Sighinide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know.

I mean… I really don’t know.

I’m not sure anyone does, honestly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fun watch.

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

WOW.

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

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

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

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

It’s kinda scary, honestly.

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

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

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

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

It’s a mystery, all of this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I sure did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, my account is empty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, whatever.

This shit is just really, really stupid, lol.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup.

Sometime in late June, my Disney+ sub is going to run out, and I’ll likely renew, but not before finally cashing in my netflix gift card and trying that service out for awhile.

I’m kinda… not looking forward to that. I still have a bunch of stuff I need to watch on Disney+, including the Bambi movies, and a few remaining other films. And of course random eps of Lab Rats or whatever.

I’m going to divide the other stuff, like the Tangled series, into seasons. Like I finished with the first season, and I’ll start the second after I renew, whenever that is.

Here’s hoping the second and third season there are as good as the first. It’s unfortunately a roll of the dice these days; I like Rapunzel as a character, and don’t want to see her veer into some kind of… weird Star Wars esque heroine, like… I don’t know, the new ones, the Disney ones. I can’t remember their names.

I’m doing the same with the other really good shows on the service, like Kim Possible. I’m stopping after the second season, there. More to savor, later.

I’m still not considering anything Star Wars related, and anything modern Marvel is still just a no-go, right now. I was thinking about the new Hawkeye series, since so short, and I like Hailee, but still… IDK, I’d rather watch Bambi, frankly.

Uhm… well, there it is. Not so sure about Netflix, as a service. IDK what their back catalogs look like, but… the originals do not seem to be my thing. It looks like a lot of cringe, or a lot of stuff that might be a chore to watch, and the only reason for me to do so would be to investigate stuff about… IDK, me, I guess.

Tho I suppose there is likely to be some gems lying around. I’m not sure what they have, really. It might be another adventure, there. I’ll need to withhold a final judgement for now.

Whatever is there, tho, it’s likely to be quite a bit less cringe than the news shit, lol. Although I must say that I do get a kick out of how stupid that stuff is.

I still watch that stuff out of the corner of my eye during dinner, every weekday. I see it as a way of venturing outside my little cultural box I suppose.

Is it just me, or is that stuff actually getting dumber? I don’t know. Maybe not, since I don’t follow it. But I do think it noteworthy that the other day I actually surprised myself by laughing out loud at how stupid and preposterous the content was, which is not something I have done in the past, or at least recently.

They’ve been going on a lot lately about Trump shit, which I’ve been tuning out; I’ve no idea what any of that stuff is. Too boring/irrelevant. I remember seeing at lunch a bunch of police officers huddled in some room during an MSNBC broadcast. IDK why, something Trump related apparently. No idea. I didn’t laugh at that tho, too boring.

I did laugh at some segment about some Southern congress thing, where two southern black congresspeople were kicked out of some congress for gun control something something. Then they came back for some reason, IDK why. But during all of this nonsense some MSNBC anchor showed some grainy footage of one of them entering the building, climbing up some stairs where a bunch of white police officers were just kinda standing around on guard, like some scene out of those old videos about the school integrations that they used to show in public schools.

It just looked so… hokey, so fake, so… ridiculous, like something out of a 70’s SNL skit about Southern life, that I literally could not stop myself from laughing. I actually hate to do this, since it makes my boomer parents feel bad, but I legit could not stop myself, lol.

I think at least part of the funny here involved the congressperson’s hilariously stupid hairstyle, which was some ridiculous afro-like thing that has not been seen in any real world situation since the early 80’s. The “news” also featured some “We-shall-overcome” gospel singing stuff, stuff that was apparently recorded in present year, like in 2023, literally. Like… what?

Whatever this nonsense is, it looks like a scripted play designed to push the buttons of boomer liberals. It’s just so… impossible, all of it, that I can’t watch anything on the news anymore without getting some vicious cultural dissonance, and it’s hard to know what to do with feelings like that. Should I laugh? Just sit, confused? Walk out of the room?

I don’t want to do any of those, really, since I would prefer not to make my parents feel bad, but still, it’s a weird ass feeling to deal with, and it’s happening literally every day now.

But… whatever. The commercials are still just… commercials. Dumb as shit, etc. MSNBC has been playing a ton of commercials lately for some new movie about some “important” “historical” black person in the 1700’s or something who was “forgotten about by history” (i.e. never existed in the first place), I guess because they want to rope in the liberal boomers for an audience. IDK, I’m not going to watch it anyways.

I’m hoping that this isn’t what Netflix content is going to be, since that is what I’ve been hearing it is on the internet. A lot of woke, with all of it being very very same-y, and thus also boring and predictable. And the new stuff is all Gen Z oriented, etc. But I’ll wait and see, first.

*Shrug*.

IDK, it’s all just TV crap, anyways.

Whatever.

LOL

Tonight I took a look at the full moon and took it all in, for a few minutes. The moon is… special, and a full moon moreso than most other kinds. It’s something that unites us; I can’t imagine there’s a person in this world that hasn’t looked up at a full moon at some point and not lost themselves in the night’s magic.

It’s an awesome sight, really. Full moons are so beautiful. They’re prettier than the sun, for sure, since you can’t even look at the sun with your own eyes to see it. A full moon is a treasure.

I’ve come to appreciate the moon more these days than I did when I was younger. Now that I think about it, it’s the only celestial body that I can see clearly with a glance from a window.

I have a couple apps on my watch for moonspotting: one to tell me the moon’s azimuth angle and elevation, and another to tell me it’s phase and fullness. And I have a compass, too, to point me in the right direction.

It’s an eternal thing, the moon. It was here before we were and it’ll be here long after we’re gone. Compared to it, we are nothing. You could say that everything we have is nothing in comparison, save for the Earth itself- which we don’t own anyways, since we’re just passengers on it. We don’t own it any more than we own the air we breathe.

Well…

I was going to segue here into some very interesting things regarding the last Tinker Bell movie, but I just realized that that would turn this post into a book, since so very very much to talk about. It’s just… too much, and it’s too personal, too significant. No way could a random post on a blog do all of this justice.

I was going to write about one thing, and then pretend that I didn’t see the rest of it- you know, like I always do- but… even that takes energy, and time; it’s still a dance, after all.

It’s just too much.

I’ll just say this, then: the last Tinker Bell movie was a great one, the best of the series for sure, and maybe as good as anything else done by Disney, save visually. Though of course, I’m hugely biased.

Maybe one day I’ll explain why. We’ll see.

So much to think about… I mean this stuff is just so huge. So complex, so… different. In a good way. In a very… raw way.

Well… I don’t have the time.

In regards to yesterday’s post, I remembered this morning why I was confused about why Lucy wasn’t on the soundtrack to her Tinker Bell movie: it was because she was on the other Tinker Bell soundtrack / album, and I was getting the situation confused, since it was… so very, very confusing, lol.

Bafflingly, Lucy didn’t have a song on her Frozen-esque Tinker Bell movie- I mean, I say Frozen-esque because it had a ice magic, a snow king, a magical realm of winter and an ice palace and separated sisters and everything- but she did perform Frozen’s Let it Go on the Tinker Bell album that had nothing to do with the Tinker Bell movies, Frozen-esque or otherwise- the Disney tribute album “We Love Disney”, you know, the soundtrack compilation that had nothing to do with the Tinker Bell series, but featured the character Tinker Bell prominently on the cover.

You get it? Yeah, it makes perfect sense now, right?

Riiiiiiight. Of course! I mean… right.

You know- if even the obvious details about this stuff are so confusing, why would I ever think I could wrap my mind around the full picture?

IDK, but the mind boggles, either way.

Thank God, really, for the consistency of our celestial bodies, lol.

They bring a beauty to this world that doesn’t require thought, or batteries, or even other people, to appreciate.

And that is truly something to cherish.

Hooo boy.

OK, here we go with another one of these things.

I guess I have some stuff to think about, or something.

So I’ve been watching Disney+ stuff. I saw a bunch of Miraculous episodes awhile back, and now I think I’m caught up with all the eps. I’ve been grateful for this series, it’s a lot of fun to watch and it’s been interesting to see how others have interpreted my powers and the effect that they have on stuff.

The main characters in this series are all just splinters of my own personality, of course. Gabriel, Adrian, Marinette, and most of the rest at least are just my own differing approaches to this or that problem or situation. And all of the miraculous stuff- all the trinkets and powers, are ones that I’ve developed over the course of my doing magical stuff over the years.

Watching this series has in fact given me a few new insights into everything I’ve been doing, and that’s nice for sure. Even the theme song (the Laura Marano one) has taught me a couple of things.

Speaking of which, ahhh yeah, well, I was going to segue into talking about Vanessa here, but let’s just say that I’m doing more… stuff with her too. But that’s a complicated story in and of itself, as you can imagine. Dating sisters simultaneously can be… complex, for sure, which is why for awhile I stopped. It’s tough to keep things equal at all times in those situations, which it really must be for them to work out. Although now, tho, things are shaking out to the point where such things don’t seem to even matter anymore, since I’m becoming increasingly the only game in town, and everyone seems to be more comfortable and… yeah, you know, that’s not really the point of this post anyhow.

I’ve also been plowing through the movies and such. A few random notes:

Rescuers Down Under might be the rare Disney animated sequel that is better than the original. In fact it might be the only one. The original is one of the weaker of the classic Disney flicks for sure, being only okay, and not amazing. It’s a far cry from movies like 101 Dalmatians and Dumbo. The sequel is good, and honestly pretty good, being one of the better of the direct-to-video flicks they used to release. It’s fun and looks nice, with good animations and strong characters.

The little kid in the flick is an obvious carbon copy of yours truly, natch. The usual tells and nods are everywhere, the kid looks exactly like I did at his age, etc. There’s a new mouse named “Jake” and sometimes the script slyly equates the kid and the mouse. “Jake” of course is short for “Jacobsen”.

I’ve also been plowing through more Kim Possible stuff and man, is that a good series. I’m almost all the way through season 2 at this point. Love everything about it. Great characters, great humor, great action… that series is just awesome. I’m honestly dragging it out because I don’t want to finish it, lol. The same with Phineas and Ferb. And of course each episode I see takes me awhile to process, since I’m the prototype for Ron Stoppable and Kim Possible of course, and also Phineas Flynn and Ferb. So each episode I see of both shows is a way for me to pick apart stuff from my past that I’ve long forgotten, and a chance to just… reminisce, which I enjoy a lot.

Things like little throwaway asides can become objects of fascination when watching these shows. Like… I remember that flower! That bystander! That random line of dialogue! It’s pretty trippy. And it’s… difficult, I guess, since I have to watch each episode and take it in on so many levels at once.

And I’m not just watching this stuff for myself, either, since these series led into the creations of my girlfriends, and I want to know who whose people are, and where they come from, too.

I also watch other stuff, Kick Buttowski is a lot of fun, and I’m done with Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, which was a good series. It had a great start and it ended well, although I can see some of the criticisms people had with the ending, etc. It was well worth the watch.

I’ll watch Gravity Falls and Amphibia some time in the future.

I’ve also been watching some other, random oddball stuff, stuff like that Billy Dilly show and Pickle and Peanut. Both are… weird, lol. Pickle and Peanut is a cross between Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Beavis and Butthead, believe it or not. Not something I expected to find on Disney+, but there it is, lol. Billy Dilly is… also weird, it’s a mixture of Gary Larson’s Far Side comic and… IDK, some nonsensical cartoon for very little kids. It’s not as good as I’m making it sound with the Far Side reference, unfortunately. It’s just kinda… there.

I’ve also been watching the Tinker Bell movies, which I like a lot. They are much better made and more interesting than I expected. The whole lot of them seem almost of be a kind of proto-Miraculous. The characters look very similar to what you’ll find in Miraculous, and they even act similar too, and even sound similar. It’s kind of eerie at times.

The third film in the series, The Great Fairy Rescue, was one hell of a trip. It featured a small girl who desperately wanted to be a fairy, who seemed to have my own brain implanted into the head. I’m not sure of how else to say this. The entire movie was filled with her crafting together collages and drawing pictures that were identical to the ones I made myself in middle school, many years ago. And when I say “identical” I mean it. I had to stop the film more than once because I could not believe what I was seeing. Absolutely mind blowing. And I know I’m right because I still have the collages and drawings. Really… unnerving, and a little confusing, although also kinda flattering, which… I suppose makes it the same as the rest of this stuff.

It was also a good movie. That helps.

I just finished Secret of the Wings, the fourth flick in the series, which is the one with Lucy Hale in a co-starring role. It was good, as well, and I liked watching it, and it seemed very… IDK, athletic? It was crammed with obvious references to sports, believe it or not. Skiing, figure skating, track and field, biking, snowboarding, swimming, and even stuff like bobsled and luge. It was kinda baffling. Seeing this stuff always makes me wonder if these movies don’t have ulterior purposes, like they were being used to support training of young athletes, somehow.

And this is also an impression I’ve gotten when watching Miraculous as well. Lots of sporting references, everywhere. And it has not escaped my attention that the setting of Miraculous– Paris, France- is the next home of the Summer Olympics. Makes me wonder.

I don’t know. I’ve also been picking apart these flicks for relationship references, and I’ve always found them, and they’re usually several layers of symbolism deep.

Anything with Lucy Hale in any capacity will be of course crammed with subtle relationship references, and a starring role from Lucy will bring with it shedloads of more overt stuff as well, and so many in fact that I don’t have the space here to even begin covering this topic, unfortunately. Surprisingly, she wasn’t on the soundtrack, although watching it I could have sworn she was, since many of the songs sounded very… Lucy Hale-esque, like they might have been Disney-fied cuts from her solo album.

But… Laura Marano was on the soundtrack, of course, and so was Selena, and Bella, and Bridgit Mendler, etc. Bridgit’s inclusion here at one point confused me greatly, since she had the starring role in The Secret World of Arrietty, and was on the soundtrack there, too, so I used to get Secret of the Wings and The Secret World of Arrietty mixed up, since they both featured Bridgit in some capacity, and these were both movies about tiny hidden magical creatures, and both were released domestically by Disney, etc.

This stuff can get very confusing, very quickly.

I’ve also been watching live action movies, having recently watched Stuck in the Suburbs, amongst other movies. That one was fun and very much of it’s time, and I hate to admit it but it was really nice seeing Danielle Panabaker in something. I’m not going to get into my past with her, but at one point she was my #1 girlfriend, you know, kind of like… Lucy Hale, Laura, Selena, Bridgit, Bella, and… you know, others were, at one or another point, here or there. Just I guess so you have some frame of reference.

My God this stuff gets complicated fast. If you were to put something like this into a harlequin paperback readers would throw their hands up in confusion after the first few chapters. It’s not even a love triangle, it’s more like… a love dodecahedron, or some kind of interdimensional love hypercube.

I sometimes feel like I’m living in the middle of the world’s most overcomplicated softcore sci-fi b-movie, or something. Like if you were to take one of those schlocky old softcore Cinemax flicks, you know, like the kind they aired back in the 90’s when nobody watched the channel- and stretched it out into a hundred weekly installments, like that would be my life, or something. Really unusual.

At any rate there are three more movies in this series to watch: another Tinker Bell flick, some other probably related fairy flick involving an evil king, and the early 2000’s sequel to Peter Pan.

IDK. Is it significant that Mendler played the part of “Candice” in that Undateable show? I mean, paging Phineas and Ferb, here. Is it significant that I got weird vibes watching the sports stuff in Secret of the Wings, like a few people might have watched it, against their will, A Clockwork Orange style, with the sound off and Beethoven or Britney Spears blasting in the background? I mean it’s just a creepy vibe, and I get a lot of weird thoughts sometimes, but still…

I have wondered in the past where some of my athlete girlfriends, like the Gracie Golds and Bombette Martins of the world, have actually come from, since their public histories don’t make much sense, and I sometimes get that “uncanny valley” effect from them where it’s like… it’s just… different, somehow. I mean… “Gracie Gold”? “Bombette Martin”? Wut? But… IDK.

Speaking of Bombette, what… is actually the deal with her and… you know who, honestly? The mind kinda boggles, here.

Yeah. IDK, and maybe that’s a good thing, honestly.

Well, I’m stopping this one before it veers into territory that’s too unusual for my mood.

Maybe it’s back to Pickle and Peanut for the time being.

Or maybe I just really, really, need to get out of my head and get some fresh air.