Sighinide

Well, I had a good Halloween this year, with a few caveats.

Felt I should blog about this since I just paid for another 3 years of hosting, lol.

Soooo, yeah, Halloween was fun / enlightening. I learned a lot, watched a ton of movies, and felt quite satisfied with the whole holiday.

The good parts, of which were many:

1) The movies. I watched a lot of them, mostly old-ish movies from the 80’s and 90’s, and in doing so I took many lengthy walks down memory lane. Some of them in fact I had missed the first time around so in those I learned new things about myself and my distant history, and, bizarrely, of my very recent history as well, which I guess shows how planned and organized this has all been, unbeknownst to me.

Example: In two of the movies I watched, I saw my recent (5 years or so) health problems referenced in regards to me, specifically. And these movies were 20 to 25 years old! I was… baffled. Confused. And disoriented.

I saw Urban Legend, a late 90’s slasher movie that used my freshman year in college as a reference point. Near the end, a pointed remark was made about injuries to my kidneys and my liver, both of which I was hospitalized for in recent years. Verrry specific, that one. Kind of… incredible, and frightening.

Reallllly creepy, which I guess goes along with the holiday, but still.

There was a lot of very personal stuff in the movies I saw. I Know What You Did Last Summer and it’s sequel were interesting explorations of my past relationship with Jen Hewitt. Wow, they were kinda mindblowing, lol.

Man, too much to talk about, there. But the movies themselves are critically underrated. Not by a lot, but they certainly were. The sequel was the better of the two. It was quite good, much better than I had been led to believe by the critics. I missed it the first time around because of the reviews. I wish I hadn’t.

Let’s see… I saw Aimee’s Beneath the Darkness, all 3 Urban Legend movies, Scream, The Craft, The Faculty, the two “Boogedy” movies on Disney+, the Disney vampire flick, Don’t Look Under the Bed, When a Stranger Calls, Piper Curda’s School Spirit, Casper, the 90’s The Adams Family, and some other flicks, which I’m kinda drawing a blank on now lol. And a bit earlier I saw Kelli Berglund’s Ghost in the Graveyard.

Oh yeah- and I also saw the third Crow movie- the one with Kirsten Dunst. I missed it the first time around, since it was a direct to DVD release. TBH I hadn’t even heard about it until a few years ago. It was good. The low budget didn’t give them much to work with but they did what they could with it. It was a fun watch.

Actually- now that I think about it, I think that the lower budgeted movies were the ones I liked the most out of the group. An interesting thought. Perhaps budgetary constraints forced creativity on the part of the filmmakers, or something. Or perhaps a smaller budget just means more creative control for the director, since the studio would likely be more concerned with higher profile projects. I don’t know. But it seemed to me that the direct to video or television releases that I saw were more personal and a bit more… impactful, I guess, then the glossier theatrical movies.

Oh, wait. I also saw the last two out of the four Halloweentown flicks. And Nightmare Before Christmas, again. And Frankenweenie the original.

I saw a lot of stuff, lol. Well, an in depth discussion of all this would take hours, so I think I’ll move on at this point.

2) Trick or Treating. This is always fun. I handled candy duties this year and it was interesting. I like to people watch in general I guess, but I did the usual analysis of things while doing so. My recent understandings of things made this kinda different. In particular it was odd seeing Trick or Treaters dressed up like Harry Potter. Imagine that- a kid dressed up like Harry Potter on Halloween, and the man who hands him candy is the actual Harry!

3) Music. As usual, I used Halloween as an excuse to goth out. I ran through a few playlists of goth this and that- some death rock, synthpop stuff, gothic rock, and darkwave. I even played some graver and gothabilly stuff. Gawd damn goff stuff can be just delicious. You can just kinda sink into it and get lost; it’s amazing.

I used to just adore this stuff before… ah… IDK, I guess before Selena Gomez and Co. expanded my palette. But it’s still there, always in the background.

Oh yeah, I saw that Olivia Holt and Kiki Shipka movie Totally Killer. So I guess this paragraph belongs up in section 1) somewhere, so please put it there, mentally.

Where was I? Oh yeah, ummmmm music.

Well, aside from the gawth stuff, this year I included in my rotation some more mainstream-ish songs, like some from the Rocky Horror soundtrack. And, believe it or not, even some from people like Elvira, whose music I was introduced to on the Sounds of the Seasons channel. Not really heard her stuff before but I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, it’s pop, but it’s listenable. Pretty good.

4) Life stuff. I like to use Halloween as a life barometer of sorts. So every year I take stock of how things are going, and I think they’re going pretty well in general this time ‘round.

I’d explain more but this post is getting a bit lengthy, and any further detail here would take things too far off-topic.

Now, on to the not so good if not downright bad stuff.

1) The candy. It… wasn’t good. I’m not sure how to account for this, but seriously. It sucked.

This year my dad went to Costco and purchased the same big bag of candy he always purchases, but this year, it was… different. The mixture in the bag, I mean. He was really disappointed. In the past, there’s been an even assortment of different kinds of candies, like M&M’s, Snickers bars, Twix bars, etc. in this bag. This year, there wasn’t. For some reason, three quarters of the bag was divided up between Yorks and Twixs, with the remaining 25% being a small mixture of everything else. There were two small bags of peanut M&M’s in the whole thing, and I think like 5-6 plain M&M’s, and like 5 Snickers bars. And aside them, a gigantic pile of Yorks. The weird inequality of the whole thing was glaring when it was all sorted out by product.

Not sure what was going on, but it looked like the manufacturer was stuffing the bags now with the least popular candies and not letting the consumer know of the change. Typical of a modern company.

The candy itself was… strange, too. My mom remarked that the candy bars seemed smaller than they used to be, like when I was a kid. IDK, but I don’t think it impossible. Some of the plain M&M’s bags were so empty I was shocked. One I opened myself had 5 M&M’s in it, total. Seriously- just 5. At first I thought maybe it was just a manufacturing one-off but there was another bag with only 6 in it. Wut? Even a 9 year old would feel ripped off by these things!

And the candy tasted… weird, too. IDK. After the holiday was over I ate some of the remaining candy myself and it didn’t taste right, like at all. It didn’t taste good. It was too artificial. And I know that I’m talking about Halloween candy here but still, this stuff tasted really artificial, and not in a good way. It didn’t taste how I remember it tasting back when I was a kid, that’s for sure. It wasn’t satisfying. It didn’t taste like a unique treat, it just kinda tasted odd.

Back in the 90’s candy tasted artificial too, but I remember it being… a measured kind of artificial. It tasted like something created to maximize enjoyment of taste. Like it was artificial, but it tasted good; on some level it was indeed satisfying. This stuff wasn’t. It tasted like candy-product. The M&M’s didn’t taste like M&M’s, they tasted like imitation Chinese knockoff M&M’s.

I though it might just be me but man, after eating the candy I got sick for a solid week! Hence the lateness of the post. That never happened back in the day.

IDK. I don’t follow these things, but I suspect that the ingredients for these products have been futzed with a LOT in the last 30 years. Things swapped out with cheaper things that are only close-ish to the original product. And perhaps my crack about the Chinese knockoff type product wasn’t off the mark, either. Maybe these things are manufactured differently, now, in different places. Yuck.

At any rate, they taste bad. It kinda sucks.

Ohhhh that’s right. Speaking of candy, I saw Fun Size too. And also Idle Hands. So this paragraph belongs up there with the other 1). So please put it there mentally, thanks.

2) The costumes. Not a huge gripe, but still, are costumes these days kinda bland to anyone else? It’s just… where’s the gruesome? Where’s the disgusting?

Looking at the kids this year I was struck by how, IDK, samey they all were. There were a lot of Spider-Mans. A lot of Marvel, I guess purchased as whole units by parents who didn’t know what else to do, probably at those Halloween shops that pop up annually every October.

Back in the day there were a lot more DIY costumes. I know that this is kind of an old-man-yells-at-cloud complaint but seriously tho, lol. Back in the 80’s and 90’s a lot of kids and parents made their own costumes and they came up with some very cool stuff.

One year I went as a diseased hunchback and I got some weird reactions I remember to this day, lol. I had this swollen irregular hump on my back and huge, bloody, oozing pus filled welts all over my hands and face.

My mom and I took great pains to make the welts and sores as realistic looking as possible. At the time she worked in an emergency room so she knew what real blood and skin infection looked like. So we made it seem “real”.

The reactions I got made all the work totally worth it. More than once I caught moms doing double takes, lol. I swear that on at least one occasion there was actual concern. The other kids loved it. The dads were in awe. “God damn kid, who beat the shit out of you?!?” LOL. Good times.

One year I went as “Spider-Man”. No, not that Spider-Man. I had a different one in mind. I went as a normal kid being overrun and eaten alive by a horde of bloodthirsty man eating spiders. I painted some fake blood on, glued a few dozen spiders of different kinds to my clothes and covered myself in webs. It was a ton of fun.

The thing is is that unfortunately I don’t see any stuff like that anymore. Literally, it’s all just… franchises. Corporate stuff. If I’m being honest, boring stuff. No imagination. Honestly I can’t think of one costume that didn’t seem like it didn’t just come off the rack at the mall.

So many good memories there, of past Halloweens. It really can be a great holiday.

Well… I guess that’s it for this year’s Halloween installment. It was fun writing this; I hope you had fun reading it.

To prep for the release of Laura Marano’s debut album and as a follow up to the previous post on this blog, I decided to watch, on Tubi, the Maranos’ (sisters Laura and Vanessa, and mom Ellen) movie Saving Zoë.

Well…

*Ahem* Ok. Wow. Um… This… is going to take some unpacking. Wuh. Wow. Yeah. Multiple posts, this time, for sure. Uhm, yup. Multiple posts.

*Ahem*

Hugely, huuuuuuuuugely personal movie. This one goes way above and beyond the norm in that aspect for sure. Christ, I’m not even sure of what I just saw, honestly. In some instances the movie seems to verge on the autobiographical. Some of the things said and implied by, uh, Echo (Laura), and Zoë (Vanessa) were kind of seriously blunt and shockingly on the nose. One line said by Echo/Laura to her sister Zoë/Vanessa that directly revealed a lot of regret about the sacrifices made to become famous was kinda… interesting. Also interesting that the protagonist Echo/Laura Marano made a snide, direct reference to Laura Marano’s Boombox music video when she talked to her therapist in the movie, who is played by Ken Jeong, who also co-starred with Laura in her Boombox video.

Seriously. I was like… Wut? Did I just hear her say what I thought she said? I actually had to rewind the movie a bit and yeah, Holy Shit, lol. In this instance she didn’t so much break the fourth wall as she sledgehammered it into oblivion, lol.

Obviously there are shedloads of issues at play here concerning me. I take it it’s not a coincidence that the major antagonist is a creepy webmaster who runs an underground website who sexually lusts after both sisters and is named “Tom”. And there’s the whole subplot of narcotics addiction, and… other stuff…

Yeah, we are talking maaaaaajor psychological issues being worked out, here. And I mean… I get it, I do, it’s just… yo. Wow. Holeeee fuck.

Well, just glancing at the IMDB page for this flick, it seems as if this is yet another in a long long line of movies/shows that I’ve talked about here that is underrated. I’m not sure if people really “get” what this movie is saying, and why, and to whom. I’m not… going to bother looking up the RT reviews. Do I need to, really?

I’m still not sure 100% that I understand it, myself. This might in fact take multiple viewings, and that’s a good sign.

Honestly, I’m not sure of how to make this “not complicated”. I was going to start by describing the movie in general, but the closest flick I could think of to this one was… Zoey (!!!!!) Deutch’s Before I Fall. Yes, the same Zoey Deutch that famously guest-starred in an episode of Vanessa Marano’s Switched at Birth, and who was also a Disney regular like Laura. Not Zoë, Zoey. But, back to Zoë.

Actually, no- let’s stay on Zoey for a moment, since I swear I got déjà vu at least 5 times while watching Saving Zoë, and each time, it was in reference to a Zoey Deutch movie, like the aforementioned Before I Fall.

At one point I actually paused Saving Zoë in disbelief because a character recited a line of dialogue verbatim from Zoey’s movie! And in similar circumstances! I mean… were the camera filters the same, too? They kinda looked like it, and… yeah, yikes, lol.

At any rate, in Saving, uh, Zoë, there is a girl, Carly, who, uhm, reminded me a lot, both in looks and part, of Halston Sage’s character in Before I Fall, and… yeah, I don’t know, this only adds to the fuckery.

Ellen Marano (mom) lent her voice to a few episodes of the original Magnum P.I., (including an episode called “Laura”. Wut?!?) and uh… Halston Sage lent her talents to an episode of the remake. Her costar in that episode? Ken Jeong.

Looking up “Laura” in IMDB, we find that it is the second highest rated episode of the show on IMDB and it has a plot that reads like a weird alternate dimension script for Saving Zoë, with the primary change being that of the character of Thomas, who goes from being the good guy (Thomas Magnum) to the bad guy (Tom).

Wut?

I know that Saving Zoë is supposedly based on a book, but… yeah, well. IMDB tells me “The Maranos had the rights for the movie for 10 years. They bought them when they were still very young from Alyson Noel, the author of the novel.” Yeah, I’ll bet.

Oof. Wut?

All of this is seriously making my head spin.

Uhm, I’ll be listening to Laura’s album for sure… and uh, other stuff.

You know- at some point I’ll need to talk about some of the… other other stuff, you know? The really controversial stuff, the stuff I’ve not been talking about for fear of rocking the boat, so to speak. But… not now. IDK.

Honest to God, people. What the… fuck?

The mind just boggles.

I haven’t… talked about anything here in eons, lol. I figure I might stay with the running theme of TV stuff cause… why not, lol.

Honestly tho, it’s been so long I don’t remember much of what I used to put on here. I should probably change that.

But, anyhoo…

Tubi is awesome, seriously. They have a lot of good and interesting stuff and not a lot of ads, or at least, not a lot on the stuff I’ve been watching. It’s great.

I like the name, too. “Tubi”… I think it’s a Shakespeare reference. “Tubi, or not Tubi”. Kinda brilliant. Also doubles I think as a reference to those old style CRT televisions… and their gigantic, uhm, tubes. Yeah.

*Ahem*.

Well, yeah. Tubi is… good.

Wow, I can practically feel the gears grinding, here, lol. I really should blog more.

Well, I’ve been using Tubi to watch a lot of my girlfriends’ stuff, I guess to fill in the blanks on what they are doing, and, if I’m being honest, on what I’ve done myself, in my own life. I’ve lived quite a long time, and I guess that I’ve forgotten much in the past four decades.

Let’s start with last night. Last night, I saw Alice Upside Down, which is a kid’s movie starring a young Alyson Stoner. As with all of these types of movies, I liked it more than I think I was supposed to, lol. Yeah. And as is very usual with… all of this stuff, it’s all kinda… eerily… close to me and, uhm, yeah, IDK, hard to unpack. Well, ok, here goes.

I’ve always liked Alyson Stoner. I mean, I’m a fan, and I can say that unabashedly. I genuinely like her music, for example. I mean I actually have some mp3’s from her, I mean. And I knew who she was before the Super Bowl performance with Missy Elliot.

So, this was a treat, and of the kind that would have gone unnoticed by me in ages past, in the dark days before the era of streaming, so I decided to indulge. The movie itself was… good, objectively, for what it is; I mean, it’s a kid’s movie from 2007, so it’s very… “Hilary Duff- esque”, with a lot of Disney channel-ness and fantastical interludes. But it’s not entirely young- the aim here is of a year or two older than that of the average Disney channel obsessive, so the protagonist (the titular Alice, played by Alyson) dresses sometimes in a style that I might call “watered down Hot Topic”. 2007 to the core, then.

Alyson has a lot of charisma. She’s a very good actor, and had a lot of talent even at a young age, for sure. Her dad is played by Luke Perry, who also does well. (Requisite creepy aside, here – Alice’s dad is my age (!) give or take a year, and this is vaguely significant (!). This may not seem creepy now, but you wait, oh, you just just wait). Alyson’s rival is played by Bridgit Mendler, who acquits herself nicely in her bad girl role, interestingly. Her brother is played by Lucas Greebel who starred in the High School Musical movies and the Switched at Birth TV series with Vanessa Marano.

And… ahhhhh, yeah, ok, I juuuuust figured something out right now. Zoey Deutch, right? So THAT’S what she was doing… yup! Yup. I get it. Yup. Mmmmmn hmmmn. I mean, of course, I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner! I just… wait. You know, never mind, that’s another essay, … or two. Yeah. Wow.

Umn, well, back to the review… uh, good movie-ish, thing… Oh fuck it, a formal review isn’t what we’re here for anyways, is it?

Ok, I need to organize my thoughts, such as they are, a bit.

The whole flick had a massively strong undercurrent of trying to advertise Bridgit Mendler as a girlfriend to yours truly, which… they didn’t need to do, lol, but I got a kick out of their over-the-top efforts, one amazingly funny (to me, nobody else) scene came when Alice tried to set up her my-age dad with her Bridgit Mendler lookalike teacher (remember- Bridgit is in school right now). Throughout the scene, an album from the band “Berlin” is placed within frame behind Alice. The name “Mendler” is of course German for “coat maker”, which, interestingly, ties in quite nicely with her single Hurricane.

Get it? Coat Maker- Hurricane? It’s a joke, kinda. But… yeah. The whole movie, and I mean, the whole fucking movie, was laced top to bottom with subtle asides that scream “HEY TOM, LOOK AT THIS CHICK! FUCK HER!”

Another obtuse scene had Bridgit’s character perform an audition for a school play replete with references to yours truly and- beside her, I kid you not- was a sign saying in bold letters “PRETTY LADY”, lol… and… other stuff, there’s too much to name, here. Too many things to list. The age thing here is also relevant- a line is said in the movie about Alice pushing pushing her dad to date Bridgit Mendler teacher stand-in, regardless of the 15 year age gap between the two of them. Mendler is of course about 15 years younger than I am.

Again, I had thought that I was the one who had pursued these girls. I suppose I was wrong.

Another very shocking (to me) scene came two thirds of the movie in when a Taylor Swift lookalike (!!!!!!!) entered the picture looking, sounding and acting like a carbon copy of teenage TayTay, and was introduced specifically as a potential/inevitable wife (!!!!!!!!!). I swear to fucking God I did a double take at that one.

This movie was released in 2007. That means it was in production during what… 2006? 2005? Taylor’s debut album came out in 2006! Christ! This scene is really obvious in it’s implications; there is no mistaking what it is saying. Again I’m just baffled; obviously I did not understand who it was that was initiating these relationships.

In the cases of both Taylor and Bridgit I thought I was being so devious and sneaky and… IDK, Machiavellian, by swooping in when they were so young and impressionable, from my perspective. But man… nope, lol. They both had me pegged and figured out lonnnnng before I had ever heard or laid eyes on either one of them. It’s kinda humbling, actually.

But, whatever. Regardless, the movie contains a ton of references to my own school career, including my time spent in high school working on the school creative magazine, Creations, which was no small part of my life, and a part I’ve not really discussed, here. Creations wasn’t just some random high school production- it was deemed more than once to be the best high school literary/creative magazine in the country, and it won a truckload of awards during my tenure with it. It’s pretty interesting stuff, actually. Maybe I’ll talk about it more, here, maybe not. But it was because of my time with Creations that I became such a stickler for, IDK, good creative writing.

Sometimes I do kinda wish that I could go back and talk with the teachers that created those masterpiece compendiums with us. I can’t, but… it would be nice. Hmmmn. Things to think about, I guess.

I still have the books. I’ll always keep them. Honestly, they’re really really good.

Wow, sooooo much to unpack, here. Jeebus.

IDK. I’ve been watching other movies, too.

I’ve seen a bunch of Kelli Berglund movies as well. She is also awesome, and they are also interesting, in a different way. She seems to have been heavily influenced by my past and present with Karate and TaeKwonDo, interestingly. I’m not entirely sure how this works, but… there it is.

She made a couple of… unrelated movies in Australia about two different Americans who excelled in two different sports, and who were both missing a parent, and who both wound up teaching a bunch of down-on-their-luck Aussies how to work together and be a better team and beat some “evil” athletes, and… hmmn. Peyton Roi List also made one of these.

I was kinda… confused by that. And made curious. That seems like kind of a specific genre, doesn’t it? Like… ex-Disney stars IRL who play as American athletes missing a parent who have obstacles in the states who move to Aussieland and coach Australians who need a fresh outlook to beat some evil rival athletes… kinda weirdly specific, lol.

I think I found the answer in the last couple of frames of Swimming For Gold, Peyton List’s movie. These movies are being subsidized by the Aussie government. They’re probably then being made by the same people. In Kelli’s case I noticed that even though ostensibly her characters were “different”, they somehow shared specific details in their pasts and, amusingly, wardrobe pieces.

But ok, in Kelli’s movies she teaches gymnastics in one movie and cheerleading in the other, but really, she’s teaching a mix of both and also Karate and TKD in both movies. It’s kinda… cool, but I mean, she’s channeling me so hard in these flicks, lol.

So in watching Kelli’s movies, Raising the Bar and Going for Gold (note: not Swimming for Gold, that’s Peyton’s movie, we’re talking about Going for Gold, here) I can see what I used to do and teach with others in what she does and it’s pretty cool. It’s… kinda awesome. It brings back a lot of memories.

IDK, a lot to think about. These movies are actually packed with stuff, things mostly directed at a very specific athletic audience.

Yeah. One interesting theme I’ve noticed buried deep in these flicks in general is the whole idea that you can’t really “leave” athletics, not after spending your youth doing them. And that’s something I’m going through right now, as a middle aged man.

IDK, you just… can’t. You can’t leave, can you? This is a big essay, but… yeah it’s the truth. I’ve been watching a lot of these young gymnastics- cheerleader movies lately- not just the few I’ve listed above, and a bunch of them make a point to say that it’s really tough to check out of gymnastics or cheer or dance after a decade and a half of them. I get what they’re saying, there.

In my case it was the martial arts but the principal was the same. You spend so many years of your formative time doing something and it’s difficult if not impossible to leave, at least entirely.

Well, I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s not a bad thing to have gymnastics or Karate or Wrestling or whatever as a part of who you are. But it does become something to manage, then.

Well… this essay is becoming a few, all kinda mushed together haphazardly. I should probably stop here before it gets even more unwieldly.

Ok, I think I need to blog more, really. Like, seriously, lol.

Ok then.

Holy shit, does TV suck.

Yeah, I know, but I hold out hope that maybe if I point this out enough that somehow, someway, some of this… stuff… might change, somehow, for the better, at least at little bit.

I mean, it never does, but… one can hope.

I’ve given up on watching T.V. I mean, I just can’t take it. Have I said this before? I’m getting the feeling now that I have. I might have; I’m not sure. But it’s true regardless. Nothing’s changed, then.

A question: Why does everything on television have to suck? Is there some kind of law or something? Something I’m not aware of? Something not public, perhaps? And I mean everything. All channels, every show, every single fucking commercial, etc.

I have Amazon Prime available to me, and I’ve been streaming some nature docs every now and then. They are nice, but there are distressingly few of those on offer. The rest of Prime is filled up with utter shit. If .1% of the media service of Prime is nature docs, this means that 99.9% of it is… other stuff. The garbage, I’m assuming. I’m not going to bother watching 10 hours of a show to find out if it’s “good enough” to watch the rest. That’s idiotic.

Well… there’s always Map of Tiny Perfect Things. But that’s only one movie.

Other stuff… Mom has a subscription to Discovery+. I decided to check it out. I was pleasantly surprised when I found some nice nature documentaries, but then, to my utter horror, my surprise turned to revulsion when I discovered that they had commercials. And not just any commercials- they had the ugly, stupid ones that accompany mainstream television. I was utterly aghast. There I was, watching Blue Planet, when some nasty ad for something like Tide or whatever popped up, randomly. Quickly, I scrambled for the remote, desperate to mute the TV. A Google search told me that Discovery+ had begun inserting ads into some of it’s plans, and I guess that my parents’ plan was amongst those.

Yuck.

The ads on the offer during the nature shows are particularly grating because, I think, the rest of Discovery+ is schlock TV. Logging into the service, I didn’t see nature stuff advertised. Instead, I saw a banner for My 600 Pound Life.

And that’s basically what Discovery channel is, these days. It’s one of cable TV’s fortresses of garbage. So that’s what the subscription service offers, then: a lot of trash, with a few token other offerings to give the appearance of variety.

So, with a service that’s 99.9% trash, and .1% not, you get commercials that reflect that ratio. You get the worst of the worst. Commercials with the ugly people, or, rather, with the ugliest people. I couldn’t bear to finish the first ep of Blue Planet, but with mainstream commercials being what they are most of the people I saw in the ads were black and I think all were fat, which is probably not coincidental considering the banner for My 600 Pound Life I had just seen minutes before.

Gods, what a disgusting shithole television is.

If anything, it’s getting worse the more I write these, if that can even be believed.

Everything on television is ugly, and stupid. Everything. It’s baffling. There is truly nothing I can find that isn’t.

Every month I try. I flip through the channels and try to find something to watch that seems pleasant that isn’t forty years old or older and I always come up dry. Everything new is stupid or ridiculous.

It’s kind of… pointless, really. So I feel like I should give up, and I likely will.

I still have that Netflix gift card but man, I am really struggling to actually put it to use.

Which… is kinda sad in comparison to the other news this week, which is that I took advantage of the Steam Summer Sale to buy a bunch of stuff for my new laptop. I purchased the complete Grim Dawn collection, for example, and also… well, a bunch of other stuff; a lot of other stuff. A lot of amazing games were on sale for… very cheap- I mean we’re talking anywhere from fifty cents to three dollars. And Steam is wonderful when it comes to offering bundles from different devs and publishers: buy a franchise, and you can get further discounts, etc. I spent a couple hundred dollars but walked away with a huge collection of games that I will play for years.

Money well spent, for sure.

When I was thumbing through Amazon Prime the other day I was… stunned, honestly, at how… expensive everything was. It was baffling. A movie rental for one movie cost like six dollars. 6 bucks, for a 2 day rental! Wut?

I bought the “Game of the Year” Edition for the first Borderlands on Steam for 8 dollars. I suspect it will give me weeks or possibly months of casual use.

To purchase a movie on Prime it’s like 15 dollars at least. Wut? I checked and the new Little Mermaid thing from Disney is selling for 20. WUT?

Insane. Utterly insane. I also bought “The Handsome Edition” of Borderlands 2, the one with all 52 pieces of DLC, for like 12 bucks the other day. It will likely provide months of on again, off again fun.

For like 20 dollars here and there, I bought bundles from and drained all the inventory from multiple publishers and developers. I walked away from the sale with hundreds of quality games. I mean, some of these were good to great games from independent publishers that were discounted to twenty cents, thirty cents each.

Movies today are… really expensive, in comparison to what you get. Any place you look, in any format, anywhere. Rentals, purchasing, streaming, anything. They are expensive in money, time, or attention, or… anything. This is why I stick to kid’s movies, mostly, when I watch them, or my girlfriends’ movies.

Because then, there might be something personal, and that’s worth it.

But the rest of it?

Well… no.

The old media is really stuck, isn’t it?

Movies suck, they are always too big, too long to watch, too expensive to make and watch and stream, too… weird and complicated to understand, etc., and TV is just… a godforsaken shithole, lmao. There is literally nothing good about television as a medium, at all, anymore. Everything about it is terrible, lol.

It’s dying, too. You ask kids what they watch now, and they tell you Youtube, or twitch. They don’t tell you anything on TV. It’s not even streaming services. It’s twitch they watch. They sit and chill and watch an ordinary guy play Minecraft for 4 hours. And why wouldn’t they? I would rather watch that myself than anything on the cesspool that is TV, lol.

TV is just… Gods, it’s just so vile, isn’t it? I mean, it’s uncanny how every single thing on it is ugly. It’s like a reverse Midas touch, or something, where instead of it’s touch turning something to gold, it just turns it to shit.

lel.

Seriously, tho.

Another question, here. Why does every TV commercial that features a relationship show an interracial one? Seriously, I ask. It’s bizarre. Like… seriously. It’s confusing. I don’t get it, at all.

I think that the real problem that TV has, and broadly speaking movies have this problem as well, is that TV has an overwhelming lack of “normal people”, which explains the rise of youtube and twitch, naturally.

Everyone on TV is weird, somehow. Nobody is just… a normal person.

Scrolling through the TV channels what you see is a gallery of freaks, oddballs, and assorted “others”. And I know that this sounds cruel, but that is basically what you get. And watching movies, this is also the problem.

Nobody is “normal”.

It’s the usual problems. I mean, I can list them, we all know them, but here we go: too many tattoos, too much interracial stuff, too much weird and probably fake facial hair, too much bizarre… ways of talking, weirdo politics, weirdo sports shit (yes, this is a problem), muscles that are too big and cartoony looking, dumb drama and ridiculous theatrics, and… I don’t know, everything is awful, lol.

In my down time I’ve been curiously investigating some of the media related things I’ve talked about before on this blog that have irked me, like the ridiculous facial hair that we see on so many of those professional douchebags these days. I’ve realized that those beards are fake: they’re glued on. I mean in some cases you can actually see it. Like, there will be a huge bushy irritating big fake mustache on some guy, but if you look closely, you can see underneath it a small reedy looking thin stubble of a different color that is “growing” in a different direction.

And in many cases with these big meathead muscle guys, so too are the muscles fake: those are not actually muscles, those are implants. Well, that, or synthol or other injections. But I think most of the fake muscles are in fact implants.

And I think the abs come from liposuction, not exercise. And the ab muscles themselves there might be silicone, not real tissue.

I mean, this is a separate essay, but God almighty, the fakery involved in looking “hot” is unreal. It’s all so fake. For years, decades, I wanted to look “hot”, and that was part of the reason why I started exercising so much.

But gods, it’s allllllllll fake. It’s all just plastic surgery. There’s no “diet and exercise” there with these people (celebs). It’s lipo, implants, body contouring, hormone injections, steroids, silicone, and cgi (which is used more often than people think, I think).

Uhm, well, separate essay.

Other stuff…

Disney sucks, something like the last 9 of their movies bombed at the box office, and their new haunted mansion movie is going to bomb, too.

Christ, what on Earth are they doing?

I already dissected the disaster that is Lucasfilm on here, so I won’t do that again, but that race swapped abomination that they call The Little Mermaid really needs to be picked apart, here.

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Why did that movie bomb so hard? They miscast the lead, of course. Why oh why, in all of fuck, did they race swap the lead of The Little Mermaid? Oof.

Yeah. That… was a bad idea. A terrible, terrible idea.

I don’t… get these people. Seriously. What were they thinking?

Mermaid bombed horribly overseas, basically because of the casting.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-the-little-mermaid-gets-doused-in-china-south-korea-after-racist-backlash-1235505682/

Hollywood has a problem. It wants the Asian market more than anything, but as I’ve explained before on this blog, the Asian market is the market most resistant to race swapping. They are the people who like it the least, and are thus not going to take to the stuff being peddled by the studios.

This is… a stupid, stupid problem, made by the studios themselves, since they have some kind of hard on for race swapping red heads with blacks.

The thing is, the people who make this shit seem to have some unnatural and a-historical hatred for whites that other people do not share and do not want.

The diversity crowd does not seem to understand that white people are not bad; that they are good people fundamentally, that their history is a good, just and positive one, that they have brought good things to many people and that they made the world a far far better place with their presence and actions. Replacing them on film like this is ugly, stupid, and just… monstrous. It shows an absolutely tremendous arrogance and a fundamental lack of understanding of history.

Minorities in the US are arrogant, small minded and stupid regarding racial matters. They think only domestically. They do not see the “big picture”, and thus do not understand the tremendous good that whites, and especially white men, have brought to the people of the world.

Other countries do not have a chip on their shoulder regarding whites that minorities in the US seem to have. Universally, whites are regarded as having a history and culture worth valuing and honoring… except by the shitheads and cretins running the show in the West.

The morons that run Disney do not seem to understand that the Chinese do not give two fucks about any black domestic racial struggle yadda yadda about whatever blah blah. For the record, I blogged about this back in 2016, lol.

I don’t remember the context of this post, but I thought it amusing. IDK what this is even about anymore, lol, something with Will Smith, IDK, I guess, lol, but I think I made some interesting points:

Thoughts on the Oscars’ Race Row

---

This tide must be arrested if Hollywood is to survive over the long term. Jettison the Smiths. Just get rid of them, and make an effort, a real effort, to make inroads into the culture of the young WCWMs. It needs to happen!

Or not, and Hollywood can just sink into further irrelevancy with the most important demo in America. It’s up to them.

Secondly- Asians, in Asia. Black actors in general will never find appeal with them, and “black experience” movies do not appeal to them for obvious reasons. Why should rice farmers in Indonesia care about the “plight” of black slaves in 1800’s America? They shouldn’t, and they don’t, and they never will. Hollywood needs to stop with this B.S. if it wants to succeed in the global film marketplace.

In no way, with the world as it is now, should Hollywood be indulging in liberal schmaltz, not with the reality that competition is coming soon from China and other places. China is big enough that it can make it’s own film franchises to rival Hollywood’s- and they’re not going to cast black actors. And you know what? That’s what the global audience really wants. The danger here is real.

I think that if Hollywood gives in to the Smiths and the others, they’re going to lose ground and it’s going to be much faster than even their most pessimistic predictions will be.

The fact that Hollywood refuses to face up to reality is what is going to destroy it in the long run. The 90’s are gone. The liberal project has failed. It’s time to move on.

---

Interesting post. Perhaps people should have listened to me more back then.

And so Disney sinks into the mire, along with the rest of them.

I saw some on set pictures of the new Snow White movie, and… gods, what an ugly, ugly… ugh, yeah.

It looked bad.

As in like cheap, bad. It’s baffling.

We are told these movies cost like 300 million dollars, or something, and… I mean… how? Where does the money actually go, then?

Google “Snow White Set Pictures”. I’ll paste one of them below.

Does this look like a 250 million dollar production to you?

I mean, what the fuck am I seeing here?

My Junior High School drama teacher, Mr. Brian, would have been livid with anger if his students were to show up to a performance of Snow White looking like this. I mean, this looks cheap. Like CW cheap, and their stuff looks almost like bad cosplay at times.

This is not exaggeration. Google “Snow White Cosplay”. You will see better looking costumes than this Disney shit.

Seriously. 250 million dollars, for this? WHAT?!?!

Uncle Walt was adamant during his lifetime that nobody touch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. No remakes, no sequels, no continuations, no novels, comic books, nothing, nada. He understood that Snow White was Disney’s foundation, and that to touch it was to risk everything, image-wise.

Snow White was sacred; it was the first ever full length animated film, and thus one of the most important and influential movies ever. Possibly the most important movie ever released. Maybe even the best. It’s a human cultural milestone, similar to the Mona Lisa, the David, the Taj Mahal, or the Sistine Chapel. I mean… you don’t touch those things. You just don’t.

I mean- imagine the world today if Snow White had never been made. No Disney. Maybe no full length animated movies… literally, like, at all. I mean… no Pixar, no Dreamworks, no Ufotable, no Madhouse. I mean, none of it.

And… yeah. Just… look at that picture, up there! What the fuck IS that?!?!

I do not think Walt would have been happy!

Well… I know. But I take this personally because I know that Ariel was me, originally. She was based on me, and my formerly bright red hair… the blazing hair I had in childhood. So it means something to me.

Back to the new Snow White… they’re no longer Dwarfs, even. Wut? I know this rant is getting long, but apparently Peter Dinklage said something jaw-droppingly dumb about “Dwarf” being offensive and Disney changed it to “magical creatures” or somesuch nonsense and that’s just… idiotic beyond belief.

“Dwarf” is not an offensive term. Literally nobody thinks this! Dinklage is an idiot.

Three quarters of the role playing games released in the last fifty years feature “dwarves” in some capacity, and usually in a major one.

Arguably the most popular video gaming franchise in the world, Warcraft, uses dwarves as their mascot!

Here’s the World of Warcraft entry on “Dwarves”. Note the sheer, overwhelming size of it:

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dwarf

For me it would take days to parse through and understand all of this!

Dinklage is a dumbass, and Disney here is in real danger of looking like a laughingstock. They’ve gone wayyyyy too far overboard with the “woke” shit, and in the worst possible ways.

And seriously, what is even the problem? Dwarves are awesome, right? Whenever I play a D&D based game I choose a Dwarf fighter, because those rule. I mean, Dwarves are cool, right? There’s a reason why they’re in so many fantasy games. So why is he complaining so fucking much?

Well, I’m kinda tired and blogged out, but there you go.

I think that the major takeaway from this post should probably be the racial stuff, at least in regards to the international market.

When it comes to the international market, I suspect the key to unlocking their wallets is whiteness, and lots of it. Redheads, blondes, European fantasy. There is a reason Barbie broke records and Little Mermaid bombed, and the racial angle is it. The international market loves loves loves them some white people.

Little Mermaid could have been the movie breaking those records. It could have wiped the floor with Endgame, but nah, gotta have the right politics, right?

Movies are primarily escapism, and to the masses of the world, there is no better escapism than beautiful European fantasy. There is a reason why Warcraft has been so popular worldwide for so many many years. Ditto for DOTA, and for LOL. And, hell, for Minecraft, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s all different kinds of European fantasy.

This “woke” stuff is purely American. It may do well here but I suspect it will continue to struggle if not fail completely overseas, likely forever.

Seriously, though. 9 bombs in a row. Then 10, with Snow White. The stock continues to dive. At what point are the share holders going to get angry? If they had just stuck to their traditional European centric formula, Disney would be swimming in god knows how many billions right now. One of media’s greatest missed opportunities.

Well, this post is too long and meandering, IDK.

But, there you go.

I guess that the takeaway here is that I’m done searching, both for things in others and myself. I don’t need to experiment anymore, with anyone or anything. In regards to sexuality or even relationships in general I can just zero-in now on those very specific things and particular types of people that are most fulfilling for myself and safely ignore 99.99% of everything else.

And with that being the reality, nothing impresses me anymore, and TBH everything outside the very specific zone that works best for me no longer seems to even register. At best that stuff is casually ignored; at worst, it’s repulsive.

It’s kind of amazing, actually.

Life is so much simpler this way, and so much more fulfilling. It’s quite nice.

And it frees up a lot of time, too.

Pretty sweet deal.

Random relationship stuff tonight… IDK, I need something new to talk about lol.

Well, I think I’ve reached peak internet. Porn just grosses me out completely these days.

I’m… really, really tired of porn, or frankly anything sexually explicit, at all. Even nudity, save for very rare exceptions, seems boring at best. I just… don’t like it. It looks horrible, or maybe sad. I don’t like it.

It’s finally happened, lol. After twenty five years of living my life online, I am truly sick of pornography, lol.

Is this a function of just getting older, or something else? Maybe I’ve just seen so much of it that I’m just… desensitized, or… I don’t know. But I’ve gotten to the point where I’m actively repulsed by it now.

Porn, I mean, or anything else. Sex scenes in movies, grossly sexual music, or like, any of that.

By accident I saw part of one of Lily-Rose Depp’s sex scenes in The Idol and I actually threw up in my mouth a bit. And no, I’m unfortunately not exaggerating. I actually tasted it. It had a chicken-y flavor, since I had chicken for dinner that night. It was horrible; truly nasty.

I’m over it. Long gone is any desire whatsoever to dredge up anything in my old “porn” folder. If I ever find it again I’ll probably delete it, or at least all of the big stuff in it, whatever that might be.

I’m officially “porned out”. I would die a happy man if I were to never again see two gross people bumping uglies. Honestly, even the thought of it is rather nauseating.

I saw, much to my unfortunate dismay, a “leaked” sex tape of TikTok personality Olivia Dunne. Ugh, gross. At one point I had considered a relationship with her but no thanks, not if that is what she’s going to be famous for. If you want to be a gross slut fine, but I will be looking elsewhere for love, thanks.

Instead of Dunne, I think I will be hanging out with the amazing Lily Brooks O’ Briant instead. She’s prettier and younger than Dunne and more talented as well. Her music is amazing, especially for her age. Or at least it’s music I can identify with. And she seems… IDK, my type. She seems like someone I could get along with over the long term. Or I guess, that’s how it seems now. We’ll have to see.

But Dunne… ick, no. She comes across like a dollar store Paris Hilton. Not really my type these days.

For what it’s worth, a fully clothed picture of Kathryn Newton or Kaitlyn Dever is more of a turn-on for me than… pretty much anything else I can think of, lol. IDK, perhaps that’s what love is. And maybe that is why porn is such a gross thing, to me. I have something better. Why would I settle for a sloppy, smelly substitute for love when I can have the real thing?

Love is physical yes, but also spiritual, and emotional. Porn is… watching someone else do a base physical act. It’s love, minus everything that makes love transcendent. If love is a famous diamond, porn is the gravel in your driveway.

Kind of an awkward analogy but I think it fits. Porn is common; it’s everywhere online and everywhere else today; everyone has seen it, and so it has no value. It’s worthless. Love… is rare. Most people, I think, do not ever get to really feel it, or even see it in others. Of the two, love is vastly, almost infinitely superior.

That having been said, someone famous for being in porn is beneath me. I choose not to hang out with those that have no value, or who seek to not cultivate value in others. If you want to roll in the mud with the swine, good for you.

But I have finer tastes.

I also saw a few random pictures that purport to be intimate shots of Ashley Benson and Cara Delevigne together, back when they were an item. Yuck, as well. Not interested. IDK what the deal is with this stuff or where it’s coming from, but it doesn’t seem… pleasant. Not my thing, whatever this is.

I suppose that there are others interested in these things. Maybe younger people, IDK. But I’m not, and I think it probable that I never will be, again.

IDK.

Other stuff…

Well… I have other things to write about here, concerning other relationship topics. I might talk about that stuff later on in the weekend.

But for what it’s worth, I can understand much better now about the old conservative position against pornography. It’s like… I could understand it before, but now I get it.

I will probably always be a libertarian type at heart, but yeah, I can see it, now.

Well, I’ve been playing more games, lately. It’s pretty fun, and useful.

Random stuff… I’ve been going through my Steam catalog and just… trying stuff, games I bought years ago but never got around to playing. For example- I’m trying the Anomaly series of tower defense games. Those are fun, I like tower defense. I’ve also been playing Warcraft III again, and… well, that’s a story in and of itself.

I think I know where Warcraft III came from, now. I’ve been tracing its roots back to me, and the stuff I’ve done and thought. I’m like 99% sure at this point that I inspired the character of Arthas, for example. I mean, just look at me, lol. Big guy, nordic, strong, and… good, and evil, etc. I channel both the powers of the light and dark, of life and death, in equal measure.

I think I might be Kerrigan, too. At least partially. I can see it. It’s a feeling. The hive mind, and all that. At any rate I think I pieced it all together. But… I won’t bore with the details.

And I need to keep some things personal. I mean, as much as someone like me can, lol.

But suffice it to say I understand the underlying bits and pieces of where this stuff came from, now. At least I think, lol.

Other stuff… I’ve been playing Heroes of Might and Magic III again. Man, that is a great game. I really appreciate its understated aesthetic. Warcraft tends to be very cartoony and “over the top”, and that isn’t bad- it fits the franchise well, but it’s overwhelming success as a franchise means that fantasy games have tried too much to copy its style, I think. Regardless HoMM3 is amazing.

I ran through the campaigns in college, and TBH I think on some level it did me good. Helped me to learn how to strategize, or something, IDK. Or maybe it was just a way to blow off steam, lol.

I think I have some saved games somewhere. I mean, from college, seriously. Twenty five years ago.

It’s not impossible for me to dig them out. I also installed the GOG version of Diablo/Hellfire, dug out my old saves, and installed them. One of them, a wizard character decked out in the game’s best stuff, was last used on this very day (July 18) twenty three years ago. So July 18, 2000. That’s when the save file was last modified. Amazing!

I remember playing Diablo I at nights, after my shifts at Office Depot. lol. What a world. It was a good way to wind down after a hard day at work. Wow. Twenty three years ago. Man, that’s a long time.

Looking back- would the person I was then be proud of the man I am now? Yeah, I think so.

For sure.

I guess that’s the test, really.

Other things- somehow, a game called Fight ‘N Rage ended up in my Steam library. No idea how this happened, lol. Tried it; it was fun, a stylish amalgamation of Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Denjin Makai II, 64th Street: A Detective Story, and I think D.D. Crew. And probably some other stuff. But regardless of it’s origin, I played it once and got to the fifth level boss, whoever that is, and quit the game because I was tired of playing. IDK, I’ll try it again, someday.

I’ve also been playing iOS games. Most of that store is… bad, most games are deliberately broken or otherwise extremely sketchy. I’ve gone over this before, but I’ve downloaded and played simple puzzle games that drained my battery and caused my device to overheat. I think a lot of games and apps in that store secretly use peoples’ devices to mine… stuff, crypto, data, or other things. The iOS store is really toxic and dangerous.

There are a few games, though, that are not horrible or alarming. I play them while using my exercise bike. I crank the resistance up to max and just bike away, for hours at a time.

I have some old clothes that I need to lose a handful of pounds to fit into. It isn’t much, it can be done pretty easy. The bike + pilates + dumbbells can accomplish that, no problem. But still, I need to work at it. Once done, I’ll rethink the rest of my life, I think.

Other thoughts- the typical midwestern diet just… isn’t working for me. It’s too much food, just… too much food. It’s not bad food, but the sheer quantity of it can sometimes be a real problem. IDK, that’s kind of another post.

But… yeah. It’s too much, really. Sometimes I find myself taking the food I’m given and secretly disposing of it, somehow. I feel guilty but… it’s just too much, but I don’t want to refuse it, because that would be rude, so…

Well, it’s alright.

It’s late, time to pack it in.

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.