Strait Up

-are we one and forever?

-I guess at what you'd sound like

-and it's still me and you — together

---

It's been a while since I've talked to you, dear reader. It's also been a while since I called you that. It's also been a while since I've blogged and walked, and it's just nice to be able to call you dear reader even though I read the italicized with some sort of vehemence, for lack of a better term.

I still keep the blog dream alive. One day, I won't have to worry about my place in the world IRL as much, and I can go back to feeling like I'm in tube with the internet (Freudian slip?).

Ugh. It really does feel like the internet is mostly just... YouTube nowadays, at least for me.

I think it's why I now hesitate to continue with my SotD (Song of the Day) posts that link directly to YouTube. 

I have a hard time justifying my hotlinking to YouTube. I really do. I still sometimes come across old, human-made, usually self-edited music videos of yore (think early YouTube, like evo of dance and iJustine, or re-uploads of old Internet memes like the Numa Numa guy and The Emo Song) and I smile at the nostalgia, but it's just easier to pick the all-polished "official" versions of pop songs and pray the ads don't break through my filters. Skipping the comments section (unless there's a good reason not to) is also usually the play, pun not intended, in 2026.

I really do prefer earlier YouTube, still, and I guess that's its enshittification at work.

---

So for now, my long-term unemployment is being staved off by my intention to improve myself, and especially through diet. Despite a major pitfall recently (won't get into the details — where the devil is after all, but my living situation is feeling precarious and probably will be for the foreseeable future, so I'd rather stay warm and safe than cold & boldly on the streets and, imagine, not living at home during the winter in Toronto). Can I?

---

Oh and the SotD is Paula Abdul - Straight Up. It's on the internet, and stuck in my head this week, and I'm citing it because that's the good thing to do in this AInternet hell we find ourselves in currently. I heard it on regular Internet radio last, I swear!

To round out my first big post of 2026, here's a picture I took of my eldest cat, Bébé, instead of a YouTube thumbnail (for once I'm trying to follow the Rules of the Internet):

ChatGPT-5.2-OpenAI consulted only for motivation to blog on this one, which is a big part of my writing process. Mistakes made are my own.