A non-human existence:

As I look outside the window from my one bedroom condo, I see snow outside covering everything, from the trees, the railroad tracks and the community patio that has lawn chairs and a collection of BBQs; never used or booked even once since their completion in late 2019. I look at the time, it’s about 4:44pm on a Monday, for some reason every time I look at the clock it always reads that time, regardless if it’s PM or AM, for some reason I always get a chuckle out of it in my mind signifying to me, yep, I’m dead or rather; I’m done for today. I put on my slippers, put on my surgical mask and make the trek downstairs to the building lobby to collect the mail and any packages from Amazon or whatnot. I open my mailbox, it’s empty: looks like nothing today again, ah well, maybe tomorrow, or maybe I should just skip getting the mail every other day? Maybe I should just go down when I get a email saying I have a package? Nevertheless, this trip was a waste of time and I make my way back upstairs, at least I didn’t encounter anybody else on the way back either; good shit. As I re-enter my unit and while washing my hands I am reminded that my company has a end of year Christmas party this coming Wednesday, I haven’t decided if I was going to go yet considering the rise of the new Omicron variant making it’s waves in the city, so I was a bit worried about catching this new Covid variant; it would be such a waste if I got Covid even after I got my two shots and was considered fully vaccinated, but a part of me felt that I should go regardless, to go see old co-workers; at least the ones that are still around at the company and meet the new ones, the ones that were hired during pandemic times. I have only been back to the office once since the lock downs started in 2020 and even then it was a waste of time, there’s no reason to go into the office anymore other than for water-cooler talk and trying to earn the bosses favor; I’m not that kind of person but maybe I should be, at least in order to make it appear like I miss going to the office, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. I pull my leftovers from last week, popeyes chicken out from the fridge and into my microwave and go back to my couch to turn off my laptop. Before I sign out I take a final look at my outlook email inbox and I see a new message that says that the Wednesday party is cancelled due to rising cases of Covid out of precaution. I close my eyes and assume a horizontal position on my couch as my laptop continues it’s shutdown procedures and internally make a sigh of relief: I guess I don’t have to decide if I’m going to the party after all. With a sense of both joy and mild sadness, I hear my leftover popeyes chicken ready in the microwave and hence go to retrieve it for consumption. While the pandemic has brought upon much hardship and pains these past few years, there’s at least one thing I can be grateful for: at least I don’t have to pretend to be a normal human being anymore. That, and in this ruined world, at least fried chicken still tastes good.

If 2020 was to be remembered as a year of endless ruin because of the covid19 pandemic, 2021 would be remembered in many ways as a continuation of that sentiment; and I would argue that it was even worse than 2020 in many respects, both from a societal, political and economic perspective. What then has changed for the better? What has gotten worse? Let’s reflect upon this past year and the changes and events in our world that has come to define our ‘new normal’ in a raw train of thought manner as per usual in no particular order.

Bad things that have happened:

The covid19 pandemic continues onto another year in full force with new variants such as Delta and Omicron of concern popping up every so often, triggering continued lock downs and measures that effect everyday life. Despite ready to go covid19 vaccines proven by science the voices of anti-vaccine and anti-lock down/covid denial continue to grow in the public and in the social media sphere to much of the detriment of everyone. On Jan 6 Trump supporters attempt a coup in DC because they think the 2020 election was rigged and trash Capitol Hill putting all of congress in danger and damage greatly the foundations of American democracy and further fuel political and social divisions in America. The proceeding aftermath is horrible and the Republicans deny any responsibility and Trump has to this day not been held accountable for the attempted coup even tho he fully incited his supporters to do so. Trump is impeached a second time for this Jan 6 insurrection but it’s just a gesture as the corrupted Republicans would never approve of it anyways in the senate, waste of time. Increased right wing radicalism in America due to political discourse which for some reason has spilled over to even Canada and other regions. More school and church shootings in the US. America and western nations pull out of Afghanistan after almost 20 years in the country after the Afghanistan war trying to rebuild the nation but are quickly overrun by a re-energized and renewed Taliban that quickly take over major cities and soon the entire country in less than a few weeks. Afghanistan society and norms are sent back decades to pre-invasion times. 20 years of war, suffering and battle for absolutely nothing, complete waste of time, America’s status and reputation further takes a hit globally. The Taliban, the terrorists; literally win. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics happened this year…in 2021 and it was a sad and cringe display of covid era measures with no international spectators allowed and later, all spectators even from Japan. The Japanese people wanted to straight up cancel the games amid rising covid cases but they went on ahead due to IOC pressure and money obligations, resulting in local protests right up to the opening ceremony of the games, which was a horrendous boring display of nothing, which could have been so great had it not been for covid. Famed American gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from competition due to unstable mental health, bringing awareness of mental health to the forefront during the games but at the same time immense criticism for being weak and amateurish which were not unwarranted. Former Japanese Olympic gymnast God, Kohei Uchimura, falls in a early qualifying round and fails to be entered into the entire event and is ruined, ending his great Olympic career on a sad embarrassing note. Too many Canadian athletes that were promoted heavily in commercials on TV fail spectacularly at the games and it becomes a sad cringe fest while watching the games like that women boxer. Least memorable Olympic ever probably. Oscars awards happened during covid times and everything that won almost no one had heard of or watched because of 2020 movies were pushed back or withheld to this year, like Dune, James Bond, etc. Some movie called Nomadland won best picture, never heard of that in my life; Tenet won for best visual effects probably because no other heavy special effects movie even dared to show in 2020. Everything else was a cringe forgettable fare that no one cares about. Grammy’s were held, no one cares. Justice League had the Snyder Cut released on HBO Max streaming service and revealed the weird 4:3 aspect ratio de-saturated mindset of what could have been if Zack Snyder had completely directed and finished the Justice League movie with his vision before studio intervention, which while indeed a better product, was like 4 hours long and only marginally better considering the amount of screen time added, the movie is still shit just not as bad as the original 2 hour theatrical release. DC had largely a shit year, with new wonder women 1984 being terribad and the new suicide squad, while apparently not bad, was largely forgotten about already. Marvels Eternal was released and was apparently the worst Marvel movie by a long shot, too bad. Black Widow was finally released but on both streaming and box office causing further dispute between Scarlett Johansson and marvel/Disney about their release agreement, while I enjoyed the movie personally, was criticized heavily by core comic book fans that decried it’s changes to source material and characters which is warranted. Shang Chi was released with much anticipation and praise and while personally enjoyable, was not without it’s glaring flaws and questionable casting choices which was also criticized heavily by many. James Bond happened, and no one really cared. Dune was finally released but it was quickly discovered that it would be a two part movie at least and this one movie would not be the end of it, while personally enjoyable, is not a movie for everyone as it’s essentially OG Space Game of Thrones and very slow moving. Squid Game on Netflix became a thing as a top show worldwide creating a new generation of Korean media simps that think it’s the greatest shit ever when it’s really just a bootleg rehashed formula taken from many older anime and Japanese/asian media. People playing squid game card games at subway stations because they think it’s the coolest shit ever. People cosplaying as the square and triangle masked minions in squid games because they think it’s the hottest shit ever when from an outsiders view people think you are part of some Sony PlayStation advertisement. No real anime or fandom conventions in Canada for a second year in a row of real significance, AN is ruined, FanExpo is ruined even tho they tried, AX in LA tried but it’s not even, AnimeNYC happened but is a ruined waste. Sad. All the artists and merchants that live off of conventions and selling art and whatnot still don’t have a good means to make money and are forced to do their business online to much hassle and significant overhead. Japan to Canada parcel shipping has been a shitshow of nope for the entire year, no EMS, Air or even Surface parcel is available to Canada, making DHL the only option, which is a hell of a lot more expensive than any other option and basically guarantees 100% of the time that you will have to pay duty on your shipped goods, fuck. Makes buying things from Japan very painful and sometimes not even worth it if the price of shipping exceeds the actual value of the items, had to cancel some figures and cut down my orders because the shipping costs are ridiculous. Still can’t travel to Japan, still disallowing any visitors other than business or diplomatic people from entering japan, man, that sucks. Let me in. China is being China even more so than usual this year, cracking down and tightening their grip on culture and society in general in an attempt to control what is popular and the discourse among the population. CCP bans ranking of celebrities and idol contests in the effort to prevent hierarchies and tier lists, which is against the socialist/communist ideology in an attempt to prevent youth from obsessing over their idols and spending all their money buying their goods and shit. CCP bans public displays of wealth on social media and the public in general as it is against the socialist/communist ideology, overnight millions of Chinese people and businesses purge their social media of bling bling brag posts/images out of concern of taking hits on their social credit score. CCP bans and denounces gay looking effeminate men as celebrities and idols as it is against the traditional Chinese ideal of a strong masculine swole buff man, claiming that they don’t want a society that puts wussy gay looking effeminate men in their movies and media, which currently dominate in popularity because of course they do. CCP bans video gaming for teens under the age of 18 with heavy limits on playtime to something like a few hours only on the weekends in an attempt to curve youth gaming addiction while indirectly ruining and putting their own domestic game industry on the cross-hairs with even more restrictive rules and censorship that limit their growth. CCP bans extra school tutoring and foreign online education in an attempt to limit the amount of external knowledge/information that goes into the education of Chinese youth in order to exert more power/control so that wealthy Chinese don’t give their children an advantage over those that cannot afford it. China enacts blackouts to major cities and regions because there is an energy shortage and inconveniences millions of normal citizens. China’s Evergreen real estate development giant is basically bankrupt and has defaulted on it’s outstanding loans in the hundreds of billions and leaves thousands without jobs, thousands of buildings incomplete and many normal Chinese people who invested in real estate to be financially ruined, CCP does nothing, wants them to fall and pick up their assets and essentially nationalize the giant for more centralization of corrupt economic power. China releases Canada’s ‘Two Micheals’ after years of unwarranted detainment after charges against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou from the US are dropped/waived, and the two Micheals are immediately released, proving without a shadow of a doubt that they were political hostages as a result of Meng’s detainment. Meng returns to China and is welcomed home as some kind of hero by the CCP. Canadian and world opinion of China and diplomatic relations with the CCP take a further nosedive, with positive views on China in Canada reaching record lows of like 13-16% percent among the population. Chinese and Asian people in general face increased discrimination as a result of China’s aggressive behavior which is also compounded from last year as a result of Covid19 originating from Wuhan, China. Hong Kong university removes it’s last public memorial of the Tiananmen Square massacre, symbolically marking the end of democratic norms and governance in Hong Kong and it’s inevitable transition to direct CCP control. Hong Kong election only allowed pro-CCP parties, sham election where less than 30% of the population even bothered to show up to vote since it’s all a sham, it’s over. Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accuses high ranking CCP official of sexual harassment/abuse but quickly disappears only to return a few months later saying that her original claims were false and that nothing ever happened, bringing into question what kind of brainwashing or blackmail they have to destroy her family and career. More tensions between CCP and Taiwan escalate and further saber rattling continues, with fear of an unavoidable war/invasion of Taiwan in the near future. Worldwide micro chip and superconductor shortage from Taiwan and parts of China lead to massive shortages of electronic goods from smartphones, tablets, cars, toys, machinery and even console gaming systems. Worldwide supply chain issues results in shortages of everything in general and or slow restock of common goods to more niche things like pokemon and yugioh cards. Suez Canal ship got stuck twice cause people are dumb and can’t drive a shipping container boat that is too big. Canadian real estate prices have gone up to ridiculous levels to the point where most millennials and younger people literally cannot afford to buy a house or property without outside help from family or parents. Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are the worst in price increases but because these places are so overpriced many people continue to leave urban cities for other provinces/cities which cause a ripple effect in those places where the prices also rise to unmaintainable levels. Chinese foreign investment in Canadian real estate is continuing to make matters worse as the CCP cracks down on wealth and money laundering become even more rampant, especially so since Hong Kong has something like 300k Canadians living there which may find themselves back in Canada in a few years if things get bad as Hong Kong transitions to direct CCP control. Inflation has reached the highest it’s ever been in over 20 years to something like 4-6%, meaning that all goods and services will increase in price. Salaries have not increased at all in general and for health care workers despite the pandemic, meaning that if you don’t get at least a pay raise matching the rate of inflation, you are essentially taking a indirect pay cut. All food prices from grocery stores to take out food has noticeable increases in price as a result of rising inflation and high transportation/shipping costs. The Federal minority Liberal government announces a snap election to no ones surprise in order to try to gain a majority government but fail to do so, resulting in more or less the exact same distribution of seats between all major parties due to poor timing with the fall of Afghanistan and increasing covid cases in the autumn. It was a necessary election but an election that resulted in no changes whatsoever and in the minds of many Canadians, felt pointless and a waste since the status quo was preserved. The fact that the Federal election was held in September 20 feels so distant and far away, most Canadians have wiped that event from their mind already since covid still dominates the news headlines everyday. The People’s Party of Canada attract some support due to it’s anti-vaccine anti-lock down platform and gained more attention than most people are comfortable with acknowledging but luckily failed to gain a seat in parliament. The Green Party of Canada implodes upon itself hysterically with it’s terrible leader Annamie Paul making some of the most mediocre and piss poor election campaigns in recent memory. Laughable. NDP just being NDP. The Conservative Party try their best but can’t fool Canadians to what they really are at it’s core and the Liberal Party continue to do more of the same messaging with stagnate results. No one in the federal election addresses issues that people care about like housing, inflation or the economy because all solutions are essentially the same from all parties in slightly varying capacity, which is to do nothing or very little. On a provincial level, Doug Ford continues to do what his party does best in the pandemic, do nothing unless it’s already too late and be completely reactive to public opinion and backlash. While Fords handling at the beginning of the pandemic were admirable in 2020, it’s become blatantly obvious that he won’t do anything proactive to help Ontario through the pandemic like increase healthcare spending, hire more nurses, uncap healthcare workers wages, invest in more hospital infrastructure etc. Continued restrictions and lock-down that make no sense and favors the rich and wealthy, while shitting on small businesses. Poor vaccine administration and confusing and shitty online booking system due to lack of supply and logistical know how results in huge delays in people getting their vaccines and some just giving up in the early days of vaccine rollout. As a result of said lock-downs, Ontario has had some of the most repressive knockdown measures in North America and for the longest stretches of time periods, the lock-down measures from last January 2021 were never officially repealed and didn’t loosen till mid summer, meaning almost half a year of limited capacity at restaurants, malls and other establishments, ruining many businesses that could barely stay afloat. Education and children in Ontario, perhaps all children around world really are completely ruined; an entire generation of children and kids/teens have been going to school or have done online/hybrid learning for over 2 years now, two years of their life in pandemic world which largely can be summed up as wasted; teens that went to to high-school in September of 2019 as a grade 9 are now in grade 11, and in those 2 years have probably learned nothing and have had their high-school years robbed from them with the daily social rituals of school life having all but being completely banished. The discovery of hundreds of mass unmarked graves at indigenous residential schools in BC and in other provinces provided physical evidence of the injustices and cruel treatment of indigenous children by the school and church system which forced the Canadian government to acknowledge it’s wrongdoings of genocide in Canadian history. At a ceremonial day marked out for remembrance for the aforementioned discovery of dead indigenous school children, Day of Truth and Reconciliation, PM Trudeau takes a vacation to BC, which looks terrible politically and acknowledges that it was a mistake, although honestly most people would have done the same if they had a day off work anyways, but no one wants to admit that. Many famous people died in 2021, John Madden, Betty White a few months before making it to 100, Prince Phillip, DMX, Larry King, Christopher Plummer that come to mind along initially. More people die because of anti-vax mentality and stupidity as victims of misinformation, such as those found on reddit’s /r/hermancainaward are prime examples of such stupidity and brainwashing by religious and far right extremism. Continued tensions between anti-black protesters and right wing white supremacists. Increased rise of cancel culture and the cancellation of prominent people/celebrities such as Shia LaBeouf, Marilyn Manson, Ellen DeGeneres, Matt Damon, Gina Carano, J.K. Rowling, Dr. Seuss among other things. Daft Punk broke up after 28 years of music and can now rest and be old grandpas of the electronic music industry. Kayne West and Kim Kardashian announced their divorce, funny shit. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg got grilled after a whistleblower brought to light that the company fully knew that it’s platform encouraged and intensified political division and incited encouragement of extremism for it’s users and did nothing. Facebook changed it’s name to Meta as a result of the bad press and had a terrible cringe presentation with Zuckberg trying to sell us his vision of a virtual Metaverse world and pretending to be a normal human. Web platforms that welcome right wing extremism such as Telegram and Parler remain despite having their data and records investigated by authorities after the Jan 6 insurrection. The GME stock short squeeze was prevented via Robinhood retail trading app, preventing people from buying more GME and exposing the pure corruption of the financial institutions that support them. Meme stocks happened for better or worse and the rise of retail investors growing. China cuts the dick off Chinese stocks and prevents future foreign investment and new stock listing, essentially ruining any illusion that they had that they were a free market. More foreign companies pull out of China. Rich billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson flaunt their space dicks with their private space race for better or worse. Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world for better or worse. Reddit is going to file for IPO and wants to be a publicly traded company, which could adversely effect the moderation and increase the censorship of content on the platform only for the worse (imagine if Tencent brought a majority share of reddit, shudders). CNE cancelled again for the second year in a row. Astroworld Festival in Houston has a crush stampede event during the Travis Scott performance that ends up killing 10 and injuring 300 others which is sad and superbad negligence. Toronto Maple Leafs got absolutely ruined and humiliated in the first round of the playoffs when they were up 3 games to 1 vs the Montreal Canadians only to choke and blow it again, even worse was that this year was supposed to be ‘the year’ in which they take it all the way to the Stanley cup, they even had a film crew making a Netflix documentary about them but in the end it was a waste. Raptors still shit as expected. Argos are shit. TFC are shit. Blue Jays still shit. Putin and Russia move troops close to the border of Ukraine, furthering tensions in the region of a possible invasion of Ukraine and another war that no one really wants to have but Russia. In November world leaders met at COP26 to discuss possible radical change and action in order to stop and curb climate change and global warming but the end result was a big giant nothing burger and all World leaders fail to honor climate pledges of previous summits and essentially do nothing so that everyone will die eventually cause of climate change. An old MIT study research paper from the 70’s has resurfaced that predicts that with the current trajectory that humanity is currently taking we will see the collapse of civilization and society as we know it by 2040, due to lack of natural resources, social and political strife and environmental/geological crisis’s that cannot be avoided. We’ll see about that one. Wildfires and natural disasters in the US like tornadoes and shit fuck shit up in America and many parts of the world. From a professional working level, many people that I knew from work prior to the pandemic have left my company due to much more lucrative jobs offerings on the market today which means that most of the people that that I knew when I started in 2019 are gone. Work continues on with no end in sight for the project that I am working on with directors and big bosses saying that it could take many more ‘years’ for the project to be completed unless they pick up the pace of development and change their approach. While work is fine I am beginning to lose interest in the project and it seems that big bosses don’t recognize/appreciate my contributions to the project as much as I had hoped/liked to and are not being transparent or honest with me in their vision/plan for design in the long run; leaving me feeling frustrated and left in the dark at times as if I am easily replaceable and can be removed/fired/laid off at any time at a whim, which is totally possible. Their reluctance to recognize me as a “Lead” or “Senior” in my position bothers me and their renewed attempts to hire a new “Lead” designer recently to manage all designers in the company somewhat irks me as a slap in the face. Maybe this is all just in my head and I’m making things worse then they really are but I can’t help but think that the big bosses are fucking me over from getting a raise/promotion. Motherfuckers. Had 3 different managers throughout this year, the first two were chill, the newest one, I’m not so sure about as I don’t see her helping me attain a promotion or raise but that has yet to be seen, I’ve only been under her for about less than a month or so. Morale is low in general in my department/company because so many people have left/ are leaving over the past year or so, sad. Hotel near my condo remains a homeless shelter due to covid, with continued panhandlers, hooligans locker theft, vandalism and the such, usual Scarborough fare. Video games in large part at least for console and triple A titles have been mediocre and big name companies like Rockstar have dragged their reputation further in the mud with shit compilation HD remasters of GTA which are just ports of their mobile versions, fucking up everything. Blizzard is still shit, Konami is further ruined. Stopped playing Epic Seven because it’s not fun for me anymore, too pvp guild focus and grind. Didn’t watch as much anime or shows as I wanted to because other things more important like watching vtubers take priority. Coco from Hololive graduated and it’s very sad. Hololive EN still can’t do 3d debut because they can’t go to Japan due to covid travel restrictions. Youtube being a bitch and removing the dislike button because of money and pretending it’s for mental health, when it’s really about ad money and corruption. Youtube shady secret practices with changing algorithms and suppression of anime related channels and vtubers live view numbers because they don’t want anime/vtubers to be always the top trending live streams, or wanting to pay them so much money from ad revenue/ cause corruption. Youtube adding in a fuckton more ads before almost every video live or even archived, at least 2 every times at the start of a video fucking everything up. Having half hour youtube ads auto play is what the fuck levels of bullshit, for example, full anime episode for some anime card game. PS5 still doesn’t exist, at least to my knowledge. No real innovation or movement with Apple or Samsung phones, low stock due to chip shortages. Black Friday was whatever. No internet popular culture development, there hasn’t been a widespread viral meme video or whatever worth speaking about since Coffin Dance from 2020, and there doesn’t seem to be one for the foreseeable future. Youth culture is ruined. No popular songs or hit music unlike last or prior years. OnlyFans announces that it will no longer host pornographic content for members only to backtrack a day or so later and say opps never mind realizing that the majority of it’s users use it to make and sell porn, that it’s their bread and butter. Binance closing shop in Ontario because they don’t want to play by Ontario rules. Haven’t seen the Bros in a long time. Ever since the fall of Afghanistan I haven’t ordered food at a local Afgan kabob places such as “Kandahar Kabob” and “Kabob Guys” because I’m afraid to say something to them about Afghanistan which may or may not be offensive to them or how the terrorists won, which in reality, they too may be Taliban supporters. The Winter Olympics is happening in a few months in China and no one cares because it’s China with all their bullshit recently and most western countries such as Canada and the United States have staged a diplomatic boycott of the games. Trump is going to start his own television and social media/internet company. I learned that in a survival situation if stuck in a desert, drinking water from a cactus will most likely make you sick and is toxic, it’s not safe at all, my entire life watching tv and cartoons has been a lie. I learned that cats are not supposed to drink dairy milk because they can’t digest it and it is toxic to them, my entire life watching tv and cartoons has been a lie. All holidays ruined, nowhere to go, nothing to do, Halloween was ruined. Christmas was especially ruined this year because things were going good up until the Omicron variant appeared in South Africa and spread like wildfire across the world. People thought and believed things would be getting better now that we had the vaccine but when Omicron hit and how transmissible it was even for those vaccinated the reality that this is how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future hit everyone hard. Everyone’s mental health is ruined in general, some more than others. Everyone is going to get covid Omicron eventually, it’s unavoidable, it’s just a matter of time when and how sick you will get or not. At the time of writing an estimated 5.45 million people have died from Covid 19 and total amount of cases approximately 293 million worldwide.

And yea, that’s all I can think of at the top of my head. I know it’s not alot but you get the idea. People and historians are continually writing books and studying this period of human history academically so it’s just a matter of time before more movies and fictional stories will be made. I think there is already a few shit movies or tv shows being produced taking place in our pandemic world already. Society in general and culture continues to be drastically shaped a result of this past year, it will be interesting how things will be in a few more years from now. Well then, aside from the wholesale continued ruin of our times, what good things happened this year?

Good things that have happened:

Even though I feel that my job is somewhat stagnate and I can’t move up any further, I am happy and grateful that I still have a job at all in pandemic times in comparison to others who may work in retail or have jobs that requires them to be on the front-lines of the pandemic like health care workers or those that need to be physically there in person for work. I have a relatively stable job (still just an illusion) with good benefits, and good spending credits for dental, eye-wear and other health items that has great vacation amount and time off policy. Although I didn’t get a change in status or title to my job role, I got a mini raise mid summer of some shit that only equates to like a couple thousand dollars at the end of the year mainly because of fears that I was going to leave the company; better than nothing I suppose. Still chump change to rate of inflation however, so I’m hoping that my annual review in mid Jan/Feb will bear more fruit. Unless a decent sized pay increase happens, I will seriously consider looking for another job because right now the past year has been a boom/job seekers market, companies are hiring like crazy. It’s not surprising then that so many from my company have left for far more lucrative jobs and salaries that pay out like 30%-50% more than what they were currently making, it’s crazy. If your in IT, computers or programming/ development changing jobs is the right thing you should do if you value money over stability. Working at home is still a blast, still wearing t shirt and sweatpants for 99% of the working day is great and not going on the TTC to go downtown is a continued non-human benefit of this pandemic world. Got new glasses that were fully paid for by my company’s eye-wear plan and brought a whole bunch of random shit related to health care like vitamins, books and shit because they are free using health spending credits, yea boi. Had the chance to play Vanillaware’s new game, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim; it was a great experience and one that I fully enjoyed, excellent storytelling and visual art direction, worth every penny and the time I spent invested into it. I still haven’t gotten around to playing a few Ps4 games that have been collecting dust that I forgot about such as Atelier Lulua, Disgaea 5 (they are at Disgaea 6 now so…) and that Hyper-dimensional Neptune RPG game they made a few years back that apparently was shit but we’ll see. Still haven’t picked back up Valkyria Chronicles 4 tho due to PTSD, maybe one day. I still haven’t gotten around to Atelier Ryza which is the hottest shit since the main girl is hot, there is so many figures of her I feel that I am missing out. Started playing Hyperdimension Neptune x Sengran Kagura cross game on ps4 which is pretty fun. Guilty Gear Strive came out this year and starting playing fighting games again, holy shit it’s a fun good game; I have spent most of my year playing this new guilty gear since it came out in June and even reached the highest ranking in the game, Celestial, good shit. Guilty Gear Strive won some award for best fighting game of the year, although there wasn’t much competition really. I’ve put in about over 250+ hours in this game playing online because the rollback netcode is amazing, smoothest online fighting game experience I’ve ever had with virtually no delay, it’s as if you were fighting someone right beside you. Fucking ballin with Ram and Axel, fuck dem bitches up online. I also brought the remake/remaster of Nier Replicant, which is technically the prequel to Nier Automata which i greatly enjoyed in years past, I’ll get to it eventually. Outside of console games, I’ve had a great year for mobile games as well, never missing a beat in china boats, Azur Lane, I’ve gotten every new boat as expected and continue to play the game on a daily basis and still enjoy it fully. For FGO it’s been a pretty indescribable great year for pulls unlike the shit pulls I got in 2020, I’ve gotten almost everything that I wanted and more, Waver, Merlin, Skadi, Kama, Nobu Alter, Da Vinci Loli, Summer Musashi, Space Ishtar and a whole bunch of other 4 stars, fuck yea boi, this da shit. Looking forward for Caster Artoria in 2022. While I have stopped playing Epic Seven this year, I think it’s for the best because I can now focus on my remaining two other gacha games and other console games that I have neglected, not to mention guilty gear is in the loop now, so I don’t regret it, the best part is that at least I didn’t spend any real money on Epic Seven and got relatively good units; maybe if they have another Guilty Gear collab I’ll come back we’ll see. I’ve also brought digitally the new Melty Blood Type Lumnia for my PS4 and it’s a pretty fun fighting game as well although it’s online community is like mainly Japanese and it’s hard to get games now that it’s past it’s release date, I play this game casually when I’m not feeling like Guilty Gear Strive. I didn’t pick up any new gacha games thankfully this year and will continue to resist playing any new games unless the waifu gacha power is overpowering. Continued growth and expansion of the vtuber industry, especially Hololive which over the course of the past year has seen the debut of Hololive EN Gen 2, Hololive JP Gen 6 and Vsinger IRyS although not without it’s tough sad moments such as Coco leaving and going independent as Kson. With the China debacle along with Haachama behind her, Kson can finally be free to do whatever she wants now without the rules and restrictions under Hololive and for the better probably since more of the money from superchats and whatnot will go directly to her. Top 10 superchats on youtube is dominated by Hololive vtubers, good shit. Brought alot of good nice figures this year via pre-orders but once again the pain from the DHL only shipping leaves a bitter aftertaste, opened alot of nice new figures. Added some more picture frames on my walls with nice anime art and shit. Got around to building a floating shelf over my tv to display more figures and some picture frames above it, looks good shit. Nothing in my condo broke this year which is great compared to the shitshow of last year where it seems so much shit broke. Brought a air purifier for my bedroom, the smell of pure air is nice. Brought some Sabaton shirts and one came signed by the band, great surprise, had that shit framed, although I don’t have a good place to display it on a wall and I’m afraid it will fall, right now it’s behind my couch resting. Got into stocks as a result of the GME short squeeze along with r/wallstreetbets and it’s been a fun time with meme stocks, brought some GME to be along for the ride, still holding that shit waiting for the right time with my Diamond Hands. Brought some other shit like BB stock and it’s shit down like 50%, brought some ARK Innovation ETF and it’s down like 40%. Fuck, ahwell, Diamond Hands. You win some you lose some. As a result of GME short squeeze event and r/wallstreetbets, I have become more financially aware of stocks and the entire financial system as well as investing and money management as a whole and ironically the corruption that goes on at a daily basis that fucks normal people, which is both enlightening and disheartening. I got back into cryptocurrency since Bitcoin and Etherum are surging all throughout this year, reaching all time highs; HODL. Bitcoin price reaches new all time high of like 69k and ETH like 4.6k this year. Cryptocurrency in general has attained a somewhat mainstream level of awareness with ETFs tracking BTC and ETH created on the stock market and even on tv and the radio I hear people reporting the price of BTC and ETH as if they were like stocks, good shit. Kayne West and Kim Kardashian announced their divorce, funny shit. Facebook got grilled because of whistleblower brought to light that the company fully knew that it’s platform encouraged and intensified extremist views, try to make change for the jokes, changes name to Meta. America was saved for the time being with Trump Failed Jan 6 Coup. QAnon crazies and many right wing extremist are hiding in waiting, not much activity. At the Tokyo Olympics, a number of prominent events were won by Canadians such as Andre De Grasse for 200k sprint, Maggie MacNeil for swimming, Damian Warner for the decathlon and many others which is great, better than average for Canada. Tiger Woods was seen able to speak and walk, although he will never be a full time golfer pro ever again probably. Rich billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson flaunt their space dicks with their private space race for better or worse. NASA and other space agencies land robots on Mars and they do cool shit, nice space rocks, nice for space research. Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world for better or worse. Tesla stock reaches over 1k, for better or worse. Apple, Microsoft and other safe mature tech industry tech stocks have significant gains throughout the year as can be said for the entire S&P500 index and thus the entire economy is still ok, at least the bubble has not popped or maybe will never pop. Working at home for many people has given the realization that they don’t have to put up for shit employers that want to force them back into the office during covid, leading to as they call it, the ‘Great Resignation’ the trend of mass people leaving their jobs for better opportunities, forcing company’s and employers to up their game and pay more money, both for office and in person jobs in general. Trump was banned from Twitter and many other social media, allowing some in the social media sphere to sleep better at night. Much decreased use of Uber Eats and food delivery apps because fuck they are getting more and more expensive, I have largely weened myself out from using them since like September of this year, which is good, cheaper to just get the food myself. Eating less, getting a bit less fat, a little bit goes a long way over the long run. Major wins for the Black Lives Matter movement in regards to the successful conviction of the former police officer that killed George Floyd last year that sparked outrage and protests for many a months in 2020. While controversial, Kyle Rittenhouse, some other white boy with a AR15 that shot some people during protest was proven innocent, which while is not going to make anyone happy, was the correct and right choice given the evidence and circumstances in court. Electric cars are slowly becoming more popular and many major car manufactures are switching gears and focusing on developing only electric vehicles which is good for the future. The rapid development of Covid vaccines and new vaccine methods is paving the way to creating new vaccines for other diseases such as Malaria and maybe even HIV/AIDS in the future. Biden hasn’t fucked shit up yet badly unlike Trump and is doing a decent job of managing the covid pandemic and slowly trying to bring back credibility to America. Dune was a great movie and I enjoyed it, looking forward to part II. The new spider man movie is apparently very good, looking forward to seeing it if I can. Highlander reboot movie is a thing and Henry Cavill is cast to star as the new immortal prince of the universe, hope it’s not shit. Book of Boba Fett is out now which is cool, haven’t gotten around to it yet tho, will probably watch when it’s finished. Loki was a great watch for extended marvel multiverse crash course which I enjoyed but is not for everybody. It’s been 1 year or so since I watched Mandalorian S2 and the memory of that show is still alive and bright with optimism for star wars. Brought a Light Saber online for alot of money, will review it maybe when the time comes. Yaiba Mugen Train movie was great. FGO Camelot movie was just ok for part I. Lots of good anime shows aired this year but once again just too many to watch all, will summarize my thoughts in my yearly anime recap later. Discovered some new food places and expanded Indian food into my rotation. A Bro has become a father, which is great. My partial watching of squid game was warranted and am now knowledgeable about mainstream korean squid culture. So yea, I think that’s about it from what I can remember from 2021 in terms of good things, which honestly is not a whole lot, better than nothing I suppose.

Well then, with that said, why is it that I think that as a whole, 2021 was worse than 2020? It’s simple really, 2020 started off on a good note, we had a good 2 and a half months before covid got serious and we all went into lock-down into eternity and the pandemic became real. For those two and a half months, the world was looking good, I was going to go to Japan in April, the Olympics was going to happen in Japan to much excitement, it was the changing of a whole new number in your calendar, it was looking up, we had no idea that all of that would be shut down and ruined so quickly. And even during lock-down, it was kind of a novelty, with excitement in regards to toilet paper shortages, cleaning supply shortages, mask shortages, food hoarding, lining up to grocery stores and other dumb shit that we didn’t have in 2021 because by now, we were all tired of that shit and have gotten past that. In 2020 pandemic lock-down living was still new, by 2021 we all wish this could be over with already. One can say that 2021 is the better year overall because now we had vaccines and most of the population was ready to get them, and yes, we did, the majority of the population did indeed get vaccinated but the small minority of anti-vaccine and anti-covid voices was just a constant reminder that no matter what, covid was here to stay for the foreseeable future, maybe even the next couple of years. In the January of 2021, there was some optimism for the future, maybe by the end of the year, if everyone and the world got vaccinated, maybe we can go back to the way we lived before, to be normal humans, go travel, go to restaurants without having a vaccine passport, hang out with friends and family at parties and have concerts, events and celebrations on mass again in public spaces, that maybe we could have a nice Christmas like was did in 2019. That was the hope and for a short time in the summer, we did have that, but the reality was far more bleak than what we had imagined with the rise of the South African Omicron variant of covid 19 that has quickly become the most dominant strain of the virus around the world. In just a short month, we went from looking forward towards Christmas and new years celebrations, to back into lock-down quarantine restrictions almost as if being vaccinated didn’t even matter anymore since Omicron was so transmissible, you can still get it even if you were double even triple vaccinated. While the word is that symptoms are far more mild than the previously dominant Delta variant, who knows what long term effects it could have on the human body aside from pushing our health care network to the edge of collapse unless we try and reduce hospitalization. And for those reasons, the possibility of hope and the reality of it being ruined is why I feel that 2021 was worse than 2020.

On Sunday Jan 2, I got my third shot of the Pfizer Covid 19 Vaccine at a Scarborough Health network hospital. I could tell we had got a lot better with administrating and organizing vaccinations at least at this place, instead of moving through lines and checkpoints, I was seated in a chair immediately and some nurses or helpers asked me for my health card number and whatnot and or any reactions or allergies to the vaccine as per procedure. A vaccine trolley man strolled by and then just quickly gave me the shot and it was done, just a matter of waiting.

While waiting for my time to leave, I hear that a women a few seats down from me was getting her shot; her First shot of the vaccine and had a lot of questions to staff.

In my mind, I wasn’t sure what had prevented this relatively young Asian women that spoke perfectly fine English from getting it sooner; maybe it was because she was too busy, maybe the online booking system failed her, maybe she was out of county and only wanted to get the shot in Canada, or more maliciously; maybe she was an anti-vaxer and was only getting it reluctantly because she was going to get fired from her workplace, maybe she was formerly an anti-vaxer that finally came around and had her senses knocked into her when a loved one or family member died of covid, maybe she was pregnant and didn’t want to get the vaccine out of fear of what it may do to her baby, maybe she was just a dumb lazy bitch.

I have no idea but at that moment, I knew then and there that covid would never go away as long as people like that women existed, and that covid was here to stay for potentially many more years to come, it’s just a matter if society and our world will allow us to get back to normal granted we let these people fall through the cracks and we turn a blind eye to their existence at the expense of them becoming a further burden to our already stressed healthcare system. After all, they didn’t believe in covid and didn’t want to get the vaccine, why should hospitals be forced to take care of the same ignorant people who protest outside hospitals and try to discredit the very people that are trying to help keep them alive. Let them die, these people didn’t listen or believe in the science so why should nurses and doctors put themselves at risk when the end result of their recovery is just for them to continue spewing misinformation and nonsense to the detriment of society.

While it may sound like a cruel and inhuman proposition, perhaps it is a necessary evil that we need to take, besides:

I’m no longer human.

So what’s the fuss if a few more people get sick and die?