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Gray Skies

Aug 5, 2026 · edited Aug 7, 2026

I've learned that people tend to complain endlessly about where they live regardless of whether it's a decent place, perhaps to seem modest or self-deprecating or something. By my contrarian nature, I feel I must then start appreciating the positives of the spiritually degrading status quo, where a new infectious disease is headlining every week, the war that ended a dozen times has further casualties, and young people lack a bright future.

Similarly dim is the overcast sky as I look out of the train window on the way to Birmingham. A 'shithole', a wise man once said, having woken up in a steaming focking mood, yeh. I actually love that the skies are so gray here that my eyes don't have to adjust, nor does my body have to sweat once I step outside like it does in Austin. Despite the waning heat wave and lack of air conditioning, the sun is not nearly as oppressive as it is back home. It also apparently rained on me today for the first time since the start of a weeks-long drought. The petrichor sufficiently masks the smell of sundried piss on the street soaking up the drizzle like chicken boullion.

This is the first trip where I haven't brought my drawing tablet with me since picking it up in 2023. Life's tragedies have made it hard for me to draw the art that once gave me joy, lest it remind me of a guy I was in love with some time ago that ended up hurting me. Ironically, the matching accents in Britain are a constant reminder regardless. It's funny that, as an American, I see him in pretty much everyone over here. If that makes me racist towards British people, then I'm racist.

I've been experiencing so many thoughts and emotions that I somehow haven't already confronted, in the company of my family, in such a circumstance that I'm unable to talk about what's going on. I realize now that I had the chance to finally see a guy I was so close with overseas, the impossible was possible, and now that I'm here the joy and excitement I felt at the time was all for nothing. The trip feels purposefully empty. A shared experience like this would've been lifechanging to me, and selfishly I feel enraged and betrayed to have had that taken away. I didn't expect to feel this once I got here, and it sucks to go through it by myself so far away from home. I guess that's why I wanted to write about it.

To get through (and to an extent repress) my thoughts lately, I've been doing tons and tons of programming, a change of pace that helps me kinda compartmentalize that chapter of my life with this current one. Each chapter is defined by an obsession, often in cycles which strengthen each other as I revisit them. For example, while working on the Germs.io game client I grew up on I learned how to deobfuscate Javascript, do performance profiling, and use a 2D 'engine' (of sorts) in Pixi.js to provide for my friends and the community. Doing so has given me a lot of technical confidence, helping me feel more at home as I revisit working on this website.

More importantly for the future, it's also given me confidence to revisit Dreamcast homebrew. I've done a lot of work on learning the technicals of computer graphics with C to prepare myself, which would be fantastic candidates for some tutorial-style posts. I can imagine some articles on how I set up my toolchain and integrate Neovim with it... but I digress. I'm so excited to share what I've been working on, especially in 3D!

My stop in Birmingham is up next, so I'd best be on my way...

---

BIRMING'AM

In the back right corner of a silent charity shop in the suburbs, a bearded forty-something-year-old man with an NFL tote bag and a bucket hat asks in a thick British accent where I'm from as I flip through a tiny selection of men's t-shirts. (Somehow, they're always way in the back corner of the shops, an order of magnitude smaller in quantity than the women's stuff.) I never know whether I should say I'm from Chicago or from Texas, but my intuition picks the former this time. He replies, leaning back and crossing his arms:

Well, then, what brings you to this--

He glances over his shoulder for his wandering wife an aisle away, lowering his voice to a near whisper and slouching an inch closer.

--this... shithole?

The perfect choice of words makes it impossible for me to match his muted tone. I have no idea how to articulate why I'm suddenly so excited. It's actually not the first time I've heard that it was a... aahh...

By the end of the interaction I had complimented his NFL bag, but he said it was his friend's; a Green Bay Packer's fan. I suggested he tell him that Jordan Love sucks, and that he'll know what that means.

I was wearing a pretty normal outfit while I walked outside that afternoon, maybe slightly fruity. Simply a Snorlax hat, a 90s cycling event shirt, and some short shorts for the hot-ish London weather. Still, a little British teenager with a bowl cut standing around a bunch of goons wearing all black called me a faggot in broad daylight. Not quite yelling, but just loud enough that they're pretty much asking you to look back at them to start causing a scene. He kept saying "you like do anal" or something over and over in his tiny British teenager voice, which was so absurd to me that I just had to tuck my chin and keep walking so I didn't laugh at the poor kid.

It wasn't all bad, though; some guy my age said later as I walked opposite of him, "aye, va fit's noice". I don't think he used the word "nice", I don't remember what it was excactly. The situation didn't parse quick enough for me to give thanks before I'd walked past him, unfortunately. I was still in social defense mode from being called a fag.

---

Bristol

As another day passes, I'm once again concluding by writing while in a state of fight-or-flight thinking about the guy. It's pretty sad that I'm still all hung up over this. I wish I could enjoy this experience for what it is, but my memory overlays everything to dampen my happiness and invade my peace. The feeling of loss is constant; I always imagine how much better it would be, in every situation, if things just went a little differently and he were there for the moment.

I'm in Bristol. A beautiful place with tons of Victorian-era rowhouses of all sorts of colors. Reminds me a lot of Cape Town. There happens to be a balloon festival jacking up the prices of hotels, so we kinda got screwed on accident. Had to go to McDonald's and some Euro-animu noodle place that's trying to be like Panda Express so we can stay on budget. We aren't here to see the balloons, in fact we're due to take the train back to London as it's happening.

I don't like being away from home for over a week. I seem to always have an emotional reckoning at some point in the forced company of others. Usually my thoughts are experienced in a vaccuum, but to subject my family to this stuff is irresponsible yet inevitable given enough time.

For now, I'll leave it to a future post. I've made this one long enough already. Things will get better, as they always do.

Cheers, bruv. I love you all.

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