Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
I have had an urge to watch some old slashers what I haven’t seen before. I decided to give “Slaughter High” from 1986 a shot. It’s supposed to be a comedy. It’s neither a very good slasher nor a remotely funny comedy. There’s a kill with a lawn-tractor that was kind of cool, but overall, a big ol’ dudski.
The abrupt transition to fall weather definitely has me in the Halloween mood early this year.
After an unplanned summer hiatus I have returned.
Greetings once more from my hovel on the shores of the bow.
Clearly I couldn’t be assed to write anything here what with my summer being just jam packed with such exciting activites as sitting in this basement watching movies and trying to prevent the tiny anarchists who live in my house from doing grievous bodily harm to themselves and each other. Every day is an adventure.
I binged all 4 of the Michael Winterbottom Rob Brydon/Steve Coogan “The Trip” movies in the last 24 hours. At a time when one cannot go out it was great fun to watch these two travel around picturesque locations and bicker in duelling impressions of 1970s film and tv performers. I’ve heard the quadrilogy compared to the Linklater Before trilogy and I can see the similarities. These are much funnier and probably not trying as hard to say something prescient about relationships (though a more convincing and relatable dude-friendship is hard to think of on sceen). My favorite of the 4 is probably the first, but Trip to Greece is a pretty close second. For no reason other than I just thought of doing it I now present to you my suggested pairings for The Trip movies with the Before movies.
The Trip and Before Sunrise.
The Trip to Spain and Before Sunset
The Trip to Italy and Before Midnight
Halfway through typing those I sort of lost all enthusiasm for and confidence in the idea but didn’t want to delete any of it in case it triggered some kind of gnawing, existential dread about my writing and I stopped blogging for another 2 months. So, in the interest of maintaining momentum you got to read that utterly useless bit… and this bit explaining it. You’re welcome?
Glad to be back.
I’ve been on a Fantasy kick.
I’m even reading the Silmarillion. I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s an absolute SLOG to read and it is the most “homework” like thing I’ve read for pleasure in a long time, but I love all the world-buildy, fiddly-ass bullshit of it. It also really lays out on front-street a lot of the stuff I find very frustrating and problematic about The Lord of the Rings mythology, though. I like that story and find the universe and it’s myth very interesting and borderline fun to read about, but for a guy who spent some time in his day fighting fascism he sure has a lot of it in his mythos. Any time there are “favored” or “chosen” races you should have klaxons going off.
I’m toying with the idea of diving too deep into Elder Scrolls lore videos now too… I don’t have the time or patience to actually PLAY any of those games, (the few times I’ve played Skyrim I got bored after about 25 minutes) but I love complicated fantasy universes. I don’t play World of Warcraft anymore, but I sure like reading books and encyclopedias about its universe. I should really read the 2 Song of Ice and Fire books I haven’t gotten to yet so I can pick up all the maps and encyclopedias and whatnot that surround them and not risk spoilage.
Currently Playing: “Fantasy” Mariah Carey.
Currently Reading: THE SILMARILLION, J.R.R. Tolkien
Crazy hectic workweek going on with a special event so likely to be light on the blog side this week.
That said, I do have one or two things worth mentioning.
I played a bit of the free-to-play tier of the new Trackmania and apart from a weird glitch that caused all my times to get erased for the hour I’d been playing I had a great time. Assuming I can get the technical issue sorted out I plan to get into it a lot more.
Second, I am reading (playing?) the Fate/Stay Night visual novel for the first time. I don’t know how long it’ll take me, and I’m very early in the first route right now but I’m intrigued and planning to do more each night before bed so maybe in 100 hours or so I’ll have a clue! This is either going to open me up to previously undreamed of levels of anime geekery OR it’s the biggest mistake ever… possibly both.
I’ve been staring at this blank screen trying to think of anything interesting to write about, but I went to bed at 8 last night and the only anime I’m right in the middle of is dogshit and I don’t want to think about it let alone write about it. So instead here is a sketch from The Birthday Boys, my favorite sketch comedy show of all time.
I’ve got one episode left in Yuri On Ice and now I want to watch figure skating? This is an unexpected outcome. Also unexpected is that I would be so invested in the relationship between Yuri and his coach. I just want those boys to get married and be happy and skate together. I love all these skating boys. I want them all to win gold. Except Jean-Jacques. That arrogant Canadian doofus. He has a warm-up jacket and the logo on its sleeve is literally an upside-down Canadian Tire logo. I assume the producers googled CANADIAN and the first thing that came up was our stupid sporting goods store. Apart from that, it’s a very good show. I am looking forward to finishing it and the eventual movie.
So, there’s basically nothing going on this week. The tiny anarchists who live in my house are wrapping up the last of their schoolwork. A shame that they have to do it here as the final weeks of elementary grades were always the most fun. Fortunately they’re in pre-school and grade one so they don’t even know about the fun they’re missing and they seem pretty happy regardless.
My boat-wives are doing well, lots of levelling going on. I’ve always found grinding experience and farming materials very relaxing in video games so this stupid gacha game has been sort of perfect for me. I can watch my degenerate animes while I farm epic gear to outfit my boat-wives to my heart’s content.
Ahoy! From the deck of my battleship, currently docked on the shores of the Bow.
Yesterday was a very busy day. So busy in fact that I didn’t notice I hadn’t blogged until I was nestled, all snug in my bed.
I… I started playing this gacha game called Azur Lane. In it, as you do in most gacha mobile games, you collect pngs of waifus, but THESE waifus is boats. Battleships to be precise. What has become of me? I used to spend time thinking about art and slow cinema and reading challenging works of fiction. Quarantine has broken me. Now I just grind battles to upgrade my waifu boats. It’s only a matter of time before I start having opinions on various and sundry hentai and doujinshi… I regret nothing.
Currently Playing: Weird Al Yankovic – “Mandatory Fun”
Currently Reading: FLOWERS OF EVIL COMPLETE EDITION VOL 2, Shuzo Oshimi
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow
I took a look at the nutritional information on my favorite instant ramen. It has 25% more sodium than a big bowl of sodium. So, that’s not the best. I guess I will start using half a packet when I make the broth? It’s either that or I’ll be down with another kidney stone more’n likely.
I finished the first season of Fire Force in preparation for the second season starting up in a couple weeks. Now I’m onto season one of Re: Zero. It’s been on my Plan to Watch list for a while and the second season starting soon gave me an excuse to finally start it.
In an attempt to make up for some of the lost time during recovery I’ve been spending too much time each day in the chair. It’s beginning to take its toll, might be time to start looking into some kind of hybrid standing desk situation again.
Currently Reading: THE INSTITUTE, Stephen King
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
Here in week 8,000 of confinement we’ve reached the stage where time has stopped. I’ve been working at this desk now for the last 864 hours and it’s apparently not even 3 pm? Outrageous…
Biggest source of excitement today was discovering my favorite ramen noodles were back in stock when placing my online grocery order. I’ve got enough Gourmet Spicy Nongshim Ramen now that none of us will have to worry for a loooooooooooooooooong time.
Spending some time in the evenings with my backlog of manga and anime, will likely have some stuff to talk about in friday’s Read Icculus. Today I’ve been going through the back half of the first season of Fire Force. I stopped at episode 12 as it was first airing for some reason and with season 2 starting (barring Covid delay) next month I wanted to get it finished before then. It’s a good show to have on in the background. The story and central mystery is *fine* but the big stupid shonen action sequences are a lot of fun. Pretty decent little action show.
Currently Playing: Grove of Whispers – “Borderland”
Currently Reading: THE INSTITUTE, Stephen King
This blog entry is presented as shareware, please mail me $4 if you want the rest of this entry…
Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.
Today I am thinking about the MSDOS games I loved as a lad. Commander Keen! Crystal Caves! Jazz Jackrabbit! Duke Nukem (and later, Duke3D). Hugo’s House of Horrors! God, there were so many. Primitive, obviously, but I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on them. Eventually there were CD compilations of hundreds of shareware games and I’d spend entire weekends just scrolling through those discs, occasionally finding some gem and spending hours playing the first installments.
I think of this mainly because one of the tiny anarchists who live in my house watches a lot of youtubers who play, what can ONLY be described as utterly dogshit advertisement delivery platforms in the guise of computer games. These “games” are janky, ugly and boring. Occasionally, I will cave and allow him to acquire and play one of these wretched things himself. Without exception they turn out to be garbage. One assumes the youtubers are being paid by the con-artists who develop these “games”. (the anarchist in question is also a devotee of Minecraft, lest you think he’s completely without taste). I hate that the software targeted at him are at best such lazy pieces of shit and at worst slot machines designed to deliver ads and extract money (shit’s locked down, he can’t actually spend any of my money).
I know every generation says “things was better in my day”, but in this very specific example? I think they probably were.
Currently Playing: LEIDUNGR – “Odainsacre”
Currently Reading: RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: THE GREY WITCH, Ryo Mizuno
joezone 