Vinylless

My Top 3 Culinary Experiences of 2025

2026-01-25T00:00:00Z

The greatest thing about the New Year season is that there's so much to blog about! Between reflecting on how things went in 2025 and setting goals for 2026, I could gab forever. While I have a more in-depth blog post about the local restaurant scene cooking on the backburner (stay tuned!), I thought I would jump in really quick and talk about some of my favorite restaurant experiences I had in the past year.

Honorable Mention: Bailey's Chocolate Bar

Bailey's Chocolate Bar, of the Bailey's family of restaurants, has been a classic staple of the Lafayette Square neighborhood for over two decades. As the name suggests, the bar focuses on dessert and is famous for its EXTENSIVE list of chocolate martinis. There are some savory options on the menu as well, but let's be honest, if you're going here, your main priority is to indulge in some rich, chocolatey goodness.

It's a shocker that I had not dropped everything and made my way down there the moment I discovered its existence. But for a couple of years now I've been dying to go and waiting for the perfect moment to make a reservation. Fast forward to April of 2025 when my partner was visiting from out of town (a recurring theme on this list), and we decided that the perfect way to spend our Easter Sunday together was to walk around Lafayette Park and have a late lunch at the Chocolate Bar.

We got the Cheese & Charcuterie Board which was a generous assortment of all types of meats & cheeses and followed it up with the Lover's Plate, basically a perfect sampler for two of SO many desserts on offer. There were strawberries, brownies, blondies, macarons, bruleed banana slices, caramel popcorn, meringues, and two tiny mugs of warm "drinking chocolate", which we saved to drink last. The cocktails were flowing heavily throughout the meal, and I think my favorite of the night was the Dark Raspberry Martini, which was so richly chocolately with the silky undertone of sweet raspberries. It's the perfect little slice of heaven on earth.

3. No Ordinary Rabbit

The newest establishment on this list, No Ordinary Rabbit is a quirky restaurant focusing more on small plates and offbeat cocktails. It opened in early 2025 to a lot of hype, so it was high on my list to check out with my partner when they were in town. The space is fairly small, but it has a dark, cozy atmosphere with amusing rabbit-y decor. I don't wear much jewelry day-to-day but for this date I broke out this vintage-looking necklace I own that has a big rabbit on it. On arrival the waitress complimented my necklace!

I wish I could remember the names of all the drinks we tried, but I think some of them were seasonal offerings anyway, so it's possible they're gone for good. The cocktails I sampled were pretty spirit-forward, which my heathen palate had mixed success handling. Further into the night I stuck to their spritz offerings, of which they had a decent list. We got pretty tipsy!

We got three plates to share - the Tinned Squid, the Mussels, and the Hagfish - and each was more delicious than the last. We were stunned multiple times when we thought we hit the ceiling of tastiness and then the next bite was impossibly even better. At some point I think we were disturbing other guests around us by how loud we were drunkenly "Mmmmm"-ing! At the end of the meal our waitress tempted us with a dessert menu and we ended up having Baklava Cigar Cookies, which, anything baklava is going to be delightful. I am dying to go back again as soon as possible.

Even though they've only been open for a short while, NOR has also gotten into hosting frequent special tasting menus for various occasions, such as holidays or the debut of a new wine label. Most recently as of posting they are advertising a special 4-course meal for Valentine's Day. It costs a pretty penny to get into one, but a girl can dream...

2. Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar

October, being my birth month, is historically dedicated to indulgence and hedonism, and 2025 wasn't any different. This past October I gave myself a little project I called 'Wine Bar Wednesdays'. Every Wednesday after work I would have dinner & drinks at a local wine (and/or cocktail) bar, specifically somewhere I've been meaning to go but haven't, preferably somewhere within walking distance. Overall, the project was a phenomenal success (for my tummy, not my wallet) and it felt good to finally cross some places off my bucket list that had been sitting there for too damn long.

Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar is one of those places, also part of the Bailey's restaurant group by coincidence. It's got everything going for it, being an attractive, rustic establishment as well as only being a few minutes of walking away from where I live. And honestly? I am a huge fool for not having tried this place out sooner. You mean to tell me that a delicious bar with the largest cheese & charcuterie offering I have ever seen existed practically next door to me this entire time??

I decided to sit at the bar, which was the right call because I had some great conversation with the bartender. You've got to be in the right mood for it, but I do admit I love occasions where I get to sit at the bar and be chatty. We commiserated about the state of Downtown St. Louis and I got to hear about his beef with Ballpark Village. To start I got a Beeting Cancer cocktail, an October special that they were having in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (proceeds went to such-and-such charity). It was very beety, and I couldn't taste the alcohol at all! Dangerous.

Bridge has an array of decadent-looking entrees but I was laser-focused on the charcuterie. On their menu they have a whole page dedicated to an elaborate rubric of meats, cheeses, and other cheese board add-ons in different price points. It's a bit of a daunting task to choose your spread, and I went a bit conservative with my board in order not to overwhelm my wallet; I ended up getting 2 meats, 2 cheeses, and added on olives. Everything was delicious but the true MVPs of the plate were the Wagyu Pastrami and the Focaccia. The pastrami was incredibly tender, melt-in-your-mouth, and paired immaculately with everything else. The focaccia...never have I had such thick, pillowy bread before, with the most addictive salty, herby crust. I could eat that focaccia for every occasion, and Bridge even offers a stand-alone order of focaccia on their appetizer menu, so, you really COULD order it for any occasion. Genuinely I'll just stop in the middle of my day from time to time and think about how delicious that focaccia was.

Confession: I raved about Bridge to my mom and she got jealous, so not a week later we went back there and had dinner together. We got another cheese & charcuterie plate, and it gave me the opportunity to try some different options. The best cheese we got was Sage Derby which is a cheese that's green because it's infused with herbs! It was so delicious. My mom was also curious of the Whipped Pumpkin Ricotta they offered as an appetizer, so we ordered that too. It was creamy and pumpkin-y, less like the innards of a pumpkin pie and more on the savory side. And of course it was paired with - you guessed it - more of that wonderful focaccia!

1. Umami Seasons Hot Pot

And now we come to the big winner, the best-of-the-best restaurant I went to in 2025! A place so delicious that after I went the first time, I went again three more times within the year!

It was possibly inevitable that Umami Seasons Hot Pot would become a favorite haunt, because it presented the first opportunity for me to experience hot pot. I was of course familiar with the concept of hot pot beforehand, being an anime teen reading story arcs in manga where friends share the communal meal, or getting awed by YouTube videos of Japanese hot pot restaurants and their wow-factor presentation. But hot pot restaurants in the U.S. Midwest are few and far between.

Enter Umami Seasons, which opened in the Delmar Loop mid-2024 in the space that used to be a Thai rolled-up ice cream joint called Snow Factory (RIP). It's honestly impressive that a tiny space that used to house just an ice cream counter and a few small tables could transform into a restaurant with 10-13 large tables meant to accommodate large pots of soup. Ever since its opening I had been craving going and finally experiencing hot pot.

I only had one other hurdle to jump to achieve my hot pot dreams: getting someone to go with me. I'm sure it's not a crime to go eat hot pot alone, but that's definitely not the intended experience - hot pot is meant to be shared! I do have a large immediate family which you would think would be the perfect group to rally up for this kind of thing. However, there are two Celiacs among them, so it's hard to convince the whole group to try any new restaurant, especially something that involves communal eating where the cross-contamination risk is even higher.

The solution came with, once again, my partner visiting in April. We made a date one weekday evening out of shopping around the Loop and then having dinner at Umami Seasons. My partner, being from the backwoods of Sweden, also had not had hot pot before. We went in as wide-eyed ingenues and came out with all our expectations exceeded.

I can only assume that our experience with hot pot will sound fairly basic to someone who has had hot pot before. We got broth, we got meats & veggies, we cooked the meats & veggies in the broth. But my eyes were opened to a world of FUN and DELICIOUSNESS! The added bit of interactivity where the ingredients are laid out in front of you and you are in charge of cooking your own morsels is instantly addictive. And the experience is greatly enhanced when you have other people with you, sharing plates and comparing notes about which broths taste best with which items.

Umami conveniently has a Hot Pot for Two special which we ordered, and it came with two broths, two meat trays, one large veggie & mushroom platter, one plate of assorted tofu, and one "starch" (rice or noodles). It was a satisfying amount for two people to split, although we did end up ordering more fish later because we're insatiable. For our broths we chose the Chongqing Spicy Broth (lowest spice level) and the Miso Broth, both which were extremely tasty! The spicy broth had lots of chili peppers and peppercorns floating in it. I would recommend avoiding accidentally picking up a chili pepper, because biting into one is a bit painful, but eating the peppercorns gives you a delightful tingly sensation.

Another crowning achievement of Umami is their Build-your-own Sauce Bar, where there is an array of ingredients laid out for you to mix into your own dipping sauce. One thing you have to know about me is that I go absolutely wild for a dip, so a station where I have infinitely customizable options to mix a sauce like my own little potion is peak. They give you some suggestions of combinations to try but I usually wing it. It's a bit different every time, but I would say my signature sauce mixture predominantly consists of sesame oil, sesame paste, garlic, and cilantro.

Armed now with the experience of hot pot and pictures of the menu's gluten-free broth options, I finally convinced my family to try out Umami and was able to go again in the fall as my birthday dinner request. Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely! If you're not getting a special, you basically just order items individually through your phone with a QR code. We were able to keep things gluten-free by steering away from items like fish cakes and noodles, and sticking to raw vegetable & meat options. But even with that limitation, there's still a huge variety of things to eat! My recommendation is to get the Veggie Combo instead of ordering individual vegetables, because that's the only way you get sliced tomatoes (I don't know why, but for some reason they don't offer tomatoes à la carte). I really enjoy the tomatoes & Chinese cabbage in any broth, but especially the Chongqing. All of their mushrooms are delicious but I especially like the Enoki, and for meat you can't go wrong with classic Pork slices.

So I got my family hooked on hot pot as much as me. Since first having it with my partner in April and going with my family for my birthday, I've been back another two times, and one of those visits was not even prompted by me, but by my dad! Every time it has been consistently delicious, and it feels kind of healthy in a way because you're mostly filling up on vegetables. Umami does offer an "All-You-Can-Eat Meat" special, but I'm not sure I would ever take it, because most of the deliciousness comes from stuffing your face with cabbage and mushrooms. My dream is to go to Umami enough times to sample all the broth options and make a definitive broth ranking. So far my favorites would have to be the Chongqing and the Sukiyaki, both extremely savory but on opposite ends of the "heat" spectrum.

Those are the restaurants that I enjoyed going to the most last year! I had so many delicious meals in 2025 that it was honestly hard to narrow down, but every experience that made it on this list is one that I constantly reminisce about and get excited for my next opportunity to go back. Due to the nature of my 2026 resolutions (hopefully there's a blog post up about those before the end of January), I may be limiting myself to how much I eat out in this new year, but I hope to make every meal a great one! Bon appétit!

101 Cards for World Postcard Day

2025-10-01T00:00:00Z

The letter-writing group I am a part of asked if I would do a writeup of my WPD experience, and I thought: Hey, free blog material! So here's a version of what I wrote formatted for this blog. Please enjoy and I'm excited to now be a part of the cohort of blogs that haven't been abandoned with just one entry sitting on them!

Happy World Postcard Day, everyone! If you're someone who's received a letter from me before EVER, there is currently a special postcard on its way to you!

Today I finish my months-long task of writing & sending out a postcard to every single person I have an address for! The outgoing mail came out to 101 postcards!

In the past few years my impulsiveness in buying postcards has increased dramatically, to where I had a pretty sizeable collection. Around the time I was wondering if I was in need of a downsizing, I learned that October 1st is World Postcard Day, and I hatched a plan: I would send out a postcard to every single address I have written in my address book. I had completed letter-writing challenges such as InCoWriMo before, but even so, I knew this was going to be a daunting task. Luckily I had the idea several months ahead of October 1st, so I had plenty of time to start writing and prepare. The first postcards to get written were done around the middle of August.

I possess many addresses from friends & family I know in person, as well as a core group of online friends (shout-out DOMINO CLUB). But roughly 50% of the addresses that these postcards went to came from one source: r/RandomActsofCards. This is a subreddit I discovered in June of this year and instantly fell in love with. At its core, it's a forum where people offer to send cards and request to receive cards. People will also post thank-yous on the subreddit when they receive mail, and the moderators meticulously keep track of who has given thank-yous to whom. You get a colored badge next to your name to show how many thank-yous you've gotten. (Last I saw, the person with the highest amount thank-yous was somewhere over 8,000!) The prospect of having a huge community of people to send cards to combined with just that little bit of gamification made this such a tantalizing thing to participate in. I also just so happened to make this discovery around the same time I had opened up my own P.O. Box - perfect timing!

So this summer I sent and received a lot of cards to people in RAoC. Subsequently, I got a lot of people's addresses! With IRL friends and close pen pals, I write their addresses in a little book that gets tucked in the Snail Mail Supplies pouch that I keep. Now that I was obtaining a lot of addresses through DMs on Reddit, I decided to make a dedicated master Google spreadsheet to keep track of them all.

Typically when I send a postcard, I like to shrink my handwriting down real small and cram as much writing as I can onto the card. I knew right away that it would not be feasible to do that with the sheer amount of cards that I needed to complete, so all of the postcards have varying amounts of writing on them. I tended to write more on cards going to closer friends, whereas basically all of the RAoC recipients just got a simple "Hope you have an awesome day!" message. I made kind of a funny decision to write all of my messages from the perspective of me on October 1st, even if the card was written 2 months before that! This led to a lot of messages talking about what I'm excited for in October...to be fair, there's a lot to be excited for! (Most notably my BIRTHDAY! 🎉)

My hopes for this project were that I wouldn't have to buy any new postcards & just use up ones from my existing stash. That ended up being the case! The majority of the postcards I sent out were from this boxed set I had containing 100 floral-themed postcards. I had originally bought the box before I was even into sending postcards that much, thinking that I would use them as scrapbooking material. I had used some but found it difficult to cut-and-paste with them, being that the paper was so thick. There seemed to be a good chunk of cards left, but I used them all up fairly quickly! For the rest I just used random other cards from my collection. One of my favorites I sent out is probably this postcard with a Pride & Prejudice quote on it, which went to my mom, who is the HUGEST Jane Austen fan on the planet.

I did not buy postage all-at-once for this challenge, but would get a sheet or two of stamps whenever I found myself at the post office. The final count of postcards I sent was 76 domestic and 25 international. So that means going off of current US postage rates ($0.61 for a postcard stamp and $1.70 for an international stamp), I spent a grand total of $88.86 on postage for this project!

As much fun as this whole undertaking was, I probably would not do it again and I don't think I would recommend this as a challenge to anyone else. There were a lot of drawbacks that came with it: Firstly, it took up a lot of my free time. At any given moment I have several personal projects that I'm working on (*cough cough* remember when I said I was going to make zines this year...?) and many of them fell to the wayside to make more time for postcard-writing. I don't know if the accomplishment of finishing this challenge outweighs the guilt of leaving other things untouched. Secondly, I was very worried about my address list becoming way too long for me to handle, so I cut myself out of other opportunites to send mail that I otherwise would have gone for. Making more offers on RAoC would mean more addresses on my list, which means more postcards due on October 1st!

All in all, I definitely felt the pressure more acutely with this challenge than any of my experiences with InCoWriMo, so I think I'll just stick to that from now on. (Although the amount of postcards I sent today is enough to make up at least 3 InCoWriMos so I may be taking a break from that next year!) I'm looking forward to going back to writing letters and postcards at my own pace.

Anyway, I am hoping and praying that every single postcard gets to its destination safely. If you get one in the mail, let me know! Or even better, write a postcard back!

2025...The Year of BB!

2025-06-15T00:00:00Z

When my friend Bagenzo announced her blogging framework Strawberry Starter at the beginning of the year, I was very excited to dust off my old Neocities that I'd been sitting on and get to blogging! My first post would of course be about my 2025 resolutions and goals, allowing me to have one place to lay everything out so I could hit the ground running. Fast forward to now, halfway through 2025...For Sale, Blog Post, Never Written.

This probably shouldn't be surprising - I orignally constructed Vinylless in 2021 with the goal of playing with a different blogging framework, Zonelets. Aaand then never seemed to find the time to write any posts. I'm not a blogger by nature. But with my increasing distain for all of the centralized social medias out there, blogs seem the most desirable way to get writing and rambles out to the internet.

So, with renewed vigour and a recent Strawberry update, I'm back! And it's better late than never to talk about what I want to accomplish in 2025, because to be honest, I don't have a lot to show for myself at this 50% mark. I could use a spiritual renewal of the promises I made to myself. So here we go!

Operation: Become BB

In 2024 the game I crowned as GOTY was Anthology of the Killer by Stephen Thecatamites. The game consists of nine short walking(/chasing?) simulators that Stephen developed under a pseudonym from 2020-2024 and released on GameJolt. The games center around one plucky zinester and her ongoing quest to document the strange happenings in her hometown of XX City, rife with eye-popping colors and murder. Each game in the series can be completed in a single evening, although the chapters get longer and more elaborate as the story goes on. I played them over the course of several months alongside Discord calls with my parter, and we were both really charmed by the project. (Other people must have been charmed as well, as the game won a bona fide games-industry award, the Nuovo Award at IGF 2024.)

A huge factor to how charming the game feels is protagonist BB, whose internal monologue drives the story of the game. As you run around, BB provides commentary to everything interactive that you can bump into - opinionated descriptions, snarky asides, philosophical musings. She ventures into a world of chaos with the single-minded goal of getting her next zine to print (well, and trying to stay alive).

So great was my love for BB that it inspired me to center my New Year's resolution on living in her image. If we're being honest, my path to creative energy recovery after being obliterated by the pandemic has been slow and nonlinear. Choosing a specific muse to embody is a new angle for me to try and regain my creative drive. But what does 'becoming BB' actually entail...?

Stay Alive in a Hostile World

Anthology of the Killer does not have very complex gameplay, but a majority of your playtime is spent avoiding people who try to kill you. The chase sequence is implemented throughout the game frequently and in a myriad of different contexts. It's a bit of an obvious takeaway but the first step to any sort of creative success is making sure your basic needs are met in order not to die.

While I don't live in a city with killers constantly chasing me, it often feels like the expectation to break my back working 40 hours a week at a day job in order to sustain myself in a capitalist society is enough to drive me to the grave. Often in the past couple of years I've gotten really frustrated with myself when being too exhausted from The Day Job impeded my ability to do creative work in my free time. I think reframing this exhaustion as rest that I need in order to stay alive would be healthier for my mental wellbeing. At the end of the day, it's all about not dying!

Make Zines!

BB's main medium of art throughout the The Killer series is zines, and she's immersed in the zine culture in her vicinity. If you've found this blog, I don't think you are a person to whom I need to explain what zines are. While I've dabbled with making a few in the past (and even was an editor for a zine-like publication in college), I wouldn't necessarily say I'm a "zinester". However, zines are really cool! I'd LIKE to be a zinester! And the only way to make that happen is to make more zines!

I came into 2025 with a lot of zine ideas bouncing around in my head. Last year I became obsessed with several local restaurant review podcasts, and thought to make a series of zines with my own opinions about local places. I also watched an inordinate amount of movies last year (significantly more than I've ever seen in past years), and think that a zine about my 2024 movie journey would be fun. Of course, being a member of DOMINO CLUB, I also love to hype up the work that my friends do through there, and it would be interesting to put together some "fan"zines for specific games that have stuck with me.

"That sounds great, Emma," you may be saying. "But I haven't seen any of these zine ideas come into fruition yet, and we're six months into 2025. What gives?"

Partially I want to blame what I talked about in Point 1, which is, I've just been trying to stay alive here! But there's some more underlying faults as well, that hopefully I can actively tackle with the project of becoming BB...

Quit Pussyfooting and Actually Write

I'll just come out and say it: writing sucks. I think ever since 7th grade when I was first introduced to the five-paragraph essay I've had an adversarial relationship with writing. But as luck would have it, in order to tell a story or get your ideas across to other people, you have to use some freaking words. It's a reason why I'm drawn to gamemaking as an art form, because even though there may be some writing involved, it gets supplemented with doing actual fun stuff like adding interactivity, mechanics, UI, visuals, and sound. Writing just for the sake of writing is dreadful to me. I have much respect for my friends who have participated in NaNoWriMo, or who have even gotten their works of fiction published, but you will never catch my ass doing that.

However, a lot of my zine ideas require me to...write! Whereas with video game development, I can pepper in the fun parts of developing a game while I'm getting the writing done, I need the text of my zine at least semi-finalized before I get to the fun part of layout design and construction. So if I can't bring myself to write, I'm at an impasse!

I think it boils down to the fact that the only way out is through. In The Killer, BB narrates her thoughts about whatever the player interacts with, but it's also implied that this narration is also the text that goes into her zines. To make writing a habit, I should be like BB and just be recording my thoughts constantly.

To this end I think it's best to have several different avenues for me to turn to for longform recording. Of course I'm never without my Hobonichi Techo Weeks, which acts as my everday-carry journal and planner. It's also been on my mind to start a commonplace book, which has become all the rage among analog enthusiasts in the past couple of years. The journaling that I do in my Hobonichi is primarily focused on life events, whereas I think having a separate notebook to collect inspiring writing and have a place to internalize it and respond to it privately would excercise the ol' creative muscles in a useful way. Then, there is this blog that I'd like to get off the ground. The journaling I do by hand is very stream-of-consiousness, get-it-down-and-go type of writing. With this blog, I hope to have a place to work on more thought-out, structured, get-a-casual-pass-at-editing pieces.

The great thing about having these mutiple avenues is that they're free to overlap and draw on each other. Maybe I take something I've written in a journal and work at it until I have a blog post. Maybe I edit down a too-wordy blog post but decide to take the cut content and elaborate upon it in a journal entry. And then, of course, this ecosytem becomes a fertile ground of ideas and writing to turn into zines!

Get Immersed in Zine Culture

A great aspect about zines is that there's a huge community for them. Throughout The Killer series, BB does come into contact with other zinesters, and it's implied that she's active in a larger network of creatives who come together around zines. My hope is that interacting with the zine scene will allow me to broaden my mind as a creator, and also keep the well of zine ideas full by being inspired by others' work.

An obvious way to get into zine culture is to follow more zinemakers on social media. This proves to be a double-edged sword, however. More and more I'm feeling a lot of disdain for mainstream social media platforms, and recognize that scrolling my feed is a big trap: it more often than not acts as a distraction that keeps me from fun activities that I could be doing instead. So while reaching out to other zinesters is beneficial, I want to put a focus on developing relationships with zinesters via other avenues than social media. This could entail in-person interactions with zinesters in my local community, or finding non-social media ways to talk with long-distance zinesters (email, written correspondence, visiting zine fairs in other places).

I am not aiming to table at a zine fair by the end of the year, that's a bit too lofty for me. But I would like to submit at least one zine to a distro in 2025. My friend Em Reed actually runs a very nice one called Plaintext Distro, and I have some ideas cooking that could fit the vibe there. European paper sizing, here I come!

And of course, you don't have to tell me twice to buy more zines. My wallet prevents me from going too crazy, but amassing and reading a diverse collection of zines can broaden my mind and provide a wellspring of indpiration for my own work. I have this nice little basket on my bookshelf of zines I already own. Although room is getting kind of tight, so it may be time to make more room for a larger collection. And hey, if you out there make zines, send one my way, I'll gladly take it and read it! Which brings me to...

I got a P.O. Box!

Hey, at least in the time it took to write this blog post about 2025 goals, I got one of them sorted! The desire to get more into zines, unplug from centralized digital social platforms, and other creative schemes in the background finally came to a head and I decided it was time. I now have my own P.O. Box and I can elicit all sorts of mail without doxxing myself! If you have anything you wish to send me in the pursuit of becoming immersed in zines, you can send it to:

Vinylless
c/o Emma Daues
P.O. Box 69012
Saint Louis, MO 63169
USA

As another way to be annoying, I've designated this P.O. Box to also act as a sort of 'Comments Section' for this blog! I don't want to fiddle with adding a digital comments section to my blog posts and have another social space online to deal with. If you have a question, comment, criticism, write me a damb letter! (Pretend email doesn't exist.)

Honestly if someone puts in the effort to write down something on paper and physically mail it to me, even if it's a horrible takedown of my character, that's dedication, and I'll honor it with a response on my blog.

Become "New Wave"

In supplemental material for The Anthology of the Killer, it's mentioned that BB decides to change her name and become "New Wave" after listening to the song "My Little Red Book" by Bebe Buell. However, she's not exactly sure what becoming "New Wave" entails, so that's one thing in my BB embodiment that is up to me to interpret.

I'm already into some New Wave bands: The past couple of years I've been slowly working my way through Talking Heads's discography, so I should finish that up this year. My sibling's obsession with Oingo Boingo has rubbed off on me and I've had Dead Man's Party on loop recently. And of course I've been a lover of The B-52's since I was a little kid. I could broaden my horizons a little; I have several friends who are into DEVO but I haven't really touched them at all. If you have recommendations for albums, write to me!

BB wears a lot of polka-dotted clothing throughout the The Killer series, and I think it's implied that she thinks wearing polka-dots is somehow New Wave. Unfortunately, I refuse to turn to the polka-dotted side of life. My wardrobe is already too-fully packed with stripes, stripes, stripes.

Anyway, this is a lot. My feelings right now are that this is too ambitious of a workload to get accomplished in half a year. But I will try my best! Please root for me!