June Gloom on Blogger, year 3

A couple years ago this month I started a blog for boomer shooters like Doom. I called it June Gloom 3D after Duke Nukem 3D. A lot has happened since. I figured it was time to write up the yearly retrospective; I was originally going to write it for this blog, Super June Gloom, but then Duke 3D's birthday happened to come along and I wanted to write about that, and wound up using that post to talk a little bit about the state of my presence on Blogger and my plans for the coming year. So here's a link to that.

Happy birthday, Duke. And here's to a productive year on Blogger. And a better year for everyone. I know things are scary right now, and while it would be comforting to imagine a big badass hero like Duke doing something about the terrible things happening on our streets, the fact is, Duke is still just a character, and it's up to us to save ourselves. But I hope in the meantime we can look to the heroes we create and imagine a better world.

defrosted

This isn't a political blog, at least not really. I intended to use this platform mostly to rant about things that don't really matter to anyone outside of the all-important 40-45-year-old internet weirdo demographic. But I don't know how I can look at what's happening outside my window or on my screen and not say something.

in which I spread my arms wide and await my fate: for immersive fans to see this article and scream at me

There are two truths that might seem contradictory. Truth one: I love immersive sims. Truth two: "immersive sim" is not a real thing. You might think that these are contradictory on their face, and you would be correct. And yet, here I am, writing this.

Let me explain.

Twenty twenty five.

Gonna keep this one short.

This has been a really rough year for me. I've had rougher; the seven years since mom died have contained some of the worst moments of my life. While 2025 doesn't quite have the sheer level of awfulness that was the first few months after mom died, or frankly speaking most of 2021, or the last three months of 2024, it was still an absolute stinker of a year. I think the only thing that saved me was moving into my own apartment, even though I can barely afford it and am losing money fast living here. I also had a visit from one of my very best friends in the whole wide world, and that made a lot of difference.

YouTube Delenda Est

YouTube must be destroyed. While you can make arguments for FaceBook and TikTok (personally I think TikTok is way behind just by the other platforms' sheer age) it's my view that YouTube is the one website that has done the most damage to society, culture, and the farce that we call our "democracy."

doing an ollie for the girls

I briefly considered making my first actual post a rant about Christmas, but that's boring, and anyway by the time this post goes up Christmas is probably going to already be over. (Turns out it wasn't, but whatever.) I don't have enough non-holiday-themed posts to bury it under yet. Maybe next year. Instead I'm going to talk about blogging. Neat, a blog post about blogging, how meta. But wait, hold your goddamn horses. This isn't what you think. I'm not here to talk about how you can make money at home. You can do that just fine with two feet and an OnlyFans account.