I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
I’m at the Old Bar, as I’ll call it, owing to the role it played in my previous residency in this town. Back then, it was a little bohemian bar where you could sit and smoke and block like a man. And I did, pretty much every Sunday night. Starting about 9PM I’d wander in from the cold, plop my laptop or a dog-eared notebook on the table and order a beer. The outcome was predictable, and can be seen oozing down the right-hand gutter of this site, itself a giant gutter.
The Old Bar has changed many times over the last twenty years, as I’ve previously mentioned. The first time I experienced its current incarnation was a bit of a disappointment. I had wandered in with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised to see that at least the old, familiar furniture remained. I have a certain attachment to some of the these tables, having done some of my best work while getting grievously overserved at them.
Taking our seats and waiting on the terrible service (also held over from the old days), my friend became quiet. Looking around nervously, he seemed to be inspecting the other clientele, a worried look starting to paint itself on his face.
“Does everybody look sick and sad to you?” he asked.
Understanding immediately what he was thinking, I looked around frantically until I found a current menu. Ripping it open, I scanned the contents urgently: cafe latte*, milk* chai, salad. I looked down for the asterisk meaning, and had my worst fears confirmed. Goddam bar had gone vegan!
I know, you’re asking yourself: Wut? A vegan bar in Germany?? Afraid so, lads. Despite all the best meat products of the world at their fingertips, these dorks had gone for the Globohomo line. They’ll be serving cricket burgers within 3 years, mark my words.
In the old days, this was a Finnish bar, so they always served shitty food. Who the fuck eats Finnish?
Welcome to the end of 2023, and the beginning of 2024. The outgoing year wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of a year for humanity, from what I gather, but personally I did alright.
After living in England for 16 nice and easy years, I’ve moved back to southern Germany. Mainly this is to be near my wife’s family. During the godforsaken lockdowns we were completely cut off from both our families, stuck on an island while assclowns like Boris and Merkel decided who we could see and when. God damn, it still pisses me off.
Now we can flout the rules with impunity, whether sneaking a cheeky Mother’s Day hug in while the cops are looking the other way. Or taking the dog for two walks in a day instead of the allotted one. Being a rebel is not what it used to be, let me tell you.
Moving back to Germany feels sort of like coming home. Not all the way home, to be sure, but probably closer to moving your way from Limbo back up to the Snow Level, or maybe even to the Hotel Level. It’s a big adjustment, but I don’t really feel it every day. I slipped back into most of my early-2000s habits quite easily. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting in the same pub, at the same table even, that I sat in while I wrote the majority of my posts up until 2007. The bar has changed many things, but the furniture is not one of them.
It was pretty easy going immigrating this time around, much easier than my first trip. I already speak the language, have a job, and am married to a German lady. This year I chatted in an easy manner with the immigration officials, got all my stamps, and had a proper visa within weeks of my arrival. I was here for ten years back in the day, eight of which were a tense Mexican standoff with their version of ICE, gruff bureaucrats looking for the slightest excuse to ship my ass back to America where I belong.
While 2023 might have been a catastrophic mess for most of humanity, I wouldn’t have noticed personally — that is, were I not addicted to social media shitposting and getting into political arguments with my parents after binge-drinking. That is my own personal Information Superhighway, one that is paved with bad habits and hurtful intent. So from that lofty perch, I gathered that humanity had something of a rough one.
Well I tell you something, Bucko: The solution to the 2016-2023 problem is not going to be 2024. Things are going to get worse before they get better. I miss the days when everybody just worried about things in America being batshit crazy. This time around, shit is hitting the fan all around Europe as well: France, Germany, even normally reliable Poland are all gearing up for a knockdown-drag out year. They don’t do it often, but when white people start getting all up in each other’s business shit can get crazy.
This is a list of running issues outstanding on the site:
[fixed] Blogroll now showing on index page
About box not showing on blog pages
Readability box shows on posts even when not logged in
Podcasts throws a 404
Gallery throws a 500 ("Invalid filter: 'thumbnail'")
[fixed] (unicode issue) Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Num comments / pingbacks should be in the post header above tags
Gallery even throws a 500 in the admin console when you go to “new Item”. Got to fix that. There’s not really another way to add an image to a post without that.
Post detail could be a little better:
- add an edit button
I have played this game a little bit, getting through the first couple of missions and maybe spending a grand total of 3-4 hours. I have never "gotten into it" as they say, and generally don't have a high opinion of it.
I hope this will be like a couple of other recent attempts, though, where I start playing and them I'm all like, "oooh, now I get it.". Good examples would be Cyberpunk and Vampire Survivors.
Expectations
This game has lots of commentary and relevance to today's world, more so than I myself had 10 years ago, last time I played it. I expect my interest in the story to overpower my lack of interest in the general gameplay.
On the other hand, I really don't like hyper stealth games where I am constantly getting killed until I figure everything out.
Nevertheless, I am going to give it the college try, and this time intend to take notes and try to understand what is happening amongst the various characters and entities within the game.
I think I'll look around online for a bit of lore contexting, just to make sure I don't have to play the first game to understand all this BS.
[fixed] Creating a post appears to ignore the publish / draft setting; posted as published
[fixed] Create Post with New Category Creates the category correctly, but doesn't add the category to the post; converting back to draft works as designed
[fixed] Create Post with existing category assigns the catogory
Pasting a photo into a post fails to upload it
Posts defined as Pages are show alongside blog posts
Embedded media in posts (when URLs are posted for example) cause an error, but post is added successfully
[fixed] Can't upload images for some reason; I think this needs to be moved over to xgallery (expects a record of all uploaded content, I guess, and not just a URL provided at upload time). According to the logs, this is a wpUploadFile call.
Aside: pasting a bunch of markdown into the wordpress client works pretty good, converting headers, etc. Will need to try when it has a link
[fixed] The "post format" option when publishing is not available. Need to look into where this would come from (getOptions?)
Moving post to Trash does not work (“wp.deletePost not supported”)
[fixed] Updating a post with multiple categories leaves it assigned to one category (the old one?)
[fixed]Changing category on existing post doesn’t save the new category. it appears that wp.updatePost doesn’t handle categories well.
I bought this game early in the 360 cycle, and bounced right off it. I've probably put 5 or 6 hours into it, which is a slow bounce. But bounce I do, and I've retried it at least twice.
It's vintage remedy, though, and seems to be almost as good as max payne. I like the story, and would love to see where it ends up. The mechanics are good but frustrating as hell when you lose.
Expectations
I think I'll get into the groove of the mechanics and enjoy it a bit more than before now that I have the goal to actually fihnish it. I look forward to learning more about the story. I might have to take notes this time around.
Versions
This is an Xbox 360 exclusive for the original version, I believe. Let me look that up real quick.
Actually, there's a 360 release, but looks like a re-release for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Series. I believe the Windows/Steam release is the original version, while these others may be the remake.
I'm not really that interested in the remake, as the graphics / sound of the old version were fine for me. I'm a simple man.
The Steam version might be interesting to try out on the Steam Deck, I guess. Could be something. It costs £11.39 on its own, £15.49 with extras. Might be worth purchasing, as the graphics are better and there's the option to use a mouse, should I decide to do that. Plus, I already own it on Xbox, so where's the fun in not buying somethin.
I never played Disney's Aladdin back when it was current on the Genesis, but I did see the movie. I may have seen the game at the time, but I don't remember it. That was right after my tenure at Kaybee Toys ended, and without an employee discount it was unlikely to enter my possession.
I've tried this one out in emulation, and it's a rollicking good time. I am looking foward to exploring it.
Expectation
This is one of those platformers that current "retroid" indie games aspires to, from my short time trying it out. I expect to get into it, and enjoy it at least as much as the other Disney games of the time like Castle of Illusion. I want to enjoy this one, and if possible finish it.
A few years ago, I was suffering a bout of what the doctors refer to as Hemiparesis. In my particular case, the right side of my body was about 30% paralytic, with the muscular degeneration and tingly weirdness you would expect from such a condition; i.e., enough to make everyday functions uncomfortable, but not enough for unlimited visits by the Stranger.
As part of the diagnosis, a crown-to-waist MRI was requested by the head neurologist on the case. He suspected a slipped disc in my neck or upper back, and wanted to have a look around the works. He was confident, and probably would have preferred vivisection judging by the smug expression and little round glasses he wore, but the fools in the myopic scientific community would have called him mad, mad, so went instead with the MRI.
Elisson describes the process as pleasant, at least to people of his philosophical bent. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. It started innocently enough, with the warnings about being in a gigantic magnet and the effects it could have on your body. Things like ripping a pacemaker right out of your chest, dragging with it the attached heart, still beating as electric jolts continue, the device none the wiser that it is only pumping air.
Before they fed me to this monster, I was allowed to pick some music to listen to during the process. Figuring I would come across as more intellectual, and that Hank Williams probably was not one of the options, I asked for classical music. The headphones they give you obviously can't be conventional headphones, as those are based on magnetic impulses being transferred along metal cables; the twirling magnets would spin the cables around you, pulling tight until your body was crushed, shooting blood out your ears and nostrils and fingertips as you spun around in circles and nurses screamed and your loved ones banged on the glass until they fainted at the sight of what remained of you.
As I slid into the tube strapped to a table top, I found myself wondering if I had forgotten that I had metallic hip implants, or if the metal fillings I have in a few molars might be ferromagnetic. I could see my teeth getting pulled out of the gums and right through my cheeks, clacking against the tube enclosure, swirling around as they chased the giant magnetic loops that were twirling behind the plastic walls.
The table top locked into place, and everything was quiet. Then the music started. MRI headphones sound different, transferring the music as they do through a long tube, which is attached to little paper cones next to your ears. The result is unsettling; scratchy, distorted carnival music heard from a great distance, distorted by echo. The deep, bone-rattling boom, boom, boom coming from the machinery spinning around you shudders beneath it, out of sync with the music and causing a low-level unease that grows until you're spending all of your energy not to freak the fuck out.
The whole thing last either thirty minutes or a thousand years, depending on whom you ask. The output was a little animated slideshow that started from the top of my skull and ended at the sacrum, neat cross-sections of all the vile giblets that fill us and keep the meat moving. It showed no blockages to the network cabling, so the neurologist sent me to have an electromyogram. I can only assume this was done as punishment for debunking his original diagnosis.
EMGs are weird, mad-scientist puppetry best left undescribed.
I hate being ignored more than just about anything. Anything besides the sound of fingernail clippers, that is. Not nail scissors, mind you, those I have no issue with. But nail clippers drive me right up the fucking wall. I literally can't even be in the house when someone is knips knips knipsing away at their nails. When I hear that noise, it feels like my spine is trying to slither out my back and down my leg, looking for a hole to hide in until the coast is clear. But I digress.
I really try to listen when people are talking to me. If someone walks up to my desk at work, I'll acknowledge their presence; and if I'm busy or talking on the phone, I'll make awkward head tilts, hand gestures, and otherwise contort myself just to make sure they understand that I see them there, waiting to talk to me. If I know there's an SMS or iMessage waiting on my response, it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. I have no peace until I read it, respond to it, and get it off my back.
Maybe my hatred of being ignored is simply jealousy. Perhaps I'm affronted by the fact that other people can knowingly have my message sitting there in their inbox, them not giving a moment's consideration to something that would drive me to distraction.
If I walk up to someone who is on the phone, and they don't so much as look in my direction, maybe it's the admiration that I feel for their sense of utter detachment that makes me want to strangle them where they sit, preferably with their own telephone cord, should there be one. This is a downside to the ubiquity of wireless technologies: the absence of ready-made garrotes in everyday situations
So yeah, being ignored and using nail-clippers. Oh, and blowing your nose loudly in public. Fuck people, they do vex me so.
I opened a bottle and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
my town and my world behind me.
I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
and dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a bottle and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
and followed their road with its bumps and bends
to the happily ever after.
I finished my bottle and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
but I have a bottle inside me.
With apologies to Julia Donaldson: that last part is a little creepy.
I was sitting in the train this morning, listening to music and reading something on my tablet. This was all according to my morning routine, a quiet and comfortable place, with nothing more serious to worry about than a flat iPad battery.
About 10 minutes before we reached the final stop, where I would transfer to the train that takes me onward to my own final stop, a pretty girl collapsed.
She didn't go down like a sack of potatoes, mind you. She was a class act and just sort of gently leaned, and kept on leaning. The lady next to her realized what was happening pretty quickly. She calmly caught her and gently laid her out in the floor, right by my feet. As far as collapses go, it was orderly, graceful even, like a slow-motion stage-faint.
Once she was safely on the floor, calls went out for anyone who might know first aid. A twenty-something guy in immodest cycling pants confidently stepped forward and started giving orders. He checked her pulse, made sure she was breathing, and went about arranging her body so she wouldn't choke on her tongue, should dire things indeed be happening. But she was breathing fine, and lay there on her side with her hands beneath her face, sleeping peacefully. Right by my feet.
I wasn't sure what to do. Not in a flustered or chaotic way, more like when you're speaking in public and can't figure out what to do with your hands. It's been well over twenty years since I took first aid, and I don't think you're supposed go straight to leeches and trepanning any more to treat these types of imbalances of the humors. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat there and watched her sleep.
This felt creepy almost immediately, so I turned back to my reading. I was in the middle of a Tumblr post by Cory Doctorow, something about cyberfreiheit or Disney's Haunted Mansion most likely, and wanted to get to the end of it. This was when my iPad died on me. For just a split-second, sitting there watching the device's spinning wheel of hibernation, I felt like the universe was conspiring to make me miserable, that life could be cruel and unfair. Then I remembered the young lady who was laid out unconscious at my feet, felt guilty, and checked up on her progress.
She was sitting up but groggy, with people gathered around, asking her if she knew her own name and who was Prime Minister. I realized that if I fainted and people started asking me these kinds of questions, I wouldn't be able to get more than 50% of them correct. There would probably be a lot of sad, slow head-shaking about the young man who was so out of it he doesn't who the Mayor of London was or who chuffed the lorry. Luckily, and to her credit, she was more up to speed on UK current events and was fine, if rattled. We arrived a few minutes late but I made my transfer without any hassles.
I entered the connecting train and sat down for the final 45 minute train ride into work, wondering what I was going to do with myself without a telescreen to stare at. Right before leaving the station, someone sat down across from me: it was Sleeping Beauty, and though she was ambulant she was definitely looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
I wasn't sure if her passing out on the morning train was something I should bring up. I thought it could be an ice-breaker, maybe, a way to get a conversation going and pass the time. But then I thought, she might ask what I did to help, seeing as she had been laying on top of my shoes. I was front row center to her collapse, and not only had no impulse to jump in and help, but would probably have done more harm than good had I tried.
So I put on my headphones and pretended to listen to music, sneaking the occasional glance to see if she was still shaking and pale. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.
WTF, climate, it's almost the end of April. The sun finally came out today, and the sky is blue. But it's cold. It should be 65 degrees and breezy outside. May's coming up, you fucker, now make some effort out there.
An advertisement for the Kantine bar in Augsburg, Germany. It's a bar located in the abandoned American military base close to the town.
According to legend, the city was threatening to shut them down for years. Once, they even had a closing date. But they were given a reprieve. This postcard is an invitation to the celebration party.
It has been raining cats and dogs. And there are snails. Snails and slugs are everywhere. They creep around the garden at night, as expected. But they're also shameless, flaunting themselves all throughout the day.
When I go out to smoke at night, there's all too often the crunch underfoot, another escargot falls to the Croc, crushed to paste in his little home. I usually feel pretty bad about that.
Indeed, there's a veritable snail plague underway over here in England. I guess one should expect it, with rain every day for a quarter-year straight. I'm alright with it, to be honest, they don't bother me much. Except when I accidentally crunch them, that is. Then it kind of gets to me, makes me feel bad and clumsy.
But the little lady, she's a gardener, and sees things a bit differently. Gardeners tend to have that ruthless, detached streak in them that you only otherwise see in serial killers and cattle farmers. If some creature might get in the way of their ultimate goal, be that a coat made of women's skins or a milk quota, well, God help whatever that creature might be. Measures will be taken.
A couple of days ago, she decided it was time to spruce up the edges of the garden. Plants were bought, packed in little plastic grids, destined for a lifetime of loving care. For she's a generous gardener. New homes were made for them, all along the boundaries, between the other flowers. There was just one problem: The snails would be coming, and everybody knew it. She knew it.
She brought more than tulips home from the garden shop that day. She brought snail pellets, little bright blue nuggets of horror that she could strew about the garden. They looked scary enough on their own, but there should have been a warning on the bottle. A warning to all, that it contained scenes of Armageddon, of the End Times.
Since that day, a week ago, the garden has become a charnel pit of loathing. A multitude of nails and slugs and gastropodes of all descriptions lie writhing in their own secretions outside my house at this very moment.
Whenever I dare venture outside, their blank little eyestalks stare up at me, quivering, begging my help yet hopeless of salvation, dying in a pool of slime that used to be their bodies. And they have lain there since the butchery began. Every day, there are new piles of empty shells scattered on the flagstones, settling down into the horrifying masses of goo, the remnants of dozens or even hundreds of the slugs and snails that were drawn to the Blue Death before them.
I hope her flowers survive, I really do. But I can't help wonder: at what cost!
Looks like the little lady and I will be making a rare appearance at one of these here "blog" meetups. Looks like I'll need to get my tux out of the mothballs and polish my spats.
Anybody coming who might still have my blog in their RSS feeds?
Taco Bell is being sued for using the word "beef" in the advertising for their "beef" tacos.
Now, I'm not one of these people who would eat a beef taco in any restaurant without expecting there to be actual, honest-to-jeebus beef or some kind in it. I'm just not that cynical. I expect things to be what they say and do as they're told.
Careful analysis reveals, unfortunately, that Taco Bell's "seasoned beef" filling is duplicitous and not worth your trust:
"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers'
reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef
and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dear me. We should have seen this coming. Nevertheless, I feel unaffected as I haven't eaten at the Bell in years, and even then I was usually enjoying the (relatively harmless) Bean Burrito, with added sour cream to ensure receiving bespoke food items (Taco Bell ProTip).
So now we're left wondering: If it ain't beef. What is it then?
A second opinion may not be exactly what you're looking for. What for you is flawless and sublime might be unremarkable to those whose opinions matter to you. They might find the object of your opinions quaint, lackluster, or, worst of all, not worth commenting upon.
These things can be borne somewhat when the knowledge is yours alone. This
is why you must carefully consider with whom you're going to share your
likes and your dislikes. Or anything, really.
Take a good, long look before speaking.
My god sits in the back of the limousine
My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane
My god pouts on the cover of the magazine
My god's a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene
I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype
I listened to everyone now i know that everyone was right
I'll be there for you as long as it works for me
I play a game
It's called insincerity
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
I am every fucking thing and just a little more
I sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
And when i suck you off not a drop will go to waste
It's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste, yeah
(asskisser)
Starfuckers
Starfuckers
Starfuckers, inc.
Starfuckers
All our pain
How did we ever get by without you?
You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Don't you?
Now i belong i'm one of the chosen ones
Now i belong i'm one of the beautiful ones
I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:
How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.
I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).
There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?
The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.
But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.
People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.
If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.
What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.
Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.
