The Pokemon
I started trading Pokemon cards.
I was going through my old childhood collection, and apparently some of these cards are actually worth some money. 55 green ones for a little flimsy piece of paper? That's sick as piss. I could try and sell them all, but I thought to myself -- maybe if I trade my way into collecting a whole set, I can sell the whole set and make a lot more than the worth of the original cards. Instead of going for a whole set right away though (100+ cards), I am going to try to trade my way into getting all the VMAX Eeveelutions. They're full-art holographic cards, so for each eeveelution it would mean getting the regular full art, the alternate art, and secret rainbow holographic if there is one.
I traded with a person online my "Steven full art holo 95/98" for a "Gardenia's Vigor full art rainbow holo 202/189". Technically I'm losing money on the market price, but the maximum I could have sold the Steven for is 15 MAYBE, but most likely 10. I think I could easily sell the Gardenia's Vigor for 20 bucks because it's pack fresh. So, 3 bucks shipping, I'm ultimately profiting. Gardenia's Vigor also has more trade clout I think because it looks really fuggin' cool, and in my opinion Steven doesn't look nearly as cool. I am also giving her two "Dialga reverse-holo 7/127", an extremely beat-up "Misty's Seadra", and a near-mint "Tornadus full art holo 98/98", all of this in exchange for one Raichu Prime. Tornadus is worth maybe 3 bucks, Dialga I could probably get 4 apiece, and the misty's seadra is worth a buck if even. However, I could get 10 bucks for the Raichu Prime, and it has more trade clout it seems like because it's a pretty sought after card. So, I might break even in market value, but it brings me closer to my goal.
I bought two "M Rayquaza EX 61/108" cards, a "Blastoise EX 22/108", a set of I believe 10 V-series Japanese cards in great condition, and a "Honchkrow V alt-art secret rare 162/172". One Rayquazia is moderately played, the other is in great shape but it's Japanese. With shipping, the rayquazia's were about 16 apiece, the Blastoise I got for 2 bucks, and the Honchkrow was 20. The Honchkrow I got at market price but it is in mint condition so it could probably sell for a bit more, though I don't know if I could sell it with only 35 ebay user reviews. However, I do I know that it has trading clout, which is what I'm looking for.
Anyway, I am trying to get all those VMAX Eeveelutions, right? For each one the typical art goes for 3-5 bucks on Ebay, the secret rainbow holo goes for about $20, and the alternate art goes anywhere from $40 to $300 depending on the card. I priced them all together, and they're like 900 bucks all together I think, so that's like 100 per eeveelution if you average it out (including eevee). However, I'm confident someone out there will prefer a blastoise, a rayquazia, and a raichu prime in exchange for an alternate-art umbreon... maybe I'll throw in a couple first editions.
I traded a guy a "Mewtwo EX BW45" and a "Darkrai EX BW46" in exchange for his Eevee VMAX and his Leafeon VMAX. I could sell my Mewtwo for maybe three dollars, and my Darkrai for three to five, but probably two or three each realistically. The VMAX cards are worth about the same, so I'm ultimately just losing money on shipping.
Anyway, once I get all the VMAX eeveelutions together as a collection, I'm going to sell that motherfucker for bigger moneys and huge net profit, and then just buy all the cards at below market value on auctions with the money I have made, and then repeat the huge profit, and make even larger moneys. I'm a genius!
I also had to order penny sleeves, top-loaders, team bags, padded mailing envelopes, and a postal scale. I think each toploader individually cost 15 cents, each penny sleeve about 3, each team bag around 5 cents, and each envelope about 20 cents. So ultimately that adds up to 42 extra cents per card in shipping materials, plus 3-5 bucks shipping. So I need to essentially make over 5 bucks in profit per sale in order to actually make any money at all :)
Realistically what I see happening is that I'll run out of motivation and just sell everything and give up. It's a lot of fun at the moment though, it gives me something to do since I can't work and it's kind of neat seeing one card turn into another card.
The dudes online say that the best way to make money and get good cards is to buy massive bulk lots online and sort through 'em for the good cards, but I don't really want to do that. I'm guessing if I just snipe auctions I'll be able to net profit. I need to sell some stuff before I keep buying though because I've drained my bank account pretty damn low.
We'll see if anything comes of this or if I'm making a huge mistake and losing money I don't have. Theoretically and at best, this is a good monetary investment. Realistically, it's probably going to make me a very small amount of money and is going to be a very inefficient way of making money compared to a minimum wage job. However, it's really fucking fun. I think I am beginning to understand how people get trapped in the collector's mindset. I'm not one of those people, not yet anyway, but I get it now. It's fun to trade things you don't want for things you want, and it's impressive to have a full set.
Some of these cards I'm straight-up selling, like this really heavily played French-language holographic Zapdos. We'll see how it goes.
I had the first edition holographic Charizard when I was a kid and I traded it for a regular, non-holographic, non 1st edition Snorlax, and it makes me really angry because those motherfuckers go for over a thousand green fellows right now, I think mint condition is 64k. Imagine! Imagine all the things I could do with even 10k! It could pay for like a year or two of student loans.
Medication changes
I got put on a benzodiazepine by my psychiatrist, I am taking it as a sleep aid. I was super hesitant because I've heard horror stories of people having allergic reactions, going off, and then having horrible withdrawal and being hospitalized for months. He told me that it's super unlikely though and probably not going to happen. I don't know much about them, and I don't really care to honestly if he says it's probably fine. I haven't started taking it yet. I'll start probably in the next couple of days. I know I should not find it scary, and I am not sure why I find it scary, but I kind of do. Time will tell if it fucks me in the ass or not. I don't foresee addiction being a thing, I am not the kind of person to get addicted to anything at all really other than caffeine, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens :)
I think the medication is called Lorazapam. I went to the Wikipedia page tonight and it makes it seem very scary. "More addictive" than other benzodiazepines, and it can cause amnesia and irritation/aggression. Now, since I am taking this before bed and it will have worn off by morning, I imagine the "amnesia" will cause me to forget my dreams. I don't want that, I like remembering my dreams, but I prefer it to not sleeping. If my psychiatrist didn't walk me through these symptoms though then I am guessing the odds are very low at my dose.
Interesting show I am watching
I've been watching an interesting show lately with a friend, it's called The Boys. I am approaching the end of the first season. The show is a "superhero show", but the superheroes have a lot of personal problems and many of them are only "good" for publicity but in reality are awful people. Anyway, the premise is interesting, and the thing that really puts the show together is that the acting is amazing. The acting is perfect. Every actor just completely nails their role and character. It's amazing.
The only thing I don't like about the show is that they show... too much sex. I think the show could be just as good if the sex scenes were implied. Or just freaky shit, like having a man breastfeed. Why is it important? How does it improve the show? Nobody knows.
Also, there was a scene in which a few dudes with beefy guns started shooting at a couple of characters. Somehow, the duo manage to hide behind a concrete support 5 feet away before the bullets reached them. Also, the people with the big guns conveniently paused their shooting while one of the characters hiding peeked with his glock. I fucking hate plot armor. That's one of the things I loved about Game of Thrones; in GOT, plot armor doesn't protect all the big people; a lot of big protagonists and antagonists die abruptly. I love it.
Miscellany
Sometimes, I kind of wish I could be disembodied. I know it sounds stupid. I just... it's so inconvenient having to regulate my temperature, sleep, eat, shit. Sometimes I wish I could just exist... passively. Incorporeal. I think it'd be interesting to just kind of dissipate, perpetuate across an entire meadow in the winter, aware of every snowflake that falls. Feeling them pass through me, feeling the chill but not feeling cold. Feeling the breeze but not not feeling blown. I imagine it would be quite cathartic.
I wonder if Windows 11 has a keylogger that datamines everything I type and tracks the frequency of certain phrases for advertising and analytics companies. I like to think they do. I imagine that keyloggers are pretty easy to write, though I wouldn't know because I haven't tried. I honestly have a suspicion that anybody with a Windows computer has one (because Windows is garbage). Sometimes, to spite Microsoft and whatever silly felons might be logging and lurking, I jokingly type things without sending or posting them, like "I am going to kill the mayor of Detroit on ___ date at ___ time, I will use a ___ kind of gun." I then delete the text and move on with what I was doing. I do this maybe weekly (not about the mayor of Detroit specifically, but just this joke) and sometimes I include addresses or venues. See, they can't go to the police with it, because they're not getting the information legally. So I either freak them out, which is my intention, or I get put on an NSA watchlist and waste a little taxpayer money, which I don't care about because I haven't done anything wrong and don't plan on doing anything wrong. The most illegal thing I've ever done is speeding. Plus, I would feel so special if there was a dude in the NSA monitoring me. It would add more meaning to my life, more spice. Imagine I'm just sitting at home one day and a SWAT team destroys everything I own and drags me to jail. Who cares if I'd be ruined, my life would be more interesting -- I'd be on the news! It'd be a perfect world! There would be no disease, no hunger, no starvation, no Travis Scott, no murder, no war, no Kardashians, no broken relationships -- it would be a perfect world.
I also at times have recently found myself wondering if I have any Jewish ancestry. See, of all the various born-in ethnic groups, Jewish people actually have a fully-fledged religion attached to theirs, as opposed to a loose spirituality or mysticism that may be found in another ethnic group. They also say that you can be Jewish if you aren't a "practicing Jew"; it is said that you are "born Jewish". So that got me thinking -- if someone really far up my family tree was Jewish, and his parents were Jewish, and his wife was Jewish, perhaps that means that his lapsed child was also Jewish. Does that mean that his lapsed-Jewish child's child was Jewish? At which point does a line of lapsed Jews stop being Jewish? Am I Jewish and I don't even know it? If so, I already have the formalities all taken care of, I think all I would need to do is just memorize a bunch of shit in the Torah. Then and only then would I truly be able to make anti-semitic jokes with complete joy and happiness in my heart, knowing that I am not uttering jocular prejudice against people that are not of my own kind. I opened up my old 23andme account and looked at all my little stats... I have 0.0 Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. 60% of my genes come from Switzerland though. Which is odd, because I am not very resistant to cold weather. I'm not very resistant to any weather, to be honest.
Pilots fight differently.
I played Titanfall 2 some time ago. There is a character in that game who is also in Apex Legends, called Ash. She has a voiceline in Apex Legends in which she says the phrase "pilots fight differently." I find it rather amusing, because it doesn't make sense if you don't understand the lore behind the term, and that "pilot" is a title that is like that fictional universe's term for "Navy SEAL on a bajillion steroids". Apex Legends is a game that nobody plays for the lore. In fact, there is no story mode; you just get it in scraps. If you want lore, you play Titanfall. Anyway, there's probably millions of people that play Apex Legends that don't know anything about the lore. Those people will hear the phrase "pilots fight differently", and think to themselves, "huh. I guess Ash knows how to fly aircraft, and she respects Valkyrie (another character whose whole persona is aviation shit)."
Comparably, there are overwatch voicelines that people seem to love to spam in game lobbies, such as "take it on the chin!" or "I'll try anything once." It's very silly, very goofy, and, dare I say it, marginally wacky?
I want to keep writing but I am tired, I haven't slept and it is almost 5 AM. Yay!