Nat Quayle Nelson

Rooftop Friendo Zine Bundle

Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 -0500

I’m going to be selling my zines at Grid Zine Fest 2024!

In preparation for the festival, I’ve created 7 new zines, DOUBLING the size of my zine catalog!

If you want, you can now buy a bundle including printed copies of all 14 Rooftop Friendo Zines.

That includes:

Collected Writings #1: I Think, a sci-fi psychodrama
Collected Writings #2: A Minecraft Fieldguide to Brazen Harlotry
Collected Writings #3: Frat Girl
Collected Writings #4: Stargazing in the Snow
Collected Writings #5: Dear Roommate
Shakespeare Randomizer - each copy is unique & contains 17 random pages of Shakespeare
Dancing with Demons: Essays at the Intersection of Dance, Music, and Video Games
Ex-Mo Bingo #1: Fun childhood trauma on every square!
Ex-Mo Bingo #2: I’m going to Hell for this
Ex-Mo Bingo #3: Back to Square One
Flash Fiction #1, featuring:
- “Vending Machine”
- “Wishful Portions”
- “Blood from a Stone”
- “Pet Rent”
This is NOT how you keep a TA Job: True stories from my year as a public high school Paraprofessional (written by Anonymous)
Failed Manuscripts #1: The B***s** Detectives (NSFW)
Failed Manuscripts #2: The Catfish Diaries: Valentines from a Tinder Daddy (NSFW)

New releases are in bold.

If you’d like to pre-order a bundle, to pick up at Grid Zine Fest on May 18, 2024, venmo $25 to @nathyafterdark. If you’d like a bundle shipped in the mail, venmo $30 to @nathyafterdark, and send your mailing address to natquaylenelson -AT- gmail -DOT- com.

50% of all proceeds will be donated to Gaza as E-sims!

I’ll be selling individual copies of all these zines at GZF, but some might sell out, idk.

FLIES FLIES FLIES: First Trailer Release

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve been publicizing my new Patreon to friends and family who I know will want to support it. It’s kind of like mooching off everyone I know who works harder or earns more money than I do, so I can make this weird passion project a more central focus of my life.

I’m always managing my energy against a day job, so I put minimal effort into the Patreon page at first, planning to start by canvassing the folks who will donate no matter how janky it looks, then iterate on it later to try to appeal to a wider patron base. Who exactly is the demographic for this very personal visual novel/web series?? I have some guesses but really no concrete idea yet.

So I’m still thinking through what the patron tiers should be. For now, I want to make sure people who can only afford 1USD/month, can still access full episodes, because there’s only one episode and the production value isn’t top-notch yet. But over the last couple weeks while begging my family members for money, I realized that without a trailer, I’d be asking total strangers to pledge a dollar a month for the project sight unseen!

So this morning I re-edited the cold open of episode 1 together, and I’m releasing that as the first trailer. Currently, even though the “show” is scripted and rendered by a game engine, I have to manually record the “game” running, then use OpenShot video editor to cut down long and awkward pauses in the dialogue that come from part of the code being optimized poorly–I plan to write a technical devlog about the voice-over/dialogue system soon.

A bunch of people have pledged at $10, which I didn’t actually make a tier for. With people valuing my work higher than I expected, I’ve started coming up with ideas for a $10 tier reward. One idea which might appeal to fans, and also help make the project better, is that $10 patrons would be invited to the virtual table-reads of episode scripts, and have the chance to give feedback while the show is being written.

Byte-Size Mindfulness #1: Song Walks

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 14:58:41 -0500

I’m rounding out my last undergraduate semester. One of my classes tasked me with the final project of writing creatively about who I am, and who I’m becoming in response to what I now call the Quarantine Era. I got to choose the format, and I decided to resurrect an idea I never got around to last year. It’s a little advice column about the way I’ve seen the world ever since I knew how to use a computer. I call it “Byte-Size Mindfulness,” or, Using Technology to be Better at Emotions.

The basic idea is that life is super complicated. It’s hard to understand my emotions in real-time. Computers can simulate all kinds of moments in ways I’ve never even thought of. So I should use my understanding of technology to build lasting metaphors. I can’t quite explain it, but maybe I can show it.

Song Walks

A song walk is something I do when I have an emotion stuck inside me that’s really powerful and lasts more than a few minutes so I can’t focus. Hopefully I have my phone and headphones with me, because what I do is choose a song that really resonates with my feelings, and I put it on a loop. Pretty loud. And I go for a brisk walk.

Tonight as it started getting dark I was mired in a feeling like, “Are you kidding? This has been all the world had to offer me today?” I needed something to happen to make it feel like time was even still moving.

I put on my coat and went for a walk listening to “Anna” by the Menzingers. (Spotify

YouTube)

The first cool thing about a song walk is, obviously, catharsis. None of the people you walk past know you’re a doofus listening to the same song on repeat. Once you get far enough away from your own neighborhood you might notice the street is empty (because everyone is socially distancing, as they should) and get the confidence to just belt out the chorus. It feels amazing.

I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YA / PLEASE COME BACK TO PHILADELPHIA / THIS PLACE AIN’T THE SAME WITHOUT YOU, ANNA

Hey, the singer’s voice is just as sad and lonely as I feel, and that makes everything better! Wow. Just replace Philadelphia with “the entire planet” and Anna with “a life that includes embodied interactions with friends and wonderful people to meet and enjoy the world with.”

The other thing about a Song Walk is that your song (if it has lyrics) might have more to say about your feelings than you could have picked up on if you only listened to it once.

But I will wait for you, babe / I have so much to tell ya / I have so much to say / Take as long as you need to take / I have so much to tell ya / I have so much to say

Life can take as long as it needs to. I will wait.

But it will come back—that’s what the scientists are saying for now, anyway. Right? Right???

Maybe I need to go for another walk.

Other song walks I have taken

Another Menzinger’s song: “House on Fire”. I think I was walking in Downtown Salt Lake during when I lived in “luxury” student housing that was falling apart and basically uninhabited by anyone else to talk to. Seriously, dozens and dozens of rooms were empty in this place. And every time I would walk outside, I’d see people without homes living in tents outside the library. It was fucked. But maybe I am matching the wrong song with that memory.
Once I was on a trip to New York and got waves of anxiety walking by myself at Times Square. I listed to “Sleeping Lessons” by the Shins about five times and felt better.
I listened to “Melody Circus” by Savant on a walk the morning after one of my first poetry open mic nights back in high school. When I got home, I wrote this poem about it that was eventually published in the lit mag. Maybe you like the poem, maybe it’s bad, gimme a break it was high school.

Emacs: Fury Road

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0600

I took a ride in my friend’s Tesla today. It was disgustingly perfect.

The car door handles were new-fangled and strange, but after I learned how to lever the door open, it was smooth sailing. The first thing he showed me was the automatic steering. All by itself, it made a perfect lane change on a steep, curving, downhill road! I couldn’t have done it better myself.

After that I couldn’t help but notice the size of the console. It’s like 3 iPads put together! Zoom out on that map screen and I bet you could see all of Salt Lake City at once, with color coding for traffic jams.

Next up: Caraoke. You can sing along to Imagine Dragons using the built-in software of your Tesla. Can I get a “Thun-der!” or what?! I couldn’t remember the beat of this unironic Utah classic until the second time through the chorus, but once I got going I could not be stopped.

When we pulled over at our destination (and trust me, I was not happy for it to be over) my friend still had a few things to show me, including the Tesla Arcade, YouTube integration, and OH MY GOD it has a Yule Log with REAL HEAT!!

I made him take me one last time around the block. And if not for that, the illusion would have remained impenetrable. But it didn’t. We went over a bump.

It was then that I realized: This Tesla’s not so special! It takes bumps and potholes just the same as my little 2007 Prius! And I sure as hell don’t need any Silicon Valley goons controlling my car for me!

I need Emacs.

So I did what any self-respecting hacker would do, and made some upgrades. Starting with my steering wheel.

I know what you must be thinking: That keyboard’s a knockoff! And you’d be right. I haven’t been able to get my hands on a real Model M but the Unicomp comes pretty close!¹

After securely attaching a keyboard to my steering wheel, I needed to gain control of my car’s console. I had no idea what OS it was running, and the only hacks I could find online were for disabling that annoying beeping whenever you’re in reverse.

Many hours of experimentation later, I was able to gain BIOS access to my Prius Console. The solution was mind-blowing, but it could fill its own blog post, so I won’t get into it.

Of course, for my new base operating system I chose Arch Linux. Once I had pacman up and running, I was tempted to install xorg and the delightful Emacs X Window Manager, knowing it would give me access to GUI versions of all the apps I’d need to reach feature parity with a Tesla. But I realised this was nonsense for three reasons:

Using GUIs would be cheating
Unlike with native Emacs extensions, I would never be able to fully hack GUI apps to my needs at runtime
I definitely don’t want to fiddle with a computer mouse while driving.

So X was out the window. Pure terminal forever! I installed Emacs and prepared to write my own Prius drivers for Arch Linux. Again, this was an arduous process, so I’ll spare you the trouble.

Once I had working functions for all the basics ((prius-turn-wheel-left), (prius-turn-wheel-right), (prius-accelerate), etc.) I started to think about my ideal keyboard shortcuts. I knew C-b and C-f wouldn’t feel very intuitive for turning the steering wheel, so I installed evil mode and embraced using hjkl for acceleration, reverse, left, and right.

C-g hits the brakes. Obviously.

If anything ever bugs me, I can always tinker on my Elisp config without even turning the car off. I simply turn to the familiar C-x C-e binding and (eval-buffer)–and suddenly I’m metaprogramming my car on the way to school! If that seems dangerous to you, rest assured that I only ever drive with a navigator in the passenger’s seat. #PairProgramming

But what about all those cool features my friend had? Could my homebrew vehicle ever come close to the glorious feature bloat of a Tesla?

Map support: google-maps.el seems compelling. I do hate to rely on closed-source software, so maybe I’ll find time to fork osm-mode bring it up to date for OpenStreetMap support.

Karaoke: Surprisingly, this is also already implemented. karaoke-time

Games: All I need is nethack-el to keep me entertained for thousands of hours on the road.

Yule Log: emacs-fireplace is in colorful ASCII art which makes it even better.

And with that, I’m satisfied. With GNU all things are possible.

I hope this write-up might inspire a few new Emacs Road Warriors out there. If you’re like me, you’ll see that you never wanted a self-driving car–all along, you wanted smarter tools for driving your own car.

Note: Many parts of this post are true or at least plausible, but I did not actually install Emacs in my car. Neither should you.

Further note: I should have been seeking gainful employment during the 3 hours it took to write this blog post. If you think my lunacy deserves to be rewarded, Venmo @nathyafterdark or subscribe to my Patreon.

I do have one disappointment with the Unicomp: It only supports chords of up to 4 keys, which my research tells me is the same as the original Model M with its PS/2 connection. With the advantage of modern hardware, why not more? Sadly this means I won’t be able to use braille-chords-mode on the road. ↩

Rooftop Friendo Zines

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0500

I run a zine imprint called Rooftop Friendo! It’s named after the roof of an apartment building in Brooklyn where I once lived for a summer.

You can buy PDFs of my zines on Gumroad or itch.io.

For official printed copies of Rooftop Friendo zines, follow these steps:

If you’re making a bulk order for any reason, send me an email for special treatment.
If not, send a private Venmo payment to @nathyafterdark including the following in the memo:
- List of zines you want
- Your email address in case I have to contact you for clarification
- The full mailing address where I should send the zines
Does Venmo let you put that much text in the memo??? Someone should try this and let me know.

Use this formula to calculate how much money to send:

 VENMO AMMOUNT = SUM(GUMROAD PRICE OF EACH ZINE) + $2 x NUMBER OF ZINES

 // So if zine A is $1, and zine B is $2, and you want both
 // you send me $7 (which is $1 + $2 + $2 x 2).
 // And your address and email.

I will mail you your zines as soon as I can.
If this seems complicated and expensive, come find me at a zine festival. Sorry.

Stand-alone zines

Collected Writings

Failed Manuscripts

^ BS doesn’t stand for bullshit in this case. If we’re blood relatives, do not buy this zine.

P.S. this post has a permanent, up-to-date home here, and a link in the site header.

My new short story: 'I Think'

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 21:24:13 -0500

A sci-fi story I wrote last year was awarded the Western Regional Honors Council Short Fiction award and published in this year’s edition of the Scribendi literary magazine. The University of Utah Honors College flew me out to Bozeman, Montana to appear at the Scribendi release reception, at which I talked for a few minutes about the story. You can watch the talk on video from my phone!

I’ll be unveiling “I Think” in zine form on next Saturday (April 13th) at Grid Zine Fest. Be there!

The Fifty Shades of Grey Challenge

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0600

Later today I plan to rush to public library on the last day before my hold on Fifty Shades of Grey expires, then rush back to campus in under an hour for more class.

Why is it so important that I obtain a copy of Fifty Shades? So that I can dominate my new housemates… in a friendly competition.

The Challenge

A copy of Fifty Shades of Grey is placed in an accessible drawer in a communal room of the house. It is the only copy of the book permitted inside the house for the duration of the challenge; anyone who has already read the book is disqualified according to the honor system.

The first competitor to read the book cover-to-cover is the winner (with caveats).

Every competitor writes their name on an index card and uses this card as a bookmark, secured with a paper clip so it is easy to preserve the place of everyone else’s bookmark. Tampering with someone else’s bookmark is forbidden, and so is moving your own bookmark to any page other than the one you’re currently reading. In this sense, the bookmarks should always visually represent who’s in the lead.

Here’s where it gets tricky: Reading Fifty Shades of Grey is also against the rules. At least, getting caught is. The whiteboard in the study room will be used to score the number of times each competitor has been caught reading the book. Consequences for being caught are to be determined—it may be that after a certain number of times being caught, a competitor is disqualified, or that a reading time-out is imposed on someone after being caught. It is especially forbidden to read the book in any private space in the house; that is to say, if you are to break the rule that forbids reading the book, you must do so in a place where you risk being caught by housemates. At all times when no one is reading the book, it must be returned to the same communal drawer. Being caught holding or hiding the book without reading it, is also grounds for punishment.

In order to achieve a full victory, any competitor who finishes reading the book will be required to take a trivia quiz on GoodReads. The other competitors will determine if the winner’s trivia score is good enough to prove that they did indeed read the entire book.

Prize also to be determined.

Paimon Jar

Fri, 28 Dec 2018 00:00:00 -0600

I recently stopped using Beeminder. I realized it wasn’t a good personal fit, for two main reasons:

I’m a workaholic.¹ ² My usual tendency is to work like crazy when I feel like it, and not at all when I don’t. Negative reinforcement for not getting work done hasn’t changed that crunch & quit behavior. I often just ignore reminders I don’t want to act on.
I obsess about money. My lizard brain likes to label some of the most commonplace purchases as frivolous, and I can mentally spiral when I run low on funds.

This last semester I observed that when I give into these less balanced mindsets, I still get all my essential work done one way or another. The only thing that suffers is my personal life. I don’t need Beeminder to hound me to be more productive. What I really want is a system that incentivises balanced thinking and keeps my health in check during the process.

My new system is inspired by New Girl:

I call it the Paimon Jar, because I’m using a jar one of my friends painted with the Paimon sigil³ for me, and it essentially creates value from my inner demons.

Every time I successfully identify an unhealthy thought process, I put a dollar in the jar. This might seem like negative reinforcement, but it’s actually a very satisfying middle ground. The jar is where I save money to buy the essentials my lizard brain doesn’t think I need. In that sense, what I’m really doing is rewarding myself for being more mindful in the face of negativity, while turning the behaviors I tend to beat myself up over into something cathartic and even kind of funny.

I can hold my inner demons in my hand and say, “I see you for what you are, and we are separated by glass. You have no power over me.”

See this post ↩
And this post ↩
To understand this reference, see Hereditary. It’s spooky, weird, and filmed in my high school! ↩