Another Cat Blog

    Originally this was just going to be called “Cats,” but then I recalled I already wrote a blog with that title something like 7 years ago. I'm not going to link that here (but I mean you can find it easily but scrolling through my old posts) because it's overall kind of a bummer entry. I'm not going to lie and say there are no bummers in here (there's two) but this is intended to be a fond remembrance sort of situation. 

    I was not a cat person for a lot of my adolescent life. I had some vaguely unpleasant interactions with cats a few times as a kid (basically just got hissed at a few times) and pretty much wrote off the entire species. It wasn't until I was in high school and started dating that I met my girlfriend's cat and my opinion on them changed entirely. 

    Here's the story of the cats I've had. 

        Shorty

    I don't talk about this cat a for a variety of reasons. Primarily it's because we only had a few weeks together before she passed. Secondly it's because it's still a bit of a sore topic for me. 

    It was the summer before my senior year at WSU and the house we had recently moved in to was one of two properties leased by our rental agency that allowed pets, and that was one of many reasons we decided to move in to the building that was reportedly constructed in 1911. My roommates and I gently put out the word that we were looking for a college house kitty, and soon after my mother let me know that she had a friend who had recently inherited a cat that she wasn't it a good position to keep due to an allergy. 

    The cat had, within the last week or so, been to a vet to get a full checkup. She had a resounding clean bill of health. 

    Maybe a week or two later I'm back in Richland for the weekend and I go with my Mom to see her friend and pick up the cat. As of today this was over 11 years ago, but I remember with absolute clarity the first time I met Shorty. 

    We get to the house, introductions take place, then we go look for the cat. She hadn't been living here long and was still prone to hiding. The three of us looked around for her and I maintain a very clear image of when I peaked over the couch to see her staring up at me from behind it. She had stunning blue eyes and a rich gray coat of hair. 

    Shorty was seven years old at the time. She was adopted as a kitten by and older lady, and she unfortunately passed. I was told they were very attached. 

    I had done a lot of reading on how to introduce cats to a new home, and at the time I was the only person living in our college house as this was during the summer. I followed all of the steps as best as I could and things started pretty smoothly. Shorty seemed to warm up to me over the course of a few days, and by the end of the first week I could pick her up for short periods without issue. 

    Pullman during the summer is vastly empty compared to that of during the school year, but I still had a few friends in town. Most of them came by at some point or another and met her, and she was clearly socialized pretty well. She would greet the visitors after they had been in the house and sitting down for a while. 

    Still, it was pretty obvious she wasn't doing the best. At one point someone took me aside and said “hey I hate to tell you this but there is no way that cat is only 7 years old.” It came from a place of concern and I politely showed them the documents from the shelter where she was adopted, with a date clearly showing her as 7 years and some change. They were a bit shocked and maintained she had the appearance of a cat in her mid teens, but it didn't come up again. 

    At one point she got out when I didn't fully shut the front door. A full day went by and I was losing my mind. I had left the front door open in hopes she would come back. I was sitting on the couch in the living room staring intently at the door when I finally decided to use the bathroom. I did my business, came back out, did the biggest double take of my life and went and scooped up Shorty from where she was standing in the doorway. 

    Things were okay for a few days after this. I don't think she got into anything nasty while she was out as I think issues would have started closer to that period. But as time went on, she began to eat less and less. One day I woke up and saw her breakfast from the previous day was untouched. This was just about a week before my 21st birthday and I had not yet managed to find a job for the summer. I couldn't afford a vet trip then and there. So I looked up what to do in this situation and found a lot of solutions that did help at first. 

    I picked up some wet cat food and heated it up in the microwave so it was more “enticing” (I gagged the whole time I had to handle it), got ground turkey and chicken, cooked them up plain and served them to her, and she ate and seemed normal again, for a few days. 

    My 21st birthday weekend (kinda) had appeared and I planned on going home for the weekend. I actually turned 21 the following Monday, but it was easier on the Richland folks for me to be in town this weekend instead of the next. I had a trusted friend check in on Shorty while I was out. She gave me updates on if and when she was eating and while she was not consuming full portions she was having nibbles here and there. 

    She texts me at about 7pm that Sunday and says she's taking off from her last check in and that she hadn't eaten since that morning but appeared to be in an okay mood. I don't recall what I was doing but I didn't leave Richland until a bit before 10, putting me back at my Pullman house just a few minutes after midnight on my 21st birthday. 

    I had gotten a small bundle of cash given to me in the form of presents and was ready to drop it all on a vet trip. I parked my Hyundai in the driveway and ran inside excitedly, calling Shorty's name. After a few minutes of her not coming or at least meowing my heart rate shot through the fucking roof. 

    And finally I found her. In one of the downstairs rooms in the far corner. I knew before I got up to her but reached out to touch her nonetheless, and she was dead. 

    I called my girlfriend at the time, Mallory, while I clearly was not doing well, and she walked me through how to handle the situation. I am still beyond grateful for her help. 

    I managed to get moderately composed and really wanted to cheer myself up. Suddenly I remembered, I'm 21 now, and there are 24 hour stores in the area. 

    And this honestly was just a kick in the balls – I went to the local grocery stores and picked out two big cans of nice beer. I went up to the register, probably not looking so hot, and put down the two beers and handed the cashier my ID. I was really, really fishing for a simple “happy birthday!” the clerk looked at my ID, looked at me, looked at the date on his register, and then handed me back my ID without word save my total. 

    Like I said I only spent a few weeks (I'd guess six) with Shorty. To this day I fully believe that this cat really wasn't interested in being with anyone except the elderly woman with whom she spent her entire life, and I'd prefer to think the two are together and much happier in wherever they are now. 

        Splotch

    About a month passed. My roommates and had moved in for the school year but class hadn't quite started yet. This probably goes without saying but this was one of the funnest times of the year. I was still a bit down from the Shorty situation, but no longer living alone helped quite a bit. Of my three roommates, only Blake had ever actually met Shorty, and only once. So it makes sense that I was the only one still kind of hurting from the situation. They were still gung-ho on having a house cat, and when we were discussing it as a group one day, Mallory chimed in, shortly after realizing her family had a cat they would be willing to part with. 

    Her Dad sent us a picture of Splotch, and.... I kinda went “maybe not that one.” Yea, that was awful of me. I will provide the context that it was an unflattering close up picture taken by a 2011 flip phone sent to and viewed on a 2011 slider phone – she did not look friendly or cute in this photo. 

    Here's some Splotch backstory: she grew up on a farm in Idaho. She was a third generation farm cat. The matriarch of the cat family, Coug, showed up to their place one day in the early 2000's. She was relocated three times as she was feral and not exactly being helpful. When she found her way back to the property for the third time, they said “fine.” They reached an implied understanding, and Coug began doing her catly duties. 

    Fast forward a few years/generations and Splotch is born. There is a total of something like 8 cats on this farm, one pet cat and seven farm cats (these numbers are probably off slightly). The farm cats were exclusively outdoor animals, and the cat with the “pet” designation was allowed in and outside. 

    From what I was told, Splotch was essentially bullied relentlessly by her family. Mallory's family noticed and took pity, and also allowed Splotch occasional indoor privileges. 

    Then it finally happened, after the yearly Priest Lake trip in 2013, Blake, Mallory, and myself stopped by her family's house on our way back to WSU. We had some excellent lamburgers for lunch and they asked if we wanted to meet Splotch. Blake and I both said yes, and turned around to see that unique calico coat turn the corner. We got up from the table and sat near her, and she immediately collapsed on her side between us, screaming “pet me!” Honestly we were ready to take her then and there, but we were already cramped in my coupe with three people and our bags for the weekend. Also, we acknowledged it needed to be a house decision. 

    From what I recall the conversation lasted like 12 seconds. Blake, Ozzie, Ben, and I all agreed we'd take the cat next opportunity we had. It turns out that was just a few weeks later at WSU homecoming, where Mallory's parents came up, complete with a kitty in a carrier. 

    We all know that most weekends are party weekends at WSU. Homecoming was always an especially rowdy time, and we decided it would be best to take her upstairs and let her get used to the house in a calm room while people generally went nuts downstairs. The upstairs rooms consisted of Blake's and mine's, and because Splotch was used to the scent of Mallory it would make the most sense if she spent the first day or two in my room (hehe). 

    So we had a party that night. I kept intending to go downstairs and join but I just couldn't take my eyes off of Splotch as she inspected every millimeter of my room. Throughout the night people would come upstairs one or two at a time, and come in to meet Splotch. She got a lot of oohs and ahhs and directed at her fur coat. 

    Sunday finally comes around and the house has quieted down. Splotch had gotten the grand tour of the upstairs on Saturday and we showed her the rest of the main house throughout the day on Sunday. The residence had a large unfinished basement that I used as a bedroom for most of the summer (much easier to sleep down there in the heat) and we figured we should show her the whole house while we were at it. 

    We take her downstairs and she sniffs around until she sees the gap below the staircase. Like I said I spent a lot of time in the basement during the summer, and Shorty had been with me for a lot of that. She went into the little space below the stairs at one point, explored, then came back. So when Splotch went to do the same I didn't think much of it. Blake even said “dude grab her” and I said she'd be fine. 

    She goes into the hole, and we wait. And wait some more. Then just a tiny bit more. Suddenly we grab a drill and remove the section of wood paneling to go after her. Finally, we see the last bits of daylight shining through from underneath the house. As it turns out, this hole in under the stairs leads outside if you're small enough. 

    So I start to freak out. The cat is out, and I could've stopped it. We take her food and water downstairs every day and it's always gone a few hours later. This was only mildly comforting as I had unfortunately discovered there were mice living in the basement toward the end of the summer, so we couldn't be sure it was actually Splotch eating it. The next weekend Mallory's Dad drops off a cat trap. We deploy the trap, place food in the back, and two hours later we have our cat back..... for the first time. 

    She escaped twice more but never learned how to avoid the trap. To everyone's immense delight she finally understood that this was now her home, and even after she managed to get into the basement in the future she always came back without needing to use the trap. 

    During the particularly wild weekends when we'd have friends stay over and the living room was already occupied, people would start crashing on the couches in the basement (I left out the bits about the mice when we had that many people over). Whenever the house got too busy and people were going in and out of the basement, Splotch would quietly excuse herself and spend the weekend exploring the neighborhood before reliably coming back on Sunday evenings. 

    She doled out affection pretty evenly amongst us. It was rare for any of us to keep our doors fully shut all night as she liked to spend the night where she pleased and often moved between rooms while we slept. 

    And cat-wise the rest of the school year went pretty smoothly. It did not take long before she'd run to the smell of burning weed, because it took her about two seconds to figure out that stoned people=people that want to pet a cat. She really was an awesome college cat. 

    Graduation was swiftly approaching. After a handful of discussions we decided I'd be the one to take Splotch after we all moved out. The problem was that I was moving back in with my parents initially, and there was no way in hell they'd let a cat move in. So Splotch went back to Idaho for a few months while I lived with my parents, found a job, and moved in with a friend from high school. 

    This is another memory that's now approaching a decade old that I recall vividly. Mallory was coming in to town for the first time since I moved into the house in North Richland, and she was bringing Splotch. I got home, hugged Mallory, and asked were Splotch was. At the time she was hiding inside a recliner chair, but it only took about a minute of us coaxing for her to come out. She seemed legitimately pleased to see me and was open to exploring the small house. 

    The period of my life in which I lived on Platt street is one of those that I look back on the fondest. I was living with someone from high school, Emily, and while we were always friendly with each other we never got close while still attending RHS. But we really clicked as roommates. We put a thin strip of duct tape on the CRT TV and watched Friends while playing the mustache game (whenever the piece of tape lined up as a mustache we'd take a drink). We got Woo's and Domino's probably too much and never had any major disagreements.  

    She also had a dog, Stetson. Splotch was used to dogs and Stetson had met cats so it wasn't really an issue. Stetson was very attached to Emily. He tolerated me but never went out of his way to hang out with me when Emily was out. In the few weeks I lived there before Splotch came down, Stetson spent all of his time on Emily's bed when she was out. On day two that I got home from work after Splotch's return, Stetson was sitting just outside Emily's room, which was highly irregular. 

    I almost never went in to her room, especially if she wasn't home, but I went to turn her light on and to my total lack of surprise I see Splotch, laying right in the middle of Emily's bed. She gave me a look that was cat speak for “yea bitch, this is my house now.” 

    Stetson and Splotch eventually learned to coexist pretty contently. I'd come home and check her room briefly to see Stetson now barely hanging the very edge of the bed, then as time went on they'd be laying next to each other. I don't think they ever quite cuddled, but the tolerated each other's presence without issue. 

    The time at the Platt house came to an end pretty quickly. I made the rash decision (detailed extensively in the anxiety blog) about moving to Seattle, and Emily moved out at a similar time. Splotch again went back to Idaho until I had a place to rent on the west side. 

    I'm going to skip a lot of stuff here but Splotch wise it's pretty unimportant. We moved to Bellevue, then to Seattle, then after a lot of shit we moved in with my parents. To make a long story very short my parents were worried about me, and when they said I could bring Splotch with me if I moved back home I truly realized the gravity of the situation and took them up on it. 

    And Splotch was really happy at my parent's house I think. She had a nice big, clean house to run around in, got supervised outside time, and even had someone she could drive absolutely insane (my Dad). Cats love people that try to ignore them, and Splotch would wait outside my parent's door every morning so that my Dad did not have a single second to himself before he left for work. She'd rub up against him while he was trying to do his morning stretch, yell at him to try to get him to feed her early, and generally just be as obnoxious as possible (in his eyes). 

    Time passes and I finally land a new job working in IT, save up some money, and move out in August of 2020 to a small apartment in Kennewick. 

    The first night I was in my apartment I celebrated with Ozzie (who also helped me move, thanks again bud). It was rather late by the time we finished and I knew we'd probably get kind of loud, and I decided to wait to move Splotch in until the next day. After I got Ozzie an Uber home and I laid in bed, basking my the fact I was again in my own place, and really toyed with the idea of getting a round trip Uber home to get my cat. Luckily for all involved I feel asleep before that. 

    Finally (well, the next day) I have Splotch moved in. She explores a bit (it's a small enough place that I let her just explore the whole place) and gives me a look that says “it's alright I guess.”

    When I first got Splotch she was estimated to be about 7 years old. She was now 15, and if I'm being honest I do think the move at her old age made her go downhill pretty fast. 

    I knew she had lost some weight but I didn't truly realize how bad it was until a friend came over, he hadn't seen Splotch for a few months and immediately commented on how skinny she was in a worried tone. I had a slight come to Jesus moment and took her to the vet a few days later. 

    The vet ran some tests and pointed out she had dropped nearly 40% of her body weight since her last visit. They didn't find anything clearly wrong with her but prescribed some medication. 

    I was largely in denial. Her decline was not nearly as quick as Shorty's. But one December evening I walked up to my computer desk and she was laying just next to the keyboard with her head just barely hanging off the desk. It was honestly adorable. Then she didn't wake up. I said her name several times, nudged her head, and while she wasn't stiff she was not responding at all. Just as I was shakily grabbing my phone to call my Mom, Splotch woke up and looked at me. She was clearly trying to say “this is real, this is happening, I am old, please come to terms with it.” 

    My parents invited me over for dinner a few days later and I remember it was difficult to remain composed but I managed to tell them that I was fully aware that this would be my last Christmas with Splotch. 

    And it was a very nice Christmas. My Dad will probably never admit it but he did eventually develop a fondness for her. He told me “hey your sister and Bill and bringing their dogs over for Christmas, Mom said you can bring Splotch over if you want” (I later confirmed they never talked about this and it was in fact my Dad inviting the cat over). 

    While yes it's generally inadvisable to move around a senior cat, taking her back to my parents house was for a few days was nice for everyone. Splotch immediately knew where she was and showed no signs of struggling with a different environment. She opened her stocking Christmas morning and annoyed my Mom by playing with the lights on the Christmas tree. 

    Shortly after New Years it became clear that her time was growing very short. Finally the vet visit occurs where they ultimately say it's time to start thinking about maintaining her quality of life, and there isn't much more to be done. 

    And there were some fun times with Splotch during this period. She had always been good at not getting on kitchen counters or stealing food. But she knew her time was swiftly approaching, and all rules went out the window. At one point she hadn't eaten for nearly a day and I made a frozen pizza for my dinner. I took it out of the oven and sliced it, then left it to cool for a few minutes. I came back to find her absolutely chowing down on a slice and all I felt was happiness, she was eating. 

    A few days later she wasn't eating anything. Turkey, chicken, bacon, fries, pizza, all the stuff she had loved and would always eat. 

    Finally it's a Thursday night and I'm up until almost dawn with her as she's vomiting, having spasms, and a variety of other things that signified a clear end of the line.

    I made an appointment with my vet that morning and bought a bottle of Crown during my lunch. My Mom picked us up and drove us to the vet, and we said our final goodbyes. I thanked her for getting me through so much of the shit that I dealt with over the last few years. 

    We were with her until the very end. 

    My Mom dropped me off and I pulled myself together for a while. I played video games with friends who knew what was going on for several hours. I put a good dent in the bottle of Crown. At some point the last person got off, and asked if I was okay before they did. I assured them I was fine and moved to my couch, where I had a monitor with a Chromecast hooked up. 

    I queued up the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, knowing exactly what I was doing to myself. I watched the whole thing, and at the very end when (spoilers) Luke leaves in the elevator with Grogu after the emotional goodbye, I bawled my absolute eyes out. It was perhaps one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. 

    As a kid a had gerbils twice. They were... okay, but there was never much of a bond that developed. I had Shorty for less than two months and while I was devastated when I found her alone, I was able to move on after a while. 

    Splotch was the one consistent thing in my life for eight years. She was present for several moves, a really nasty breakup, the lowest of my mental states, as well as some of the best times of my life. 

    I have so god damn many pictures of this cat and I really thought it would wreck me every time a Snapchat memory came up that was just a barrage of Splotch. This actually wasn't the case. I got drunk and cried a lot that first night, and then after a while things started to improve. 

    I sent Mallory's Dad a message on Facebook to thank him for giving us Splotch so many years ago. He sent a kind reply. 

    I miss you Splotch. 

        Sera

    Okay, the two bummers are out of the way. 

    Late on May 14th, 2021, Ashley sent me a text that said “Hey, you busy tomorrow? You want to look at titties?” 

    I smiled and knew the chances of going to a strip club with my cousin in-law tomorrow were in fact pretty much 0, and tried to think of something clever to say. Before I have the chance she sends the next text saying simply “I mean kitties?” 

    All I could respond with was “either one works.” 

    And so the next morning we're at the rescue shelter in Pasco with Katie. There's some sort of adoption drive going on and kittens are all in a caged outdoor area. I'd never had a kitten and didn't really want to get one right now. Partially because older cats are less likely to be adopted, and partially because kittens and without a doubt more work. I live alone and was working full time, so a kitten didn't seem like the wise choice. 

    We asked to see the other cats and went back to the room featuring cages with something like 20 cats. I met two or three, all of them being let out of their cage and then wandering around to inspect the people in the room. While this was happening there was one cat in a bottom cage who kept rubbing up against the edge of the enclosure. As I'm about to asked if I can meet this one, the cat manages to rub her face against the lock just right so she opens in and lets herself out. She approaches me briefly and sniffs me before checking out the rest of the room. I felt a connection pretty quickly as she was so eager to get out and meet us. 

    Her name is Seraphine, and I think to myself, wow, that's kind of a lot for a cat. I'd probably shorten that to Sera. 

    The clinic worker picks her up like a baby and says “yea, that's usually the sign of a pretty chill cat.” Ashley and Katie look at me encouragingly and I say okay, let's do it. 

    A few minutes later as Sera is being processed I'm thinking to myself this is moving really fast – and I vocalize my thoughts. I ask Ashley if I'm maybe moving a bit too quickly and she asks me “do you love her?” to which I respond yes without hesitation. She smiles, I do the same, and a few minutes later we're on our way back to my apartment with Sera in a cardboard carrier. 

    She didn't do very well on the ride home and had managed to almost claw her way out of the cardboard device. We got her in to my apartment, Ashley and Katie gave me a big smile and shared some words on encouragement, then took off. 

    I introduced Shorty and Sera to the old Pullman house very gradually. My apartment is far smaller and I figured to be safe I'd let Sera explore the living room, then we'd post up in my room for a while until she seems comfortable. 

    It was damn near instant. I let her out of the carrier, she sniffed around the living room and kitchen, then gave me a “now what?” look. She warmed up to me and her new home so damn quickly. 

    I'll admit that I was again at a pretty stressed out point in my life. I was dry heaving before work pretty regularly. After I got Sera I went a full three weeks without any of my famous “AYUUGHK” noises to start the day. 

She's currently curled up in my lap. I love this cat. 

Things with Sera haven't been perfect. She was estimated to be one year old when I got her, which is “technically” considered adult age for cats. There are times when I feel I need to double check the paperwork I got with her to make sure I didn't actually get a puppy. I still can't leave unattended food out in any capacity. I once bought a bag of cat food, came home, set it down, used the bathroom, then came out and picked the bag up to put it in the closet. When I picked it up it soon became clear that in the 50 or so seconds that I was in the bathroom she had torn multiple holes in the bag as food spilled everywhere. 

    She gets fed twice a day like most cats, but she wants to be fed three hours early at least. This means that if I feed her last thing before I left for work at around 7:45, she gets hungry at around 5. She has mastered waking me up. She knows how to pull my blankets off me, how to turn my lamp on, how to raise the fucking blinds, and if all else fails, how to smack me in the face. 

    When I got my second covid vaccine I was the third of three on my work team to do so. The other two had called in sick the day after their dosage. I told my manager I would let him know how I was feeling in the morning, and he assured me they'd plan around my absence just to be safe. That's how I know that second shot kicked my ass – I slept through my alarm, my second alarm, Sera pulling my blankets off me, literally knocking my lamp over onto my face (I woke up with it laid across my nose), and honestly who knows what else. I called my manager first thing and apologized but he just laughed and reminded me they had planned for this. 

    I don't really know what she does when I'm gone all day but all I can really imagine is that it's bicep curls. A few months after I got her, I returned home from work to find my fridge open and food across the floor. I put a chair in front of the door and placed a box full of books on it. Opening it was a pain in the ass even for me. Still, no matter how much shit I stack on it she is able to open it. I've now removed all the food from the small section of the interior that she can reach, so even if she opens it she can't actually retrieve any of the contents. 

    Then came a wildly stressful day – I can count on one hand the number of times I've talked to my downstairs neighbor. One day at work I got call from my apartment complex saying that the gal who lives below me called them saying they could hear a cat freaking the fuck out. I got approval from my manager to check on her, got home, and found the fridge open. 

    She managed to get in further than ever before and into to a box of takeout from.... too long ago. She busted into it and went to town, and it was not going well. I managed to get into my vet. They gave me some super fun stuff to help her “get it all out,” and get it all out she did. It was disgusting. But she was fine. And still is today!

    When I leave town for a weekend I have an auto feeder and a two large water bowls I fill for her. Still, I have broken microwave that I set between the aforementioned chair and sink counter, so that opening the fridge is literally impossible. I could spend $8 on child locks but I mean.... Yea, I should spend $8 on child locks. 

    Sera almost always comes to me when called. If I get out of bed to pee in the middle of the night you better believe she's watching my back. She's always waiting for me when I get home. She keeps me company while I make food (and occasionally gets nibbles). If it weren't for her I'm confident I would be cripplingly lonely alone in this small domicile. I am still beyond thankful that Ashley and Katie gave me the shove to get a cat again. 

    Like I mentioned earlier Sera has been cuddled up with me as I write this entire thing. As I'm sure you can imagine some parts weren't easy to write. I'm currently 32 and barring any extreme circumstances it's likely I'll still have this cat when I'm 40. And I think that's wonderful. 

Sean's Top Games of 2022

 

Sean’s Top Games of 2022

 

Spotify wrapped was a disappointment for me this year. Not due to the app itself, it’s simply attributed to my listening habits. An artist who will remain unnamed had again topped my yearly listening metrics. Following some events in the last few months it was borderline depressing seeing them at the top of all my most listened to categories. Luckily, this year, several other platforms released summaries of my yearly activity.

Snapchat provided me with a frightening collection of weirdly personal information I had chosen to broadcast to those few that still look at my story on a regular basis. Reddit demonstrated that my tastes in the time-wasting method that is the Reddit app have not changed in the last several years. Finally, Steam gave me an interesting insight into my ever-changing taste in gaming.

                I really enjoyed Steam’s take on wrapped, with the exception of the horrifying realization of how much time I have wasted playing Rust. For years I’ve largely rotated between the same few games, rarely branching out except to play a highly related single player release. Sometime in December of 2021 I started going to the Steam store, filtering the entire catalog of games by top ratings, usually combined with enabling the filter to display only titles that were on sale, and making a purchase from there. I did this a handful of the times over the year and most of the games on the list are a result of this boredom induced habit I’ve picked up.

                It might be worth mentioning that few games on this list actually came out in 2022. When I say “top of 2022,” I mean my top games that I played for the first time this year – not necessarily the best titles that were released in those 12 months. Without further ado, here are my top five games of 2022.

 

5. The Darkside Detective

                Point and click puzzle games have always been appealing to me. That being said, it seems like any time I tried to pick up a highly rated title in the genre, I ended up getting frustrated because I couldn’t grasp the mechanics or adapt to odd logic that point and click games tend to feature. The Darkside Detective was a refreshing experience, it’s mostly straightforward with a very charming sense of humor to it. When I’m alone I rarely laugh audibly, and TDD had me cackling aloud on several occasions.

                Another thing I really enjoyed about this game – it’s short. You may notice a pattern develop in this list, some of my favorites this year are able to be completed in less than three hours. Playing a game start to finish in one (reasonable) sitting is an excellent way to fully enjoy it. Plus, it has the added benefit of generally indicating that there’s no pointless side content in place just to artificially lengthen the play time.

                This game does not take itself very seriously and it benefits from that greatly. I don’t wanna spoil too much, but there is a part where you need to fix the internet in a building so a ghost can have jerk off material.

                I did get stuck on a few occasions but never to the point where I had to google my current situation to advance to the next section. It can be tricky, but it’s fair. When I did eventually figure out the solution to the bit I was stuck on, I couldn’t help but think “Sean you fucking idiot how did you not get that before?”

                Anyway, if you have a few bucks, a few hours, and a desire for mild brain teasers, give The Darkside Detective a shot. You’ll be saying “dammit, Dooley” in minutes.

 

4. Ready or Not

                Wayyyyyyyy back in 2006 when cable was still a thing, Tech TV had a show called X-Play. The hosts would provide comprehensive trailers for upcoming releases and review new titles. I still recall being enamored with a game called Swat 4 after I watched the X-Play review. However, I did not have any sort of gaming PC at the time and therefore wouldn’t be able to play the game until a few years later when I stumbled onto it during a Steam sale. I paid the $10 or maybe $20 it cost, and then played it for the rest of the night.

                I’ve played tons of shooters. There are of course so many good ones, but you need to wade through droves of inadequacy (or at least read reviews on what to avoid) to only play ones worth your time. The SWAT series provided a new take on the first-person shooter genre in which you are encouraged to end engagements without violence by disarming your enemies. This was of course in opposition to the usual story of immediately lighting up anything on your display that’s wielding a gun. You can shout at suspects to drop their firearms, use less lethal weapons, pepper spray, flash grenades, etc. Of course, if all else fails, lethal force is always an option.

                When I finally picked it up in 2012 it was already showing its age painfully. It didn’t hold my attention all that long, but I came back to it for a few hours once a year or so.

                Back in January 2022 I again sorted the Steam store by highest rated titles. This game, Ready or Not, was listed has having overwhelmingly positive reviews. I had never heard of it before, but overwhelmingly positive sounded pretty good. When I found myself on the store page, I was stunned to see that it is essentially a spiritual successor to SWAT 4. The core gameplay is almost identical (disarm suspects, rescue hostages, try not to taser your teammates) but with several quality-of-life tweaks and indescribably superior visuals and gun physics.

                It’s still in “early access.” Buying an unfinished game is always a risk. When I first started playing, the AI was nothing short of broken. You’d open a door, see an armed suspect facing away from you, and before you can hit the button to tell them to drop their weapons, they’ve done a 180 one tap to your head. It was infuriating, inexcusable, and not nearly enough to scare me away.

                Twelve months later it’s a night/day difference. New weapons, maps, and cosmetics have all been released. Though it’s far from perfect, it’s a great way to spend a few hours with some friends if you want a changeup from the kill on sight sort of games.

3. Nightmare of Decay

We’re 3 for 3 on games I bought on a whim because they’re highly rated. I stumbled onto Nightmare of Decay and it’s one of the fastest I’ve purchased a game after seeing the store page. It is so, so, so close to classic survival horror perfection. It’s a very similar experience to the 1996 release of Resident Evil. Fun fact – the remastered remake of Resident Evil (aka rereresident evil) has been solidified as my second favorite game of all time for several years. Old school survival horror, complete with clunky movement, silly puzzles, extremely limited ammo/healing items equivalates to pure bliss for me.

I don’t know if I could recommend this game to most people. If you had no idea what you were getting into, you’d never believe this game came out in the 2020s. The graphics are equivalent to games that were released in the late 90s. The difficulty can almost be labelled as artificial at times, primarily due to the fact that your character moves slow enough to give turtles everywhere a boost to their confidence. There is a “sprint” function that enables you to move just a hare faster. It runs out after about 3 seconds, at which point you become “exhausted” and start crawling along while the monsters are tearing you apart. I realize I’m not exactly making this sound great, but the thing is those aspects of the game are part of what makes it great (in my opinion).

NoD also gets bonus points for being about 2 hours long. If you’ve played enough Resident Evil/Silent Hill games you’ll breeze through it on normal difficulty. When Elden Ring came out this year, it was not uncommon to hear Dark Souls veterans saying they had an easier time beating certain sections than new players because they “know how the games work.” It’s precisely the same situation here. Nightmare of Decay has essentially no new ideas to it. It’s more of an amalgamation of horror game tropes executed perfectly and is easily digestible on a weeknight.

2. The Amazing Spiderman

I built my first PC back in 2007. The last console I owned was an Xbox 360. Even after I pieced together my first build, I’d spin up a few choice 360 games now and then. Still, when it finally red ringed in 2009 I didn’t feel at all compelled to replace it or to buy the next generation of the console.

That being said, I definitely had opinions in the console war. I was team Xbox for years. I had a PS2 for a while when I was in middle school. After playing Halo and seeing trailers for Knights of the old Republic, I knew I had to make a switch. I loaded up the console, controllers, something like 20 games into my Mom’s van and traded them all in at Gamestop.

Using the $6 in store credit that the trade in afforded me as well as some money out of my pocket, I purchased a new Xbox console, with used copies of Halo and KotoR.

All of that is a very extravagant way of conveying my thoughts on today’s console wars- I have no idea why the hell someone would by an Xbox over a PS4/PS5. The difference in exclusive titles is baffling. I had been sorely tempted on several occasions to pick up a used PS4 so I could play titles like Uncharted and God of War. What really caught my attention was Spiderman*. As a child one of my favorite PS1 games was Spiderman. And damn did the remastered version of Spiderman that released on PC this year hit me in all the right places to get those nostalgic happy little feelings in motion.

*(what really caught my attention was The Last of Us. I borrowed a friends PS3, bought TLoS, the game didn’t work, I traded it for a different copy that *also* didn’t work, that was the last copy they had, I gave up)

                Remember earlier when I mentioned that I liked shorter games because there was no pointless side content? Okay so Spiderman is like 60% repetitive side content. The thing is, that side content is so damn fun because the entire time you get to yknow, be Spiderman. In my opinion this is a comic book superhero adapted into a video game flawlessly. I’ve heard great things about the Batman Arkham series, and I gave some of them a shot – they just didn’t do it for me. Spiderman Remastered is pure fun and occupied almost all of my time between work and sleep for days.

                The presentation is especially fantastic. I don’t have the latest and greatest PC hardware, but my system holds its own to modern games pretty well. The game runs at a crisp framerate and looks amazing (hah) even on my hardware that is now 3 years past its prime.

                Did I mention this game is fun as hell? Because it is.

                Last thing – play it on a controller. It was a game made for a console, and the platforming/button mashing fights feel far better with joysticks than they do with a keyboard+mouse.

                Honorable mentions:
               
                A. Elden Ring

                One time I gave someone $40 of weed and they bought Overwatch for me. On another occasion I basically (ahem, straight up) stole a game from Gamestop by writing down the product key from the manual that was in the case, and then redeeming it on Steam. Still, perhaps the most interesting story of me coming to own a video game is a close friend of mine (drunkenly) RAVING about a game and telling me that he wanted to purchase it as a gift for me so I could play it ASAP. I requested, repeatedly that he sleep on the decision – if you wake up and still think that this is the case, spend that $60+tax. Otherwise, maybe wake up and realize it’s not my cup of tea/coffee/liquor. We all got off for the night with the intention of going to sleep. As I was about to drift off I realized I left my phone at my desk. I got up and bumped my mouse so that the light from the monitor would assist in my search. I found my phone, then looked up at Steam, only to see that I had a new gift waiting for me. I sighed, but excitedly began installing Elden Ring before I went to sleep.

                Elden Ring is good. I mean, Elden Ring is fuckin incredible depending on who you ask. It was my first “souls like” game. I put around 70 hours into it in 2022. I enjoyed it, a lot. I could never bring myself to actually complete a playthrough. I got a little over halfway through the main questline without using any sort of guides, then gave up. Six months later I picked it back up, started a new file, and did everything start to 70% through the game using step by step guides on how to do everything in the best possible method.

                I could not tell you which one I enjoyed more than the other. The thing is that on neither occasion did I actually complete the game. Elden Ring is fantastic and undoubtedly deserves the accolades it has been awarded. It’s not one of my top of 2022, but damn did I play it a lot (10x as much as most games on this list).

                B. Overwatch 2

                While Elden Ring got a mention because of how significant of a game it was to me this year and how it nearly made the list/deserved mention for its impact, Overwatch 2 make the list for the precise opposite reasons.

                The debut release of Overwatch is my 3^rd most played game of all time. I played the absolute shit out of this game.

                Overwatch 2 is so, so sad in comparison. Delving into the precise reasons I have for this conclusion would contribute nothing to this piece. Overwatch 2 is mentioned on this list because of how much of an impact it did not leave when it absolutely could have. I suppose you could just label it as my biggest disappointment of this year. If it did not remove Overwatch 1 from existence to become its own entity I may not be mentioning it. The fact of the matter is: one of my favorite games ever has been replaced by a “good enough,” microtransaction driven pile of sadness that I have no interest in playing.

                C. Halo Infinite

                Aight I think I did play this for the first time December 2021. I don’t really count this first month of gameplay because I only played the single player campaign (which was fun!). A few months after its inception I found myself playing Halo, online, with friends I hadn’t regularly corresponded with since high school. Halo Infinite’s online multiplayer experience ranges from “this is what gaming should be” moments all the way down to “this is why people know if computers can survive a fall from 3 stories but not 4.”

                I spent a lot of time playing this game in 2022. If I had spent that time playing this game because it was actually good, it would have made the list. I absolutely adore this title because I was able to reconnect with friends from high school. Remove that from the situation and this would be just another Halo title (which it is).

Sean's #1 Game of 2022: What Remains of Edith Finch

Ho lee shit. #1 is also a result of my Steam store sorting adventures. Another not exactly shocking fact is that this game takes about an hour and a half to finish. Bear with me because this next sentence makes me cringe as I write it as it will surely make you cringe as you read it – What Remains of Edith Finch is more of an experience than it is a game.

 One criticism that is often leveled against it is that it’s a “press w simulator,” i.e., a game where you literally just walk almost entirely in a straight line. And that isn’t necessarily untrue. It’s just that this is a way to spend your time that’s not gameplay focused - it’s entirely narrative driven.

Everyone should play this game. It’s incredibly accessible (as it is admittedly a walking simulator as mentioned above) and available on every mainstream platform.

Something else I'd like to add: this is not a horror game. There are parts that are absolutely spooky, but there are no jump scares or anything of that nature. 

It does start off a bit strangely. Stick with it – it gets less weird after the bit where you eat toothpaste and become a cat, I promise. Give it the benefit of your doubt and I promise you will walk away with some degree of an emotional response. There’s a part (if you’ve played it you already know which part I’m talking about) that is nothing less than a breathtaking experience. This game does things with storytelling that few other games have, and it does it with that sweet, sweet brevity.

I could go on and on about What Remains of Edith Finch. But if you’ve made it this far I know you’d keep reading, when what you should be doing is buying this game and playing it right now. So do that.

 

               

Yogos Director's Commentary

                I’m about to say something I haven’t said since high school: you should go watch Yogos. Not because it really holds up to the tests of time, just because this blog will make a lot more sense if it’s fresh in your head. I’ll add a link to each video as they come up below.

                Kaden, Matt, and myself were often asked “what was your inspiration for making Yogos?” even in the summer after 8^th grade when we first uploaded the video to YouTube I thought this was a… silly question. People – Yogos weren’t even good. I think my Mom purchased them on a regular basis because they were usually on sale for like a dollar, and while they weren’t yknow, good, they had plenty of sugar so they’d get eaten. She saw inexpensive snack that quickly changed into eaten snacks, and chose to keep them stocked. Also it was 2006 and who the hell looked at sugar content?

                So why Yogos? We thought the name was funny when I yelled it in the “Sean” voice. If you’ve been waiting since 2006 for us to drop a truth bomb about how the Yogos videos were an allegory for a political conflict or that it’s somehow related to American youth being obsessed with sugar, I’m sorry to disappoint. We sat around trying to come up with a video idea, got bored and looked for snacks, I yelled YOGOS, and a few minutes later the camera was rolling.

                You know what I learned a few months before we made the first video? Making videos is hard. Even these silly little 3 minute videos take hours to complete. “Filming” took place across three days and editing took a couple hours (shoutout to Windows Movie Maker crashing every few minutes). I had created a few solo videos of me doing weird shit, and got some positive reactions here and there after posting them to Myspace.

                Then it happened. The reason why I almost stopped creating this sort of thing – in my 8^th grade technology class, someone who had seen my most recent video had really enjoyed it, and wanted to show it to a bunch of other people in the class. Something like 8 people gathered around one of the 17” Dell monitors and she hit play.

                Silence. No reactions for three full minutes. No one laughed. When the credits started rolling someone looked at me and said, very halfheartedly as if they just realized I was in the room, “oh I liked it.” It was mortifying at the time. After this hiccup I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post anything again.

Fast forward to the following summer and some friends and family gathered around our family computer and I showed Yogos to the first group of people aside from Matt and Kaden. Pretty early in it was apparent that this was a different case entirely. When it hit the point about two minutes in where I confuse airsoft BBs for Yogos, the reaction from the room kicked me right off the fence onto the “put this shit on the internet” side.

                At times in this piece it will sound like I took it too seriously between calling it a “production” or talking about the editing process or issues we ran into. When I first began writing this I tried to make it clear that all of was intended to be lighthearted by putting disclaimers on each bit that referenced any sort of intricacies involved in the process. But it got repetitive and boring to read. Please know – I’m aware that this is a blog about the creation of videos regarding yogurt balls.

                So that was a lot of intro, let’s get into the breakdowns.

                Yogos: Yogos pt. 1

                So yea no shit it makes sense to start at the beginning of the video, but I’m also glad to get this part out of the way ASAP. The intro scene is, in my opinion, the weakest/most cringe inducing part of the whole series. Between the awkward cuts and me running around yelling for no discernable reason, it’s a rocky start. The only saving grace in my opinion is that as I laid on the couch in the first few seconds, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants was what was playing on the TV. I doubt anyone has ever noticed this independently. A thirteen year old guy sitting around by himself watching Sisterhood of the Travelling pants was nothing short of hilarious to us as we started production, and it did not work, yknow, at all. Then, FINALLY (aka 26 seconds in) the other stars make their entrance and things improve dramatically.

                Like I mentioned before, everything I’d done up to this point had been a solo venture. Because yea, no shit, no one could drive yet and making videos was a boredom induced habit and not something that merited “hey you guys wanna come over and make a dumbass video about nothing?” That is up until I showed these two some of my older stuff, and they just completely understood what I was going for.  

                We shot and edited the video together scene by scene instead of shooting everything and editing later. Contrasting this sequence featuring Kaden’s casual demeanor with the backwards hat while Matt slowly murders a nectarine with a Desert Eagle airsoft pistol, against with the awkward introduction was what kept us filming.

                Then we hit the scene with 2x speed. This part is hit or miss to me, but the part where I go up and inspect Matt for Yogos is still solid in my eyes.

                Following this, we have the scene that caused the first behind the scenes drama: me throwing the doll at Kaden. He argued that it was kinda pointless and didn’t really fit in. I argued that it was a turning point for me. In my head this scene is my character trying calm himself down by playing with the doll, but the rage prevailed. I think this lead to the suiting up sequence pretty well. Admittedly, that’s a huuuuuuuuuuuge stretch. Most of why I wanted it in the final cut was the fact that the timing with the doll’s music and Kaden’s reaction as he’s assaulted by it were smooth af.

                Finally we get the suit up sequence. I. Fucking. Love. This. Part. This was largely Kaden’s brainchild, from the Jack Johnson song to the decision to have someone throw me the helmet instead of me just grabbing it, and the zoomed shot as I clip the helmet. Then we have the red belt. This was a contribution from my sister. That thing was TIGHT, in a very literal sense. It is, with any luck, the closest thing I’ll experience to wearing an old timey corset. Plus, the socks+no shoes look really pulled it all together. Once the outfit is complete, we struggled a bit to come up with the next line of dialogue. We finally decided we should lean in to how stupid it was (duh) and drop the corniest line we could come up with – “I’m getting those Yogos.”

                Then we have the scene where I dive for the Yogos and they’re pulled away, which at first is pretty meh. That being said, it’s a necessary setup for the next scene where they’re dropped from the loft above (which is far funnier). It’s clear to me that neither of these clips would’ve worked without the other.

                As we get to the shot of Matt on the couch and Kaden on the ground futon, there are some fun behind the scenes facts to add! It’s not super easy to tell because we were using a camera that shot in 640x480, but Matt is casually munching away on a bag of Yogos. Also, if you look closely at Kaden’s left hand, he slaps his leg a few seconds in. I could see this from outside, and it was my queue to start my run past the sliding glass window. Lastly, I fuckin love this bit.

                Up next is the BB scene. Remember earlier when I mentioned showing this video to a few friends/family members and it killed? This far into the video, based on everyone in the room’s reaction so far, I knew it was coming, but when it turns to “slow motion” and I spit them all out, it killed. That memory will stick with me forever and is largely why I kept at it for a while.

                And then we arrive at the end. It probably isn’t super surprising that I butchered the leap at Kaden, i.e. I wanted to make it look real and ended up actually sort of body slamming Kaden and elbowing him in the face.

We only did the one take for this scene (Kaden understandably wanted to avoided another elbow the chin) but I think it turned out great. The abrupt transition to Cochise by Audioslave struck us as a perfect way to conclude this borderline insane, absolutely ridiculous two-and-a-half-minute adventure.

                Yogos 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-qbvdiww7c

                Yknow all those dipshit Star Wars fans who claim that it should only have been the 1977 release and absolutely no other content? Yea those people are fucking stupid but part of me gets it when I reflect on this stuff. I kinda wish Yogos was just Yogos and that we would have either moved on to a different project entirely or maybe idk get some other hobbies. Still, the sequel has a few redeeming factors, especially with some background info.

                Right from the beginning you can see an increase in the production quality. The white text on blue background (the default text layout in Windows Movie Maker and the format used in the credits of Yogos 1) is a textbook example of being a total rookie with WMM. In the Yogos 2 intro, the abhorrent yellow font that is typed out as opposed to be static combined with the grey background is, in some ways, a significant upgrade.

                Next up we have long haired Sean! The thing that the Yogos are hanging from is a stuffed monkey with hands that function sort of like the clips you use for sealing bags of chips or whatever. One hand attached to the light fixture, the other dangled and held my glasses while I slept. A dangling stuffed monkey holding my glasses every night is admittedly sorta badass.

                Enter the remote-control car. Watching the scene I find it pretty enjoyable. Filming it was a bitch and a half. That thing controlled like shit and simply driving it up and down the hallway in a straight line was painful. Steering it into a different room was nearly impossible. It mostly paid off and showcased my first (and only) editing magic. The cuts aren’t perfect, the lighting changes obnoxiously at times, but it’s still fun.

                It’s necessary to mention that up through this bit of this video I was the only one involved in the video’s production. I just happened to have the idea for an intro I liked and got started on it right away. If you look closely, when I walk out of the room and the truck is about to hit me, you can see the controller is in my hands. Yep, I drove that thing straight into my legs at top speed. It didn’t necessarily hurt, but it was absolutely more painful than I would have anticipated.

                But it was nothing. Nothing compared to the next shot where it drives over my face. Kaden had entered the picture at this point and had the idea to drive it over my face. I jumped at the idea as it sounded hilarious to me. I really should’ve taken my glasses off. I can still feel the burning sensation from the tires driving over me and mowing my glasses (mostly the nosepieces) across my entire face. As soon as it had cleared my face I sprung up and ran to the bathroom where I started applying cold water to my face in an attempt to soothe the burning pain, and no, it did not assist in the slightest. Also also, if you look closely, you can see a lone Yogo just to the left of my head.

                Then we have suit up scene round deux. The music fading in, the panning shot of both the costume hanging up in the closet and then of me fully geared up all worked quite well. Remember earlier when I said “we decided to lean into it and have me say the corniest thing imaginable” ? We did that here again, and you can see in my face that I’m trying not to laugh because I’m very, very aware of how goddamn stupid it is.

                For the scene of me shoving Matt out of the way, I wish we’d filmed at a different angle to better demonstrate the height disparity of Matt and I. The joke was me being able to move Matt against his will in any way, but it clearly didn’t work super well because due to the way it was shot he doesn’t seem all that much taller than I am.

                I mentioned before how our editing process had improved a bit. This next bit with me running up the stairs, having extreme zoom power on the package of candy on the driveway outside actually looks kinda nice. Kaden’s delivery of “ooh my, they smell like watermelon too” still gets me. The intercut shots with the brief slowmo bit made for a pretty okay final product.

                System of a Down’s song, Picture, then kicks in for probably the most “action packed” part of the franchise. You can see me almost stop as I point down at Kaden’s hat because I wasn’t sure if he wanted to cut and pick it up off the ground, but as I saw him continue running I figured it was okay. We did a few more takes of this scene but we universally agreed that this shot was the right one. The change to the over the shoulder view right as the song cuts to a more intense portion was nothing short of delightful as we put things together in the “editing room” (parents basement).

                Finally, we hit the spot where I think Yogos 2 goes downhill. Trust me, I know it sounds silly, but we had been working on this video for a few days now (when I say days I mean a few hours at a time when our mommies could drive us to and from the proper locations) and we were all kinda over it. We finally added what I consider to be the laziest attempt at humor we had so far, where a gun is introduced to the situation. Some people love this part, to me it’s just a scene that is a result of us being tired and wanting to put a bow on things.

                Yknow this part where Kaden tells me to drop the gun? And I rip the swim cap off my head and I look kinda pissed? I was. We were trying to come up with some sort of ending and we simply could not agree on any sort of conclusion to the sequel.

ALSO, let’s talk swim caps for a second. Swim caps are meant to be put on when your hair is wet and when the cap is wet. Literally the way we put them on in swim team (sometimes) was to have the swimmer jump in the water, get their head completely soaked, and then fill up the swim cap with water before handing it off to someone still on dry ground. The person holding the water-filled cap then aimed carefully and dropped it onto the swimmer’s head from a few feet up. This ensures a nice tight seal and that everything will be properly… lubricated.

Notice how I have long hair in this video? Ripping that swim cap off hurt, like a lot. So did putting it on. My frustrated face as I stared up to where Kaden was standing was 100% legitimate.

Another background fact – this was never intended to be the ending of Yogos 2. Which is why it comes off as so out of place and feels like a bit of a letdown. Kaden and Matt took off for the day and like I mentioned before tensions were running just a bit higher than they should (especially for making fucking Yogos). I decided I just wanted to finish editing it and call it a day. Later that night Matt sent me a message with some new ideas for concluding Yogos 2, and I shamefully gave him the news – it had already been uploaded to YouTube and shared on Myspace. The damage was done.

I will add that the “credits” sequence may be my favorite part of this video. The one downside is that we realized we only had two shots of Matt to work with – both of him being shoved out of the way by me. He operated the camera through most of Yogos 2 and is credited with having captured most of the behind the scenes stuff and as a result all we had (short of adding something artificial) was this clip that had already been used previously. Still, the music, me struggling with the swim cap, Kaden yanking my jammers (swimsuit) up further, all turned out beautifully.

While I had a lot of negative things to say, reception was still pretty strong. My Myspace inbox was (mostly) full of praise. But the response I got most was a question that I began to dread hearing for well over a decade – when is Yogos 3 coming out?

Yogos 3 Trailer https://youtu.be/0PIAUf6Wui4

Like I said two seconds ago, we had a lot of people asking when the conclusion to the Yogos trilogy would be releasing. We had no fucking clue, we could barely finish the sequel. It was still important to us to keep people interested. I do not recall whose idea it was, but the Yogos 3 Trailer had three constraints as we entered production: it had to be under one minute long, could not feature any unnecessary filler, and had to be funny – specifically to us. We had a few ideas for things that we knew would get a few chuckles from people who already liked the previous entries. It was important to us that people mostly without a bias would think it was enjoyable.

Again I’d like to think our editing process had improved and that that fact is on display in this short video. I still think the intro featuring the Cowboy Bebop music holds up great.

The whole bit in Albertsons was fun yet stressful to film. This was 2007 and smartphones were still a ways off from being the norm. This meant we were holding an old school digital camera in the middle of the store. Getting the shot of me picking up the Yogos from the shelf was easy. The checkout area was PACKED. We were all nervous about being told we couldn’t record. Finally in one of my few “fuck it” moments at this age, I just went for it. I got a decent shot of scanning the box with the self-checkout beep pretty well. We absolutely were getting looks from both customers and staff and beelined for the exit right after I stopped recording.

Enter the unknown character. The first face in the series that was not mine, Matt, or Kaden’s. His sneaking abilities were off the charts and his screams as he ran away with my Yogos had me breaking in almost every take. You can see me trying not to laugh in this scene after he runs off.

And then we have THE part. It was the only bit we were sure we wanted to have in the video, planned well before we started shooting: “I’m getting those fuckin Yogos.” Now at the time I had actually been attending a lot of church functions (lmao) and if you look close enough you can tell I don’t actually say the word fucking. This part still makes me laugh years later, mostly because I imagined the reaction of my friend’s moms and how they’d be sort of shocked but still laughing.

But really, truly my favorite part of all the Yogos videos: editing in the Halo 3 trailer. I’ve said that there are parts that still make me chuckle, but whenever I get to this scene I actually laugh out loud. Which is sorta lame because this part was entirely my idea and tacked on at the last second. I still can’t believe how well everything lined up – from “this is the way the world ends,” to the gorgeous looking 3, to “FINISH THE FIGHT 2007” (just to be clear yes, Yogos 3 was originally slated for release that year). Also, it was difficult to get it to look right. The original cut of the Halo 3 trailer had the Bungie logo between the “3” and “Finish the Fight.” Cutting the Bungie logo while maintaining the musical impact (again using windows movie maker) was far and away the most difficult bit of editing throughout the series.

Let me be very clear – we were riding high after this. Our heads had been slightly inflated by the praise we had received and were absolutely confident the second half of the script for Yogos 3 (yea, we were doing scripts now) would come to us easily and we’d be able to piece it together over the course of a week or so without too much trouble.

Y’all ever notice how Yogos 3 never came out?

Yogos 3

Fun fact about Yogos 3: it was about 60-70% complete when we threw in the towel. Like, we were pretty close. And it started off mostly strong: an overly artistic intro with me walking through the Hills West neighborhood intercut with opening credits, complete with Nirvana’s All Apologies (home edition version from Best of the Box). I even encounter a mime. Like, literally we ran into a friend outside of Albertsons who had mime makeup, and we worked it into the intro.

I want to add this now so I don’t ruin everything at the very end – Yogos 3 is never coming out. There’s no way we could ever do it justice following a 16 year hiatus. The last scene we had in the original cut was me jumping out a (first story) window and walking down my parent’s backyard. Over the last decade and half we have joked about how funny it would be if we cut from that scene to an HD, modern day Sean walking through the backyard without acknowledging the time gap in any way whatsoever. We still think that’d be pretty damn funny. It’s nowhere near enough to merit the effort required (including Matt flying in from Texas) to give it a proper sendoff.

Anyway, back to the summary of what we had for Yogos 3.

After the admittedly overly artsy intro, I show up at a friend (Kaden’s) house and knock on the door. He opens it, and simply yells “dude, get help.”

So enters the therapist. The first/only character in the series that is played by a woman. She’s posted up behind the desk in my room and came up with ideas to fill the void left by Yogos. She suggests encouraging a fixation around my hair (I fucking loved my how my hair looked at this point in my life). The camera cuts back to me and pans upward as the screen fades to white (we were attempting to show the next scene as a thought in my head and not a real event) and it transitions to a scene of what looks like me chugging shampoo. It was actually a bottle of that “candy” that was just a literal syrupy candy that fructose corn syrup and strawberry flavoring, hidden behind a bottle of Garnier fructis. The shot fades to white and then the camera pans back down to me on my bed. I shake my head and she moves on to her next suggestion.

This is where everything lost traction. We knew we had to have three options to replace the Yogos addiction. We had shampoo, butter mints (the third of the three), but #2 was difficult for us to come up with. What we ended up with was bagel bites. There is another transition meant to indicate a thought in my head. It cuts to a shot from the camera, placed in an oven, looking at me as I try to grab a tray of (still frozen but supposed to be cooked) bagel bites. It fades to black and we tried, and tried, and tried to add some sort of scream to yknow, indicate that I burned myself trying to grab them. We couldn’t get it to work (be funny) and going back to the drawing board for this scene didn’t seem like an option. We’d need the therapist again. We were all 14-15 at the time and her Dad was not exactly stoked on her hanging out with us. It was either cut the scene, start it fresh, or make an attempt to have everyone in the same clothing to add the middle sequence. We eventually settled on none of the above.

Back in the therapists office, I again shake my head to say that no, bagel bites will not suffice to replace Yogos. Finally, the Doctor declares she has it figured it out – my new fixation will be butter mints. Until a few weeks prior none of us knew butter mints even existed, and they sounded gross as hell. She very conveniently had a box of butter mints in her desk that she threw at my head. I was not receptive to them, and the gal we had playing the therapist gave an absolutely stunning delivery of “do it” as she took her glasses off and glared at me.

This led to me facing out the window, putting a handful of butter mints in my mouth, and then unapologetically ripping of Yogos 1 by spitting them all out slow motion. At this point I gave up on the therapy and hopped through the window.

That was the last Yogos scene we ever shot. We were all pretty busy between school and sports, and basically we lost interest. It had been too long since we posted a video (got praise) and our motivation ran dry.

We never really came up with an ending. Obviously it boils down to either I get the Yogos, or find a new fixation. You can pick whichever conclusion you’d prefer 😊

To conclude, we just have the legacy of Yogos. I have something like 30 videos on my YouTube channel. As of today, only six are viewable to anyone save me. Half of these are of course the Yogos videos. After a few instances of people in a new work environment discovering my YouTube channel and seeing this previous version of myself, I wanted to obliterate them from existence. At one point I took 1, 2, and the trailer and set them to private. Let me again be very clear – I did not receive any sort of overwhelming backlash, begging for their return. What I did get was about three people over the span of a month or so asking what happened to them. The first was surprising, the second was just weird (had never met the person, they were just a random youtuber who commented on how funny they found my socks) and the third finally convinced me to set them to public again. Number 3 wasn’t any sort of emotional “please put them back up” just a “yo what the fuck where are the Yogos videos?” and it was enough for me to realize that owning up to the embarrassing 7 combined minutes of YouTube stardom was just sort of part of the Sean package. I’ve only been at my current job since August and I dread the inevitable. At some point with every job I’ve had (with the exception of working at Amazon and Uber) someone finds my channel and the potential to repeat the middle school incident of no one in the room reacting in any way presents itself.

At least I’m pretty good at handling it at this point. And depending on how you choose the story ends – at least I got those fuckin Yogos.

 

 

 

 

               

Spicy Food

                I’ve been plagued by my share of self-inflicted vices over the years. Whether it be sugar, alcohol, nicotine – I always have backup indulgence to get some of those happy brain chemicals in motion. Should the situation call for a serotonin hit where none can be reasonably ingested – in comes the spicy food.

                It all comes back to me not liking pizza as a child. I fuckin hate tomatoes. I liked pizza until I was something like 6 years old, then found it disgusting (if it had red sauce) until I was in high school. By 14 or so liking pizza just made a lot more sense – how the hell else could teenagers without cars get food delivered? Ordering pizza meant freedom. ALSO, my friends never ordered extra sauce, which my parents had a habit of doing when they placed their orders at Pizza Hut. Throw in stuffed crust and all of the sudden pizza was again palatable for me.

                So we have this 8 or so year gap between 1^st grade and freshman year of high school where I just straight up didn’t eat pizza. In elementary school I strove to be part of the group of students who hit X reading goal or Y math points to get to have a “pizza party.” It’s probably pretty obvious at this point but I didn’t give a shit about the pizza, I wanted to have the special time with my friends who always also hit the party criteria. It became something I enjoyed: bringing my pb+j, the teacher (if they weren’t my direct educator) being slightly confused, and me saying “oh no, I don’t like pizza, Alden and Jeremy can have my slices.”

                Just because I didn’t like pizza didn’t mean the world around me stopped liking pizza. My family ordered some pies on a regular basis (especially before my parents did a low-carb diet for the first time). Finally sometime in the very early 2000s, Pizza Hut began to offer wings in addition to pizzas. My mother grudgingly offered to add an 8-piece serving of wings the next time they were about to ring up the Hut. I jumped at the opportunity.

                Pain. Pain was the result. Guys, like, yea, it was probably because I was 10 or 11, but those wings were HOT and I maintain to this day that if the wings they served at the time were their “regular” nowadays, they would be Tik Tok challenge level. Keep in mind I wasn’t ordering mild or spicy or whatever, I was ordering “wings,” period, aka the only option at the time.

**It’s necessary to add at this point that I acknowledge it’s sound a bit like I’m whining about how I didn’t like pizza as a kid and had to suffer through eating spicy food. I can understand if that’s your interpretation at this point, but at its core this is a story about how being a picky eater as a child turned me into a rad adult who is beyond thankful for his accommodating parents.  

                Still, I preferred the pain as opposed to eating something boring like toast, instead of pizza. It did not take long before I desired that buzz (not that I knew what a buzz even was at the time) that came along with eating food that made me sweat mildly. One clear memory from this time was playing Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles (why does no one talk about that game?) on my PS1. My mom yelled down the stairs saying they were ordering pizza, and I simply screamed back “WINGGGGGGGGGGGS!”

                Then finally in high school, I met the love of my life – Sriracha. Suddenly I had the power to make anything as spicy as I wanted it (at the time). It was perfection in sauce form. From then on, whenever I was at a restaurant or getting takeout, I always made sure to choose a spicy option and to add some sriracha to whatever it was for that extra kick.

                Suddenly college arrives. Pizza Hut wings have now expanded into a selection of something like 12 sauces. Wing Wednesday became a weekly source of excitement for my roommates and I. I understand it’s a pizza chain – that being said, their Buffalo Burnin’ Hot is still a respectably spicy hot sauce. Even nowadays it’s not something I can just toss down the mouth chute, it takes a bit of finesse. In 2012 it was an absolute struggle to make it through the 14-piece order of wings ($7.57 out the door at the time) but goddamn, did I love every bite. It hit a weird point when I started adding other sauces to it (yknow, sriracha and the like) and realized I needed to step up my game.

                Enter Thai Ginger: the small Thai restaurant only a ~10 minute walk from our college houses. The first time I went was especially disappointing as I ordered “spicy chicken.” It was a generic mixture of vegetables I didn’t really like with miniature bits of chicken. The next time I went, a friend of mine strongly recommended I order the pad Thai and holy shit what a revelation that lunch was. Sriracha is perfection as a sauce as pad Thai is perfection to a complete meal.

                A few visits later it hits me – I can order these noodles at spice levels 1-4. I started ordering the 3 star option on a regular basis and y’all I am just having the fondest memories right now. Needing to pause to order more water continue eating, entering into a coughing fit in which I had to exit the building to catch my breath, most of the classically embarrassing moments you experience as you journey through your spicy food adventures.

                As I got older and moving around quite a bit I kept on the hunt for restaurants that would serve adequately spicy food. Once I had moved back to Richland from Seattle, I began slowly taking inventory of Thai restaurants until I found one that stuck (it took several). I gave up on ordering anything under the spiciest option because while my tolerance had indeed shot through the roof in recent years, most restaurants don’t take you seriously when you order over the phone and say you want the hottest thing on the menu.

                Finally, I get the details on the best Thai food I’ve had in Tri-Cities. I go with some friends who were regulars. Like many places it offers a scale of 1-5 for spice. When it came to my turn to order, using the insider advice I had been given, I asked for the beef pad Thai with 10 stars. The server looked over at one of the regulars who nodded, and said “give it to him like Hailey always gets it.” She looked back at me, still with an inquisitive expression and I said “I would like to embarrass myself.” The server appeared unconvinced but clearly wrote down my order as I had intended. When she came to drop off the food I distinctly recall her saying “smelling this plate just gave me a stomachache.”

                Admittedly I was pretty silent for most of the meal. A lot of my energy was focused on “keep it cool, you wanted this.” I had the foresight to order a Thai Iced Tea as well, which is nothing less than magic (or chemistry or whatever the fuck) for helping with spice. I did not clear the plate (because I literally never do, restaurant portions are almost always two meals) but managed to hit that “full” feeling without too much trouble.

                Christmas 2020 hit a while later. Being 27 I basically had all the shit I really needed and could afford to purchase most recreational items I desired. When the family asked me for Christmas ideas, I (without entirely realizing it) suggested the same thing to everyone who asked – hot sauce.

                Come January 2021 I had over 20 new bottles of hot sauce in my apartment. Some of them are gone now, some still unopened (as I got some duplicates), and one which looks like it hasn’t been touched. This is where an interesting divide happens with spice people – there is a line between spice being there for “fun” while still adding to the dining experience, and it being a novelty which exists solely for pain inducing antics. Mad Dog 357 hot sauce absolutely falls into the latter, I would never actually put this on food to enhance it. It’s something that I take out of the cabinet, put the slightest of slight amounts on a piece of bread or something similar, and serve to myself and whoever the hell is dumb enough to embark on this adventure with me. While I do drink alone, I do not consume MD 357 solo.

This all culminates into what I've observed to be my "perfect spice" level to be. Buldak ramen, the black label. Prepare it just as the label requests. Add some Sriracha and some Hot Ones Last Dab sauce, throw in a bit of rotisserie chicken, and the result is the closest thing to a euphoric drug experience achieved via food that I have discovered in these last 30 years.

                While I’m confident enough to say I’m a good bit above average in terms of spice tolerance, I’d like to make it clear that I’m nothing special. I’d never enter a competition for who can eat the spiciest food it the greatest portion. If I do go to a restaurant that claims they have some mind bending sauce, I’ll usually order a side of it to dip my stuff in, just to see what the fuss is about.