The Diary of Mitch R. Singer

 

At the market in the summer heat

I get there and set up my tent and wait. People move behind me to grab their coffees, clad in their running shorts, the machinations of Sunday morning accelerating their leisurely rush. There are bicycles peddled by middle-aged men wearing bicycle shorts, women moving in form-fitting tights. I get peach fuzz on the insides of my arms, and the itching starts as soon as I begin to sweat. There is a fire station across from me that never seems to be very active. Peaches for you, peaches for me, peaches straight from the country tree. The acoustic entertainment is more accurately defined as murder by aural assault. Every once in a while I must endure the questioning of an idiot, which makes me wonder if we are truly a nation of idiocy. 

At home in the evening in the kitchen

I listen to the humming of the air conditioning window unit and ponder its destructive nature. It's hot outside but it is a natural heat, the type of heat human kind evolved to endure. When we cook ourselves for breakfast will we finally have second thoughts? In a way, we're a man with a stolen credit card assaulting the Vegas strip, burning through hookers and casinos in a suicide dream.

In bed, in the middle of the night.

The true nightmare is considering one's insignificance while lying awake in the dark beneath sweaty sheets. Every time I squash a bug I feel as though I've murdered an entire planet. What a tumultuous cocktail of conflicting emotions a human being is. Is being cliche the most awful human crime or the best thing we can do? I share what you share and therefore I know that I am as you are. 

In the morning

Hello, coffee. Drink me out of me.

 

Additional Thoughts on Red Dead Redemption 2

 

I don't spend eight-five plus hours with many single player games. Red Dead 2 is still occupying my time, and as I make my way through its epilogue, I thought I'd share a few observations and opinions on this amazing Western.

--I absolutely love Arthur Morgan, the character. I keep comparing this game to the Witcher 3, because they are both massive open world experiences, and while Geralt's curmudgeony gruffness is endearing, he is not a particularly interesting character, seeing how he doesn't diverge much from the typical dark fantasy archetype. Arthur isn't original--he's a more relatable Clint Eastwood--but he's fascinating as a man fighting against his lawless upbringing. As a nun tells him in the final chapter, he's always helping people in spite of himself, and although Arthur's help usually takes the form of violence, he isn't essentially a bad man. In many ways the game is a commentary on the aimlessness of life and how we blindly follow a pathway until we discover that it is not the only trail in the woods. Arthur doesn't discover this until he's sick and dying; however, as Rain Falls tells him, it is a gift to know one is dying, because one has the opportunity to find peace. Arthur doesn't find peace, but he musters enough resolve to finally abandon the monster Dutch has become.

--There's never been a world as fully realized as this in gaming. Its depiction of flora and fauna is stunning, and during my time playing it, I've taken one-hundred and fifty-two screenshots. Red Dead 2 is the first game to really make me want to go to a real world place. It's a hell of a technical achievement, and even years after its release, I don't think there's another title out there that rivals it in verisimilitude. This is a game that wants you to take your time, and while I was initially frustrated with Arthur's ambling gait and the long horse rides from town to town, I came to appreciate the opportunity they afford the player to take in the beautiful artistry on display.

--The epilogue with Marston is brilliant. You get to experience what Arthur sacrificed himself for, and you see it through the nascent eyes of John. I didn't mind shoveling horse shit or teaching Jack to ride, and it's hard for me to imagine anyone playing through eighty hours of gameplay only to complain about the end, although I'm sure some dense bastards did.

--Did this game have to be so long? You know, I certainly didn't mind it taking its time. I did wish that Arthur would've confronted Dutch sooner storywise. Hell, every damn time he said he had a plan I knew it was going to fail spectacularly, and so did Arthur. However, Arthur really doesn't abandon Dutch until Dutch abandons him, so strong is his loyalty, and he even states to Marston that loyalty was the only thing he valued, before urging John to be loyal to his family over Dutch. Anyways, I think the length works as an indulgence that is tolerated because of the quality of the material.

--One complaint I do have regarding Red Dead 2 is that the PC controls kind of suck. Fishing is pretty much impossible with a mouse and keyboard, and there are so many context-dependent actions that I sometimes felt like I was playing a flight sim rather than a third person action game. A gamepad played smoother, but I just can't use a gamepad with any game that features shooting. 

I'm going to post a bunch of screenshots, just because I can.

Hanging with the Goon

 

I googled peaches an I guess dis is a peach from tikcytalk

Well folks, its been many long moons and stars since teh Goon as walked upon teh mortal coil. Anothr season is upon us all; an taht means pickin' peaches, since I has notin' else in my life. An man oh man, does we has teh peaches! Sam has me out in teh orchard wit a backpack an a front pak to fill wit all teh peaches nature has given us. Sometimes I has to stop an eat a peach or two cuz utterwise I woundn't be able to pick any more--Sam's got me on a round teh clock schedule. Where I sleep is wehre I lay! Somtimes its teh barn and uttertimes its in teh deer stand so teh coyotes don't drag me off to tehir lair. I also has to watch out fer bigfoot cuz summer is his mad time an he's liable to make you his girlfriend even if you ain't willin' or quick enough. Anyways, this veritiable wealth of peaches has gone to Sams head an he's acting even crazier tehn usual.  He wanna hire some high schooler to dance an prance in teh yard before teh highway taht run in front of teh orchard, an he wanna make um dress liek a giant peach. This is Goon work, you understand. I cant have any uneducated kid taeking my jobs. Its just liek Uncle Tom an teh illegals. As he recollects, if they didnt let so many illegals in, Tom would still be workin an teh booger king makin' woopers fer King Drump an his merry band of monsters. Honestly i dont know where I was goin' wit that; I guess I was trying to make an analalogy. We all has a right to work, dont we? May I should make a peach pickers Union, but teh only udder picker I know is Hernando, an I aint seen him fer many moons. Tis a lonely life, being a Goon. You got teh woods an teh crystal meth, an Slack, an tehre aint much else but teh pale white moon an teh ligh pullution blottin out teh stars. Somtimes I see my future an it aint no differnt from anyone elses, cuz we all gotta die, and dying is something we all gotta do by ourselves.What Melancohly words for such a stupendus time! I dunno, I has been in tehse moods lately where all I do is reflect on what can an shall never bes. When I get all teh big bucks from pickin' peaches I'll go off to Mexico an find Hernando an maybe live wit him in teh desert next to tehy beach an watch all teh plastic lap against teh shore. Somebody give teh Goon a little light in teh darkness of existance. I needs to finds a God.

Weightlifting: My Current Routine

 

Before I workout, I put on my jabroni-approved Muscle and Fitness shirt, and then I try to do my routine while making a face like I'm shitting bricks.

 Working out is a chore when you're thirty-five with a physical job and two kids who demand watching, lest they burn the house down or horrifically maim themselves. Lately, I've been doing a three day split, utilizing an upper body push/pull day with just two exercises on Tuesday (push-press/pullups), a box squat/upper body assistance/stone lifting day on Thursday, and a deadlift/bench press/curl day on Saturday. These workouts usually take about an hour, and I try to not have much down time between sets. I can't really afford to lazily lift weights like the good old days--I have to cram as much volume into the time I have as possible. I think it's working out pretty well. I did a high box squat with 400 lbs for 3 reps a couple weeks ago, and I box squatted 425 today. I pulled 455 two weeks ago with no warm up because my friend thought I couldn't do it. My upper body lifts are nothing to brag about, but I did an easy 270 bench press last week, and my pullup routine consists of 10 sets of 10. Anyway, here's exactly what I'm doing, which can vary considerably. This is just a loose format. I often adjust the reps and sets depending on what I have time for. Thirty reps is the goal for bench/press/squat, while ten to fifteen is what I shoot for with the deadlift.

Tuseday

Push press 5 sets of 5 in a pyramid format (for example, 135*5, 145*5, 150*5, 160*5, 160*5), then do five heavy singles, increasing the weight each time. Superset with 10 sets of 10 pullups or 10 sets of 10 rows.

Thursday

Box squat 5 sets of 5 in a pyramid scheme (hah), then do five heavy singles. Perform an upper body circuit in between sets of curls, pressdowns, and laterals for 3 to 5 sets of 10 to 15 reps. Lift an atlas stone as many times as possible in a few minutes (picked up my 145 pounds stone 12 times in a couple minutes today, for example).

Saturday

Bench press 5 sets of 5 in a pyramid format, followed by five heavy singles. Deadlift either ten singles, increasing the weight with each set, or do five to ten doubles. Perform barbell curls between sets for as many sets and reps as you like.

Nothing fancy, but I'm keeping in good shape at 195 during the summer despite sweating buckets while picking peaches all day.

New Video: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

 

The year of covers continues with the Hank Williams' classic. One of the first songs I learned to play and sing, this tune has been in my repertoire for a good fifteen years. A simple three chord ballad, Williams' understated poetry is the perfect example of tear-in-your-beer music. I used to sing this to my second child before putting him to bed.

The Vacation

 

The Vacation

Here we are

Covered in ticks

The children lunging toward the pond

In defiance of any vestigial sense

Of self-preservation.

When we enter

My monkey tries to break the dishwasher

Then the washing machine

Before settling on spraying water about the kitchen.

Later we lock ourselves out of the cabin

My phone and the car keys inside.

Whenever we eat at a restaurant

My monkey howls and throws feces

While my juvenile ape eggs him on.

When it is bedtime they jump and laugh

And beat each other, bouncing off of the daybed 

Like caffeinated frogs.

After two hours, there is nothing left in the tank

and so we lie down for an uneasy sleep.

 

The next time I'll light my money on fire.

 

It was an experience. 

 

MSi Optix MAG27CQ Review

 

"What the hell?" you might be asking. Didn't I just buy a new monitor to replace my MSI Optix MAG272QR? Yeah, you are right, I impulsively purchased an Acer Nitro VG 252Q from Walmart for the rather expensive amount of 260 bucks. The Acer's 240 Hz refresh rate sure is nice, but what I couldn't get used to was the downgrade in resolution from 2560 by 1440 to 1920 by 1080. Everything looked blurry. As far as gaming goes, graphically intensive games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Control appeared grainy and last-gen, like games from the 360 era. Thankfully, the corporate dystopia that we live in gave me an excellent opportunity to upgrade by way of Prime Day. Newegg was running a competing sale, and I snagged the MSI Optix MAG27CQ, a very similar panel to the one my five-year old ruined. It's a VA panel at 27 inches, equipped with Freesync and a 144 Hz refresh rate. The curve is pretty sweet; that's pretty much the only real difference I've noticed between the MAG27CQ and my old MAG272QR. Well, there's a difference of 16 Hz between refresh rates, but I don't think anyone can notice the difference between 165 Hz and 144 Hz. This is a great panel for the low price of 250 dollars (with tax). Unfortunately I don't have the box or receipt for my Acer, so I'm going to have to take a hit and sell it. Anyway, if you play single player games primarily for atmosphere and immersion, don't let anyone tell you that 1440p isn't much of an upgrade over 1080p. It's actually an increase in pixel density of 78 percent! Red Dead 2 looks amazing again, and so does everything else I play.

New Music Video: Sweet Jane

 

One of my favorite songs of all time. I kept the arrangement simple, just acoustic guitar setting the rhythm along with a bass, with my strat doing overdubs. Still the year of covers, but I need to upload something original pretty soon or there will be more covers than songs I have written.

My Five Year-Old Broke My Monitor: Acer VG252Q Review

 

My oldest child tossed a toy at my MSI MAG272QR 27 inch 1440p 165 Hz monitor(Jesus that's a lot to type), damaging the crystals beneath and resulting in about half of the screen displaying a black space streaked with the color spectrum. Needless to say, I was pissed. A quick drive to Walmart resulted in my buying an Acer VG252Q 24 inch 1080p 240 Hz monitor as a replacement. Walmart is the only game in town, and the Acer was the best monitor they had that wasn't a 4k screen that would require a supercomputer to game on. The VG252Q is G-Sync monitor; it works fine with my AMD 5700 xt. As for the 240 Hz refresh rate, I can't really test it out, because I don't play anything that runs that fast on my computer. Downgrading to 1080p is very noticeable, however, especially in general desktop usage. Gaming wise, I can turn everything up to High in Control and Ultra in Red Dead Redemption 2, which helps offset the lowered pixel count. On the bright side, I don't have to worry about upgrading my graphics card in a year or two--the 5700 xt is a beast at 1080p. Yet I'm missing those extra three inches of screen space, as well as the general clarity 1440p provides. Nevertheless, I do notice the more accurate color reproduction of the Acer's IPS panel--my old MSI monitor was a VA panel, and colors often looked washed out. 

In short, 1440p is noticeably better than 1080p; however, being able to turn up the graphics settings helps. I like this Acer, but I miss my MSI MAG.

Control First Impressions

 

Control is currently free from the Epic Games store until the 17, and if you're a fan of atmospheric third-person shooters, I recommend picking it up. You play as Jesse Faden, a young women drawn to the Oldest House, the base of an inter-dimensional quasi-government entity known as the Federal Bureau of Control. When Jesse arrives, the Oldest House has been taken over by a malicious entity known as the Hiss, and she soon becomes Director through a pretty cool sequence of events. Control is dripping with Lovecraftian menace, and it's obvious that the X-Files is another big thematic influence. It's weird, and pretty fun. Jesse has a regenerating pistol that's an Object of Power, and she soon obtains the ability to telepathically throw objects at her enemies, which is a blast. The Brutalist architecture of the Oldest House is unique, and you really get the sense of being stuck in a vast labyrinth. My only complaint so far is that this game is a beast to run. On my solidly mid-range Ryzen 7 3700x/5700 xt build, I'm hovering under 60 frames per second at High settings and 1440p. Medium settings boosts the framerate considerably, but I recommend keeping those extra graphics settings and playing with a gamepad, which feels better. I'll do a full review when I've completed the game.

Tech Ramblings: Be Quiet! Shadow Rock 3 Review

 

No more RGB, but this thing matches my graphics card better.

My computer was noisy as hell, due to my MSI 5700 xt Evoke OC, which was overclocked and overvolted, and my Wraith Prism CPU cooler, which came stock with my Ryzen 3700x. Modding the Evoke and undervolting/underclocking fixed its noise problems, but the Prism still remained. I purchased a Be Quiet! Shadow Rock 3 to replace it, mostly because it was affordable and well-reviewed. Well, I don't have thermals or any of that stuff to compare it to the Prism; I think it keeps it a couple degrees cooler, but the Prism was always sufficient at that job. It is, however, almost completely silent. Now that I have the Evoke's fan speed locked at 55 percent, gaming is a far less noisy pursuit than it was before. The Prism had configurable RGB lights that I could sync with my Razor keyboard, and my son was disappointed that the pretty fan was gone. However, the Shadow Rock's black and chrome looks go better with the Evoke, and RGB quickly lost its novelty for me. So yeah, this is a nice replacement. It's keeping my 3700x at around 46 degrees Celsius, which is pretty cool for my 23 degree Celsius room.

The urge to constantly tinker with my system has become a hobby unto itself. Future upgrades will likely include a NVMe drive, maybe another 16 gigs of ram, and a new graphics card probably a year or two out, assuming that things ever get back to normal. My motherboard is an x570, so I could always put a more powerful CPU in there, at least until AMD switches to AM5. There's no reason to upgrade right now. I don't have a performance reason, despite what the internet might say, and the current hardware shortage is insane.