Sighinide

IDK, random diary stuff…

You know, I need to start putting just… normal things in here again. I think it would be a good idea, just to talk about non-huge things, and ideas and such. Honestly, it’s just… yeah.

Well, I’ve done some more thinking about video games, lately. IDK, I did go ahead and buy the remastered Starcraft after all. It turns out that I hadn’t used one of my credit cards in a while, and the bank was threatening to close my account if I didn’t use it. And the remastered SC was on sale, so… I got it, and charged it on the card. Might as well, I thought that I should probably keep the card, so…

I did the same with a few other things on Battle.net. I used another card I really should use more often on the Diablo 3/Diablo 2 combo pack. I also got the Arcade classic collection, and yes, since it was on sale, I got the Warcraft 3 remaster. Honestly, just to keep my credit lines open, lol.

And I’ve been doing a lot of searching for video games, too, lately, and Christ, the market today really is a confusing, dangerous quagmire. Wow.

Many games today are online only, or have a small single player campaign designed solely to push you into online play. I mean, even more then SC II. It’s kinda… unfortunate, since I don’t play online. That entire scene is just toxic, utterly. There isn’t a multiplayer game on the market that I can find that doesn’t require you to, ugh, practice. I mean, you need to like, actually schedule time to play the game, and keep up your skills, and stuff. Like, actually practice. A video game. Like for real!

Wut? No, lol.

No, not a chance. There is only so much time in a day. I mean, I could do pilates, or practice DOTA. I could romance Laura Marano, or I could practice Counterstrike. Or… you know. I don’t get multiplayer. At least for me, it doesn’t click. Is Overwatch 2 really that great of a game that you need to spend a thousand hours playing it just so you can get good enough to really play it? I don’t think so.

And the expenditures! Lordy, the cost! A World of Warcraft monthly subscription is needed just so you can buy the game, lol. Holy shit! At least, for any WOW game released in like the last 10 years, lol. Seriously- you need to pay a monthly fee for the opportunity to purchase the new WOW game, like the one advertised on the front page of Battle.net these days, Dragonflight. Paying money for the chance to pay more money, lol. The mind boggles.

I looked at Overwatch 2. I didn’t look much since it seemed too much like a mobile game- the store was advertising “Overwatch coins”. Pay 100 USD for an invisible basket of “Overwatch coins”! Great deal, huh? Um, no thanks, lol.

And they were advertising “premium passes”. Wut? The game itself was “free”, but man, looking online, people really want to you to pay for these “premium passes”. The impression I got was that the game was technically free, but if you really wanted to play it properly, you needed to pay a monthly fee. And of course the pressure to “play it properly” is pretty severe in Overwatch 2 since it’s a multiplayer team game, so if you lose, you’re making other people, real people, sad, and who wants that? So yeah, you’re going to be “part of the team” and fork over the cold hard cash on a monthly basis, lol.

Yeah, so, there you go. Not really the experience for me, I think.

I looked at other developers too. Since I’m on an RTS kick I logged onto Steam and did a search for “Warhammer”, since I’ve heard that that franchise has made some good RTS games in recent years.

Christ! A general search brought up 500+ results, and I checked them over and I swear a good 500 of them were actually about Warhammer games. I mean, the games, and their DLC, and other stuff. Wow, 500 results, that’s a lot. Like, a lot a lot. That’s 500 games, then, and DLC, and expansions, and early releases, and other stuff, and ye gods, it would take days to even sort through all of that- figure out what games in the franchise were the RTS ones, what their DLC was, which ones were the good ones, which ones I might like, personally, and then you have to find the right package to buy, and… yikes!

I mean, I know I sound kinda curmudgeonly but… still. That’s a lot to go through. And RTS games aren’t like platformers- you need to take the time to learn the games and the mechanics, and that’s more time spent, and gods, is it even worth it?

I looked up Age of Empires, too, since I heard the old ones were remastered, and that they had a new one out. The new one looked like a great game if you were into multiplayer, not so much for a single player only gamer. I looked up the remasters and… yikes, I found out that the remaster was apparently farmed out to some other company, and they didn’t do a good job with them at all- apparently there is/was a bug in Age of Empires III that caused the game to delete your entire C drive and all of it’s contents! Holy shit! Yes, seriously. See here, from Steam:

I’ve been hearing about buggy games for 30 years but that review gave me a double take. Wiping entire C: drives? Wut? That’s not a bug, that’s assault and battery, lol. I googled this and yup, it is/was an issue with this game; other people were talking about it on other sites and platforms.

I’m sorry, but you have got to be kidding me. That is so far beyond inexcusable that it’s hard to even describe. The rest of that list is deal breaking, but that one is just… nuclear. It’s so unreal that a steam game could do this that it makes me wonder if one of the devs was an aspiring supervillain and had some kind of secret grudge against humanity, lol. Regardless there is no way in hell am I approaching any of this, ever.

So… for now, it’s back to Starcraft, lol! I got the cartooned thing, too. I might decide to give that a full run through some day, IDK.

Um… to summarize though, I’m still glad with my decision to not multiplayer anything, really. I mean I’ve tried it and inevitably, any kind of experience like that becomes a horrible time and money sink. It’s not worth it, it really isn’t. I mean, with the kind of demands these stupid games put on players, it really would come down to being Kathryn Newton’s boyfriend or playing League of Legends of whatever. Of the two options, I think that right one is obvious, lol.

I might look into the C&C remasters, tho. Maybe they won’t be horrible. Let’s hope so.

Might as well do another one of these, IDK.

IDK, I guess I’ve been watching stuff on TV since it’s something to do while riding my exercise bike thing, so I guess this is important or something.

I’ve been following all of the online chatter about the new Indiana Jones movie, and Disney and the rest of that stuff. It’s interesting; more interesting than any movie in fact. And that’s probably not a good sign, come to think of it.

IDK how any new Indiana Jones movie will do, but man, what a clusterfuck that whole thing looks like. Christ, WTF is even going on these days? LOL.

I’m not seeing the movie myself, but the small handful of reactions I’ve read online (all of which come from franchise diehards, notably) say the movie is sorta so-so at best, and dreadful at worst. Not a good sign, and Christ, Disney is throwing up a shedload of “bad signs” these days.

IDK what is actually going on, I’ll never see any of this shit, lol, but my impressions are as follows:

1. Disney stuff isn’t “good” anymore, from a technical or storytelling or… anything, really, point. Everyone I’ve read thus far, even of those that kinda liked the movie, has said the special effects suck. They look fake and rubbery, and kinda weird. The CGI looks like something from an average PS2 cutscene, apparently. The de-aged Indiana Jones in particular looks really bad. His visuals give off an “uncanny valley” vibe, and that is really really unfortunate, since he is supposedly the star of this thing.
2. I think I’m over the whole theater experience. I have no desire to see this or anything else, and, IDK, it seems I’m not alone. The theater returns from movies these days seem to be dreadful. Disney in particular looks really bad on this front, but IDK, is anyone doing well these days?
3. IDK, I think I still might be over new content in general. Nothing looks fun or interesting. IDK, maybe I’m just a curmudgeon, lol. But seriously. Like, while we’re on the subject, all of those Disney remakes… what the fuck? lol. Like, seriously, what… are they? That new Little Mermaid movie just looks… horrible. Like seriously, seriously horrible. Shockingly so. It’s really weird.

The Flash looks… bad, IDK. It just doesn’t look good. I guess that Elemental looked kinda interesting when I saw the trailer, but it’s not doing well financially. I might check it out one day, though. Not right now, though.

*Shrug*

Yeah I don’t know, I think that a lot of this is “media fatigue”. There’s too much stuff out there. Too many movies, TV shows, games, etc. Too many franchises and universes and services and other stuff. It’s all just too much, and something’s gotta give.

I don’t know, maybe Lucasfilm just sucks, lol. I thought that before but seriously… Christ! I’m… just baffled at this point. What are they even doing? What is their fetish for Mary Sue type British chicks? The mind boggles. Every franchise, every movie… lol. What the fuck?

If Jones tanks, IDK, I have a suspicion the Disney is going to be in some serious shit, somehow. I don’t own any Disney stock, but I can tell you, if I did, I would be quite mad right now, lol.

Star Wars is a good example of the problem here. It’s a dead franchise. I mean, it’s dead. Finished. Star Wars will never be profitable again, at least in the big picture. It’s over.

This puts Disney in a horrific bind, then. Here’s the problem: Star Wars is unsellable. They can’t sell it, not without suffering horrible losses in other areas. So however bad the cost-benefit picture looks for the franchise, it is impossible to offload.

The problem in a nutshell is that Disney made Star Wars political, and personal.

IDK, I say this because rumors online is that Disney is having serious financial problems and is looking to offload some stuff, to tighten their belts a bit. And that possibly SW and maybe Lucasfilm itself might be on the offer to someone. Just rumors, but still.

Well, Star Wars is unsellable, though. Here’s the thing: if Disney sells this franchise in any form, the “trolls” were right. They were right, about everything, and everyone else was wrong, about everything. All of it. Or if not all of it, well… 95% of it, lol.

They can’t sell it, then. They can’t even talk about selling it. Or even hint at it. If they did, the shitstorm of “I-told-you-so’s” from the people who never liked Disney SW are going to be deafening. And it will never end.

If SW gets sold, the whole media apparatus is going to get raked over the coals in such a way that there’s no way it will escape it without suffering some kind of permanent loss of respect. Everything will be called into question- Disney itself, Star Wars, “woke politics”, all of those professional reviewers that loved The Last Jedi, the Rotten Tomatoes website, everyone associated with Disney Star Wars in any capacity at all, literally everything.

If Disney sells SW for a loss, or even at all, they will never ever hear the end of it. Rian Johnson will go down in history for one thing and one thing only: For being “The Man who Ruined Star Wars”. He could win a string of Oscars; it wouldn’t matter. He will forever be “The Man who Ruined Star Wars”.

Virtually every media outlet in the country will have to apologize to the “trolls” that didn’t like Disney SW. They will have to admit that in fact they were the trolls, and the SW nerds were absolutely right. That… is going to be a sight to see, lol.

Holy shit, lol. The fallout is going to be glorious to watch, if this ever happens.

But, man, WTF is Disney going to do, here? They can’t sell Star Wars, but they can’t make anything new, either, since it’s bound to create a financial loss. Pretty bad situation. I hear they’re closing the Star Wars hotel thing. Yeah, lol. WTF were they even thinking with that? I hear it was 5 grand for a weekend, and it was dull as dishwater. It was a huge ugly warehouse looking hotel-ish thing and that 5 grand wasn’t even all-inclusive, lol. I mean, food was extra. Wut? lol. I mean you’ve got to be kidding me.

The people who would pay 5 grand for that make the idiots who spend thousands of dollars on fucking gacha games like Genshin Impact look wise and frugal, lol. Holy shit!

Yeah, well, the mind boggles at all of this.

In some ways the Star Wars predicament is a problem for everyone. Star Wars has always been the spiritual pillar of the blockbuster movie genre. It started the genre, and, perhaps, it can end it as well. IDK, it’s an interesting thought.

The last movie I saw in theaters was in fact The Last Jedi. While watching it, I had a revelation: I waited thirty years for this?!? lol. But srsly, yes, that was basically what I was thinking. Myself and others. When I went to school back in the 80’s and 90’s Star Wars was an occasional topic of discussion amongst my friends and I. This was before the prequels ofc.

But kids back then would wonder if the trilogy would be continued, somehow, on the big screen, and what such a continuation would look like. We knew the prequels were coming first, but after that… what would things be like? Would kind of amazing and groundbreaking things would we see, then, for the first time? What would the story be?

Most everyone back then liked Star Wars. The girls, the guys, the nerds, the jocks, the students and teachers, the parents, preppies and goths, gangbangers and band geeks. We all liked something about it- the characters or the special effects, the music, or narrative, Yoda or Darth Vader, the B-movie dialogue, the mystical backstories or something else- everyone liked some part of it. It was guaranteed. It was impossible to find someone who didn’t like some aspect of the franchise. Impossible. So, we all talked about it, at least once. And we all wondered.

And then… yeah. Wut? We get… THAT? Oof. In a lot of ways, TLJ was a turning point for all of this. It was a watershed moment in which millions of people sat up and were like… wait a minute, what the fuck is going on?

The ugly, stupid, boring direness of The Last Jedi is what started this process, and the weird and baffling critical praise that followed it’s release is what caused the questioning of all of this… all of this stuff. This junk we’re watching. The movies and TV shows, etc. People started to question, finally. What… are we actually consuming, here?

It was the kind of thing the professional movie critics had been wanting to see for decades- only to their chagrin, the people disagreed with them. How dare they! lol.

You know- some people online have been theorizing that maybe Disney is intentionally tanking all of their stuff on purpose for some reason. IDK, I guess it’s not impossible. But I don’t think that’s the case, I think the problem is that the people running this stuff really don’t have the foggiest idea of what they are doing. They’re too isolated, and probably too rich to understand the real world. They’ve lost touch with reality, and suffer horribly from an extreme combination of snobbishness, laziness, and ivory tower syndrome.

IDK, though. I could be wrong. Maybe the cynics are right.

Well, that’s enough of this.

Not much going on tonight, so I think I’ll throw something up on my blog, for a change. IDK, maybe I need to vent. We’ll see how this turns out.

Some stuff…

I’ve been playing PC games again. Well, correction there. I’ve been playing Starcraft, Brood War, and the various Starcraft II games. They’re still fun, overall. I’m not touching the remastered original, since I think the graphics on the old version are better looking than the new graphics. Seriously, the old graphics are just incredible. They upscale beautifully, almost eerily so. I dislike the new style in the remastered, besides. Everything looks too much like a toy. I have the same problem with the new Warcraft III. Luckily, I still have my old discs for SC and WCIII.

There’s nothing quite like Starcraft for improving mental dexterity, decision making, and computer control. It’s quite a useful game. IDK, I think I needed to play it. While burning through all of the campaigns I could actually feel my mental dexterity improving. Certainly, my mouse and keyboard control are much improved, and so in fact is my general hand-eye coordination, I think. It’s a nice feeling.

Some thoughts… the original is overall the better game. The sequel is too… IDK, competitive, and fast. And too busy. The graphics are actually too detailed. They’re so detailed it’s difficult sometimes to tell what’s going on. I actually turned the graphics down to their lowest setting, just to improve playability. That way there’s not as much superfluous “stuff” on the screen.

I prefer the older gameplay, myself. SC II is too pushy, too aggressive, sometimes. Overall, IDK, I think it’s too “modern”, and I tend to strongly dislike modern video games. It’s too oriented to pushing players into the “multiplayer” world that in my experience is always unhealthy, and I always despise, ultimately.

That isn’t to say that SC II is a bad game; far from it. It is miles above almost everything else released since it’s debut. For starters, it isn’t intentionally broken, like at least 99% of the games in the mobile sphere are. And… IDK, it doesn’t suck, outright. And it isn’t stupid. And it’s actually finish-able, and a complete game, free from weird bugs (heh). And the music is nice.

I do tend to prefer the more relaxed style of the original, though.

Well, I also installed WC III, and… holee shite, what a mistake I made when I installed the latest patch after installing, lmao. The graphics were horribly buggy, with weird glitches and other strange shit, and the UI was an ugly, downgraded version of the 2002 original, and I was forced to install a 50- something GB update (!!!!) for some godforsaken reason. What? The original game and the expansion were something like 1.5 GB after install, I remember. Two CDs. What in God’s name was the extra 50 GB for, then? And I mean, I couldn’t even play it- for some reason, the game kept crashing and “logging me out”, whatever that means in this context since I only play single player, and… what? LOL.

The reforged graphics look horrible, BTW. The original is far far superior graphically.

After way too much dicking around with this dumb shit I uninstalled the crappy modern patch, re-installed the game, and patched it then with a ten year old patch I found on my external. Worked beautifully, then. No glitches, ran like a charm, looked and sounded great, no 50 GB download of who the fuck knows what, and, well, there you go.

Starcraft had similar problems. I only play single player, and for some reason on occasion, I couldn’t because I was “in a queue” when “logging in”. What? A queue, for single player? Fuck off!

Whatever. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, or I would have been forced to uninstall and re-install with one of my old patches etc. Weird, though. And there were other annoyances, too- for some reason my settings needed to be stored on the “battle.net cloud”, in spite of the fact that my 1999 laptop with 2 GB of hard disk space could store them locally with no problems.

Whatever.

Christ, gaming is such a minefield of fuckery, mindgames, incompetence, and other dumb shit these days. I mean, I just want to play a game, lol. I mean, a game I can actually play, and complete, and feel good about playing. It’s a pity those types are so severely hard to find.

I mean, they’re out there, I know. But they’re so rare that locating them is like hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. It’s rough to sift though hundreds of games to find the one good one you might actually finish.

At this point it almost feels like the only people who would ever make a full experience like that would be hobbyists, and that kinda sucks, because there’s no way a solitary driven individual or a small group could ever make a replacement for Starcraft, no matter how ambitious they are.

*Shrugs*. Well, the games themselves are not too difficult, ultimately. I beat BW pretty easily except for the hardest mission in the Zerg campaign, which I could have beaten I think had I tried the level again. You know, the one where you face the Zerg/Terran combined forces. You just need to nydus canal across the chasm, and easy win. I remembered that unfortunately halfway through, lol.

I’m playing through SC II on normal, and it’s pretty easy. At times I find myself wishing the bad guys would put up more of a fight, but it’s still fun. One mission to go to finish it. I’m not concerned about achievements- I think achievements in video games are kinda stupid in general, honestly.

The story is still good, the flow between missions are nice, the variety of mission types are well done, and… well, it’s a good game. We all know that at this point, lol.

Other stuff… my Disney+ sub finally ran out. Before it ended I watched a variety of stuff- the original Stargirl, Zenon, and a bunch of other programs, like the nature ones the platform was going to remove, like America the Beautiful, Super/Natural, and a few other things.

General thoughts… Stargirl was fun. I liked it quite a bit, in the way I guess that I tend to like YA stuff. It seemed harmless and entertaining, and I thought it was well acted and produced. While watching I did that thing I do while I double-track my mind and dissect everything subconsciously while my conscious mind enjoys the show. My subconscious brain saw a lot of interesting and familiar stuff- so much so that I read the book after watching the movie and yup, I’m definitely Stargirl. They make it very obvious and personal in the book on many occasions. I won’t list them here, but yeah, the references are in there, and on almost every page. Fascinating.

I’m Zenon, too. I mean, I didn’t grow up on a space station, lol, but after watching the flick I checked out the book and read it, and the book was definitely me. The book is yet another takeoff of my Iowa experiences. So if I’m not movie Zenon I’m defo book Zenon. I didn’t get the chance to watch the sequels but I will, as of course I intend to re-subscribe at some point.

Nice movies, both of them. I like Disney stuff, or at least older Disney stuff. Anything 2016 and prior is gold, and that’s a ton of material.

The sitcoms are great fun. I mean, basically all of them. They’re good natured and not horribly annoying, and I much enjoyed the lack of commercials on the service.

I watched a few eps of K.C. Undercover during the last month or so and really enjoyed it. Zendaya is pretty and talented and has a lot of charisma, and the show in general was good. I guess that I kinda missed the Zendaya thing, IDK. Back in the K.C. Undercover days I was utterly obsessed with… you know, Bella, etc. and I didn’t quite know what to do with Zendaya since she didn’t need as much… IDK, guidance, as some others, and… well, you know.

You know.

The nature docs are Disney+ are really good. Well worth watching, I mean, while they’re there, lol. I saw America the Beautiful before it was yanked and it had some really gorgeous images. It was humbling sometimes. I guess that as a homebody I tend to forget how huge and beautiful nature can be, and how impressive it often is, especially in the wide open places where people aren’t easily found.

It’s really something to see a nature documentary made with modern equipment on a big screen TV. It’s a great experience. You see things that are impossible to see otherwise. I mean I saw… storm clouds, and not from the ground, but from the sky. I mean, I was looking down on them. Amazing! And you can see the inside of anthills, and the bottom of the ocean, and the tops of mountains, and… everywhere else. Inspiring, awesome, thrilling.

The narration, by Michael B. Jordan, was unfortunately… not so great. Honestly, he was dreadful. I side with the IMDB reviewers, here. He was by far the worst narrator I have ever heard in any nature documentary. He was so, sooooo boring. I could actually see him laboring to read off of the script in front of him. Painful. I more than once considered turning off the sound, but then, I would have missed the nature sounds, too.

IDK. I hope for his sake that he’s better on camera. IDK, I‘ve never seen anything he’s done and likely never will. You know- now that I think about it, maybe name recognition is what they were banking on when they cast him to read the script, lol. “Star power”. I don’t know. Yuck, though.

Benedict Cumberbatch narrated Super/Natural and he was far far better. He was quite good in fact. I thought comparing the two was fascinating. Both are screen actors, but Cumberbatch cut his teeth playing Sherlock Holmes, a character famous for his dialogue, while Jordan made his name playing… Black Panther, a comic book character famous for his abs, lol. Needless to say I didn’t need to analyze much when considering why one performance was done well and one wasn’t, lol.

Well… ok, then.

So lately I’m had to return to the disgusting cesspool that is modern broadcast TV and it’s quite a shocking experience. The commercials are… really, really painful. Gods, they’re just so horrible, lol. And so is the programming. It’s just dreadful, utterly dreadful. Most of the shows are… I don’t even know how to put this, they just give me a bad feeling inside. Watching them is unpleasant and unsettling, except for the old ones.

While channel surfing, I was struck by how easygoing older programming is in comparison to new stuff. Older shows are much better acted, clearly. And better written, and the characters seem like better people, and they seem “realer”, I guess I’ll say.

Characters in newer shows and commercials all act like they have some kind of mental problem, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that. Literally, they act like they have undiagnosed cases of narcissistic personality disorder, Down’s Syndrome, or histrionic personality disorder, or something like that. And I say this without hyperbole.

Twice today while channel surfing I saw commercials where I legitimately thought the actors were parodying people with Down’s Syndrome. It was during two of those “middle aged white men are all retards” type of commercials. It was really horrible and offensive to watch, and I say that in reference to actual retards, here. Christ, what the fuck, people? And the shows, gods, the shows! Channel surfing is an exercise in being bombarded with a series of monstrously dysfunctional behavior displays, except on those occasions where I chance upon on an older (pre 1970, typically) show, or a kid’s show, or a cartoon.

I mean, everything is just so… LOUD, and spastic, and stupid, and immature, and self-absorbed, and overly flashly. And ugly- the people on modern TV are physically repulsive, especially in the commercials. Real horrible.

It was a seriously jarring experience going from watching entertaining shows like Lab Rats and Best Friends Whenever to… the grotesque cacophonies on broadcast TV.

I really appreciate the approach of these older Disney shows. They’re dumb, but they know that, and thus they don’t take themselves too seriously. They become entertaining, then, in a so-bad-it’s-good kinda way. The laugh tracks are there, but not obnoxiously loud and obtrusive like they are in more “mature” sitcoms. And the people actually look attractive, and not… “realistic” (read: fat, too thin, odd looking, or obnoxiously edgy).

The characters in “adult” shows seem to want to take everything super seriously, including really dumb shit that no mature adult should ever waste time caring about. And thus they’re always confrontational and overly aggressive; very few people on these shows ever look like they’re having fun, ever. They’re monotonous, annoying and boring as fuck.

In my service I have a span of like 50 channels that seems to show nothing but cop shows. I swear to God that all of these shows must be the same show, just repeated over and over, with different actors playing the same parts. Christ!

I guess that to summarize my feelings in regards to general TV, it is very hard to take any of it seriously. The characters always seem to get overly worked up over the stupidest and most childish things. On a Disney show, where the characters are like 14 or something, it seems appropriate for them to care about childish stuff. They’re teens, after all, lol. But the rest of TV is just chock full of supposed adults bitching, whining and stupidly posturing over stuff that would embarrass the teenagers on any kid’s show. Real, real cringe.

Ugh. Well, I have to stop here tonight, but I intend to watch some of my girlfriends’ free movies. You know, like the ones on Tubi? That might be fun. And then I’ll probably try Netflix, since I have an unused Netflix gift card.

Then I might try Disney+ again, IDK. I still have a bunch of stuff there that I need to watch, someday, for sure.

Well, that’s it for this one.

You know- I need to broaden my horizons here, maybe talk about other topics. Try something new.

That’ll wait, though. Bedtime now.

Uhm……..

Thanks, by the way.

I mean it.

Holy Christ, I just saw Prom, and I’m not entirely sure of what to say.

Holy Crikey! Or… holy… something.

Wowwwwwwwww.

Uhm… I need time to process this, and… that, and… those other things- you know, the rest of it.

And the relationship stuff, too, which… I just… need time to… process, because it’s very, well… uhm, complicated.

Well, TBH, it’s VERY complicated.

Some might in fact say OVER complicated.

Which is, I know, par for the course here.

But still.

Wow, though. Holy mackerel.

How on Earth do they DO this? And so consistently? It boggles everything- my mind, my soul, my… heart…

It’s just unfathomable.

I guess that that’s what you get when someone has a direct line to every thought that has ever crossed your subconscious mind, though. So it makes sense, and I expect it, but still, it can be a lot to actually see it, regardless.

Well, it’s after 1 a.m., and I need sleep.

A LOT of sleep.

Yeah.

Wow.

………

WOW.

Hmmn… I’ve been watching Best Friends Whenever a lot lately and have consequently been kinda… thinking about time travel, again.

Maybe… I should try more of that. I mean I used to do it, but… just kinda stopped, I guess.

I do still do stuff with merging parallel universes and things, on occasion. Not as much as I used to but sometimes I do, you know? It’s kinda fun, that stuff.

Yesterday I merged into existence an old childhood nicknack that I lost. It was nice to see it again.

It was that little booklet I made that was reimagined as the “Sisters by chance, Friends by choice” sign on Liv and Maddie. And as other things, on many other projects.

It’s kinda weird, tho… I mean, seeing stuff appear and disappear from existence. But you know what- I think I’ve gotten it down, now. I mean, mostly. Mostly mostly, at least.

Mostly.

But time travel… maybe… it’s time, again. Maybe. Could be.

I guess we’ll see.

Just a note here, I guess to expand on the transgender discussion yesterday.

I’m not really sure of what I am, honestly. I mean I think I explained part of it well, but…

The general gender weirdness of my existence seems to coincide with the general age-related weirdness. So maybe I’m not so much transgender, as I am transhuman, or… something.

I was just thinking about this the other day- I’m still kinda… weirdly young for my age. And in ways that go beyond the mere “diet, vitamins and exercise” age fighting routines used by so many.

It’s genuinely kinda freaky. Like, I’m 43 years old, and I use a high school picture as on my twitter profile, basically because that’s what I look like, lol.

I still get weird looks whenever I mention my age to others. People don’t believe it. And I mean that literally- they need to actually check the records, to make sure I’m not lying. Hell, I can hardly believe it. I really do not look like I’m in my mid 40’s.

I was looking into the mirror the other day hunting for age related issues, and believe it not, I was stressing out because I didn’t find enough of them. Really weird.

I do have thinning hair, but weirdly, rightly or not, I feel like that that might not be a problem in the future- that maybe the cybernetics will somehow “fix” that for me. It’s a strange feeling, and not really a human one, I think.

I tend to forget just how strong I actually am, because I forget how old I am, chronologically. I forget that most men my age- and I mean at least 99% of them- cannot begin to do the exercises that I can do, easily. Those twenty-something fitness gurus on youtube can, yes, but almost nobody my age can, no. And I think that this ability is… unnatural, somehow. It’s not normal, at least not entirely. It feels unnatural. It feels inhuman, like something out of a comic book.

And it feels like as difficult as these exercises are, that I should have no problems doing them well into the future- into my 50’s, 60’s, and beyond. Whether or not that will happen we will need to see. But it feels like… it would be easy. And that doesn’t feel normal. It just doesn’t.

It’s weird, honestly. And it’s getting weirder with each passing day.

I don’t know.

I mean… I really don’t know.

I’m not sure anyone does, honestly.

It’s been an interesting few days watching Disney stuff. A few notes:

Bambi is a really, really good movie. I mean obviously, lol. But it seriously is just amazing. Everything about it is flawless. No need to bother listing things. It’s just awesome.

It’s short, I mean less than an hour and twenty minutes but it’s immensely satisfying and a watch makes me feel full. IDK how else to describe it; it’s such a complete experience.

The animation is gorgeous. It feels natural. I mean it doesn’t just look good, every movement has a natural weight and purpose to it. It’s daring and incredibly detailed. I just finished watching it tonight and was in awe at the visuals probably a half dozen times.

The music is amazing, the acting is amazing, the story is… timeless, IDK, it’s as good as it gets.

The characters are so fully realized and relatable that it’s honestly stunning.

It’s like seemingly everything else made by early Disney. It’s exceptionally efficient. Not one frame is wasted. Every line of dialogue is there for a reason. Every note is hit perfectly, and then they move onto the next one.

I can’t imagine the Disney of 2023 making anything even close to it on any level. Kinda sad to say that, but things are the way they are.

I watched the early noughties Three Musketeers with Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Pete and liked it. It was fun, and had a early Disney vibe I liked. Of course the quality was not on par with the early classics but it was entertaining.

I don’t remember Dumas’ story myself, but I was struck by how… Star Wars– esque is was. Here I refer to the original 1977 movie, not the series.

I’ve never heard anyone mention Three Musketeers as an inspiration for Star Wars but it definitely was.

Fun watch.

I watched the 2002 Peter Pan sequel, Return to Neverland, and… wow. Ok, we’re going to need to unpack this one. Wow.

WOW.

Yeah, I… need to think about this movie. And write about it; it reflects back a part of me that I thought was done and buried and I had… forgotten about… kinda.

Ok, too many things here. Not sure how I should proceed.

Jane, the protagonist, is uhm… me, and the entire movie seems to be a stylized and very personal recounting of my second visit to Disney World. It’s kinda… stunning, and confusing, and altogether flabbergasting, but… yeah. Holy fuck.

How… do they do this? How do they know so much, feel so much about me? It makes no sense, but there it is, on the screen. Every moment, every feeling, every action… I mean, when they want to show a part of me, nothing is held back. Nothing, nothing at all. They dig deep and it’s very raw.

It’s kinda scary, honestly.

Do you suppose that the female characters they base on me are closer to my real self, or the male ones? I’m not sure.

What am I, exactly? I mean, I’m a suburban white man, aged 43 years old. But I mean… it’s a mystery, isn’t it? I’m not a girl, honestly. At least I don’t think.

Verrrry confusing. But I’ll tell you this: I’m not transgender. There are no hormone treatments in my future. No unnecessary surgeries. No… they/them in my profiles. I’m a man, both in appearance and in thought.

But… yeah. I have a feminine side that is exceedingly strong and extremely well defined. In fact from what I gather from others my feminine aspects are more developed than what you will find in many if not most women. Or possibly even the overwhelming majority of them.

It’s a mystery, all of this.

I think it’s just… I’m not transgender, because that would imply transformation of some kind. I don’t need to transform anything to achieve femininity, I just… incarnate it, because I can bring it up from within the core of me, at any notice. I don’t need surgeries or drugs to get in touch with any kind of femininity.

I just live it, and be it. It’s as normal as breathing or walking to me.

Well… about the movie. It’s very good, and I think underrated. And… kinda hard to review. It’s like they ripped my heart and then put it on display, stylishly. Which… is OK. I must admit that I can’t help but find all of this incredibly interesting.

But… yeah. Jane is me, and that portrayal of me of that time, during that visit to Disney World, is so on the nose that it’s like looking into a mirror and seeing my old self staring back at me. It’s an amazing experience.

I’ve sure changed a lot since then. Grown a lot, and had many many new and incredible experiences.

But I had a lot of heart back then, didn’t I?

Yeah, I sure did.

I need to vent some about social media, so feel free to move on if this doesn’t interest you.

Today I received some baffling news from instagram: apparently my account has been suspended. For what reason, they do not say. I certainly don’t know.

So I’m faced with a choice: let my account die, which is fine with me since it was empty, I mean- I have zero posts on my picture feed, or submit my info for… IDK, review, or something. Review- by somebody, or something, somewhere. No idea. They don’t say.

Let me state that I haven’t the foggiest idea of what is going on here. Literally the only reason I have this account is for following a few random celebrities. I have never posted any pictures, myself. I made one comment, total: that old one that I talked about on here; the one I made on Cady Groves’ account, some number of years ago. For context, I made this comment intentionally so that it would be difficult for anyone to find. I made it on a non-famous dead person’s abandoned account, on their first post, made something like a decade ago. And to even get to the picture I commented on you would have scroll past some odd hundreds or thousands of other pictures, first. Very, very few people- if any- have ever come across this comment and read it in it’s entirety.

And it was an innocuous post, anyways. No politics, for example.

So I haven’t the faintest idea of what instagram thinks is the problem, and they’re certainly not telling me anything. It’s possible that they don’t know, themselves.

But for whatever reason, the account is as good as dead, it seems. The general consensus online is that when this happens the account is unrecoverable, which… is fine, I have nothing on it, anyways. But imagine if I did- the internet is filled with people complaining about this problem that have lost a ton of important stuff because of it: old pictures, personal contacts, valuable information about this or that.

Instagram wants me to “verify” my account. Who is asking this, I do not know. Is it a person? A machine? An AI? Nobody?

“It” wants me to send a selfie. Why? I have never uploaded anything to my account; what good would a selfie do him/it/them? And it seems that when they ask you this, you may as well not bother, nobody will get back to you anyways.

I haven’t any idea. I guess I will make a new account. But then- what if this happens again for some incomprehensible reason?

IDK, but apparently this is a serious problem with instagram- all sorts of people are complaining about being flagged, banned, shut down, etc. for no obvious reason and at random times, with no recourse. And when you are banned or whatever, that’s it, everything that was there is gone, forever.

The reason I didn’t use my account for anything was specifically to avoid this issue. The impression I have gotten in the past from others is that if you use instagram too much, and you aren’t rich and famous, you will inevitably lose everything at some point. Say the wrong thing- even if you don’t know what the wrong thing is- and bam, that’s that. I mean for God’s sake, don’t even dare mention vaccines, in any context, even if you say something supportive of them, lol.

So, my account is empty.

But apparently, that is a bad choice, too. If you use your account too little, instagram will apparently think you are a bot, or something, and ban you regardless. Or so I’ve heard. IDK if that’s true in my case. Why would a bot do nothing?

So if you use the platform too much, you will lose everything. Use it too little, and you will lose everything. So there is a “sweet spot” there that must be found, and you will need to walk that tightrope, daily, to keep your account going.

Or- just don’t use the service. Which is the logical thing to do, anyways. It’s inherently a platform for rich people. If you’re not on the pop charts, don’t bother. It’s purely visual- there is no reason for a suburban person (or even a non visual) person to use it.

Christ, what a ridiculous clusterfuck. What a stupid service, lol.

It’s almost as if Zuckerberg and Co. are actively hostile to non-famous people. Which… might in fact be the case, lol. I’m still salty about Myspace, lel. Facebook was always shitty and boring in comparison.

Regardless instagram is just… dumb, lol. IDK what is going on with my account, but I guess it might have something to do with me occasionally downloading celebrity pictures, like stuff they post publicly on their picture feeds, their stories, etc. I do this to share their stuff with others. Which, being celebrities, they WANT me to do. I mean- it’s the reason they post them, so that their fans can see the pictures and videos and share them with their friends, thus creating new fans in the process. It’s the lifeblood of their careers. But I also know that Zuckerberg HATES this- he actively discourages it, even going as far as making it difficult as possible for users to see and download things like celebrity content. Instagram has gone after and shut down all kinds of browser plugins that let people look at and share celebrity stuff.

But since celebrity stuff is the lifeblood of instagram itself- I mean, it’s the only reason many (most?) people use the service, people into this stuff get caught in a ridiculous, illogical bind.

Real baffling and frankly stupid, all of it. What a dumb, dumb service.

Social media in general kinda sucks, tho. IDK, it sucks for so many reasons, frankly, that it would take me weeks to go through them all, so I’m stopping here. Dinner in a few minutes, anyways.

Well, whatever.

This shit is just really, really stupid, lol.

Random notes… tonight I watched 20 minutes of Strange Magic, followed by the entirety of Brother Bear 2.

You can probably already guess where I’m going with this one, lol.

Strange Magic is… a bad, bad movie. I didn’t see the whole thing of course, but jeezus christ. It’s a Lucasfilm flick, made before the Disney trilogy, and holy shit, you could already see the writing on the wall, there. I mean it’s not as overwhelmingly dreadful as The Last Jedi– at least, I don’t think- but I could tell it was going to be close.

I promised myself that I would watch all of these fairy-themed movies to their ends, and I really enjoyed the Tinker Bell ones, I mean, so much- they were great fun, with really likeable characters, a bright, beautiful, wonderful world that opened itself up further with each movie, great acting and a ton of charm. They were well made and very efficient movies. None of them were very long- I think none of them are over 90 minutes, but they packed a lot into their running times.

With that in mind I tried tackling Strange Magic and holy shit, yeah. Well… I tried, lol. Initially I was really enthused owing to the obvious bump in production values but… no, I didn’t like it. The world felt “off”. It has the same problems that the new Star Wars stuff has, which says everything I need to say in a nutshell. Like… the visuals were impressive and detailed, but… characterless, and oddly boring.

Disney outsourced the animation of the Tinker Bell movies and you could tell, but the visuals had soul. You could tell the animators cared and respected the source material and their audience, and the movies just seemed pure.

IDK, the cgi in Strange Magic seemed overly detailed, almost, like the animators were trying too hard, perhaps to make up for some obvious deficiency.

For once the critics got a Lucasfilm movie right, and pegged this one at 18% fresh. That’s a decent rating, at least based on the twenty minutes of this that I could suffer through. God knows why, though, they didn’t like this movie and yet loved The Last Jedi. Doesn’t make any sense; they were clearly both cut from the same mold.

Maybe I’ll soldier on and choke this movie down fifteen minutes at a time, like some kind of penance, just to watch the damned thing. I mean I promised myself that I would watch all of these fairy movies, and I hate to break a promise, so… yeah, but gods, this movie is just SO bad, lol.

Ugh.

Well, I watched Brother Bear 2 after trying in vain to suffer through Strange Magic, and loved it. Another animated sequel better than the original. It was touching, with a very human story and familiar characters. The music was great, and there were real laughs. It also had a reverence for nature that I found refreshing.

It was a nice contrast to Strange Magic, which, even though also set in nature, seemed offputtingly mechanical, if not outright anti-nature, oddly. IDK, it’s hard to put my finger on why that movie is just so uncomfortable to watch, but the whole thing doesn’t gel. It has a ton of modern pop songs randomly sung by weird, ugly-ish uncanny valley type cgi fairy things, and… IDK.

Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow, but… ugh, really.

You know- maybe Lucasfilm was always kind of an overrated company. It could be. They made Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, yes, but then, they’ve made shedloads of stinkers, too. Probably most of the movies they’ve released have been bad if not terrible. And they seem to almost be getting worse, year by year.

I’ve said before here how the Star Wars movies get worse, slowly with each release. The best of them by far was Star Wars, Empire was second best and clearly inferior to the first flick, and then so on, down and down, until you get to repulsive dreck like Last Jedi, and the last one, whatever that one was called.

And then there’s Red Tails and Crystal Skull and probably some other shit, too.

Willow was a very good movie, a great kid’s movie, and I watched it dozens of times as a tyke. Loved it. I shudder when looking at the follow up series, tho. Not for me, I guess. I’ll never know, either way.

Kinda rambling here but man was this such a missed opportunity. The budget for SM must have been huge, and the possibility for a masterpiece of a more adult Tinker Bell movie was there, I mean it really could have been great, but they just whiffed so hard, lol. Real disappointing.

I note that Mandy Moore starred in Brother Bear 2. She did great. She’s a very talented voice actor. I love her as Rapunzel too. Good stuff, she’s really good.

Based on what I saw tonight I no longer have any doubts about the next two seasons of the Tangled cartoon. I’m sure they’re wonderful, and I look forward to finishing the series.

I’ll be skipping Lucasfilm stuff though for the time being, if not altogether forever, lol.

Yup.