10:01 P.M.

Happy Halloween. I'm gonna talk about commercialism. Here's a question:

Who are ads for?

The amount of times I’ve had to sit and watch an unskippable, patronising, gaudy advert and thought Jesus Fucking God who is this for, who would possibly buy your thing because of this is beyond numbers at this point. It's getting a bunch of the same Deliveroo ad on Discord that provoked this little rant in particular.

I’ve gotten so frame-perfect at skipping adverts the moment it hits 5 seconds that I could speedrun YouTube. Me at the zoo%. I understand it’s probably just to make the product memorable like those John Lewis Christmas ads but the point still stands I think. It feels genuinely kind of insulting.

One of my favourite Umami shorts I’ve rediscovered recently thanks to my recommended, 10:01 P.M, goes into this in a really neat way. Adverts that just are fully, uncannily disconnected from the human experience almost become their own form of art in a way and you can make lots of good art out of them. They leave such a bad, horrible taste in your mouth, like licking rust.

I’ve linked the short here. I really like it. It explores the problems of modern day homelessness and how the marginalised are treated and how stupid and harmful these laws are. https://youtu.be/I2-shiwvIPo?si=PnB7NymngfSMCu83

The actual advert 10:01 P.M’s music is from is fucked up, too. Check it. https://youtu.be/q_HnUbNVygg?si=n1EWQjOSAMM87KNy

(There are people in the comments getting weirdly catholic and conspiracy theory-y about it, though, so watch out for that. I kind of get it, though; it does feel a little bit like watching a deal with the devil go down in real time.)

Point is, ads are weird and scary, and they’re only getting weirder and scarier. I should write a story about evil adverts or something.

Song of the day: I Love You For Psychological Reasons by They Might Be Giants https://youtube.com/watch?v=Oesgd0NL124

Actual Believer In Miasma (Germ Thoughts)

For the last few months, I’ve been opening the bathroom door with my foot. It feels weirdly shameful to admit that.

The handle is made of brass, I think, which I read somewhere is self-cleaning after a certain time, but I don’t think that’s true.

(Never mind, I just googled it while writing this, it’s called the oligodynamic effect! That’s fun. Here's a whole Wikipedia article about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect)

My brother coughs with his mouth open like a toddler even though he’s a 28(?) year old adult man with things like wages and a beard and a Tinder profile. I wear gloves more often and use my shirt hem or cuffs to touch things like traffic lights or power buttons or the fridge. I use my elbows to turn taps on and off.

The world feels like it’s covered in germs.

 

There was this video they showed us in food tech about cross-contamination, all the way back in Year 7, when I first learned how easy it was to give up. The video showed this bright pink gross sludge that got on everything, into everything, all from touching one little bit of raw meat; it got onto faces, into mouths, onto countertops, onto utensils.

It started there I think. From then on, I realised how much I touch my face and how unhygienic the world is.

Especially traffic lights. Eugh.

(I found the video, if you’re curious. https://youtu.be/nkVY08aqC28?si=biQhrMLJThTAZUxX)

It also didn’t help that a little while ago there was a worms scare in my house -- worms as in pinworms/threadworms, the disease reserved for Victorian children and dogs. That’s what started the compulsive hand washing and the taps with the elbows thing.

I have this irrational fear that, for some reason, one particular bacteria is going to get very big and aggressive when I turn my back. Like a superbug except, you know, physically large. And angry. I have the same fear with actual bugs, like that movie Enemy with the spider, or Cloverfield with the things in the subway.

Grim.

I think I should get diagnosed with something, but I don’t know what exactly.

Wash your hands, folks. Not like I do, though, because I wash my hands so hard skin starts coming off.

Wash your hands the normal amount.

Song of the day: Strange Overtones by David Byrne https://youtube.com/watch?v=YdLvyzR0ihE

Introductions

Hi. I'm harve. If you're here, you probably already knew that.

I'm @harveywithouty on Twitter (though I might end up changing the name so watch out), @harveposting on Instagram, and at some point I will have a Tumblr. I don't really care too much about having "a brand", so usernames will be inconsistent, but that might stop being the case someday.

I want to get kind of Real And True for a second and talk about why I actually went and made a blog and how it feels to have one, just to get into the groove of having it.

For a long time, I've wanted a place to dump stuff. Unfinished projects, little self-reflective essays, woes about life troubles and whatnot, but most of the internet is far too public a place for me to do that in a way that feels safe and suitably NOT personal. Plus, all the social media I use is, like, TOO social, if you get what I mean. A bunch of different LinkedIns.

I feel like I'm hiding bits of myself I'd get more enjoyment out of showing. Instagram I barely touch, other than to talk to friends, Twitter is a place of I Have To Be Funny Or I'll Die, and Tumblr seems too distracting. I figure this site is simple enough and quiet enough that I can do stuff here without making too many waves. Everyone I want to see this place will see it, y'know?

As a kid that grew up on the internet and swiftly and violently had that used against him for about five years, doing something like this does still kind of make me feel like I'm airing out all my bullshit for people to make fun of me. My whole childhood was online, and bullies -- which is what I know they are, now -- are always gonna be bullies. They make you insecure about normal shit. I know now too that, logically, the majority of people that'd genuinely use something like this against me have been removed from my life, but I can't help but worry about it anyway. I feel like I constantly have to present some Form Of Self or be doing Bits And Jokes, and I kind of want to get away from that here.

This isn't me saying this will be pure unfiltered harve -- we present false images of ourselves all the time just by virtue of being people on the internet, after all (which I touch on in some of the stuff I write, which may be published here one day) -- but it'll be a nice way for me to just kind of speak. I'm just gonna say things here for me, instead of for other people.

This place feels like a pretty good void to hoot and holler into; it's relatively simple to use and it feels fun to, like, have a website. It makes me think about scrolling through old blogs and reading creepy stories til my eyes went square.

Stick around, if you want. I'll be here either way. Same harve time, same harve channel.

Thanks for reading, friend. :]