Sighinide

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.