butterflies going around that I thought they were leaves at first.
It was nuts.
But I also don’t have a lot to say on it considering I didn’t take photos or videos of the phenomenon. So that LA Taco article will have to do.
Beyond that, all my time today has been devoted to the gym and homework. So… Yeah, disregarding butterflies, listening to the audio book for a book I have already read is the most interesting part of my day.
Purely due to the more philosophical questions I’ll be considering about the difference in media consumption over the next few days.
So hey, maybe I’ll come back to this topic at the end of the week.
Or even if I don’t, maybe I’ll have some more interesting blog topics from here on out!
Remember yesterday when I was gung-ho about going to the DMV if for no other reason than to have something interesting for my blog?
Funny how naive I was in thinking that the DMV could offer any sort of interest.
To be fair, it’s not like I had a particularly negative experience there today — unless you count PTSD flashbacks to failed driving tests or the generally oppressive air of bureaucracy washing over hordes of upset numbers in the government’s labyrinthine system of rules and policy.
If anything, renewing my license was a quick and painless experience. The kind of trip through the DMV that left me saying-
-after I left, but would not have been my “fun activity” of choice over going to the class I missed.
Thus that did not blossom into a subject to fill my entire post. Nor did the lovely lunch I had with Mom afterwards, as much as I enjoyed it.
When I decided to scrap the idea, I half-considered writing about my unusual blog traffic today. Analytics are usually a fun subject for me, and for whatever reason a bunch of people looked at my blog today before I even wrote anything:
The last big spike was my birthday.
However I don’t exactly have a reasonable way to explain why I got more traffic today than I have in recent days, so it would just be mindless babble.
… As though the rest of this wasn’t already mindless babble. I know, I can hear you all saying that to your screens amid a slow eye-roll.
I’ll get to the point.
I went in to CSUF for my late class, Comm Law. So far my favorite course of the semester because of the professor.
An example as to why: She overlaid a well-edited video of John Oliver’s Supreme Court dogs over the audio of a case we were covering in our homework.
Today’s conversation broached into SCOTUS decisions which have affected obscenity and porn laws. It was a conversation full of amazing conversations and references one would not expect to hear in a classroom.
One such conversation involving that innocuous fair use butterfly photo I used for my Featured Image.
However, the way I see it I’ve just found myself increasingly interested in Pornhub-related subjects specifically. As niche a wheelhouse as that may be.
While talking about porn in class, I specifically brought up the yearly Pornhub analytics in reference to her joking about the existance of fetish websites for everything. In response, she told us about a podcast which dives deep into the way Pornhub has changed our society — for better and worse.
As someone who drives long distances back-and-forth, I’m always on the lookout for new podcasts.
So even though she warned us that it gets depressing after a certain point, I was curious and downloaded all seven episodes of the series.
That episode features interviews with the Belgian boy who brought the website into popular consciousness, as well as the technical guy from Canada who worked on things like search engine optimization and mobile user logistics.
With promise of going into all the nitty-gritty, uncomfortable stories about society changing, the challenges to that industry with a massive and free entity in their midst, and so forth.
If you’ve got the time for it, why not take a chance and listen through some niche podcast programming with me?
I, for one, am clearly excited enough about it to share if nothing else.
That particular comic was a different experience, however. My time with it was more concentrated to high school where updates were exciting events. It was much more of a social, community-driven interest for me.
I spent a good amount of time reading fan theories on Tumblr (recently in the news) and fan fictions on Wattpad (which I was surprised to find out still exists).
I went as Dave Strider to Anime Expo one year.
Had to dig through the dark bowels of my early Facebook posts to find this…
I even started planning out this big Dungeons and Dragons-esque fan roleplay with my friend Sam.
All that doesn’t take away from how excellent the webcomic itself was. Even before it was finished, there were some great think pieces about it — my favorite being from PBS Idea Channel.
Finding out that video is almost seven years old hurt my soul… So let’s move into contemporary subjects.
More of the webcomics I read today are quiet, personal experiences. Super fun and often passionate projects from individual creators and small teams that haven’t reached the scope of something like Homestuck.
The most recent of which, Kid Midnight, being my spark to finally talk about them.
It all started yesterday when I was catching up on a few episodes of the podcast Still Untitled (most notably starring Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame). The usual suspects were discussing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with Ben Acker, who plugged his recent venture with the artist Natalie Nourigat.
His pitch was that the comic is an autobiographical story being drawn by a facsimile of Batman’s sidekick, Robin, as he tries to decide whether he’ll be a superhero or go to art school.
That was enough to sell me, but after reading through the seven current ‘episodes,’ I feel it sells the project short.
Kid Midnight is all about that sidekick dealing with not just career goals, but also the other trappings of adolescence. Love one is too scared to admit, popularity, imposter syndrome…
All guised in an incredibly charming, funny and beautiful comic.
Just go read it. I promise it’s worth the time, and you can bang out what’s there in a half hour tops. When I write this, anyway.
The elevator pitch for this comic is simple: Imagine if the monster from The Ring was actually a lovely, sociable woman who married a human that writes horror novels.
The comic centers around their young daughter — Erma — as she goes to school, spends time with her friends and does supernatural stuff.
It’s honestly one of the most adorable things I’ve ever read. You get a brilliant contrast between horror tropes and “scary” images that are followed by Erma watching Warrior Unicorn Princess with her babysitter.
The comic begins with one-off stories like you might see on the funny pages. But eventually there are sprawling story arcs — the current one about Erma and her family going to a Yokai village in Japan to meet her Yakuza-esque grandfather.
It’s wonderful to see the passionate community blossom over time, and the author has recently announced plans for spin-off comics being drawn by other artists and a phone app. There’s a lot to love!
For the final stop on my tour, I’m going to go in a bit more of an obtuse direction.
The story centers around a Riolu named Leon and a Totodile named Vagus as they get sucked into conflict with a demented band of Pokémon and their feral underlings who hope to… Well we don’t totally know yet.
Presumably destroy all of the surviving members of an ancient civilization so they can take over the world.
We just haven’t gotten the full backstory at this point.
The story is quite long with no signs of slowing down anytime soon, and there are just as many quiet, enthralling character moments as there are swashbuckling Pokémon battles in a gruesome, more realistic style than you’ve probably ever seen.
I would argue the art direction of Tales of Elysium is its strongest selling point. Every single panel is immaculate — almost TOO good for a project focusing on Pokémon.
Though I wouldn’t say that because I adore Pokémon.
Also because the story and characters that have been created for that world more than justify a beautifully dramatic art style.
So there you are. Three different flavors of comics for your viewing pleasure.
Though I’m still fresh to Kid Midnight, I would definitely say it fits into my pantheon of weekly reads alongside Erma and Tales of Elysium. Catching up on my comics each Friday has become a favorite wind-down activity for me.
However, I’m always looking out for more!
If there are any webcomics out there that you love, please don’t hesitate to let me know about them. I’d love to expand my scope even further.
But today I really started to kick myself into some kind of working gear.
A source I’ve been talking with at HTC Vive finally got back to me with some responses last night, so progress is being made on my next piece for Gladeo.
Plus I sent out a few other emails and messages while at the same time trying to start cleaning my room. All while listening to some YouTube videos and podcasts in the background, trying to catch up on that media I’ve fallen a little behind on while doing other things like play Smash Bros.
Because for some reason I only thrive when I’m doing a million things at once. Always have.
I wound up having kind of an opposite day to my sister as a result, as she spent the morning out at breakfast with her friends and then went to a party with totally different friends later.
Quite the social butterfly, as opposed to my more introverted personal time sensibilities. Ironic considering the line of work I’m studying into I know, but I can turn on the talk when need be.
I guess to be fair there are two caveats to that. I did spend all night last night with my friends, and I have a dinner thing tomorrow, so it’s not like I’m not doing anything with other people. Plus she goes back to school next week and I still have a few more weeks of winter break to follow, so she has to squeeze it all in where she can.
That being said, it was still funny how I really wound up kicking work more into gear while she was out being social. Just came to mind when I was driving her to that second party earlier.
In terms of working, I should go to the gym again, and also get started on my Senior Honors Project stuff. I think I might try to do some research for it soon, and could even talk about it here if I find some good stuff.
Though tomorrow I might focus more of my time on trying to find a new wall calendar for my room.
This last semester I discovered the true benefits of having all my scheduled appointments available on the wall right next to me.
That’s about all I have to say after a fairly long day of not a lot happening. Got started on a lot of work, with my next Gladeo piece and maybe even novel research to look forward to sometime soon. Otherwise, for the most part I pulled this together simply so I wouldn’t miss a committed blog writing day this early into the new year.
Before I go, however, I think it’s also worth mentioning that Alyson never finishes Pokémon games. Because she absolutely adores it when I bring up video games in a way totally unrelated to what I had mentioned her for.
But also, also, that mention could become related to what I mentioned her for if I tell her that we best finish Let’s Go, Eevee before she goes back to school and leaves me Macaulay Culkining here.
Consider that a challenge if you actually read this far into a dumb post of mine, sis.
However… That didn’t wind up being the end of the story.
After finishing that blog post at school and coming home, I proceeded to do a ton of my homework late into the night. Doing so alleviated a lot of my anxiety about being able to get things done.
I’m not even sure the sketch itself was THAT funny, but watching my dad lose his shit the second it came on was amazing and definitely killed me.
Stuff like that helped keep me balanced today, to the point that tonight I’m feeling way better about life. Enough to work through the idiocy of my Sensation and Perception class this morning.
If you saw the tweet I wrote, you’ll understand.
A professor just straight up refuse to accept the final draft of my research paper early because “he didn’t want to lose it,” as if that would be my fault.
Alright dude don’t come crying to me when you have at least 35 papers to grade on the last day of the semester.
It also made me feel better enough to justify spending extra time getting into writing on the old blog here!
Which completely defeats the purpose of my giving myself the out yesterday… But hey. I did say I have messed up priorities there.
I would also argue that going to the gym tonight helped me burn off some of the stress. Which yes, I know makes this into just another post-gym posting for me.
Except this time the topic I wanted to delve into is only related to going to the gym.
While working out tonight I spent some time listening to the Nerdsync podcast. I’m positive I’ve talked about them before in one of my “YouTube Recommendations” posts, but in essence Nerdsync is a YouTube channel that I came across while getting more into the comic book scene over the summer which really thrives on intellectual takes on subjects in (mostly) superhero comics.
Highly recommended.
After getting through all of the video content there I discovered there was a podcast starring the channel’s main head Scott and his friends Chris and Bryce. Since then I’ve been listening through the ~130 episode backlog during my daily commutes.
Episode 89, which I happened to be listening to while lifting weights, was one of their recurring Trivia Challenge podcasts where the three guys make up quizzes for one another based on obscure comic book or pop culture stuff.
Through the episode I discovered something so hilarious that it not only killed off more of my stress, but also probably added a few years onto my lifespan.
In the golden age of DC Comics, around the 1950s, there was a series of stories under the title of “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen.” It’s one of Scott’s favorite things and has become one of mine as well because it’s quite literally the goofiest stuff you’ve ever seen Superman involved with, to the point that most of it doesn’t even sound real.
That’s the case with this particular Jimmy Olsen comic, Volume 113 from June of 1956.
In essence, this was a story in which Superman tried to convince Jimmy he was in a dream after the reporter accidentally got a photo of Clark Kent changing into the superhero attire. He did so by doing ridiculous things like duplicating eggs.
If that wasn’t already wild enough, take a look at the cover in which everything is exactly the same… Except Superman is upside-down.
Yet even if that’s a trustworthy source, I still cannot believe that this is an actual thing that exists. Not only is it a ridiculous premise, but the fact that they decided Superman being upside-down was whacky enough to grace the cover of the book is astounding to me.
He flies! It’s not weird that he can turn upside down!
Everything is just… So good about this.
So, so good.
After hearing that this excited I needed to share it with the world. Because hopefully it can help you all feel better about life as it has for me.
For all intents and purposes, this morning has kind of been a bust. I’m going to spend a good chunk of this post complaining before getting to the fun Starbucks bit, as a fair warning.
I woke up extra early today, around 6:00 a.m. or so, that way I could commute to campus and show up for 8:00 a.m. walk-in hours at the Communications advising center. I’ve already complained about that and referenced it twice after, so I’ll yadda yadda that and send you over to my complaining post for further details.
If you aren’t interested in reading that post, and I wouldn’t blame you considering you’re probably here for Starbucks stories thanks to the title of this post, basically all you need to know is I had one question about the application of something in my planned schedule next semester that I was going to take regardless. A really quick, little question that I couldn’t get answered with an appointment because they were all booked up for the next month or whatever.
Figured if I showed up at the beginning of walk-in hours today it would be fine.
Boy I sure am glad I commuted to campus at 8 a.m. this morning so I could ask an advisor one question during walk-in hours only to still be sitting here waiting at 9:30.
Turned out even with my early commute I was the fourth or fifth person in line and everyone is allowed 20 minutes at most. Many people needed that full 20 minutes, as it turns out.
Adding insult to that injury, my question wound up being negligible anyway. Apparently the collateral category I was interested in applying this class to goes away once I complete my minor in Psychology.
Which is something I was made aware could be the case via the internship coordinator on Monday.
So I guess I got confirmation that it is, in fact, the case… But the nearly two-hour wait certainly didn’t feel justified to get that confirmation.
Oh but that’s not all, I also had some salt rubbed into that injury which was subsequently insulted. By the time I got my Comm advising, the office hours of my Psych professor were basically over so I couldn’t go there. Then it turned out the Honors Program Director isn’t around until next week because she’s at a conference, so I wasn’t able to have my project proposal signed off and finalized.
Basically. Getting up super early this morning was a bust. Don’t feel super justified doing it.
That ends the “let me complain about things that annoyed me on my personal blog” portion of my post, though.
Because the fun Starbucks-focused thing you all probably jumped on this train to hear about came while I went to get a drink and drown my annoyance.
Now there are a few caveats I need to elaborate as scene setters.
The Starbucks I went to is on the ground floor of the Pollak Library here at CSUF. It’s kind of the most central point on campus so it’s a very busy spot.
By 10:00 a.m. or so, the lineup to get coffee was long and the place was booming.
After ordering my drink I popped one headphone in and continued listening to a podcast I started during that two-hour wait.
Mostly Nitpicking, the podcast put on by that YouTuber I love Nando V. Movies, for anyone curious. It’s great and you should be listening.
BUT ANYWAY. Point is I might not have been the most cognizant of my surroundings.
Even so, I swear to god this is true. While waiting for my order to get thrown onto the counter I saw one girl attract the attention of a barista. She leaned in, mumbled “Order 66,” and the barista got the most solemn look on her face as she nodded, turned around and went to the back room.
Being the nerdy loser I am, the only way I could have possibly took that was in the framework of the Star Wars prequels.
Like now I’m totally convinced some random customer at Starbucks is secretly Emperor Palpatine and all of the younglings in the back room of the coffee shop have been chopped up by future Darth Vader barista.
There’s absolutely no other way to interpret that scene.
Especially not one that involves the mobile order Barista Vader brought out a few seconds later.
Total coincidence.
…
Yeah, that’s the whole story. Don’t know if you think it was underwhelming after spending a chunk of this reading about a guy complaining about his first world problem of getting up early for no reason, but I personally thought it was hilarious.
Probably in good part due to the aforementioned lack of sleep and general annoyance.
Figured if nothing else it would make for a good blog post to write and fill the extra three-hour time gap before my first class at 1:00 p.m.
So I hope you too feel that reading this was a good use of your extra time.
So this post comes in response to what I wrote the other day about the dichotomy of transcription, why it’s a terrible thing to do but also why it’s the best thing one can do when practicing journalism.
I know there was a gap where I talked about videa gaymes because of timely E3 business, but these extended thoughts kept nagging at me.
There was another ‘con’ to the act of transcribing that I considered going into while sitting in Starbucks with mom, working on the first post. But I decided not to include it because the more I thought about it, the more the problem felt like one example of a larger, personal idiosyncrasy of mine.
The idea of being subjected to total silence as something potentially uncomfortable to endure.
Now, to preface this discussion with myself, I’d like to say that I don’t actually feel like I’m the only person on the planet who might just be uncomfortable with silence. If anything, I think it’s an inherent part of being as social a creature as humans are.
There are likely hundreds of scientific studies out there on the matter, covering things like our tendencies to fill dead air in a conversation by changing topics or inserting speech fillers like “um” or “ah.”
But I’m going to be looking at the subject from an entirely personal perspective. None of those silly “empirical tests” and whatnot to murk up my subjective torrent of words.
I’ve always been a rather introverted person growing up. Ironic for someone going into a field where they need to constantly talk to people, I know.
My passions have always leaned toward personal activities like reading, writing and video games rather than group activities like partying and sports. I had my groups to do things like play video games with of course, but you get the idea.
Because of that I’ve generally considered myself the kind of person who enjoys, if not thrives in more silent environments. Sitting sheltered off in my room to do work, for example, which has in the past led to my parents deeming it “the cave.”
Yet the more I reflect on my past, the more I’ve come to realize that perhaps it’s more the isolation in which I thrive, rather than the quiet. I say that because more often than not I’ve always tried to fill the silence with other noises even when I’m not with other people.
Video games themselves are the perfect embodiment of this. I’ve been playing them my whole life, and the songs and sound bites from a number of titles are just as iconic to me as some images, just as likely to help recall certain events or moments from my life.
As a quick example, I’ll never be able to disassociate the opening theme to Pokémon White 2 from the specific Target (right across the street from the South Bay Galleria) where I started to play the game for the first time after having put it down unfinished when it first came out.
The idea of making sound ever-present in my life goes much deeper than that, however.
As much as I love driving as an activity, I find my commutes to-and-from Cal State Fullerton nearly unbearable when I can’t listen to a podcast or a video as I go.
When I’m falling asleep, I can never just lay back and go to sleep. I have to do what I consider pre-dreaming, where I start to imagine some sort of scene in my head – a scene that includes some sort of dialogue or musical score – in order to really lull myself into unconsciousness.
While reading tends to be one of the exceptions to this rule, as sometimes ill sit silently just imagining the pages play out in my head, sometimes particularly boring novels for class can get so unbearable that I need something else running in the background to help me get through it.
More often than not I have my computer somewhere in the bathroom as I shower, that way I can continue to listen to whatever video series I have running while standing under the relaxing spray for arguably way too long.
The laundry basket makes for a convenient pedestal.
The list, as I’m sure you can assume, goes on-and-on.
Having gotten far off-track with that background information, let me tie everything back to why I believe feeling uncomfortable with silence is one of the reasons transcribing audio is such a terrible thing for me. As counter-intuitive as that must sound.
Sound. Audio puns. You know the drill.
When I imagine audio that fills all of the dead space in a moment, it’ll often be the sort of things I’ve discussed already. Podcasts. YouTube videos. Music.
Hell, more often than not my family has the TV on, but it’ll be on a mindless channel like the Food Network just to create background noise while we do other things.
However, I don’t consider work audio, something I’m transcribing, to be in the same category of unencumbered noise to distract from the uncomfortable void.
Part of that could be distilled down to the psychological difference between doing something for pleasure versus doing something for work, I suppose. But I think it goes deeper than that.
When transcribing an interview, you aren’t simply jamming out or getting engaged with an adventure someone else is describing. Unless of course your interviewee is describing an adventure… But again, semantics.
Rather than having the chance to just mindlessly enjoy something and absorb what’s happening, transcription is a much more heavy-duty job. You’re listening to someone talk in the same way, but instead of just absorbing it passively you’re very actively listening to that audio, translating it and jotting it down before going back to make sure what you’ve jot down is accurate.
You become more like a wall or a mirror than a sponge, bouncing that information off to a different place rather than just taking it in. The activity is much more taxing, and it becomes easier to lose your interest.
But on top of that, the requirement to constantly repeat things for accuracy leads to a whole host of other internal issues inherent to the process. While transcribing is a “listening” activity, large portions are spent in total silence. Silence is needed to finish copying down the sentence you just heard before the subject moves into their next thought. Silence is needed as you go back in time to listen to something again, and one can’t even have any other sorts of sounds going on the side because the copying needs to be as accurate as possible.
Then let’s not forget the fact that when one is transcribing audio, they can’t necessarily think about anything else other than that audio, either.
While a mind can wander while going to sleep and fill empty space with memorized sounds, transcribing requires a person to repeat what they’ve heard over-and-over again in their head to make sure they don’t forget what they’re writing so they have to go back and hear it again.
That reminder of the sentence is noise to break up the silence, yes, but again it plays back to the mundane, repetitive nature of transcribing that makes it somewhat unbearable as an activity.
Imagine constant switching between total silence and hearing the same sentences on repeat for a few hours. That’s what transcription is at its core.
Whether or not everyone else in the world feels the same way about silence and how it effects things like transcribing is hard to judge since I’m just going off of my own thoughts.
But if nothing else, simply reflecting on those thoughts and trying to imagine why certain things make me feel the way they do, even if I don’t come to any sort of substantial conclusion, is something else that’s inherently characteristic of being human.
The ability to reflect on one’s own situations, and even reflect on the ability to reflect in the first place. That’s the kind of meta that I find fascinating.
Especially when it comes off of an essentially pointless “deep thought” that winds up boiling down to me complaining about my job, if you think about it hard enough.
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 