[M-Bl] Printer Ink

My computer's clock reads 04:45, 2023-4-28. The house is quiet as I grab my earbuds to just have Deezer throw whatever at me while I start to clean the house up undisturbed, only giving it the single song off Metallica's newest album that I liked as the starting point of it's suggestions; Lux Æterna. I'm working off 10hrs of sleep over the past 48hrs, and have a second cup of coffee that night, as I cross every cleaning related task off my daily to-do list I write. My cat often doesn't like how I clean, getting scared with how I rush around the house, so I take things slowly, making sure to give her affection each time I slowly pass, to possibly condition her to not freak out as much.

For some odd reason, Deezer wanted to suggest me a lot of songs in French I quite liked, though the lyrics weren't comprehensible to me, but made me note how vocals in French sound different in a refreshing way due to having word sounds too uncommon for English. I take the trash out, and the mailbox is empty for the third day in a row, giving me a small feeling of anxiety that quickly passes.

I tackle cleaning up my room last, which is unusually chaotic and messy, as I mentally prepare myself for this to be a bigger task than anticipated. I take advantage of the advice my mother gave me as a child when cleaning, and focus on cleaning and clearing surfaces first, allowing the floor to get messier, so places like my desk can be cleaned first. Bed next, and as I begin to clear up the floor, a wave of stress comes over me that I would normally be able to shake, but just can't seem to.

I sit down, and decide to focus on something else I wanted to get done that night instead, some Japanese studying, specifically katakana. I look up a stroke order chart, because I prefer focusing on stroke order first before actual character memorization, and halfway through drawing my own chart, I decide to just print one myself. I download the chart, and attempt to print it, but comes out awful. I double check it's CMYK compatible, still comes out looking really bad, printer ink levels in printer are awful, so I go to swap them, which is kind of a process.

I notice the levels on all of them are kinda awful, so I decide to swap them all at once. The cartridges I use are aftermarket, because printer ink is overpriced. PGBK cartridge drips, stains my hands, I have to clean it up. For some reason I don't feel frustrated by this, my brain instead jumps to what kind of experimental lyrics could be written about printer ink stained hands, a jammed up life, and seeing things through a scanner while I sit on the floor, surrounded by printer ink cartridges. No matter what I do though, the printer won't recognize the cartridge, and seems to just claim random ones aren't recognizable.

This goes on for a while, until I notice the printer says Canon MX922, when I remember it saying MX920, but this shouldn't matter. Something about misremembering it just makes me sick, and I lie on the floor, my right hand supporting my head, and my feet knocking something over I can't focus on. The intrusive thoughts I've normally been great at managing recently start to pull me to the Earth, like gravity became infinite and the printer ink absorbed through my hands, slowly coating my brain. I stare at the ceiling as my eyes unfocus in everything else and the world dissolves to static, incapable of forming any thoughts, as Africa plays through my earbuds I don't even recognize I have in.

An unknown amount of time passes, before Iron Maiden autoplays, and snaps me out of this because...it doesn't sound right. The song is The Trooper, but the mix doesn't sound as I remember it, it sounds wrong...is it a remaster ? I check my phone, and feel an instant sense of pride when the title includes "(1998 Remaster)" that pulls me off the floor, and makes me continue cleaning things up, throwing away opened or empty printer ink cartridges, and writing a note to myself to buy more for MX922, before deciding to impulsively write all this.

My computer's clock reads 07:21, 2023-4-28 as I begin to write this, then 07:52 by the time I finish this sentence.