"Nothing." by Richard F. Yates

[Digital drawing. 2019. This is Dieterich. He's like a mega-slacker green snake. He stopped by for a quick visit today, but I told him I was feeling sick (so I could go play Minecraft... Yes, I feel shame...)]

[Warning: This is a long, random, somewhat pointless, video game heavy, NOTHING of a post... ---RFY]

Late night last night---got to sleep around 2:00 or 2:30 A.M., but I slept straight through until 7:00 A.M. (which is a solid five hours! Pretty good!) Watched Avengers: Infinity War, (we bought Endgame a few days ago, but I wanted to rewatch the beginning of the story before seeing the end again), while I broke my fast and had a cup of coffee...

After fueling up, it was time for today's major task... I had to re-caulk the kitchen sink! (Isn't this fascinating? My GAWD, what thrills!) It was a pain, as the stuff was sticky and didn't want to apply smoothly, and eventually, I just blacked out---and when I woke up, the sink was finished (properly) and the whole kitchen was cleaned and spotless... That's how I usually do the chores, by passing out. (I'm guessing we have brownies, little goblin-like, magical creatures, who don't want me to SEE them, so they throw a sleep spell on me before they get to work... They're common in Ireland and must have followed someone in my family here when they fled there a few generations ago...)

Then I showered, while listening to a Skeptoid podcast, got dressed, and thought about taking a nap, but Dieterich, the slacker green snake, stopped by... (I'm afraid I was a bit snitty with him. Just wasn't feeling like company today.)

Once he slithered away, I decided to go back to playing Minecraft... (Feel free to check out here if you're not a fan of the game! Thanks for stopping by!)

I've been building a bunch of LITE BRITE inspired objects in the game, experimenting with light and colored glass and shadow and such... I even made a large "candle room" where I put several dozen torches on the ground then surrounded them with colored glass cubes, and then built a large structure on top of THAT! (When I showed that room, with the candles and colored glass, to my wife, she said something that touched me, deeply: "Why?")

Here's a quick story---a scary tale, if ever there was one! I was out exploring the Minecraft countryside a few days ago, looking for different colored flowers and other things to make new dyes out of, when I realized I'd gotten turned around and was LOST! The problem with getting lost in Minecraft is that the worlds are randomly generated and MASSIVE, so without a good TRICK for finding my way home, it's conceivable that all the building that I'd done could be, essentially, GONE. All that work.....

As I've mentioned before, time moves quickly in the game, and once night falls, the MONSTERS come out... I was lost, wandering, and unsure what to do. As the creatures started attacking, I ran---getting more and more lost while trying to stay alive. When morning finally came, I decided I needed to make a bed so that I could sleep through the next night, instead of fighting or running from monsters all night long---so that's what I did.

When the sun went down, I made a quick shelter, (I spent most of the "day," after making a bed, trying to find my way "home," unsuccessfully, of course), and I went to sleep... Which SET A NEW SAVE POINT!!! (It occurred to me, then, that I could have just killed myself, and I would respawned in my home base! DAMN IT! I screwed myself over...)

I quit for the day in disgust...

Going online, I looked up how to find my way home. The first bit of advice was just to die and respawn in your own bed (grrrrr...), then next was to look for familiar landmarks (this wasn't possible thanks to my mad dash from all those monsters), and the third was to use a compass---which in Minecraft doesn't point north, it points to where you originally started the game! Ah ha!!!! Salvation!!!

But to make a compass, you need this stuff called "red stone," which you have to mine... (Mining is NOT fun. It's tedious, dangerous, and time consuming...I like building, not digging...)

Eventually, (to make a really long story slightly less long), I DID eventually find the material I needed, made a compass, and found my way back to my wonderful, colorful, ever growing (and ever GLOWING) kingdom! Hoorah!

Some times, this game is incredibly frustrating...but that moment when I finally saw my crazy buildings come into view... That was a true triumph! (Dang... Did I just write that???)

My younger daughter (Elise) thinks I should film my gameplay for a video channel. She (secretly) filmed me giving my wife a tour of my Minecraft kingdom, which she thought was funny, and she sent the video to her sister, (our older daughter, Frankie), who watched it with her husband, and they both laughed and said they would watch if we did a game play channel... I'm not so sure...

Blah...

Okay... Guess I got nothing today... (A REALLY LONG nothing...) Sorry... Hopefully, the drawing at the top of the post is funny enough to keep my head above water...

---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)

[P.S. - Another one of my crypto-art pieces sold today! Better get over to my MakersPlace store and have a look before everything sells out!!! Go! Now! Don't miss out!!! FOMO YO!]

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