Making the labored cake sex analogy an evolving reference in this extended friend group amuses me very much. Especially since it isn’t cohesive in its meaning the more parts that get added to it.

I had to let my Nintendo Online subscription lapse because the economic recovery that I keep hearing about hasn’t yet reached my part of the economy. Since I haven’t had time to play the one game I went online to play for a while it seemed silly to keep paying the frankly ridiculous price for it. Unfortunately that meant that all the ancillary things I did use every day also went away, like the music app and the Animal Crossing DLC. The DLC is the thing that annoyed me most though because after paying for the online account for years I feel like I more than paid for that DLC. Asking for a further $24 to unlock it without an active account seems greedy. The thing is, I don’t even really like the DLC. It’s just the principle of the thing. I’ve had an active account for over 6 years. If nothing else I earned that fucking DLC.
Of course all the old games you can play on a Switch also got locked up again. Games I still own physical copies of by the way. I’ll have to drag out my old hardware to play Some of them again. Not that I was going to. Again, it’s the principle. This owning nothing and being happy isn’t working for me. I think ownership is a key feature in my happiness equation.
There’s a device you can buy for various game systems that lets you store game files all in one cartridge and play them on old hardware. Flashcart. That’s what it’s called. It just came to me. The top of the line one that everyone wants costs about 300$ when last I looked. I kept putting it off when times were good because times were good and 300$ is still a lot of money for me even when times are good. Now times are not good and I have no flashcart for my very nice HD SNES. Have I learned anything from this? Only academically. I’m sure I’ll do the exact same thing again if times ever go back to being good. The flashcart isn’t a necessity since I do own the old games still. At least until I manage to accept the reality of my situation and give them up. The big draw is that all that software fits easily in one thing, so you don’t have to dig through a box of games every time the mood strikes you. At one point I think most gamers figured we’d get to a beautiful version of the future where we didn’t have to pay for our old games in perpetuity, and we could just have them on one very nice game system. People who love money much more than the average gamer of 20 years ago made sure that did not happen. Of course we all passively helped, so it’s our own fault on some level. Consumers who can’t advocate for themselves will always be turned into pay pigs eventually. Oink oink.
I know there’s other blogs where I go over this exact scenario when I was trying to talk myself in to investing in the flashcart. The only reason it’s even in my head is because something I wasn’t even really using has been taken from me and that’s what’s made me annoyed. I may not be actively using all my stuff all the time, but that doesn’t mean I want it taken away. It’s the same argument I hear about LEGO or whatever. You aren’t playing with it right now so what does it matter? It matters because it’s mine and I CAN choose to use my stuff whenever I want. It seems very simple to me. I got the thing so I would have the thing available when it becomes subject to my whim. I’m not always counting my money but that doesn’t mean I want it taken away and given to random people because I’m not actively observing it every hour of the day.
In any case I’ll figure a way to solve this problem eventually. Someone somewhere knows how to build these devices and they’ll reveal their secrets online eventually. I already have a PS3 75% ready to load every game file up till the PS1 era into. I just have to have the time to deal with the online portion of the setup. You may thwart me for some time, but I am relentless. The man can’t watch me all the time.

Mom is still ridiculously tired from the chemo. It is displeasing to think that this is going to go on every month or so for several long, long, long months. Through the winter no less… Everyone keeps saying it’s going to be a hard winter too. Daunting.

Well, I’ve taken too long on this already so I’ll leave you to your own devices again. More comic to follow on Wednesday. Stay hydrated until next we meet.

3051 Hotdogs And Cake.

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