The Continuing Adventures of Medi-Bat

So, who’s been doing what and going where while I’ve been gone in Indianapolis? =D

@Joseph Raszagal  
Been trying to do art. Just got laid off due to virus. I have no excuses now.  
Welcome back! You were missed!

@97blackbird  
I hear ya there. My warehouse got shut down after getting into some legal trouble. They tried to argue that they were an essential workplace because they stocked medical masks… except the masks were just dust masks for things like drywall work.
 
It seems that even in the face of a global crisis corporations just can’t tone down their greed, yo.

I’ve been hunkered down at my parents’ place, deep in Teh Sticks™ of Michigan. It’s become almost a full-time job keeping my mother from making trips outside the house, even though we’re both very vulnerable to the effects of the virus. She’s an RN – the outpatient surgery facility at which she normally works is temporarily closed – yet I have to fight to keep her at home, something that can prevent us both from getting sick and/or dying. The stress from this is putting me on edge, which isn’t great because prolonged stress is one of my triggers for bipolar episodes, nevermind the fact it feels like I’m having to babysit an adult.
 
IFF I can keep her at home, I think our chances will improve drastically. I’m not above flattening her tires, or hiding the car keys, if I must. My Dad has no choice but to go to work as normal; he’s considered “vital to national defense,” as his shop makes parts used by the military, somewhere up the chain. Thankfully, he’s fairly healthy, and recovers much more rapidly from most illnesses than my Mom or myself. Still, due to his age, I worry about him, let alone how he’d feel if he somehow brought a bug home to us. He’s a logical guy, so he understands what’s at stake, and has done all that’s practically possible to shield himself and us from the virus.
 
I haven’t been out of the house for nearly a month now, which is exactly what we COVID-vulnerable people need to be doing. Funny thing, I probably wouldn’t be going out anyway, as it’s the beginning of my annual Holocaust, i.e. Springtime allergy season. I was supposed to start a low dose of prednisone by now, but due to current events, that’s on hold. I’ve been getting by with double-dosing my antihistamine, making sure I take all of my normal corticosteroids, and popping Benadryl at night. That’s making my blood sugar drop into the 60s by the time I wake up (another sign my system is reacting to allergens), but it’s better than getting sinus infections.
 
For my own sanity, I’m keeping busy with electrical engineering projects: programming (C/C++ and finally cracking into Python!), building neat little embedded-system devices, and designing my Website. Give me a terminal & Internet connection, and I can keep myself occupied for quite a while! :)
 
If you guys haven’t had the opportunity to, it’s actually heartening to listen to Queen Elizabeth’s special address to the UK, available to watch here. It’s certainly more inspiring than anything our own federal government has said to date.
 
Stay safe, stay well, and may The Princesses watch over us all.

@BigBuggyBastage  
While I’m sorry to hear that you’re particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 (I can sympathize; three+ years of constant prednisone for my UC and intestinal bleeding really shot my immune system to Hell too =P) and that your mom’s being difficult, I’m glad to hear you’ve got some projects to work on to help keep you occupied and sane. For a while there I was just reading library books… and then both of the libraries I typically go to closed. I extended the books I pulled out, but with how seemingly indefinite this crisis keeps becoming, well, I hope they’re lenient on the late fees.
 
My three other time-sinks I’ve been indulging in to keep myself occupied are writing, Youtube, and video games (specifically older ones on my PS2 that I haven’t played since the early 2000s). I’m considering starting a whole new fanfic and just dumping onto the site, but it’ll need some more work. And by work, I don’t mean all the hard work I put into beating Disgaea 1 and Jak & Daxter again x3 .
 
Glad to hear you’re hanging in there. And yes, may the Sun and Moon watch over us all.

Roll call, everyone.

Joseph Raszagal, present and already drunk! I’ve been watching a movie marathon with my boyfriend and browsing the booru during the lulls in entertainment. When it comes to Star Wars, that essentially means the entirety of the prequels.
 
Also:
 
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

@Joseph Raszagal  
I don’t think the prequels were that bad anymore.  
Just redo all interactions between padme and Anakin, then redo JarJar’s thing…

@Communist Starlight  
I’d also cut back on a lot of the “space politics” scenes and tell George to go sit in a corner and think about what he’s done whenever he tries to bring up midichlorians.
 
George: “Just hear me out~
 
Me: “NO.”

@Joseph Raszagal  
But wait, no, it makes sense

@Communist Starlight  
“GO TO YOUR ROOM, GEORGE. NO DESSERT AFTER DINNER.”

@Joseph Raszagal  
LET ME EXPLAIN, MOTHEFU-

Checking in. Miserable as Hell. My new allergist is an idiot, and prescribed me crap that wouldn’t work on a very small child with allergies as bad as mine. I’ll be blowing up his nurse’s phone tomorrow, assuming my head doesn’t explode by then. It’s a damn shame you can’t (easily) get pure, pharmaceutical-grade cocaine these days.
 
@Joseph Raszagal  
Noice.
 
@Communist Starlight  
JarJar should’ve been brutally murdered on-screen edited out and left on the cutting room floor. Then there was that vapid line from Princess Ama-lama-ding-dong: “I love the water.” Not sure why that idiotic line has stuck with me, but I think it sort of stood out as the prime example of why the script-writing in these films is so bad: NOBODY in real life talks like these characters!

@BigBuggyBastage  
Other than JarJar and Aniken’s interactions with Padme, the prequels really weren’t THAT BAD

@Communist Starlight  
I dunno, man. They’re not “great,” either. LoL
 
Given the choice, I think I’d rather watch the Coleman Francis trilogy (The Skydivers, Night Train to Mundo Fine a.k.a. Red Zone Cuba, and The Beast of Yucca Flats). Then again, I’ve got a real soft spot for god-awful movies, especially those of the sci-fi/horror type; think classic 1950s aliens & UFOs, the ones made on a shoestring budget.

@BigBuggyBastage  
I’m sorry your allergies are beating you up so bad, yo =( . My mom’s the same way as soon as Spring hits. It’s like every plant on the planet was designed to hate her. Dust tends to hit her pretty hard too. Hopefully your idiot doctor figures their shit out. As a guy with way too many medical issues, I’m with ya when it comes to the frustration of dealing with a doc that has their head up their ass.
 
@Communist Starlight  
HEY ANIKEN, WHY DON’T YOU LIKE SAND? TELL ME AGAIN, WITH BRILLIANT DEPTH AND INTELLECT, WHY SAND IS SO EWWWWW.
 
Also, space politics for the sake of over-explaining a simple story, midichlorians, pointlessly showing us Boba Fett as a child and giving him the easiest motivation in the world, midichlorians, DROIDS ARE BAD AND THIS IS WHY WE’RE RACIST AGAINST THEM IN THE FUTURE, midichlorians, giving a talented actress like Natalie Portman literally nothing to work with, midichlorians, giving Samuel L. Jackson a lightsaber and magical space wizard powers and then somehow making him boring anyway (how do you even do that?), not utilizing Christopher Lee more, midichlorians midichlorians midichlorians midichlorians midichlorians midichlorians midichlorians, and so many more things that make me nerdrage.
 
I love you, comrade, but we are at an impasse here xD . We cannot agree.

@Joseph Raszagal  
“You we’re my brother, Raszagal! I loved you!”  
“I HATE YOU!”

@Communist Starlight  
“It’s no use, Comrade Starlight! I have the high ground! They were terrible movies and you know it to be true!”

@Joseph Raszagal  
“You underestimate the power of a good, political foundation!”

@Communist Starlight  
“And you overestimate how cool a ridiculous CGI lightsaber battle while literally surfing on lava will look! It’s dumb, Anakin, and it really hasn’t aged well!”

@Joseph Raszagal  
“The generations to come will remember it! They will see an emotionally charged fight between master and apprentice! If you can’t see that, then you are my enemy!”

@Communist Starlight  
“No, Anakin, they’ll remember the Darth Maul fight and his double lightsaber! They’ll think, ‘That was pretty cool, why wasn’t there more of that?’ And then, as they’re asking questions, Jar-Jar will say the next in a long line of stupidest things they’ve ever heard and the dream will be shattered! These movies were supposed to bring balance to The Force, Anakin, not destroy it by attempting to explain it with blood cells!”

@Joseph Raszagal  
“…”  
“Your hair is dumb”

@Communist Starlight  
“If you can’t see that, then you are my enemy!”
 
Only a communist Sith talks in absolutes!  

@97blackbird  
xD
 
It’s definitely these deleted scenes we’re making up that could’ve saved the prequel trilogy.