Tinsel, Reindeer, Eggnog, in That Order

the secret to the holidays

You’re still here? God I love to see it. Thank you for reading and have a happy holiday season!

Self-Promotion Roundup

I KNOW EVERYONE LOVES SELF-PROMOTION RIGHT?

First and foremost, my YouTube channel is now an Official Artist Channel.

Josh Belville, music note

Which is funny because I only have 33 subscribers. But all of my music is up on my channel and not other channels masquerading as me, which is awesome. If you’re on YouTube please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already! It’s easy and I honestly don’t post very often (and am not planning on uploading Twitch streams like I used to, only clips on occasion!). I like to make content when I feel like it, not all the friggin time, taking up your precious mental bandwidth.

The Aberrant Ziggurat is up and running. This week’s episode is about the amount of Bradys necessary to make a Very Brady Christmas—an incredibly Scientific and Important thing to discuss. I told you, each episode is its own thing. Don’t expect cohesion. If you want to submit prompts, you can on my website! Please submit something. Anything! Doesn’t have to be an “idea,” could just be a word.

Streaming is still happening. This month we’re diving into Sam & Max: Save the World and The Outer Wilds, along with 7 Days to Die with Twitch integration enabled, allowing you to spawn zombies to attack me. If any of that sounds interesting to you, head to my Twitch channel! Oh also I MADE $100 as an affiliate! It took me for-fucking-EVER. Thanks to my subscribers (aka my friends) for making that happen! I’m only about $4,900/month away from streaming being a viable work replacement!

Speaking of my website, I have updated it! I learned some new CSS tricks! They mostly work. I tried making it scale to mobile … which kind of works. It’s arguably the greatest change to my site ever and was easier than I thought it would be, but for some reason it doesn’t work on Chrome mobile for reasons I can’t fathom yet. It works on other website apps though, so who knows. I do plan on adding poetry and the old sprite comics I used to make, as well as lore and worldbuilding to the D&D worlds I’ve made over the years. A fun project. My website is my “building a ship in a bottle.” I put all the stuff I’ve made over the years there, just because. If you like it, good! If you don’t, well, that’s cool too bro.

Health(care) Update

I’ve been complaining about my colonoscopy bill for ages now. About $3,500 (after insurance) for me to pay after they snipped out two polyps out of the Big Boy (which is what I call my colon). After having an existential crisis about trying to budget paying off $3,500, I decided to apply for financial assistance to see if I could get some of it taken off. I read through the requirements and assumed that, if I even qualified at all, it would be for, at most, 25% off my bill. Which would be great!

It took a couple of months for my claim to process, and yesterday I got this letter in the mail:

You’re reading that right: they waived my ENTIRE THING. I was both Aghast and Agog when I read this. I still am! I thought I made too much money. I don’t make a ton of money but I literally got a raise right before submitting this claim. But they waived the whole thing! It’s a Christmas Miracle!

This is especially good because on the 22nd I am starting genetic counseling to see if I have the Lynch syndrome gene, and if I do it’ll probably be the beginning of a bunch more medical bills. So it’s nice to know that I might be able to get financial assistance for that as well.

The moral of this story though it JUST DO THE THING. Apply for the job, audition, shoot your shot with that person you like, just go for it. I didn’t even think the financial assistance would help at all but it helped ENTIRELY. So who knows, maybe you think you’re not qualified for your dream job, but you totally are! Maybe you’ll get that raise if you just ask for it. Follow your dreams. Pursue your heart. Take aim at the moon. Why are you shooting at the moon though? I don’t understand that one. Please don’t shoot at the moon.

Burrito Time

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I like to tweet whenever I make burritos. It’s probably super annoying but I don’t care. Lately I’ve been trying to make a good taco seasoning, now that I have a bunch of spices. Turns out I was just not putting enough seasoning in, because I made some yesterday (12/14) and I fuckin NAILED IT.

I used this recipe from McCormick for the base and that’s when I realized I hadn’t been using enough spices at ALL. Five teaspoons of paprika?! I was definitely not using that much. So I added all the stuff and then I added about 1 tsp of Tajin as well because it has a lime flavor that I thought would work well. (If you decide to make this seasoning yourself I would only use 1 tsp of salt if you’re going to add the Tajin.)

I don’t know why I’m so proud of putting spices together. It probably stems from me being such a picky eater as a kid; now that I’m an adult I really love flavorful foods like Mexican and Indian and so being able to make dishes like that is really exciting to me.

If you’re REALLY interested (and you should be if you’re reading my goddamned newsletter), my burrito was made with the following:

• flour tortillas

• 4 cheese mexican blend

• seasoned rice (basically with the mccormick seasoning listed above, just a lot less)

• bell peppers

• onion (red onion this time)

• black beans (I like to get the canned seasoned black beans)

• canned corn (no salt added)

• ground beef with the very good taco seasoning

• sour cream

• green salsa

• chipotle Tabasco sauce

• crushed up blue corn chips

The trick is to add the cheese on the top of the tortilla before you heat it up. Gets the cheese all melty. Next time I do this I will definitely add guacamole, I was going to buy some at the store but it’s expensive as all get out. So I got the green salsa instead which wasn’t the same at all but was still pretty good, if very hot.

Moral of the story is buy spices. Spices are life. Just like that Dune thingy. You know the one I’m talking about. With the big worms? Yeah. That one.

YouTube Time

I found a newsletter I wrote back in 2020 where I discussed YouTubers I liked and it was basically the same people I talk about now, which is embarrassing because I keep forgetting what I’ve said and where I’ve said it. Anyway, here’s some vids.

Can’t believe Matt has 100 of these dang videos out!

So I was making grilled cheese the other day and I had some parmesan that I really wanted to get rid of so I attempted to do the above thing, except with parmesan on the outside instead of cheddar. It failed, miserably. I’ve never been able to do this right and I think it’s because I don’t use enough butter. I basically ripped my sandwich apart on the skillet which was a nightmare to deal with. (Sandwich was still pretty good though.)

This video reminds me of VH1. That is all. I used to watch Insomniac Music Theater because I had insomnia as a teenager and this song was on CONSTANTLY. I hated it at the time but it is actually very good! I was a dumb teenager!

Technology Connections is such a great channel, and was the reason why I got my dishwasher fixed, because he has a great video about dishwashers. He likes to talk about reasonably mundane technological stuff, but does so in a charming and fun way. I’m one of those guys who loves “boring” stuff like that. Maybe you are too?

Civvie11 plays old games. That’s about it! I like his channel though.

SEE YOU IN 2022!

Hope your holidays are happy and that you aren’t, like, set on fire or anything. Jesus that would suck. Please stay away from open flames, okay? Thanks.