vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor

@ellaguro

she/her. musician, writer, podcaster, weird vidgame person

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vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· 7d

i don't know what this is and i don't care enough to find out but you can sure find a lot of people talking about this kind of stuff

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· 19d

stay cool, stay vibe-free

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· 19d

bringing back the smiling apple since it's my birthday

a lo-res jpg clipart image of a red apple with a smiling face and the words "Guess what! No one gives a shit!" around it

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· 19d

was reading David Cronenberg's wiki page yesterday and all i can say is i wish most famous artists had the level of clarity of the 80+ year old film director who makes movies about people plugging electronics into gaping bodily orifices

from David Cronenberg's wikipedia page:

"Cronenberg has spoken against right-wing politics, especially in the United States, on multiple occasions, saying in 2022 that, "I think the U.S. has gone completely bananas, and I can't believe what the elected officials are saying, not just about Roe vs. Wade, so it is strange times." In a separate 2022 interview, he claimed that U.S. president Donald Trump "didn't deserve" to be addressed in his art. He also emphasized the importance of vaccines and called the notion of refusing a vaccine "ridiculous". Cronenberg has stated that he views all art, including his own films, as inherently political, regardless of a creator's intentions."

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· 27d

rewatching the Alanis Morrisette HBO Max documentary for kicks and still amused by how much her interviews are like hearing from your mom who also happens to have been the biggest pop star in the world when you were 8 years old

a shot older Alanis Morissette sitting crosslegged in a black chair in front of a massive wall of book shelves and a rug and wood floor and two spotlights in an interview from the HBO Max documentary "Jagged"

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jul 12

i try to cycle between acoustic guitar, ukelele, and piano/synth just to mix it up since those are the instruments i have on hand. here's a guitar one just for variety

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jul 12

here's something from one my recent stupid songwriting exercises (i try to stumble through a song idea and record it as fast as possible to maybe come back to later). i normally don't share these with people.

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jul 12

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jul 5

and this one ("painting #3") is probably my personal favorite of the pieces i did

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jul 5

it was really great to have this conversation and it brought back a lot of memories of the fairly recent past of 12-13ish years ago. here's my piece made with ARTIST called "baboon nose" that i recall @smestorp.bsky.social saying was his favorite

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jul 4

in honor of this nation's birth here's an extremely liminal photo i took at the Lincoln Memorial a couple years back

a large column stands almost out of frame on the left as a glint of light peers through on the floor. towards the right of the frame, a doorway is open to a slightly more lit room and a sign stands next to it.

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 28

it was Mario 64's 30th anniversary last week, and i did this list on twitter awhile back - so i felt like it was time to revise and reshare. here's my revised list of the "normal", i.e. non boss or secret levels, ranked from worst to best. feel free to get mad at me about my choices in the replies

"Okay

15. Stage 13 - Tiny, Huge Island - this probably feels the most like a stereotypical "Mario stage" in the older 2D Mario sense of any of the others in the game and the concept is neat, but there's not much in this stage that's particularly memorable at all. i guess the mountain wiggler is kinda cool. but i don't think this delivers on the concept it promises

14. Stage 9 - Dire, Dire Docks - really this gets points mostly because there's less swimming and putting it as an intro to the Bowser stage was clever. but it doesn't have the vibe of JRB or anything i like as much as the inside the ship section. feels a little empty.

13. Stage 12 - Tall, Tall Mountain - for a later stage and for a game that is often filled with playground-like colorful things, the setting isn't very interesting. it's so brown. the platforming can be kind of weirdly perilous. i hate the hitboxes on the little mushroom platforms. i only bumped this up to "good" because the platforming is more extensive than other levels and the top area and the slide is cool though.

12. Stage 3 - Jolly Roger Bay - too much swimming, i don't like water levels. it does have a cool kinda moody vibe though and the parts inside the ship at least redeem this a little bit though. it's a little bit of an iconic blurry N64 setting too, and the first place you hear the famous water music."

"Good

11. Stage 10 - Snowman's Land - just not a lot too this level overall - missing the slide and verticality off the first snow level. also it has one annoying bit with the snowman's breath. but i'm putting it in good because i like the ice maze and igloo and i just generaly do like how it feels cozy and is kind of a "hangoutable" space.

10. Stage 8 - Shifting Sand Land - this one has grown on me a lot because a) the pyramid is way more big/ambitious than it needs to be and b) it's fun to watch speedrunners do tricks in this level. it also has random stuff like the pillars you can run up, random tornado gusts, etc. it is kind of weirdly difficult/hostile for where it is in the game though. feels like this should have been one of the later levels.

9. Stage 15 - Rainbow Ride - some cool bits to this level. the carpet thing is kinda slow/boring. this is one that's fun to watch speedrunners do movement tricks in the various non-carpet ride parts of the level though and that's made me appreciate it more. it has a "you're near the end of the game!" sort of feeling of freedom to it that i like.

8. Stage 7 - Lethal Lava Land - this map is bizarre cuz it's small and flat and the lava weirdly helps you as much as it hurts you and it's not nearly as dangerous as the sand level right next to it which is counter-intuitive given the name. it feels phoned in with how flat it is but there is also still something memorable about this level. like being in a weird red void with abstract colorful platforms."

"Very Good

7. Stage 4 - Cool, Cool Mountain - this is weirdly big and unwieldy (i.e. easy to fall off) for something so early in the game, but the slide is cool and makes it a reasonably memorable level.

6. Stage 5 - Big Boo's Haunt - pretty neat as a spooky ghost house sort of setting and like Hazy Maze Cave, it's a larger exploration-focused level that contrasts against the rest of the game. i kinda wish they made a more difficult version and put it later in the game. also i feel like Banjo Kazooie did this kind of stage (i.e. something slower and filled with random silly setpieces) better. but it's still one i'm happy exists

5. Stage 11 - Wet-Dry World - this has the abstract "random pieces of colorful geometry" that i love about Mario 64 and manages to do something interesting re: the different levels of water. some of it feels kinda random and like just a big rectangular box but i like the neat secret area and obvs it has an iconic skybox.

4. Stage 1 - Bob-omb Battlefield - this does such a good job of introducing the game. it's like such a fun little playground, though it can be a little boring in comparison to later levels."

"Excellent

3. Stage 14 - Tick Tock Clock - even though it's difficult i think the concept is cool and the emptiness of it feels kind of surreal. feels like my definition of what a "later level" in a videogame is and kind of like the pure essence of what Mario 64's platforming is all about.

2. Stage 2 - Whomp's Fortress - compact but classic level. the whomp sound effect is hilarious. i feel like it has a nice vibe, with some stuff that feels/dangerous perilous but still kind of friendly and cute and welcoming.

1. Stage 6 - Hazy Maze Cave - maybe a contrarian first pick but i like the feeling of mystery and exploring an unknown environment with dimensions you're not sure of. it still feels big and mysterious and i still don't remember how the various sections of the level connect with each other at all. it's the source of the most iconic pannenkoek video also."

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 22

thankfully i've heard from an inside source that my audience is bound to grow, so i'm not too worried

private message from a Deleted user (presumably a template spam message) on soundcloud that says:

"The vibe is universal; your audience is bound to grow."

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 19

actual gameplay looks like this btw, since it's hard to find any actual representative screenshots on the page

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 18

i called this image i made "sad tetris" - and to my knowledge, nothing like Sad Tetris still exists. it's a shame. the deep spiritual angst of blocks and shapes must be felt.

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 16

text from my recent post:

"and you know, i really would like to believe in the fantasy of Zohran's New York as a city we can all call home, but that is not the brutal reality most of the time. i never participated in the idea of New York as a haven for aspirational young twentysomething weirdos, because i moved here in my early 30's - but most of the people i know who did live that life seem to feel bitter and burned out from what did (or in most cases, didn't) transpire from it. New York is a city that cultivates the image of a cultural epicenter while also being as hostile to actually accommodating that as any city could conceivably be. the culture that happens here, has to - it's the default inextricable part of the city's self-image at this point. but it's always in a desperately precarious state, and propped mostly by goodwill and a feeling of needing to preserve what was rather than push for the new. and all the club culture that used to be a necessary space of survival for the city's underground, especially in the LGBTQ+ community, has over time became much more a signifier of clout and wealth and prestige than anything else. you're reminded how little you truly own anything if you make culture in this city - you're just leasing the space temporarily until someone younger, better looking, or with more money comes to kick you to the curb. and, i'm sorry, but it's just hard for me to feel much of any connection to all of it. beyond grinning and bearing it so that i can live around a bunch of other people i know, i guess."

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 15

same energy tbh

the cover for Thelonious Monk's 1968 album "Underground" that i'm not sure i can attempt to describe. but you should read this post by Stephen Gilmurphy that talks about it https://harmonyzone.org/blog/posts/year%20of%20the%20cow/

album cover for Tori Amos's 1996 album "Boys For Pele" - tori is sitting on an old wooden porch with a hunting rifle and her legs are covered in mud, and there's also a chicken hung up next to her

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 12

it's time to drop everything you're doing and acknowledge greatness because today will be known historically as the day that both Fuck's Quest II and Teddy Roller 2 came out on Steam store.steampowered.com/app/3545150/... store.steampowered.com/app/3391920/...

crude 2d pixel art from Fuck's Quest II that features a crudely drawn man with a few hairs sticking out on either end of his head standing in front of a blue man with a weird grin and orange hair and an orange brick school while it's raining that says "Dr. John F. Shit School For Really Weird Kids"

a fever dream 3d environment where a teddy bear appears to be lying on top of a purple 3d ball on a checkboard orange and pink-ish rotating track and the image is kind of blurred as if in motion. a mask with a tounge sticking out is in the distance an there appears to be a blue sky in the background and some shiny little curly-cue objects

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 12

let's play life

tweet from X User @markgadala from June 11th, 2026 that says:

"It's rare that AI video makes me feel any emotion.

But these "nostalgiamaxxing videos" really do capture what it's like to grow up in the 90's

Credit: homeforchristmasofficial"

and includes an AI generated 90's nostalgia themed video that starts with "POV: You wake up as a Kid in December of 1999"

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 10

a spicy snippet from my blog post i'm currently working on about my album + the general state of music

snippet from my blog post in the works:

"if you're some kind of progressively-minded person who is not a jerk and you occupy the realm of music, your response to this all might be an obsessive fixation on preserving the horizons of a lost past. music, to you, becomes this amalgam of different "cultures": who is representing what cultures, and who can be the best whisperer into what makes these cultures tick. even as the cultural archetypes you carry forth might be based on wildly inaccurate, outdated, perhaps even orientalist assumptions - especially as the internet turns everything into a confusing mush. i say as someone frustrated how the image of LGBTQ+ culture in the US for many people is permanently stuck on Paris is Burning and not the terminally internet-poisoned anime-loving furries who seem to embody the strongest undercurrents of queer culture at this point. if you're fixated on this idea of late 20th century DIY, of underground clubs and zines and alt weeklies, nothing that comes from the internet is ever going to feel as real to you. and because of this, i feel like i understand what young Bob Dylan must have felt as part of the progressive Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 60's. hey - it's great that you care so much about these traditional folk songs and how they embody the sentiments of the working class proletariat, but how about i write my own? in the face of destructive new technologies, why must we cling to this tradition like a life raft as we watch the future horizons fade away into the background? why can't we throw away the rulebook and write our own stories? why must you continually tell me "no, not like that?""

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 8

saw a game called Solarpunk come up on Steam today and it made me think again of a @villecallio.csoftproducts.life tweet from a couple years ago that has rarely left my mind lol

quote tweet from @villecallio in response to twitter user @_ComradeSolar_ from 1/12/24 that says "What is your task in the solarpunk commune?" that includes an image of a Thomas Kinkade-esque idealized countryside with wind turbines and solar panels. the Ville Kallio tweet says: "death by hanging from a solar blimp for telling everyone that solarpunk is hitlerite adjacent nostalgia gooner movement

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 7

i'm sorry to inform you about this Xbox company not being on the up and up but the youtube thumbnail of Mario with crossed out eyes holding 16 American dollars doesn't lie

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 7

"is all we ask for to inherit the machine?" harmonyzone.org/blog/posts/m...

passage from the post "notes dump 2026" by Stephen Gilmurphy: "there's a tendency to look at previous generations and say, let's not go crazy. we just want what they had: the steady job, home ownership - the other stuff, the grand abstractions, we can drop, if we have these. and then we go back to inhabiting a world already poisonous with the rage and denial of those same generations, the intricate systems of punishment and delusion they constructed in the effort to convince themselves that the trade off they'd made against the possibility of something better had been worthwhile. old machinery still hammering away, minus whatever it was constructed to protect. is all we ask for to inherit the machine?"

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· Jun 2

no one else is going to call out the ending of Antonioni's L'Eclisse in the context of liminal horror, i can promise you that

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· May 27

text from my blog from last year:

"Nintendo right now seems to exist firstly as a guardian of IP, a hegemonic cultural force who exists to embody some vague notion of "play" in a diminishing monoculture. they harshly discipline any copyright violators out there who might try and do anything with their work or stretch it beyond their rigidly defined bounds. with every big release Nintendo ordains to reassert its own dominance over the idea of childhood "magic" and "play" in the games realm with their mainline franchise games, all so tearful adults and their children can rake over some money to re-experience some lost past. and to be fair, many times these mainline Nintendo games are still broadly more creative than what other mainstream games will offer, if only because Nintendo has been grandfathered into this role culturally. but the parameters that they're working within are still very limited due to their role as the hegemonic family-friendly company. even when they are wilder, the experiments in these games can feel just as much like they're stiffly holding the medium back from exploring its true potential than they are expanding it. especially when you go beyond their specialty realm of playful mechanics and into content that challenges audiences in any kind of ideological way. the recent surreal creepypasta Mario 64 romhack B3313 has really stuck with me specifically because it's the kind of experience Nintendo never could, or would, provide. and it recontextualizes that in a very haunting, if sometimes slightly juvenile, way."

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· May 24

was sure i did this before - and yes indeed. "it won't be long" is there as my obligatory early Beatles choice and i'd probably replace "paperback writer" with "long, long, long" now though

a bluesky post by me on Apr 24, 2025 that says:

"i'm a childhood Beatles Head, here's my list:

10. it won't be long
9. paperback writer
8. strawberry fields forever
7. blue jay way
6. nowhere man
5. helter skelter
4. dear prudence
3. i am the walrus
2. day in the life
1. tomorrow never knows"

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· May 20

why have gamers always looked like this

screenshot from a news broadcast that says "Drew Engel: Gamer" and an excited looking teenage gamer with glasses

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· May 19

there has always been something truly menacing about so many of these utterly mundane spaces, long before backrooms and liminal horror stuff caught on

from the former uninteresting photos account: "A vertically oriented and indifferently framed photo of a bed spring on the floor of an empty residential bedroom with beige carpet. There is an open door to the hallway on the left, through which another closed door is visible, and a two-door closet on the right."

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· May 18

this weird ceiling fan is honestly the creepiest thing in any of the backrooms videos

vibe-free lifestyle and smiling apple purveyor@ellaguro· May 14

since video editing is my passion, i made something no one asked for but i'm sure you all secretly wanted - music that sounds like the Donkey Kong Country OSTs