Help Me, I Am Trapped in Satisfactory

I have no butt and I must fart

Nov 15, 2021

Hi, welcome to my newsletter! I try to publish these twice a month, once at the beginning of the month and once in the middle. I hope you enjoy reading my very random thoughts!

Jesus Godfrey Daniels, It’s Almost 2022

Are you seeing this shit?

Have you looked a calendar recently?

It’s NOVEMBER, people. November 2021! Not only did we experience 2015, which is when Marty McFly traveled to to save his children in the hit film Back to the Future Part II, but we’ve surpassed that! I don’t know why but for some reason, growing up, 2015 felt like the end. Can’t go beyond that. Back to the Future Pt II was the end of the line.

Can you even remember what happened since March of 2020? I can’t. I’ve been holed up in my apartment. (Well, two apartments now.) I’ve fed my cat a lot. I panic shop at the grocery store. I see friends but digitally. I got a colonoscopy—okay I remember that pretty well, except the actual event (thanks anesthesia). It’s mostly a blur. Lots of monotony that my brain has weeded out and flushed down the drain. My brain is probably a pile of mush right now, just sloshing around in my skull as a dozen neurons hold on for dear life. “He saw a cat on his walk!” one of them shrieks, waking up the others. “Get it in long term storage! Now!”

I hope your 2021 has been going well, despite these Unprecedented Times. I feel like they’re Precedented at this point, right? Make sure you get vaccinated and get that booster shot if you can!

The Aberrant Ziggurat!

In 2015 I made a podcast of short stories written using anonymous prompts from listeners. I posted them for free on Tumblr using the “Audio” post; since the limit was 10mb, I made sure my episodes were no larger than 10mb. I called it the Aberrant Ziggurat and I made 14 episodes and one bonus episode. Then I got rid of Tumblr for some reason and the episodes were lost in the Disney Vault.

Fast forward to about a month ago. I found myself listening to the old episodes on my computer and I enjoyed them! They’re funny and quirky and interesting and I am proud of 2015 me for making them. The sound quality isn’t the best but I was trying to compress some of them so they would fit on Tumblr. Oh well.

Anyway, I am re-releasing them as a podcast (wherever you get your podcast) and on my personal YouTube channel, starting December 6th and on every Monday thereafter. YouTube episodes will be released on Wednesdays. You can listen to the teaser trailer here:

Once these episodes are all out, I will begin Season 2 in May! Want to help? Submit your (anonymous) prompts here: https://forms.gle/6ytt21PcEJwQk9yj8

I’d really love it if you had a listen and if you like it, please share it with friends!

Satisfactory

I’ve been playing a game called Satisfactory a lot. A LOT. The basic gist is that you build a factory, but there is also an element of exploration and you can build trains and stuff. Here’s what my factory looks like right now:

Yeah doesn’t this look like fun?

Really, Satisfactory is like a Zen garden for nerds. You get this big space and you can use it to build things that help you build other things. It is definitely my new chill out game, the type you play when you just want to zone out and not worry for a few hours. I highly recommend it. It’s in Early Access on Steam but it might as well be done. It’s done enough to be enjoyable. There are some quirks and annoyances but overall it’s just a really fantastic game. Go get it!

My Bathroom Has A Motion Sensor Fan

My new apartment’s bathroom has a motion sensor fan. This sounds pretty great, right? In reality it’s not and makes no sense, but I do like the concept of frantically waving your arms around to get the fan to suck up your shit stink. It reminds me of motion sensor lights in bathrooms and how you always end up in the dark while you’re pooping.

So you walk in and the fan starts going. You take a shower and the fan is going. You sit down to poop and the fan is going. You actually poop and … the fan stops. Because you’re not moving, unless, again, you are waving your arms like the inflatable tube man. Or, I dunno, maybe you move a lot when you take a shit. I don’t. I reenact the Thinker pose—or as I call it, the Stinker—during my entire time on the toilet. So while I am actually making the donuts, as the kids say, the fan is not moving, not pulling up any stink. Then I flush and the fan goes again, but it ends a few seconds after I leave, because, again, it’s not sensing motion. So the stink just … sits there, like in a bathroom in the pre-ceiling fan days (roughly the late 1800s).

More importantly, it stops creating circulating air after a shower, which means there’s nothing to help prevent mold growth. (BTW, you should leave your fan on [or your door open if you don’t have a fan] after you shower for a few minutes to dry out the room and help prevent mold growth.) I really don’t have a point to this segment, it’s just weird. Just let me turn the damn thing off and on myself!

I Made A Food

As many of you know, I really enjoy occasionally making a meal that is, for almost everyone else, the easiest thing in the world, but for me is like inventing calculus. Making meals for me is usually out of necessity; in this case it was because some dubious bank shenanigans left me with a piddling amount of money until payday. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” Albert Einstein once said, and so I delved into my cupboards and fridge, seeking something that would become my food that wasn’t popcorn.

I had a Plan. See, during my last grocery excursion I had purchased some Grounded Beef, some of which I kept in the freezer like a smart boy. I also had a whole jar of pasta sauce (flavored with meat, but more like flavored with sugar. This shit was sweet. Not terrible, but too sweet), but no pasta. So I thought, “Oh I’ll just cook the ground beef in the pasta sauce and then eat that.” Now I know what you’re thinking: eating ground beef in pasta sauce on its own sounds exactly like what a 38-year-old bachelor would eat. In my mind’s eye, I had imagined adding rice to it, because I was out of pasta, but in all honesty I probably would’ve eaten it without, because I am a 38-year-old bachelor.

Side tangent: I have spices now, so I am slightly more advanced than your average 38-year-old bachelor. I’ve put an egg in Maruchan ramen. I’m hip, I’m capable.

Anyway, prior to my pasta sauce surprise, I had made a staple of my short list of Meals I Make, a pièce de résistance I like to call “Beans Rice & Corn.” Now listen. I am an adult, and I get to do whatever I want, okay? But I will admit that in the past, I would make this with just salt and butter. So imagine rice, black beans, and corn, with some butter and salt. Sounds boring, right? Yeah! It was boring! But I’m kind of a boring guy!

But this last time I made it? Spices. Okay? Spices. We got some onion powder, we got some garlic powder, we got some paprika and chili powder. Black pepper and uh, other stuff that I can’t remember right now. I took this meal up to an 11. Okay, a 7. (It actually was pretty good.)

So I had leftovers, right? And then the next day I’m browning my beef

and then simmering my sauce in the beef and it smells great, it’s smells lovely, and I realize, Hey. You should put the BR&C in there. Do it. Do it you magnificent son of a bitch.

So I did, and I made a … chili? Beans, rice, tomato sauce, beef … it’s a chili, right? I made a cheap-ass chili. This entire segment of the newsletter is how I made a cheap-ass chili. Why did I write this? I should delete it but I’m not going to, because I need content. I need to have something for you to read. I need you to acknowledge me.

It was very good.

YouTube Videooooss

An online newsletter wouldn’t be an online newsletter unless I shared some YouTube videos that I’ve enjoyed recently. These are mostly Halloween-related!

Check Me Out

Hey here’s my social medias. Yeah I know “media” is already plural, go shove it up your aaaaaaaaasssss.

For me: https://linktr.ee/jcbelville

For my streaming: https://linktr.ee/zornog

Okay That’s All

Hey thanks for reading my rambles. One of these days I’ll go outside or something, I don’t know, and I’ll have more to talk about then. See you next time!

The Belville Baguette