october 25, 2024
This week's interesting find is another spooky one in honor of halloweeeeeeeeen wooo! its a website called housecreep, where you can check to see if anyone has had paranormal experiences in the place you live!! SPOOOKY!! the website is a little spammy and hard to navigate (they reeeally want you to upgrade to premium) but i like that they have a specific category for just hauntings you can check out that's not flooded with true crime stuff.
Honestly tho the appeal of this site to me isn't necessarily the information you can look up, but the pranks you could play! Anyone who makes a free account can make a report about any address... you can make a report on your friends' apartment and then be like "whoa dude look what i found?!" hehe
It's also been a long time since i recommended music! I have 2 recs:
a group called Notions that does incredibly quality rap and metal collabs released a song that's on the heavy side i've been loving!
and a band i love, Ad Infinitum, just released a new album and a few of the songs are already stuck in my head even tho i've only listened 2 or 3 times. They're super prolific and put an album out like every year, so if you like symphonic metal and female vocalists that do their own screams i highly recommend!
october 15, 2024
It's BOOK TIME: THE SEQUEL
The book is called Dead by Selena Jacobs
While on vacation i also got this book which cost 25$ for some reason even though it was 2nd hand xD but i couldnt resist because OMG this cover is insane.
I was also enchanted by the fact the publisher is called Mosh Pit Publishing, and there was a link to a website called angelsgameproductions.com on the back. the website doesn't exist any more unfortunately, but you can still read some stuff on the wayback machine. Sounds like the author was in an ugly fight with her editor. Yeesh!
This book and I had quite a turbulent relationship but at the end of it all I find myself honestly quite delighted by the work. It's really corny, very self righteous at times, and reeks of Christian Edgelord circa 2008 (It honestly feels like a spiritual successor to those appocalypse books that were secretly about the rapture. I've never read them but it just has that vibe). But about halfway in when we're introduced to some characters named Mack and Sam I realized:
This book is a dumb action movie, told through the female gaze. The guys are rough and tumble scoundrels, but it's reiterated multiple times that they would never hurt a woman. The female characters are flawless and battle ready and the men exist to help them achieve their goals. The men are trustworthy, empathetic, and follow the main character Bethany's plans unquestioningly because "she knows what she's doing." The realization hit me like a truck full of fresh air and I found myself entirely able to look past any flaws from that point forward.
There are some lore things that didn't make any sense to me at the end, but I assume the author would have explained in the sequel that hasn't come out yet. I'm really wishing the website was still up because I'd love to reach out to her and let her know how much I loved her work. I also want her music recs, because from the book it sounded like we probably have similar tastes. Selena, if you're reading this, email me! amphibiousfloridian@gmail.com
Also, i've added a new buddy to my sidebar! A friend of mine has been working on his indie project and they released a trailer recently that goes SO HARD!! i love it!
october 8, 2024
i'm so charmed by and obsessed with this youtube channel. the humor is so like genx/boomer but the editing is so top notch. they give so many shits and it's so SILLY! pure fun.
i also made this little interactive clickaround adventure in wix last week as a proof of concept for a friend; it was meant to just be a few pages with examples of how to hide clues but i found a series of stock images and got a bit carried away xD
october 3, 2024
HAPPY HALLOWEEN MONTH!!!
to get in to the spirit, here's my interesting find of the week: a website called CreepBay!
at first glance it's a standard product-based blog that's, honestly, just a lot of ads. but it feels a lot more curated than blogs of a similar style, and they spotlight small businesses and creators on etsy. probably going to be visiting again to look for some unique presents in the future!
but aside from all the ads, the REAL treasure is in their non-ad blog posts. they have categories for paranormal activity, peoples' experiences with haunted objects, and roasting weird e-bay sellers. their weird art category is full of inspiration and creators to dive deeper into!
whether you can stomach the ads or the fashion is your style or not, this blog is absolutely run by somebody with a specific voice and taste and i am SO here for it.
september 25 2024
There's something going on with Lasik.
A while ago, i stumbled on a youtuber sharing his experience with lasik eye surgery. it was like a horror movie--so of course, i needed more content like that.
the search led me to a channel basically saying Lasik was awful, sharing peoples' testimonials, etc. it sounds horrible for the people involved, but also was a bunch of reused clips...? i don't doubt the pain of the people giving their testimonials, but the packaging feels fear mongering and a bit vindictive. it didn't feel like i'd stumbled on an awareness channel, more like a personal vendetta.
as someone whose eyesight is pretty good, has always been pretty good, i kinda just put it out of my mind as a "wow good thing I don't have to worry about that".
but i'm a huge fan of medical crime and business scam content, so you KNOW predatory plastic surgery/veneer tech content was on my radar. This youtuber i really like uploaded a lasik video recently that has left me again feeling confused.
I really feel for the people in the testimonials, it sounds like hell to go through. and I don't doubt that there are doctors out there pushing surgeries on people just to make money when they're really not great candidates (which is what most of the bad experiences seem to come down to, people with preexisting conditions that should have been excluded from eligibility)--but there's also just SO much fear mongering around this specific procedure, it seems like maybe people are getting worked up and assuming the worst of their doctors and results preemtively.
The comments on the video are also interesting. Everyone is dickriding for lasik SO hard, claiming it's the best thing that ever happened to them. That's ALSO suspicious and feels like the pro-lasik crowd is overcompensating?
I only know one person who underwent Lasik surgery and she never talks about it. so i'm not sure what's going on here. but there's a weird little battle happening on the internet over medical issues, being fought by people that are not doctors and are mostly informed by their "own research" and i just think both sides are sketchy. the medical system in america is legit just for real evil, but also doubting doctors and science is a real slippery slope.
if you've had lasik or have thoughts on the matter i'd love to hear them! let me know here: amphibiousfloridian@gmail.com . Not a doctor or anything. just curious!
september 17 2024
PIXIE PARK UPDATES
EPISODE 1 IS LIVE! Watch it here! Or click the Book labeled "Pixie Park" in the nav bar!
I stumbled on this youtube channel uploading their old creepypasta animation content:
Their work is so earnest and fun! It really brings me back to 2010s youtube in the most delightful way.
september 11 2024
I've been on vacation for the past few weeks (thus the fact the weekly updates have not been weekly-oops!). I picked up a book of sci-fi and fantasy short stories in a secondhand bookshop and it had some real bangers in it! I thought the intention was supposed to be for it to be a scifi/horror thing, so heads up most of the stories do tend to be a little on the dark side. But i LIKE IT!!
If you want to, you can check out the whole collection on goodreads, but I have a few i want to recommend:
My 2 favorites were:
"Painlessness" by Kristyn McDermott - it's about a goth girl and her mysterious neighbor who's made an interesting business out of not being able to feel pain. it has loads of body horror and mystery, i read it 2 weeks ago and still haven't stopped thinking about how cool it is! PLUS, you can read for .50c here!
"Bitter Dreams" by Ian McHugh - a western horror story with a distinctively Australian voice. super spooky, gorey, and fucking COOL AS HELL. and the author published the whole thing for free to his blog!!
But I liked basically all of them except "Wives" by Paul Haines and "Gossel" by Margo Lanagan. So I feel comfortable recommending the whole book!
I got another book called "Dead" that I'm still reading but that'll probably be its own post. there's certainly a lot interesting about that one xD
august 26 2024
I found this youtube channel that does music videos & little skits--it's SO inspiring and fun. I love their animation style and original music!
and this is a song i can't stop listening to right now!
august 13 2024
I guess this is less of a find and more of a question/observation. I'm crowd sourcing this weeks's interesting thing AND talking about my dreams. Fun for everyone, right?
I had several slice of life dreams recently where I tried to do stuff like write down my phone number and use google maps, and each time it was SUPER difficult. You know how running feels like you're moving through molassas sometimes? It was a similar thing, but happening to my brain. In my dream i used up an entire sheet of paper and had to ask for a new one.
The google maps issue was interesting. The interface itsself held up fine, but the actual locations kept moving and shifting and i was never able to get ahold of where i was.
I don't know if anyone else has ever had a dream where they tried to write or interact with a common interface and i'm curious if your experiences were the same as mine! Let me know here: amphibiousfloridian@gmail.com
Also, this is a song i haven't been able to stop listening to this week:
august 7 2024
i found this band i REALLY love, Deviants! i'm a big fan of their music, as well as their home-made music video aesthetic. it's a really inspiring reminder to make cool stuff with your friends and reminds me of a lot of the stuff my friends and i got up to in college!
through this song, i found another artist they collabed with i really love as well. Images Last lists Ice Nine Kills as one of their musical influences and i can totally tell--and i mean that in the best way possible. as someone who eats up theatricore and anything with a female singer i was instantly sold.