Sighinide

Fun, when Comcast decides not to suck.

Take a look at these four screenshots.

Every day, I get these fucking “8100” errors. Google provides no help. These are the same errors I was getting back in the beginning. They’re still happening, daily. Look at the date in the lower right corner of the screens, here.

I also get these “TV GO” errors/messages/things with the broken images. What the fuck even is this? I’ve gotten three of these this morning.

I also have problems access certain events because of “licensing issues”. What? Then why are these even recommended to me?

And take a look at the last screenshot. There, the scroll bar on the window has dissapeared(!) preventing me from navigating, searching, etc. This only happens with Comcast.

Christ, guys. What the fuck is this shit? Fix your fucking issues!

It might be wise to spend more on quality assurance here. Just saying.

Today, I watched surfing, and canoeing, and skeet shooting, and a few other sports.

I liked them; they were fun. I want to see more.

These new HD feeds with the new camera tech featured by modern Olympics are a revelation. I could actually see these sports. I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and not being able to figure out what was going on during these events, if they were even televised at all.

Now, though- I can see the action, and understand the sport, and I can generally appreciate what I see so much more.

It’s fun, and I find myself wishing that I knew more about the athletes and the stories that drive them.

Honestly- that would be very nice, I think. Can we do this? Really, it would be to everyone’s benefit. Part of the problem the Olympics have had in retaining an audience in recent years has been the reluctance on the part of NBC to care about the many thousands of athletes that aren’t a part of the “major” sports, like gymnastics.

The appeal of gymnastics over the other sports was obvious, once: it was easy to watch on those old TVs. Lots of open action, no water getting in the way of the picture, easy camera angles, easy abilities to quickly zoom in on the athlete’s faces, etc. Gym couldn’t be better made for TV, and, perhaps not coincidentally, so are the rest of the primetime sports.

But now, though- what about the rest of them? Track and Field beyond running, for example. Or anything water based. And I’m not just talking Olympics- how about the other years, too? It would give people a much needed breather from the usual stuff.

Hearing my parents talk, it seems NBC primetime is going to be the Simone Biles show. And I’m not disparaging her here, but what about everyone else? Like the dozens of men who ran the triathlon. Each one of them is every bit the athlete that Biles is, and surely there must be some stories there that are being untold. I can’t believe there wouldn’t be.

Maybe this is a moot point these days, but man, would some changes be nice in the way our media treats sports. I mean I really, really don’t like the NFL, or baseball, except for those rare moments when it becomes interesting to people who aren’t really fans of that stuff.

Football is honestly boring to me. It’s an incredibly menotenous sport, I think. Rugby is so much more fun to watch. Baseball is boring, and too long.

Canoeing- that shit is intense as hell, lol. It’s awesome. I would watch more of that, were it available. Surfing is awesome. It’s the perfect sport to zone out and just chill to. Archery is fun. Equestrian I don’t understand, but I’m learning, and that is always a gift. Badminton is just plain fun.

Gawd, I fucking dread going back to the same old boring, stupid shit after the Olympics are over. Two more years of an athletic drought before the next one. It fucking sucks.

When I was a kid, I was branded a sports-hater by pretty much everyone I knew because I didn’t like watching football or baseball on TV. It got to the point where I thought that they must in fact be right, and I started hating sports in general.

They were wrong, of course. Idiots. Christ, yet another example of how dumb and self defeating so much of the culture is that surrounds me.

For a dramatization of this, see the baseball scene in Wizard of Loneliness.

And you know- this- this problem I’ve just described here, might be at least part of the reason that this country has such a problem with obesity and inactivity. People, like me at that young age, sometimes equate physical activity with sports, which basically means “football”. Add to this the problem that gym teachers seems to believe this themselves, and you can see how a sedentary populace might develop itself.

PE classes in this country have little to nothing to do with actual physical education, and almost everything to do with teaching kids how to play sports. The end result of this of course is a public that is fat and sedentary, since 99% of the public stops sports by their mid 20’s. It’s dumb, so dumb.

Instead of teaching kids how to play basketball, how about teaching them how to burn calories? Or do “Physical Education” teachers not know that stuff?

Well, perhaps my experiences in P.E. don’t match everyone’s. But I’m sure it matches those of many.

But, back to the Olympics- it’s canoeing / kayaking is every bit as exciting to watch with modern tech as anything done in the gyms. Why not focus on those athletes more next time?

Or the other thousands of them that barely rate a mention in the primetime coverage?

Oh, I know why they aren’t mentioned. It’s because some people think they’re “boring”. Well, you know why people think that? It’s because they don’t know their stories, because nobody asks them their stories.

Next time, try asking.

Well, an interesting day.

I watched the triathalon. Holy shit, those people are fit. Un-be-fucking-lievable. Something like 45 minutes of hard swimming, followed by 45 minutes of biking, followed by 45 minutes of sprinting, with no chances to rest during any of it. Christ almighty! Every time I watch one of those I am utterly blown away by it. Unreal. Those athletes can’t be human, lol. And I say this as a cyborg vampire god, so you know I know what I’m talking about there, haha. Good Lord!

The kind of dedication needed to reach that plateau of physical ability is beyond what I can even conceive. Honestly, it’s just… baffling, lol. I’m a good athlete but that level is beyond anything I have ever seen IRL from anyone, ever. The ability to even compete in that kind of sport on a global arena must involve a combination of peerless genetics, a perfect environment, a world class support network, and a phenomenal amount of concentration towards achieving the end goal.

Well, incredibly impressive, to be sure.

Comcast decided to work better for me today, which was welcome. I only got a couple of “8100” errors, and those were only in the morning. So, nice. Nicer, rather.

Comcast? Get your shit straightened out. Thanks.

I saw bits and pieces of quite a few other sports. Neat. I’m liking the ability to stream what I want now, instead of just… taking what I’m given. It makes the experience I think deeper in some ways. It certainly changes things to not watch any of the athlete promos that NBC is so fond of running during their primetime presentation.

I think it makes the experience more global. No promos = less jingoism, it seems. It becomes more about the sport, and less about the fluff- the politics, the running tallies of medal counts, the omnipresent talking heads’ opinions about subjects that they are clearly not knowledgeable about, etc. In this case, less is certainly more.

More sports, at least. Less fluff means more stuff that is actually worth watching.

Not that the politics weren’t there, of course. They’re in all the commercials, for example. All those commercials for… the NWO, lol. You know the ones. All of them. As in every commercial, no matter the company or product.

The commercials this year are all indistinguishable, at least to me. It’s like they’re all make by the same people, literally. I don’t mean the same group of people, I mean literally the same individual people.

They’re all just variations on the same themes. They’re so similar they all just kind of blend together for me, like some kind of messy watercolor. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m legit struggling to even remember the products these commercials were ostensibly hawking.

There are a few conservative-oriented commercials that are run on xfinity, but even those are just the same as each other, too.

It’s all kind of… boring. Past Olympics had commercials that I remember fondly, since so unique and replayed over and over again throughout the games. Off the top of my head, like that Coca Cola commercial that advertised their sponsorship of the games set to that Sia song. Man, that thing was EPIC. And a few other commercials from past games that I still remember to this day.

These? They’re all kind of… blah. And I’m plastered over each one of them, I know, but still. I’ve done so much in my life- why not take some of the other stuff to make commercials? Something, IDK, comedic, or something? Or something from my college years? Why not?

I’m missing the John Williams theme. I don’t know if the TV production has it, but I wish xfinity did, that’s for sure.

Well, that’s it for now.

Yeah, this is actually a part 1, lol. I know, I’m as shocked as you are, lmao.

Alright. So… a few random thoughts, to start.

I liked the opening ceremony, save for the fact that I had to watch it this morning, instead of when it was aired. XFinity choked last night and refused to cooperate. It kept giving me an “Error 8100” code. Fuck. Well, whatever.

It was… spartan, but effective. The fact that I had to watch it after the fact I think made the shorter length of the pagentry more welcome.

I liked the symbolisms, like those of the costuming, and those incorporated into the various dances and the LED (?) floor. The drones were nice.

The guy imitating the various symbols for the events was I think the real star of the show. His routine kicked ass, and I plan to watch it again, later.

My most “uncanny valley” moment in all of this were the blocks that the kids arranged. That was something that I did, that I had forgotten about, with blocks just like those that were used in the ceremony. It was… interesting, I guess disassociating, seeing it, but… cool, since a good memory that I had completely forgotten. Weird stuff, this is.

I liken the blocks moment to seeing all of the stuff in Young Sheldon. Holy Jeebus, lol. I downloaded a bunch of clips that show to see McKenna Grace and wow, apparently people remember / know much much more about my childhood that I do, lol. It’s all the details, of everything- look, that’s my old science set! There’s the water fountain from school that didn’t really work. That’s my old flashlight, my old posters, my old classroom, my old science projects, my old computer… my old sheets, even. It’s… interesting, and… kinda… neat. I guess it depends on how all of this is used.

I suppose that my own moral code demands that I should be offended by all of this, but honestly, I often can’t be. It’s all very impressive, all of this is, and frankly interesting as hell. The scientist in me is having a field day these days, figuring out this or that cause and meaning of each tangent and detail I notice.

So it’s… kinda cool. I suppose that the overarching situation here is that the entire contents of my noggin have been uploaded to some supercomputer somewhere. Is this correct? Is it these thoughts that form the foundation of the computer system that is planned to run the world in the future? It would seem like it, I suppose. At least, that’s what the end of the Matrix trilogy tells me. Tom (Neo- whose real name in the movies is Tom, remember) becomes one with the source by plugging in his noggin and saving / running the world, or something. Something, lol. IDK, I will wait and see how the next film in that series plays out, I guess.

Speaking of which- I got to see some TaeKwonDo.

I get it, now. Some years back here I wrote a screed that lamented my past inability to capitalize on my own innate skills in that sport. IIRC, in that piece I wondered why I couldn’t, back then, fulfill my destiny, so to speak. Well, now I know.

Half of my mind, my ability, my body, seems to be devoted to communicating and setting up the system that will run the Earth for / with me. And THAT is why I couldn’t fulfill my earlier potential. I was smart, but half of my IQ was being taken and used for… NWO things, without my full knowledge of the situation.

So THAT’S why it didn’t quite “gel” for me. I mean, the pieces were all there. Watching the sport today, I can see that I easily could have gone to the games myself and competed, had all of my faculties been my own.

The pieces were all there- I was young, but had over a decade of experience in TKD by the time I was 16. I was trained by a former Olympian himself who placed second twice in the games in his weight class. I was a natural athelete and was VERY good at Martial Arts- just watch The Matrix again if you doubt this. Not that I was superhuman or anything, lol, but I was the Neo character’s inspiration.

I could have gone myself, and frankly I should have, and I easily could have, and honestly, I probably could have taken home a medal or two myself, but… half of my mind was taken up by developing the media… matrix. So I only had half of my abilities truly available to myself, alone. And I was confused- I couldn’t figure out why I was so incredibly different from everyone else, and that bothered me.

Fuck, though. Gawd dammit, I could have been a flag bearer, lol. God DAMN it, lol. Ohhhh that burns. I was every bit as good as those guys I watched today. Oh man, that reeeeally grinds my gears, lol. With Olympic training I could have done it. I remember the other Olympic athletes that I knew back then describing their own training routines and yeah, I could have handled it, had my mind been fully my own.

Grrrrrrrr, lol. Fuck, you guys fucking OWE me, lol.

Well, at least I’m there, even if as some unseen vampire cyborg god, lol. In that way I got what I should have had, back then, I guess in my own way. Fine, then.

But yeah, very interesting. What an incredibly huge and varied world this is.

I’m enjoying the sports. I finally get to see the stuff that I like.

I love sports, and I love physical activity. I exercise an hour a day, every day, for example. It’s wonderful; good sports give me life. Exercise is great for me, and I get antsy when I don’t get what I need, there.

I… don’t like, much, “normal” sports culture. The NFL, for example. Sure I might watch the superbowl, but the overall culture I don’t get and don’t like.

There is too much extraneous stuff, there. Local politics get involved. This city vs. that one, etc. I hate that irrelevant nonsense. It’s stupid, and frankly beneath me. At least a hundred years ago that stuff actually made sense- when Chicago players actually came from Chicago, for example. Now they come from everywhere but Chicago, it seems. The Bears are not even a Chicago team! The same with the Packers. So, really, who gives a shit anymore? It says nothing about either city one way or another anymore. That rivalry is dumb, along with all of the others, honestly. Fucking stupid.

There is something really really toxic and about the NFL and it’s fandom. IDK, it almost seems as though the people who get involved with the NFL fandom the most are the most out of shape people in the country. It’s truly bizarre. They’re not fans of sports, most of them. You can tell, they’re obviously wayyyy too out of shape for that, lol. How many of them even exercise, regularly? Would we even be talking double digits, there? So… what do they even get out of their fandom?

I don’t know, but there’s really wrong about all of that that seems to go even deeper than anything I have ever touched on, here. I don’t know. It’s almost as if the NFL culture intentionally pushes people away from healthy activities that should define someone that does have an appreciation for sports. It seems to encourage sloth and excess, if not obesity itself, on the part of it’s fandom. Or something like that; I don’t know, I try to stay away from the NFL, myself. I always have.

Of course in America, in the heart of the Midwest, it’s almost impossible to keep yourself away from it totally. But even when I get involved it’s always in a guarded manner.

But I’m getting wayyyy off topic, here. lol.

Yeah. Olympics. Fun.

lol.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately- mostly from the 90’s, but a few before and a few after.

It’s been interesting. And revealing. And I’ve learned a lot that I can’t discuss here for lack of time and space.

But I will say this: I think I’ve found appropriate closure with pretty much all of my early relationships.

I’ve been a revelation to rewatch movies that I saw as a teenager with a fresh eye, correct assumptions and a full knowledge of the situation and the world’s unfolded history since then. Honestly, it’s been nothing short of a miracle.

It’s… amazing, and hard to put into words, the kind of… stuff, I guess, and feelings and plans I’ve been learning about. For example, my past girlfriends were clearly not at all the innocent flowers I thought they were, lol.

I can see very clearly now how girls like Alicia Silverstone, Katie Holmes, Dushku, Jolie, Ricci, and Dunst baited and… led me, in certain directions, usually into very personal sexual relationships, without me realizing it, let alone knowing how they were doing it. I seriously thought even as recently as a couple of years ago that I was the one who initiated those relationships.

Nope, though. Ah, lol. Geez, men really are thick about these things, aren’t they?

Suddenly, Alicia Silverstone’s The Crush actually makes sense, lol. Prior to me even knowing who she was- I mean, this was before even those Aerosmith videos- I watched The Crush on TV and was… baffled, but oddly intrigued, by the huge amount of rather… poignant (uncanny?) references to my personal life at the time, down to the book report I wrote about Wuthering Heights of all things. I was like……. what? But again I wrote it all off as being a string of coincidences. I mean, aren’t all movies filled with very personal references to everyone else’s life, too?

Geez, lol. And the part with the swing, haha. I mean… wow, Alicia. You could have just, IDK, asked me out or something, you know. But that isn’t how we do things, is it? No, we, being the crowd of drama queens that we all are, must do things in the most convoluted, mysterious, gossipy and public ways possible.

And… all those references that Angelina Jolie peppered her early films with, especially Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow, and Hackers. Watching Hackers now, I can see clearly how broad of a brush they used when pointing the film directly at me. Watching it as a confused high schooler, though… yeah, I didn’t get it. I remember renting the VHS from the local supermarket, watching it, and… getting somewhat confused by the uncanny valley nature of it, but liking it overall. Angelina’s well placed and timed nude scene of course was pretty instrumental in getting me to fall head over heels for her back then, probably because she put it in there seemingly specifically for me, in such a way that would maximize it’s effect on my thought patterns, hahaha. Real sneaky, hun.

Milla Jovovich, too, which would go along way to explaining how her daughter seems to know much too easily the precise steps that are needed to maximize my interest at the specific age that both she and I are at. Kinda… uncanny valley, again, but Milla had her eyes on me for a very, very long time, even going as far as to write a few songs about me on her debut album, Gentleman Who Fell, of which I believe I am the titular gentleman, and thus recognized as the AntiChrist, even back then (thanks, Milla, for that tidbit). “Gentleman Who Fell” is an obvious reference to the fallen angel, Lucifer, or at least his avatar, the AntiChrist (me). “Gentleman” here also contains obvious sexual references- I mean, the video for this song was literally Milla the supermodel frolicking naked for three minutes. Don’t tell me that that didn’t have an effect on my teenage self. IIRC correctly I used to stay up late watching MTV specifically hoping to see it, lol. And of course there’s some other stuff there that I won’t get into.

On that note, Ultraviolet is nothing less than a nonstop parade of references to me. Literally every scene in the film, every line of dialogue, every visual and symbol, every sound effect and note of music, is all me, and often on more than one level (pun intended, lol). Perhaps that is why others didn’t take to it so much.

Ultraviolet is packed with symbols and references to virtually every video game I have ever played, and every video game-esque fantasy I have ever had. There’s Quake in there, Quake II, Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Forsaken, Unreal, Serious Sam, references to my childhood friend’s Intellivision and Atari systems… and a whole lot else, a full list here would take days to create. It also has a direct and obvious reference to my old cutting habits (the cuts on her fingers and hands, in literally the exact same places that I did it. I mean, that’s exactly what it was. You’ll know it when you see it.)

And it has shedloads of other references to my childhood- look, my old playground! That’s my guitar case! And everything else that has ever happened to me or I had ever owned up until that point, holy shit. And a bunch of stuff I’m not going to get into, yet. A LOT of stuff I’m not going to get into, yet.

And Kirsten Dunst, too. Not in that way; I’m still on Ultraviolet, here. Christ, I did a triple take when I saw her cameo, replete with innuendo about me and our relationship. Wait, that wasn’t her? Nonsense, yes it clearly was. Fine, it was just someone who looks identical to her dressed up to look EXACTLY LIKE SHE DOES.

And again, I rented this when it was released, and… had a super crazy uncanny valley / dissociative session while watching it, lol. That part with the TV and the remote? Holy shit, what an incredibly crazy infinite recursive loop that was. I watched the film on virtually the same TV, in a very very similar room, holding the same remote, with the same hand, just like it appeared in the movie. Same level of ambient lighting and everything. Unreal. Absolutely nuts.

And is it just me, or were there references to a possible future relationship with me and the as-of-then unborn Ever Gabo in the flick, as well? I mean… there couldn’t be, right? No way, no fucking way. Right? I guess?

Right? Uhm… right?

Kinda?

And Kirsten herself… I can hardly believe how much she loved me. I mean, it’s just… incredible. I mean obviously she did, but I just… and the Buffy girls too. And Charlize Theron, and… Christina Ricci, and… everyone.

I’ll need to go into all of this later. Wayyyyyy wayyyyy too much to process right now.

But I mean, Small Soldiers, right? And that one scene, with my stand in inside a room with a tied up and tortured Kirsten Dunst and a bunch of evil, naked girl dolls voiced by Christina Ricci and Sarah Michelle Gellar who throw themselves at and sexually assault me while Dunst screams in agony and shock, which is… kinda disturbing and not at all romantic, now that I think about it.

But perfect for a crowd of drama queens, though. lol. And it was absolutely par for the course for those old relationships, as turbulent and… crazily intense as they were.

Those girls definitely gave as much as they took, absolutely no question about that. Holy cripes, lol.

But it’s late, now. Very late, and I’m start to feel as though I’m performing an autopsy, with all of this grim analysis.

Fitting for the AntiChrist, no?

Ah, good night, then. Maybe I’ll take India Eisley tonight. I mean, speaking of the children of my innumerable ex’s, lol.

But… yeah, wow. Closure achieved?

I think so.

I think so.

Yeah.

Mostly, but…

Yeah.

Sure.

Oh…… my. Oh my.

Oh… my. Oh MY. Wow.

Wowwwwwwwww.

Oh my.

You know, at some point, I think I am going to need to have a sit down with Lea and Zoey so that we can have a loooooooooong talk about a few things.