All's well here at The Dispatch. The snail have formed a choir and say that they want to learn Handel's Messiah. They said that they are going to perform it for us at sunrise on Easter morning. We can't tell if they are actually practicing or if this is a prank that they are trying to pull on us to get us out of bed so early. We have also never heard any of them sing before. We'd be taking a pretty big leap of faith, but they're saying that's what Easter is about.

Game Boy 👾

• Magic: The Gathering
  • Played more commander with friends in person and on Tabletop Simulator; More Arena too
  • Tried out this Coin Flip Deck that looks really rad and would be pretty cheap to make something like this in real life
  • Been thinking about Magic as the epitome of game as an artistic medium and will need to write about that after I think about it some more
• More Ori and the Will of the Wisps
  • Still fun, and feels like it'll be a good size of game that I can complete and not feel like I need to keep playing after the main story is over

Coding Corner 👨🏻‍💻

• Letting things fail
  • I have a strong tendency to want to make sure that everything is under control (so that I'm not panicked)
  • But I can't control every aspect of my work anymore and have to trust others to take care of some things
  • But I also know that others don't know the specifics or have the context/experience I do to always make the correct decision
  • So I spend time and energy checking up on the statuses of things I'm not directly responsible for so I can help if I need to
  • People don't learn unless they fail though, so I need to stop paying attention and let small things fail if they aren't my responsibility
  • This seems obvious when I write it out, but it's been hard for me to train myself out of the habit of being the helper/hero

Albums 🎧

• "Magnolia Electric Co." by Songs: Ohia
  • Whole mindset and soundscape / poetic landscape that comes with this album
  • The deluxe version has the demos after the main album
• "Twin Fantasy" by Car Seat Headrest
  • "Stop smoking, we love you"
  • Feels like an album for white boys in their 20s, so it resonates with me
• "Teens of Denial" by Car Seat Headrest
  • Some pretty iconic lines and deeply ingrained mantras at this point
  • "Hangovers feel good when I know it's the last one, and then I feel so good that I have another one"
• "Capacity" by Big Thief
  • Becoming work music, which maybe I don't want it to be
• "Lost In The Dream" by The War On Drugs
  • Good to listen to, but I didn't pay very much attention to
• "The Record" by boygenius
  • First song sounds like Mountain Man and immediately sold me
  • "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" quote from Leonard Coen that they reference explicitly
  • Last song references "Me & My Dog" and man I love when artists reference older songs and melodies (like Mount Eerie does a lot)

Podcasts 🎙

• Dungeons and Daddies
  • Been listening to season 2
  • Very funny still even though the vibe is a little more gruesome