Sighinide

I had wayyyyyy too much stuff to talk about today concerning Disney+, so I just introduced a ton of topics in the last post, and didn’t fully explore any of them.

So, take pretty much everything in the previous post here with a block or two of salt.

I think I’ll watch Avalon High with Britt Robertson today. See how that goes. I mean, if I feel up to it.

Jeebus, what did I even get myself into, lol.

So, I finally used that Disney+ gift certificate I got from my sister back in 2020 and signed up for the service.

I mean, why not.

First impressions… I’m glad I did. There’s a lot there, in some ways more than I had expected. So there’s a lot to watch and a lot to learn.

I like having the ability to go and watch some of the stuff I missed from my girlfriends that first time around. There’s a bunch of TV movies like Girl Vs. Monster, Bad Hair Day, and other, similar flicks that I’ve always wanted / needed to watch but never really got the opportunity to. So… those are on the list, for sure.

I also like having the ability to rewatch classic stuff that I liked as a kid but haven’t seen since. I mean there’s the animated classics of course, but also movies like The Nutty Professor, and The Apple Dumpling Gang.

Alot of the content on Disney+ is bringing back a lot and I mean a lot of memories. Way more than I had expected, and in way more ways than I ever anticipated. It’s kinda surreal. Seriously.

Well… where do we even begin with all this, lol.

Ok, well.

Uhm… okay. Well.

I saw a few episodes of Olivia Rodrigo’s show, Bizardvark (I know that that’s not how it’s spelled, but IDC, lol). Wow did they include tons of me in those episodes. They seemed to build the whole of… everything, the characters, the props, the situations… I mean, everything, off of shockingly specific stuff that happened in my childhood. Somehow, these people remember more about the details of my parents’ old house than I do. In one scene they recreated down to the smallest detail the old house’s bathroom and bathtub. I mean, they had an exact replica of the tub, with the same water handles, the same drain and handbars, the same curtain, and it was all the same color, etc. Really weird and uncanny. I mean, if I had tried to remember all of those details on my own, I could not possibly have done so with that amount of accuracy.

It was like peering into a portal created by a time machine, or something. What even the fuck is happening, lol.

It almost seems as if the people making these shows lack their own memories, or something, and are just using mine in place of theirs.

At any rate, I will be watching Olivia Rodrigo’s movie, and her documentary, and then I will be spending more time with her, like everyone knows and expects I will. I mean, this is what they flat out told me would happen, pointedly and repeatedly, in the series. And it looks like they were right.

This stuff is so… uncanny it’s almost as if Olivia was manufactured, or something, specifically to be one of my girlfriends. Like she was made to order. I mean, if I’m reading the series correctly, they almost come out and say this directly, even.

Or maybe not even “almost”. Honestly I wonder.

I remember joking around with Debby Ryan once when I told her that she and the other Disney girls seemed like they were hatched underneath Epcot or something. At the time I thought that idea was ridiculous and hilariously dumb.

Now… uh… well. I mean… it’s not impossible, I guess.

How else do you even explain some of this stuff?

Olivia seems just… made to order. If you take Victoria Justice, Debby Ryan herself, a touch of Olivia Holt, a pinch of Taylor Swift, a hint of Bridgit Mendler, and a dash of Selena Gomez, and you put all of this into a blender, you get Olivia Rodrigo. Even her name seems designed to trigger certain things in my subconscious.

And I’m not talking just about her music, or her personality. I mean, even her looks, down to her facial structure, hair type and specific body shape. All of it, taken together as a genetic package, just seems designed to fit into a certain part of my mind.

I’ve been holding off a bit on her, just because of this. Because… what even the fuck, lol. Sorry but this is just a little confusing, or something.

Or something.

IDK.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on here, actually? Does anyone actually know the complete story, or are we all just lost here?

IDK.

At any rate, I like a lot of what I see on Disney+.

I like the animated shows for sure. I’ve been watching Star Vs. the Forces of Evil a lot lately, usually while riding the exercise bike. It’s a lot of fun. Great show.

Star herself is one of my girl alters, of course. I think she used my twitter account a few times, probably to tweet to Disney stars, natch. I think I remember her tweeting Bella Thorne. Kinda cool to see how she got her own show.

TBH I pity people who are new to all this trying to figure it out, haha. I mean, if even I can’t make sense of it…

LOL.

Well, whatever.

I will watch pre- Tom Jacobsen stuff for sure, just to get away from myself a bit. Thank God I have the opportunity to do this.

I have fond memories of watching classic live-action Disney stuff as a little kid in Grandma’s house. In some cases I only saw some of those movies with my grandparents. Like, IDK, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Apple Dumpling Gang. It’ll be nice to see those again, and maybe reminisce a little about how things used to be.

I saw the original Alice in Wonderland the other day. Awesome movie. Gorgeous animation. Fantastic music. Great voice acting. Took me back for sure. I wore out the VHS back in the day. Well worth a rewatch.

Man do I wish for simpler times, sometimes.

I wish the original Alice shorts were there but I guess you can’t have everything. And I’m probably the only person who would watch them anyways.

I also really wish Song of the South was there as well. Couldn’t they just slap a disclaimer on it? Seriously. I saw it back in grade school, in class. Granted, this was in the 80’s, but still, it’s not that “bad”, really, or even at all. Couldn’t they counter any accusations of “racism” by pointing out that the movie took home the first Oscar for a racial minority? I mean, seriously. Why not?

Speaking of the disclaimers, Christ, they are annoying as shit. They even put one of those on Aladdin, for fuck’s sake. That doesn’t even make logical sense. The Arabs and Persians in past centuries were Caucasians; they were and still are White, descendants of the Visigoths, Aryans and warlords like Alexander the Great. There is nothing ethnically “wrong” with Disney’s Aladdin and it’s Caucasian voices or cultural references. Even today, the upper classes in the Arab world across the board look strikingly European and / or Jewish. They look nothing like the people on the street. Mohammad, if he existed, probably looked like me.

But, that’s a different essay, for sure.

So I saw Aladdin and one of it’s straight to VHS sequels, lol. I mean, why not. The sequel was unabashedly dumb but it had it’s charms. I mean, they gave the bulk of the important musical duties to Gilbert Gottfried, of all people. I actually laughed at the idea of that. But… it was dumb fun, something to have on when playing a video game or something.

I have zero interest in anything Star Wars. Gods, have my opinions about that franchise changed over the years.

I mean, this is another essay in and of itself, but egads, am I bored to shit of Star Wars. I’m just sick beyond sick of the franchise.

The last movie I saw in a theater was The Last Jedi, and God, was that fucking movie boring as hell. It just dragged and dragged on and fucking on. It was boring, self absorbed to the extreme and overlong. Rian Johnson massively fucked up.

The 8th movie in a 9 movie franchise is not the time to be “experimental”. Seriously, what was he thinking? What a jackass.

And Sci-Fi at any rate is clearly not his genre. Seriously, WTF was he doing? The film was like 2 and a half hours of pointless floundering. It sucked, and the critics who liked it were wrong.

I checked out after TLJ and honestly that’s it for me.

When I was younger, there were a batch of film critics that went against the grain made it clear that they didn’t like Star Wars, and didn’t like the influence the series had on our culture. I thought they were just out of touch. Now, I see their point.

This old debate comes to mind. I think I get what Simon is saying better, now.

I talked about film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum before on this blog. He hated Star Wars. I mean, he actively hated the franchise and it’s influence. He thought that Empire was a bad movie and IIRC correctly never bothered to watch Jedi. I thought he was just being, IDK, stubborn. Now, I get the points he was making. I don’t agree fully, but yeah, I get it, now.

People took Star Wars wayyyy too seriously, and they put a bunch of shit in the franchise that didn’t belong there. I think the best movie in the series by far is the original cut of the first movie (what was released as Star Wars back in the 70’s) with each subsequent film just getting worse.

Star Wars is a masterpiece, maybe the best pop movie ever released by Hollywood, Empire is really good, but not on par with it’s predecessor, Jedi is very good, almost as good as Empire, and then you get the special editions, which were not as good as the originals, and then it just gets progressively worse from then on. TPM is better than Clones, which is better than Sith, which is better than TFA, etc. TLJ was outright bad, and the last movie, whatever it was called, was just dreadful.

I can see the franchise critics’ point, now. The series has an inherent shallowness to it. Any attempt at making it seem more “deep” or whatever only ruins whatever good qualities the series has, because there’s no way to make a big budget retread of Flash Gordon deep.

Contemporary racial and sexual politics, in particular, have no place in the series, and can only ruin it’s good qualities.

I read some reviews of Obi-Wan online, and it seems like it’s just more predictable shit. I won’t be watching.

Same with Marvel. I’ll watch the 80’s and 90’s stuff, mostly for nostalgic purposes. Not interested in the new stuff. That world was fascinating when it was new to me, back when I was reading 80’s Avengers comics on my bedroom floor. Back when the comics themselves were well written with some incredible world building between the different series. The foundations were so nice that I could build on Marvel’s world with my own little worlds for the characters.

The Disney stuff… I’m sure, just can’t compare. And it won’t. So I won’t bother with it.

But, this essay is already too long, again.

I will watch a lot of the stuff on Disney+ for sure. All of the old animated films definitely. Everything from Pixar for sure. All of the shorts, yes. The old live-action stuff, classic Simpsons, yes, absolutely.

Can we get the old Mickey Mouse stuff on there, too? Not just Steamboat Willie, but everything. What about the old Mickey Mouse Club shows? That would be fucking awesome.

And, now that I’m thinking about ex-girlfriend Debby Ryan yet again, why not Radio Rebel? Or that other movie she did about a 16th birthday, or whatever.

Needless to say, there is more that needs to be explored, here. Probably a lot more. Probably many volumes more.

I might write about this subject again.

We’ll see.

It’s been awhile since I blogged anything, so I figured… why not, let’s churn one out and see how it goes. Let’s tackle an easy subject for me: physical health.

Ok, so… well, I exercise, lol.

Yeah, I’m a little rusty at this.

Ok, so… I still do pilates, of course. That routine is the lynchpin of everything I do physically, exercise-wise. It’s my foundation- my branching off point that allows me to do everything else.

I’ve been working on that routine for, IDK, something like 10 years now, and I’ve at this point run out of exercises to add. All I can think of to work on is probably the most difficult version of oblique V-ups. Everything else I can find online is simple, almost effortless. I barely break a sweat at the rest of it, anymore.

I just do my usual routine of ten reps per exercise, and I go through my huge list of exercises, one by one.

It’s fun.

To make things interesting, I added exercises for my deep internal muscle sets, like those for my inner neck, central chest and deep abdomen. And I do breathing exercises now, to directly strengthen the lung muscles. And inner pelvic exercises, etc. They’re surprisingly difficult, but fun, once you do them enough. So… neat.

I recently got a smartwatch to help with all this. It turns out my pilates routine burns around 300 calories and lasts about an hour and a half. Interesting.

It’s a Garmin, the Venu 2 Plus. Pretty good watch. Great battery life. Good stuff. It should help I suppose.

At any rate, I love just… relaxing, tossing on some nature sounds, and exercising. I usually put on some kind of light show while I do it, to help with the whole “zoning out” aspect of this. I have these lasers I bought on eBay awhile back that I shine on the ceiling. I discovered that they produce some weird psychedelic effect if you stare at them long enough as they shine on a moving ceiling fan going at high speeds. Far out, man. LOL.

I have other kinds of cool LED lights, and weird screensavers on my TV and computer that I also use. All of this really helps me decompress for sure.

I mean, whatever. Everyone needs something, I guess.

Well, so that’s my foundational “thing”.

Beyond this, I do two dumbbell routines, one standing up, one lying down. Those are fun.

I’ve given up on traditional pushups, instead opting for a routine of purely knuckle pushups. Those actually work, which is nice. After years of trying I have come to the realization that I cannot do traditional pushups. My wrists won’t allow it, and I’ve read enough stories online from people who have had wrist problems from normal pushups to know that they would be a bad idea for me over the long run.

The knuckle ones work, though, so I do those instead now. They’re actually fun; I enjoy them. To ease my way into them, I’ve developed a routine of 7 varieties of those that I do on my knees, and over time I will transfer that same routine into the normal position. Then, if I still want to progress, I might decide to try one footed pushups.

And then, maybe many years down the line, perhaps the planche variety. But yeah that is a LONG way away for sure. But- that’s ultimately what I want. I’m more the type who enjoys a long journey, so… who knows? Maybe one day, years from now.

Due to the pilates stuff, I have enough core and leg strength to start on single leg squats, like the pistol squat and shrimp squat. So, I’m working on those now. Those will take awhile for sure, but I’m confident that I can do them in time. I tacked those onto my dynamic stretching/barre routine.

I got a bike, one of those little ones just for your feet. It’s cute and it works, lol. Why not?

Hmmn. You know- this is a lot, lol. Looking at it from a birds eye view… wow, I actually do a lot of stuff.

In other news, I think I discovered the reason that I’ve always been unable to get rid of the last stubborn 10-15 pounds. And it’s: (drumroll, please, lol) I’m not drinking enough water. I think that the majority of that extra weight is water weight, since I think I’ve been perpetually dehydrated.

What I’ve been neglecting to understand is that I do a lot of very demanding stuff, and all of it is very dehydrating, starting with the super intense psychic work that I do with my girlfriends. This is the reason I think that I am always so parched after fucking someone. The psychic energies that I harness are so powerful that using them dehydrates my body in ways that I don’t fully appreciate and that medical science cannot explain.

So- I’ve started chugging enormous amounts of water, and man, I feel a lot better. And I’m fitter now, too, and slowly improving still.

So yeah I think that that was what I was missing all along. I was so dehydrated from the supernatural and cybernetic stuff that I do that my body was forced to retain water to maintain equilibrium.

I could never understand why my pilates stuff couldn’t get rid of the last 10-15 no matter what. Now, I think I know.

It’s always in the last place you look, lol.

This brings to mind people like Garry Kasparov. The chess greats consume enormous, and honestly baffling, amounts of water and calories when they play in their tournaments. I’ve read studies on this. Even though they don’t move physically, they concentrate so hard and think so deeply on the game that their bodies use up all their available resources, just for the mental work.

I think something like that happens when I fuck Victoria Justice, or whomever. The human body can do what I do, but it’s demanding, maybe more than I have understood.

So, I will need to adjust.

Other stuff…

I think I did actually figure out what was wrong with my health, previous, that caused me to have those other medical difficulties. I think it really was the parasite-things and the internal gunk that caused those problems.

So in cleaning that crud out, I think I may have discovered and fixed the underlying problems that caused the issues. It’s perhaps just that the solution, once applied, took time to take ahold and for my body to self-correct.

I went through my library and found some of the stuff I killed or whatever mentioned in some of the books recommended to me by my old naturopathic mentors, like for example the weird popcorn-looking things that I mentioned last winter in the 2021 Year in Review post.

In one of those dusty old tomes those were identified as being dead polyps from the intestinal tract. I guess that makes sense, but, I’m not 100% sure that that’s what they are/were, mostly owing to their weird, rubbery shell/skin or whatever. I thought initially that those were some kind of weird parasite, perhaps something nobody has identified yet, since I couldn’t find anything about them anywhere else.

Of course it could be that I purged both polyps and unidentified parasites, I guess. Who the fuck knows.

I still think I killed off a few of those nasty, nasty unidentified worm-like creatures that naturopathic people are calling ropeworms. Christ, those things are simply evil. Holy hell, where do those things even come from? The mind boggles.

Beyond this, I remember purging an ugly looking red colored intestinal fluke, some liver flukes, and a couple of really bizarre, thin, rod shaped orange things. I remember those looking like orange needles. I couldn’t identify those anywhere, either. What even the fuck?

Some kind of oddball parasite, I guess. Were those flukes of some kind? I couldn’t tell. They were perfectly cylindrical, and long, like inches long, and very thin. They didn’t look like any worm or fluke or obstruction/stone I’ve ever seen or heard of. Weird as fuck, even for me.

Creepy shit, for sure. At any rate they’re all dead now, I think, and I feel a ton better. I do think my body self-corrected after doing this.

And I cleaned out as well whatever remained of my gallstones/intestinal plaque and stagnant bile/cholesterol or whatever. Yuck, for sure. Better out than in, tho, for sure. It’s the naturopathic life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But still- yuck.

I’ve been trying to kill more stuff and purge more junk out for months now with no luck. Maybe that means I’m clean. I sure hope to hell it does.

All of this seems to still do me good, otherwise. A few weeks back I had a checkup at the doctor, and their new medical assistant did not believe I was in my mid 40’s. I started talking about things that happened after college, and he assumed I was talking about a couple years ago, not 20. LOL. He actually did a double take when I told him my age, and he checked it by looking up my birthday, I guess to make sure I wasn’t lying.

I definitely age differently than others do, for sure. My mastery of all things in the fields of black magic, cybernetics, naturopathy, energy work, exercise, nutrition, etc. has greatly and obviously slowed the aging process in my body. At this point it’s almost ground to a halt. It’s becoming clear to others now that I’m very, very different, except perhaps to people who see me every day, like my parents, and maybe my girlfriends.

But others, though, are having a very hard time believing me when I say I’m in my mid 40’s for sure. They seriously can’t process it at times, except with difficulty.

I may have legitimately achieved some form of eternal youth, here. Absolutely wild.

My body is at this point impervious to the effects of harmful electromagnetic radiation, except perhaps in extremely high doses. My energy field just absorbs that stuff and I believe actually converts it into usable chi/life energy that my organic cells use to power themselves and keep me young. It’s like the more “harmful” microwave energy I come into contact with, like those from cell phones and microwave ovens, the younger and more youthful I feel, think, and actually look. Really weird stuff, and I’m left wondering again if any of this could even be classified as “human”.

I can actually feel my body eating the Wi-Fi radiation from my laptop as I type this, so it can apparently convert that energy into usable organic life force. Really wild stuff. Seriously. This is not at all, and I mean not even remotely, how humans are supposed to energetically operate- and yet, here we are.

What I’m guessing is that I must have a vast network of cybernetics, both inside and outside my body, that target me directly, and have for decades, I think actually since before I was born.

What I suppose happened is that the constant, unending stream of maser, laser, X-Ray, radio and other forms of energy that have bombarded me, specifically, for generations have in fact altered my DNA, or perhaps my DNA altered itself to survive the bombardment, or both, IDK.

And I know now that I’ve been the target of very specific long distance mind control wetware cyborg Anti-Christ programming since before I was born, obviously to prep me for a role as future virtual global dictator. Maybe that had a hand in changing me, too. It probably did, tho honestly, I think it changed me in ways that nobody was expecting, or had even considered to be a possibility.

Whatever. Food for future thought, I guess.

I got a good vitamin regimen, of course, and other stuff.

Well, that’s enough for this one. A lot to process here for sure.

It’s been an interesting experience, having and watching a TV.

It’s been an education for the most part, which I did not expect.

I’ve traveled a lot in online circles that frown on TV watching, for some very good reasons, and I’ve subscribed to those views myself in the past. I ditched my last TV, an old CRT, a long time ago- I think in like 2006 or so, because of those very reasons.

Why, you ask? The political slant of everything, the general dumbness of the programming, the ads, the general awfulness of “reality” TV, the “time sink” aspect of the medium, etc. You know, the kind of stuff that you probably would expect me to object to.

So it was with some trepidation that I bought a new smart TV for myself as a Christmas present last year. I was… curious, about it’s capabilities. I wanted to see what they could do, as I knew I could do more than just “watch TV” with them. And I wanted to see in general how the TV tech had advanced since my last set.

But, as I said, I approached the purchase with caution. TV when misused is an ugly, toxic thing. My parents’ behavior are a good example of what can happen when you use TV wrongly.

They are news and “reality TV” junkies, and it shows not just on the set, but in they way they talk and in the things that interest them. They obsess over Trump and every minor political thing. It’s ugly, and it’s completely warped their understanding of… everything.

They think all of what they see on TV is actually real. All of it. And because of that it consumes them. If they see a particularly upsetting story about Trump they will obsess over it and complain about it for hours. And all the while, they will have no idea, and I mean not an inkling of a clue, as to how what he did or didn’t do had to do with me.

It’s kind of funny. Bafflingly, they still haven’t caught on. Even after all these years, they still don’t get it. I keep hoping that they will I guess stumble onto reality at some point but they never do.

I’m not even sure of what to think about that. How can they be so… IDK, dense? It’s baffling. After all this time, they have no idea that their own kid is the AntiChrist of all people. You’d think something like that would be obvious. Like… blindingly so. But it never occurs to them. Really odd.

I don’t know, maybe that’s a good demonstration of the power that TV has over them. It’s like… their entire worldview is shaped by CNN. And since CNN never talks about the AntiChrist or yours truly, none of that is relevant.

But still… holy shit, lol. I mean, they have the AntiChrist in their house, living with them, and… they don’t have a clue. LOL, wow.

Sometimes I refer to the way they live as “The Boomer Bubble”.

But… yeah, back to TV. They actually think reality TV is real. As in, like what they are seeing isn’t scripted, and is in fact spontaneous and… IDK, real.

Again this is baffling behavior. I don’t get it. How can they not see that all of these shows are scripted? It’s really weird. I mean, shows like Gold Rush. They’re faaaaake. LOL. It’s so obvious. Even ignoring the logistical impossibility of any of this stuff being real, you just need to watch a few minutes of any episode to see the acting and writing, full on display.

So… yeah. I guess part of why I was apprehensive was that I didn’t want to turn into one of them, IDK, the pod people, the normal types. The kind I used to work with, who would spend their entire lunch hours talking about American Idol and being absolutely fascinated by it’s challenging content and top notch humor.

Well, so I got the TV. I do use it, but not too much, I think, and I think I use my set more responsibly than my parents do theirs.

I like having apps on the TV. Some of the games are cute. The gallery apps are nice.

I like the music channels too. They are very cool, mostly.

I watch shows as well. I try to stay away from “adult” shows that feature dumb characters, immaturity and unrealistic behavior, and choose to watch “kids” shows instead, since those have good characters, smart dialogue, and a keen sense of how people really act and think.

The kids shows are good. I enjoy them. I like how they are just entertainment, and try not to take themselves too seriously. I find adult dramas tiresome and ridiculous. Their setups and characters are just as unreal as those of the kids shows, yet they take the material with a straight face, no matter how… stupid that makes the show look.

I was surprised at how many channels were on the offer. My TV goes into the thousands of channels. Wow. I was tho disappointed at how little there was to watch on many of them. Man, are there a lot of cop shows. Wow, lol. It’s just… wow. And lawyer shows, and stuff like that. And they all seem the same to me, or at least too similar to bother with any of them.

I like CW stuff. I mean, obviously, lol, but I do. It’s different.

I don’t like the ads. They suck. They are not as good as they used to be, and man are they everywhere. The ads alone during a show can ruin it. Everywhere, there are ads, and they are all political, except during kids shows (thank god), but even there the political ugliness crops up occasionally.

There are even ads that show up inside of the TV setup menus and stuff. When I saw this I did a double take. I couldn’t believe it, so I googled, and yup, I was seeing what I thought I was. I got a Samsung TV, and they’re embedding ads into the TV software itself now. There were people online already complaining about this when I googled it.

Since I’ve had the TV (like 4 months now) I’ve gone from seeing no ads in my music channel of choice to seeing little ads in the corners sometimes, to then larger ads taking up chunks of the screen a little more often, to now huge ads taking up the whole screen with annoying looking people in them, often.

There are ads in the apps, too. I like a particular app, a featured one called “Relaxing Nature”. It features calming, quiet ambient music set to slow moving visuals of nature and oceans. But the ads, oh gods, THE FUCKING ADS. Every five or ten minutes, they cut away to an ad, and for the last few days, it’s been this godawful thing featuring Aretha Franklin.

The app itself is quiet; subdued. The perfect thing to zone out and meditate to. But then every every ten minutes I have to hear this LOUD caterwauling courtesy of Aretha. It’s ugly and horrible, and completely ruins the experience. The ad itself is some bullshit political garbage from one of those financial companies, IDK which one, because I mute the TV as fast as I can when that ugly thing comes on.

I don’t get why the app guys would allow such a thing to air during their shows. I understand the need for ads, but gods, why THAT one? Don’t they understand how jarring it is?

Well, there are other apps. I will be hunting for something better, I suppose.

Ugh, the ads. Yeah, they just… ruin so much. They try to be as attention getting (i.e. loud, abrasive and annoying) as possible, and they almost always detract from the shows themselves. It’s getting to the point now where I’m watching shows based around the content of the ads rather than the shows themselves. It’s like, when I’m flipping through channels and I see something interesting, I might think to myself “Nope. The ads shown during this are going to be nasty.”, and then I will continue flipping. Yeah, it’s that bad.

IDK, it’s… kinda sad, I think. All this amazing technology and it feels like it’s being hamstrung and crippled intentionally.

The picture on my new set is great. It’s a 4K screen with a nice display and a good sound setup, I think. It’s a beautiful piece of tech but it’s potential is being squandered, apparently on purpose.

Really, is it any wonder that people are cutting the cable and abandoning TV?

I really tried watching the Oscars the other day. I saw the first twenty minutes of it before giving up in confusion and boredom. I had no idea WTF was even going on, lol. I didn’t know who any of the people were, or what anyone was talking about. I didn’t understand the jokes. Like… I honestly didn’t even know who the hosts were, let alone who they were referencing. I occasionally tuned back in to the awards to see if maybe things had changed for me but they never did.

I didn’t see the famous slap live, and I’m glad I didn’t. That whole thing was just stupid.

IDK, the Oscars just suck. I do appreciate them for the dresses and gowns and such they let my girlfriends wear but man… the show itself is just… oy. It gives me a headache just thinking about it.

IDK if anything can be done to save the Oscars at this point. I see that the ratings for this year’s show were the second worst ever, after last year’s dreadful performance.

Last year, didn’t the show have COVID to blame for it’s ratings? How much do you want to bet that if COVID hadn’t been a thing then, that it’s ratings would have been higher than this year’s show? And thus, a continual ratings decline would have been in evidence?

In a couple years, I think they’re going to institute new diversity rules, or something like that. Ugh. The only point of interest then will be to see how low the ratings for something like this can possibly sink.

I might watch parts for the trainwreck factor. That slap was like something out of the 2003 Source Awards, lol. It could be some horribly ugly yet funny shit.

Well, I’m kinda tired of this topic, for now, so I’ll think I’ll close this post out here.

The Paralympics are awesome.

This is my first exposure to them, and I think they’re great.

I tried watching them during the summer games, but Comcast refused and offered me that infamous error message instead when I tried to access them.

This time, though, I can watch, and man, they are fantastic.

Incredibly, I’m liking them more, I think, than the “normal” Olympics. They are a nice contrast and really show how… low the normal ones have sunk.

I think I’ll list the reasons the Paralympics are great, if only for purposes of self-examination. Ok, here goes:

1) No politics. Thank GOD. No fucking politics. Yay! And this, during the Ukraine crisis no less! What a wonderful thing. It’s just athletes, competing to win, and for fun and self- actualization. It’s a really nice atmosphere. There’s no politics from the anchors behind the desk, the announcers, the athletes, and yes- there’s even less from the ads! Hallelujah!

2) The ads are MUCH nicer. Most are actual ads, like the kind you typically see on TV, and not… IDK, brainwashing, or propaganda, or abstract art, or whatever the fuck it is they show during the normal games.

I noticed a distinct lack of scowling, angry black people during these ads. It’s a much nicer package we’re getting this time around.

Gods, were the ads during the normal games just dreadful. Not so much even tone-deaf as… hostile, even disturbing. I remember one particular ad that jumped out at me as being uniquely ugly even in an ocean of cringe. It was that one featuring Maame Biney, the black short-track skater, who equated competing as a black athlete in these Olympics with someone enduring cancer treatment, and a Paralympian living life as an amputee. I can’t find it online as it seems to have been buried, but I did notice that even an MSM outlet of all things questioned this one: https://nypost.com/2022/02/12/ad-of-olympian-maame-biney-pushes-idea-of-black-victimhood/

But gods, what the ever loving fuck. I can’t believe that thing ever made it to air. What on Earth were these people thinking? I can’t imagine any way to paint the athlete here in an uglier way. Probably the biggest self-own of these games. Honestly, whoever green lighted that thing should be fired.

3) I’m really liking the athletes. They’re… IDK, nicer, and certainly more humble, than the athletes in the main games. They’re more grounded. They seem less spoiled, and honestly, less self-absorbed, than their more famous counterparts. It’s refreshing.

It just occurred to me that these athletes are what athletes in the main games were probably like before they started letting professionals compete. Paralympians seem like people who do sport because they love it, or because it fills some spiritual need within them. The pros in the main games do as well, but jeez, there is a LOT of… self-aggrandizement with those types, and a lot of “brand” marketing, and a lot of frankly needless melodrama.

Too often the athletes in the main games come across like spoiled rich kids. I’m thinking of Eileen Gu here, Shiffrin crying on the slopes for like 20 fucking minutes, Shaun White crying and emoting for like half an hour, and a bunch of other stuff. Jeezus, guys.

It’s really refreshing to see people compete and act like adults both during competition and around it. There’s a minimum of showboating and drama in the Paralympics, and that is really nice.

4) The sports themselves are new to me, and thus interesting. I’ve never seen any of this stuff! It’s cool to watch. Neat.

5) There’s a minimum of “fluff”. For the events that I’ve seen, they just show the events, and then get to the next ones, and so on. There’s not much extra stuff, and they only show the events once, I think to not emphasize the importance of one event over any others. The outlay of the Paralympics is REALLY nice. times.

There’s not nearly as much jingoistic drivel as during the normal games, like constant medal counts, all sorts of stuff about Team USA versus everyone else, etc.

I remember during the main games NBC rebroadcasting the women’s Monobob runs over and fucking over again because a black woman won. Christ, did that get repetitive. I kept watching, hoping they would show something else sometimes, but no, jeebus, I swear I saw those runs four or five times spread out amongst the channels. Gawd have mercy. It got to the point where I was starting to memorize the fucking scores. Lordy, people. I just wanted to see some biathlon!

The woman who won held the USA flag during the closing ceremony. Man was she coached to within in inch of her life as to what to say. Not much in the way of spontaneity in her remarks. Which I understand, she’s been doing bobsled for a long time and it’s all probably old hat by now, but wow, did she come across as robotic- even to ME, and I’m a fucking cyborg, lol.

6) I think the general gist of all this is that the Paralympics are mostly about sports, whereas the normal games no longer are to a large extent. I read online from some older Americans that the games and their tone shifted dramatically once they lifted the ban on pros playing, and now I think I can see why. That was before my time, but wow, yes, I get it.

It seems that inviting pros into the games brought in a lot of egos, a lot of greed, and a lot of interference, whether from governments or corporations.

7) I’m going to be streaming the crap out of the Paralympics on Xfinity when I have the time. That should be fun.

8) I remember some news segments and interviews near the end of the main games where people analyzed Norway’s dominance, and came to the conclusion that the reason they are so good is because their youth sports are mostly about… wait for it- sports, and ours are about mostly parents pushing their kids around, and everyone in general being way too overbearing and competitive.

And I remember the people saying all of this were the same ones pushing the shit I outlaid and complained about about, and they reported this fact without a shred of self-awareness. Bleh.

—————————

Well, this was cathartic, lol.

Since I know nothing about the Paralympics, I’m not sure of what to comment on. I guess I just liked getting to know them in general.

Beyond all of this, I remember doing some skating myself on the Olympic ice after the main games wrapped up. It was fun, and boy was it difficult. Wowwwww is that stuff haaaaard. I mean, I realized that before, but man, they aren’t fooling. The ice is cold, which for some reason I didn’t realize (lol), and the spins make you dizzy. And so do the jumps. And the skating. And the rest of it. Holy cow, skaters are amazing athletes.

I did this via astral projection, of course. It was a fun experience to have while chilling in bed, waiting for sleep. I liked it. Made me think of roads not traveled for myself.

Occasionally I would get flashes of myself as a pro figure skater in some alternate reality. Retired now of course, but still doing it, for fun. It’s… interesting. I get the feeling that out of all the stuff in the Winter games, that that would have been the only one I would have been good at.

I suppose there’s a reality in which I would have been a good bobsledder, but that one is so far from here I can’t see it. Same for snowboarding, or short track, etc. But figure skating? Yes, that one I can touch.

There’s just something about flying that appeals to me. I love the sensation of spinning through the air, whether it’s with my physical body or my soul, or my robotic/synthetic side, or my mind, carving out the air around me. Or just some other me, in a parallel universe, helping me along.

Well, I think I would have been good at pairs. Or ice dancing. IDK.

You know- back in the day, I loved doing those jumping spin kicks in those martial arts classes I took. They were… fun. A lot of fun. Freeing. They let me loose from the tyranny of gravity, if only for a second. Not too unlike the jumps the skaters do, I guess. Kinda. Kinda-sorta.

Well, something to think about.

I hope that other me has a gold medal somewhere in his closet.

Well… whatever. I think it’s time to pack this one in.

With a week out from everything, this is probably the perfect time to close out this series.

Some final thoughts, then.

1) It was fun, but altogether, kinda… underwhelming? IDK how to put my finger on it, but some kind of magic was missing.

The Olympics were a revelation 10-15 years ago, with the advent of high def TVs. I could actually see what was going on, and that was awesome. Now, since I’ve seen it all already, it’s… kinda, not as impressive? Or maybe not as interesting? I guess? IDK.

But, yeah, something was missing.

2) The commercials were brutally dreadful. Lordy, did I despise them. A week out and I remember none of them fondly, and I hope I never see any of them again. I remember little from them besides the overt, in-your-face NWO politics, the LOUD music, and the withering assault of their awful CGI.

It used to be that commercials tried not to upstage the programs they were situated in. Those days are clearly gone. The spectacle of the Olympics this time paled in comparison to the blistering and ghastly attention whoring of the commercials.

I’ve never in my life given the mute button on a remote the kind of workout that I did this year during the Olympics.

The racial politics, especially, were obvious and angry. I swear at times that these commercials were mad at me, for something. Over half of them seemed to feature snarling, glowering black athletes. It was an ugly, toxic spectacle.

The coverage of the games themselves reflected this. Over and over again, the most important topics discussed were overtly racial ones, with the most important topic by far the status of black American athletes. Literally, over and over again, the same racial stuff just kept getting dredged up, as if to apologize for the fact that countries like Norway were just crushing everyone.

The commercials themselves seemed almost to be embarrassed to be a part of the winter games, and so did too the coverage of everything by NBC and other stations. It’s like… these games are too white, and so we don’t really want anything to do with them, but since we have too…

It was really bizarre, and the entire thing was an uncomfortable watch, even during the best of times. It was good to see the athletes, but man, the rest of it was just painful and weird.

I read online about how the ratings for these games were dreadful, and that doesn’t surprise me.

As for myself, I might skip the NBC stuff next time to focus on other streaming options. Hopefully, not all of them will be as awful and toxic.

3) Not a fan of Eileen Gu.

She bugs me. Whatever her contributions are to her sport, she herself comes across like a spoiled rich kid who just can’t help but look… spoiled.

Her whole thing is very… not grounded. I mean, her approach to everything, including choosing to represent China. She comes across as a brat.

Let’s break that decision down. She said that she chose to represent China for two reasons: 1) to promote winter sports in China, and 2) she wanted to represent her heritage.

Both reasons mark her selfish and spoiled, IMO.

China doesn’t need Eileen Gu to promote the winter games, or winter sports in general. It is sandwiched in between two winter Olympics powerhouses: Russia and Japan. Seriously, it’s not as if China is in South America or something. This explanation from her makes no sense, and she was so obviously lying when talking about it that I felt bad for her. And also a little angry. Seriously, I could not believe the nonsense that she expects people to think.

She’s representing China for selfish reasons. She wants to build her “brand” in some way, and this is part of that plan. Nothing more.

I mean, for fuck’s sake, without Gu, team China would have fielded 175 athletes for the games this year. 175! Out of the 91 countries competing, China had the fourth most athletes. They fielded over twice as many as Norway!

Yeah, she’s just a liar, and she’s a pretty bad one, at that.

Her second explanation is equally as bad: that her choice to represent China to due to her wanting to respect her heritage, as if she doesn’t have any here, in the place where she was born, raised, pampered, and given everything she needed to succeed. The US has given her more than any other country in the world, and she seems to be embarrassed by that on some level, almost as much as the the commercials and the coverage seemed to be embarrassed by the games in general.

She just comes across like a sheltered, spoiled Asian kid. In short, she’s a brat.

4) Kamila got robbed, and Lordy, did I get tired of hearing over and over how she shouldn’t be skating, blah blah blah. Awful, truly.

I mean, fine. Voice your opinion, okay, it’s a free country. And then move on, please. Nobody watches figure skating coverage for political analysis, or for the backroom stuff. We watch it for the spins, jumps, dancing, etc.

Seriously, guys. So annoying.

5) Well… other stuff. It is always fun to watch the athletes and the sports. It’s just… the container is just so bad, sometimes. Not always- in many sports I think the commentary is interesting and I learn a lot from it, probably since many of the commentators are former athletes and even champions themselves.

I think Weir and Lapanski are very good, so long as they keep their yaps quiet about politics and focus on the skating. I mean, seriously.

I watch these games to get away from politics, and then they just keep dragging me back in, lol.

But yes the events themselves are nice, so that’s why I watch.

6) The opening and closing ceremonies are things that I might talk about later. Kind of have something else to do now. But I intend to, at some point. There might be another entry in this series, then.

I do want to expound more upon some of the good things about the games. This post was mostly venting, it looks like.

Well… that’s it for now.

Go Russia! I hope they sweep the podium. They deserve it.

IDK and IDC about the details of any of this, even though I suspect that I know enough to make a valid moral decision, if nothing else. The Russian skaters deserve to medal and I hope they do; all of them.

Fuck all these hypocritical Team USA athletes and their sanctimonious bullshit surrounding the drug scandal. There is no country in this world that has done more to promote the use of performance enhancing drugs than the USA. Even if there was something shady going on, who WTF cares? Turnabout is fair play, I think, in this case.

Remember Lance Armstrong? Dude was doping himself up for decades, and everyone knew it, and nobody gave a fuck until he was at the end of his career. You could fill a dictionary with the name of professional American athletes that have been caught using steroids. Pro baseball players, UFC fighters, boxers, NBA players, NFL players, college athletes, etc.

Case in point- everyone knows that every fighter in pro MMA is doping. Yet, nobody cares. And honestly, how much do you want to bet that there were roid heads on the field in Sunday’s Super Bowl? I’ll bet anyone there was. It’s just a matter of “catching” them. Though of course they got avoidance down to a science by now, so good luck with that.

I would not be surprised at all if the majority of players on the field Sunday were on something. Maybe not steroids, but something, absolutely.

While watching the Olympics I have been bombarded with exercise commercials featuring The Rock of all people. Holy shit, people. He’s 50 years old and has more muscle mass than professional natural bodybuilders half this age. This guy must eat steroids for breakfast and probably does.

For fuck’s sake, I remember the Rock when he was with the WWE. Back then, he was nowhere near as big and as muscular as he is now! And he’s 50 fucking years old!

Seriously, guys. Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding, here?

Fuck it, seriously. Go Russia! It’s not their fault that no other country’s skaters are as good in comparison.

And don’t give me some nonsense about how it’s the Olympics and they should be held to some higher standard, blah blah blah. I distinctly remember seeing American athletes who were obviously steroided up to their necks as far back as my childhood. I also remember that at least one American track and field athlete got his medals retroactively taken away from him. I don’t remember his name and I’m too lazy to look it up but I do remember it happened.

And let’s not forget all the roid freaks that countries like East Germany produced to promote the international revolution wayyyyy back in the day.

Fuck it, go Russia! Sweep the podium!

Ugh.

Um, didn’t really watch it. It’s been too much TV for me lately.

I’ve been watching TV the last couple of months for 3 reasons: 1) After not owning a TV for well over a decade, it’s all new to me again, 2) The Olympics are on, and 3) These new fangled flatscreens are interesting gadgets, and as someone with geeky tendencies, their opportunities and abilities interest me. I want to know what they do, and how they do it.

So I’ve been watching a lotttttt of TV, and I’m burnt out.

So, anyhow, some thoughts:

Holy shit are modern commercials annoying and strange. Every one of them seems to revolve around three things of their own: 1) Selling diversity, 2) Being as loud, flashy and in-your-face as possible, and 3) Well… the first two are basically it. Though I suppose hawking products is in there, somewhere. Fuck if I know where.

Good Lord, people. Tone it down a few notches, okay?

I sometimes watch collections of older commercials on youtube, I guess for nostalgic reasons. To relive parts of my youth, or for memories of this or that event. When I watch them, they’re… comforting, for more reasons that the feel goods I get from just reliving some part of my teen years or whatever. I mean, they’re often genuinely funny, and the products they sell make an impression on me. Like, an old ad for a car, or for a McDonald’s sandwich, seems to want to make me interested in the product.

Modern commercials are… a giant blur to me. They all just look the same. Is this a part of getting older? Maybe? But it’s like… what the fuck even is this stuff?

It’s the same every year, only it’s getting worse each time. Since every commercial is selling “diversity”, even if only subtly, they all blend together, and it becomes “the diversity show”. And since the human brain can only process so much at once, that’s what you remember from the commercials. Just a bunch of diversity. I can’t recall any of the actual products that were on the offer. There were a bunch of references to my relationships, and some commercial with Anna Kendrick with Barbies and a big Barbie Dreamhouse. Who knows what she was selling. It wasn’t Barbies, IIRC. There was a He-Man playset in there too, with a bunch of He-Man toys. And this wasn’t a toy commercial. Who the fuck knows.

Why do commercials have to be so loud? And filled with So.Much.CGI? It’s too much information. You know what happens when people receive too much information? They tune it out; they stop paying attention.

I was curious about what the commercials had to say about my relationships, so I wound up having to mute the game to concentrate on the commercials. Give my ears a break from all the noise, and give my eyes a rest from the onslaught of bad CGI.

Seriously. What the fuck?

Anyhow, I didn’t really give a fuck about the game itself. I know none of the players that played today and none of what happened on the field had much of an effect on me. The stuff that happened during the game that referenced me was interesting I suppose for purely narcissistic reasons, but… man are NFL games lonnnng. The game started at 5 and was supposed to go until 10:00 or something. Holy shit, that’s five whole hours!

That’s a long ass time to watch a football game. Were they always this fucking long? It seems to me that the NFL games of my youth weren’t nearly as long as they are now.

All of these events are too fucking long. The Oscars are too long, the Super Bowl is too long, fucking everything is. I remember reading online how the recent WrestleMania events were like 6 or 7 hours long! Something like that. Holy shit! I mean I hate to come across like a grumpy old man or something but that’s literally a whole fucking day!

When I was a kid WWE events were aimed at… kids, lol. And they were much shorter and to the point. And probably a whole hell of a lot more fun to watch.

Well… IDK, it’s late again; after midnight. I suppose I’ll dissect the Anna commercial for it’s symbolism before drifting off to sleep.

Tomorrow’s another day.

Hmmmmnn…

Yup. And- I know, I never expected to continue this series, either.

But yet, here we are.

——————————

It was an interesting experience seeing Jason Brown on the ice again. For myself, I strongly identify Brown with the other members of the 2014 USA skating team, including Gracie and Ashley Wagner. But, mostly Gracie. The two of them seem to be close friends, and I remember seeing Brown often in Gracie’s social media, back when she was more active online.

Of course I remember his distinctive style on the ice as well, and the various things people said about his skating during the 2014 games.

Well, I think it’s time to finally add my two cents.

My opinion – Brown scores too low.

Not a LOT too low, but yeah. He does.

Basically, I’m thinking the same thing most everyone else is.

There is no way he should have been outscored by Hanyu. Seriously. Hanyu bricked two jumps completely. Sorry, I know that’s oversimplifying things, but that’s how it looked on my TV. And Brown, although he delivered a performance that may have had a lower starting value than Hanyu’s, was absolutely perfect.

I’m not sure I like how skating is becoming the quad show.

That is not to take away from the skaters, like Chen, how can complete quads, successfully and well. The problem is when skaters toss things like quad axels into their programs they everyone knows full well they have a less than half chance of landing, simply because they score huge with the jumps even if they fall in some ugly manner.

I think skaters should be penalized more for falls than they are. One point seems too little.

I think the key here is that I want to see skaters perform their best, and not to attempt the absurd. I want to see the best looking skating. And I’m not alone in this.

I thought this back in 2014, and recent events have only solidified this opinion.

Brown should have taken the 4th spot in the final tally, and the gap between his score and the Korean skater should have been significant.

As an added bonus, this change would ensure more longevity for skaters on the ice. It would go some distance to ending the “one and done” culture that applies to everyone except gold medal winners at the Olympics. It’s cool to see people return for another run, to see how they’ve grown. It creates continuity, etc.

Seriously, think about it.

So yeah, Brown is cool. And while I’m thinking of him…

——————————

Ummmmmn hmmmn.

So… anyone else wonder what Gracie is doing right now? I mean besides the obvious. Or is that just me?

Probably just me.

Sometimes I wonder if I did things right with her. Sometimes… it’s reeeeally hard to tell.

It’s an easy thing to see if Victoria Justice is happy. Real simple. Same with Haley Pullos, Kat McNamara, Kathryn, Peyton… and a bunch of others. Just look at their social media. They post nearly every day, and give me frequent text updates (in the form of post descriptions) with how they’re doing, what they’re feeling, etc. Easy peasy.

Not so much with Gracie. Gracie isn’t the type to do this, and in fact, she rarely posts much, if at all, for great big stretches of time. Which is fine; that works for her. But it has left me scratching my head, and that was even before it was apparent that she was struggling with mental health issues.

So it’s not hard for me to wonder, considering Brown’s success, if that could have been Gracie instead, had I played my cards with her differently. I mean… you know what I mean.

This is compounded by Gracie’s excellent short program at the recent nationals. I kept thinking… mayyyyybe if I would have done this differently, or that differently, than mayyyyyybe Gracie would have done equally well in the free skate, and theeeeeeeen…

It’s real easy to think along these lines. I left Gracie alone for long stretches of time, not really knowing what to do, and how she could be supported, or if she needed it, or even wanted it.

Sooooooo… yeah. Head scratcher.

Did I do right? Wrong? Average? Who knows, lol. Life is a complicated thing, and everyone, no matter their power or ability, has only 24 hours a day in which to live it. It’s tough to know sometimes how these more complex situations should be approached.

For what it’s worth, what I think now is that Gracie and I hit it off so well in Sochi because we have similar personalities. We’re both performers, and we enjoy being on a national/global stage, but we have strongly introverted sides to us, too.

I never was able to make much of a connection with Ashley Wagner, despite both of our initial attempts. We liked each other well enough, but… there wasn’t enough there to really go on for anything long term except for, IDK, a casual acquaintanceship. Our personalities didn’t “gel”.

So, there you have it.

——————————

To tie this all together- what if these events were scored ever so slightly differently? A little more penalty for falls, a little more bonus for effective expressive elements and spins and such.

Who knows, maybe then I wouldn’t need to worry about some things so much. Would Gracie have made it into the 2022 games? She would have trained differently, had a different program, and… who knows. It’s an interesting thought. Her experience might have carried her through.

Well… it’s late, again.

Off to bed.

First- 2022. Holy cow.

————————————

Beyond that, the ratings are fine. Just wanted to get this out of the way. I’ve read a couple articles saying that the ratings for these games aren’t what was expected.

Isn’t the explanation for why obvious? We just concluded the summer Olympics a few months ago. For me, Comcast stopped streaming them on October 1.

It’s perfectly understandable that some people, even fans, might have been feeling burnout from the games not very long ago. Hence, the reason for the lower ratings.

I don’t think politics, the fame of the athletes, or any other consideration really matters compared to this aspect. The lockdowns screwed up the schedules- including of those who watch the games. Hence, the disruption in ratings.

Seriously, that’s it.

————————————

It’s interesting to watch these games on my TV, rather then stream them from my computer, as I had done for the past… 3 games? The return of the Williams theme is much appreciated.

The commercials… suck, for the most part. None of them are memorable, and none of them will be remembered, at least by me. Honestly, they’re worse than ever. Once again with a big sporting event, all the commercials are the same thing, just repeated over and over and over again, to the point where they all blend together in a strange mush of bad CGI, annoying sound effects, political and racial propaganda, and edgier-than-thou attitude.

Literally none of them stand out, this year. Seriously. Except for maybe the ones with the dinosaurs, and only then, because those are so odd. Olympics and dinosaurs reeeeally don’t mix, lol. It’s weird, but I guess different.

Remember that Coke ad with the Sia song? There is nothing even remotely as good or as human on the offer here. Everything kinda sucks, and I’m having a hell of a time even remembering what products are being advertised. It all just comes across as a large mass of commercials for the NWO.

I just mute them all, myself. They’re so loud, flashy, repetitive and annoying that they ruin the whole experience when I don’t. Sometimes I go as far as to turn the TV off entirely until I think they will be over.

Yuck.

————————————

Other stuff… it’s interesting how the different games tend to bookend different parts of my life.

But… ah, it’s after midnight, and I need to go somewhere tomorrow morning. Will resume this later.