Archive

• Week in Review – 2024-09-152024-09-15
  So Hell Week was quickly followed by Fire Week here in Southern California, as several pillars of smoke rose at once into the sky. There was the Airport Fire down in Orange County, The massive Line Fire over near Big Bear that looked like a volcanic eruption, and the Bridge Fire near me in the Mt. Baldy area. I was driving up from Costa Mesa on the 55 on Tuesday and could see all three driving North from there. I don’t think I’d ever seen a sight quite like that before. I initially had no idea that there was a large fire near Mt. Baldy until someone from work called to ask if I was alright. I had some ash on my truck that morning, but I thought it was from the Line Fire over in San Bernardino that the wind blew over. That’s what I get for ignoring the local news before heading out, I guess. I still didn’t even see it that morning on the way out, so I figured it was small, but it had grown tremendously by noon when I took the picture below near Diamond Bar: We watched it grow in real time all afternoon and it’s rapid intensification right in front of our eyes was shocking. Luckily for us, the winds shifted north and pushed the fire away from us, which turned out to be very unlucky for the folks over in Wrightwood. The following days cooled down significantly and the humidity increased, which I think have helped with the fires, but they’re still going with minimal containment as I type this. In gardening news, the extreme heat killed off a couple of my plants, but my lone radish in the raised bed somehow survived the heat. My rose also began to bloom as well, so some good news there at least. If it stays cool, I may think about putting out the Halloween decorations, but I think the 10 day forecast shows temps getting back into the 90s again the week after next, so I may hold off until the first week of October. During our garage clean-up last week to make space for a new hobby work area, I found a box containing a few hundred loose baseball, Magic, Pokemon, and other cards. I spent a good chunk of the week sorting and properly storing them, and found some real gems. I doubt any of them are worth any real money, but that’s not the point of these anymore. A lot of the baseball cards are from the late ’80s and early ’90s when I was teenager and collecting them, and the other cards belonged to my son when he was a little guy playing those games in the late ’90s and early ’00s. The trip down memory lane while organizing and sliding the cards into their little plastic cases was awesome. A Derek Jeter rookie card from a ’93 Upper Deck collection, a Tim Raines rookie card from Topps, and more. But my favorite thing was just seeing some of my favorite ballplayers from that era, like Doc Gooden, Dale Murphy, Tom Glavine, and good ole’ Mookie Wilson. It reminded me of seeing a lot of these guys play when they were in the minor leagues, and then following their major league careers afterward. I saw Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry play for the Tidewater Tides in Norfolk, who were affiliated with the New York Mets at the time. It also meant I saw a lot of the Atlanta Braves crew as well, since their Triple AAA affiliate played out of Richmond and they had several series against Norfolk during the season. I was a hardcore baseball fan until the 1994 strike that cancelled the World Series. The spell was broken after that and I never followed baseball too much afterward. I didn’t watch another professional game until all of the players who were active that season had retired or were no longer playing. Basketball filled the hole for the remainder of the ’90s, and football to a lesser extent, but no other sport has ever captured my imagination or love the way baseball did when I was young. I could tell you the ERA of just about every pitcher for every season they pitched, along the batting averages of most players for their careers as well, and I loved to replay games in my head by reading the box scores. But that ended abruptly in August of ’94. Even now when I watch it, I enjoy the games, but there’s always a level of emotional detachment. I’m happy for the players when they do well and I nominally root for the Dodgers, but I don’t feel invested anymore. I couldn’t tell you anyone’s stats, other than knowing whether someone’s having a good year or not (Shohei Ohtani being the exception, because well, he is exceptional). All in all, I think it was for the best, since I essentially forced myself to pursue other interests I otherwise wouldn’t have given any attention to, had I not fallen out with the sport. It also really drove me into more nerdy/geeky pursuits that I eventually explored with my son, who didn’t have to grow up with a “sports dad” — a lot of my nostalgia is for the things that he enjoyed in his youth, like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Halo, Spongebob, and just about every Star Wars collectible card game that was ever released. I think it was a good trade.
• Rothrocked2024-09-14

  I’ve edited this sequence to a lot of songs, but Hole’s Celebrity Skin has always been the one that fits the best. This is from the classic action film Above the Law starring Cynthia Rothrock and Karen Sheperd

• ZAR2024-09-14

  Is he the inspiration for the image on the Shroud of Turin? The greatest triathlete of our age? All we know is his name is ZAR

   

• Can Love Blossom on the Sales Floor2024-09-12

  I edited this together from an old Apple sales video. There’s a point where they decided they wanted there to be some romantic tension between the sales guy and the lady, so I edited those scenes together into a montage some appropriate background music.

  Also, find someone who looks at you the way she looks at printouts.

• Week in Review – 2024-09-092024-09-09
  It’s a hot one. Like seven inches from the midday sun. For the last week. Day after day of heat so bad it makes you want to slap the people who were whining about the clouds and pleasant weather back in June. I’m gonna have to take out a second mortgage for the electric bill this month. I can feel it. A handful of companies are belching shit into the atmosphere while billionaires and the elite fly around on private jets, so thanks to all of you for this. I’ll be over here using a paper straw, because a bunch of wankers think that makes a difference. In the midst of all this, I still managed to clean and organize my garage. Unlike most Californians, I actually use my garage to house my vehicle, but there’s enough room left over to store a bunch of other stuff, and if my life has taught me anything, it’s that Stuff abhors a vacuum and will expand to fill any empty space. My goal is to clear-out one small section of the garage and turn that into my hobby area to build and paint my Gunpla models. I just have to figure out how to get rid of some bulky items without selling an organ and using one of those junk removal services. The heat also had me wary about my patio garden that I recently put together. The heat knocked out all of my radishes, save one hardy survivor. I’ll let that one limp a long a little longer, but once the cooler weather starts in earnest, I might try planting some strawberries in that raised bed. My rose plant is apparently loving this shit and grew a new stem that went like a rocket over just a couple of days. It has a bud on it now and I’m just waiting for it to bloom. This rose plant produces nice pinkish-white blooms, like a zinfandel, and maybe I can get a good picture of it when it does. The basil is still growing and I’m amazed at how it already has a pleasant aroma even at this stage, but the parsley I planted is looking at me like, Release me.  I know, buddy, no one likes to hear this, but you’re basically just a guinea pig for me. Those who come after will benefit from the lessons learned raising you. As a first-born myself, know that I truly understand your pain. The Zinnia keeps growing onward and upward, but no signs of a bloom are yet to be found. Finally, I’m still playing Star Wars: Outlaws, which has become a heist story, so I’m all in on that. It’s a great time that reminds me of a good Playstation 2 era game. It also reminds me that they really don’t make the variety of games that they used to anymore. It’s either these 80 million dollar games that want to be a continuing service to keep you paying or indie games trading on retro visuals and themes, but man, we really had it good during that era. I’m sure the baboons screaming on Reddit and the other dark places of the world don’t help these days. How miserable do you have to be that you’re only happy when you have something to be angry about? When there’s a whole cottage industry of emotionally-stunted men making YouTube videos to exploit that infantile anger to enrich themselves. It’s like a bunch of toddlers being led around by weirdo first graders. A goddamned Dumb and Dumber ouroboros upon which the Creator Economy™ turns. At any rate, if the weather app on the phone is right, then the heatwave will break this week and cooler temperatures are coming. I hope so. I have a 5K coming up and I really don’t want to run in this heat.
• On Elon Musk’s Mars2024-09-08
  Elon Musk laughs at a 20 year old meme, then stops and glares at his ottoman. The Martian X team member upon whose back Musk is resting his feet freezes in panic. To trigger the mercurial leader’s wrath was to court termination. Quite literally. For everything your eyes beheld was his. The walls were Elon’s, as was the roof over your head and the deck beneath your feet. He was the computer console that awakened you from power sleep, and he owned the lights that dimmed at your appointed 15 minute rest period. His dominion encompassed the food you ate, the water you drank, and the receptacle that received the contents that left your body. Oh yes, even your waste was his, as was your body itself. Once the spark that animated it ceased, the patterns and memories captured by the neural net fitted to every team member belonged to him well. Nothing went to waste on Musk’s Mars. For it was all his. Everything you saw and heard and tasted and felt were Elon’s. They were Elon. He was all around you. He was quite literally the World, down to the last molecule of air that entered your lungs — precious air he metered to those who deserved it. Who performed. Who gave every last bit of devotion to to Him. Those who did not make the cut were cast out of Eden to the planet’s surface. Losers. Moochers. Scum. The glare quickly passes as the team member quickly adjusts to the preferred position, holding Elon’s legs at the desired height and angle. ‘Twas but a minor annoyance as something else catches his attention and he moves on to the next trivial novelty. The team member would perform for another day in Paradise, securing humanity’s continued future in space. Elon’s future.
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture Trading Cards2024-09-03

  A long, long time ago, my parents bought me a couple of Topps card packs for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which had just been released. I was a fan of the series (I was Spock for Halloween when I was 3 years old), so my Dad must’ve thought it would be cool to spend 40 cents to give me 20 trading cards.

  I somehow managed to keep at least a few of those original cards, but I always wondered if I could ever find enough to complete a set. I thought it would involve a lot of searching on eBay, but I found a booth at Frank & Son (a local place that’s like a permanent vendor’s room like the kind you’d find at a Comic-Con or other genre convention) and they were selling a sealed box of cards from ST: TMP.

  So I snatched that up quick, fast, and in a hurry.

  After going through all the packs (I did not chew the gum that came with them, though it still had its original color and cardboard texture), I finally completed the entire set. One of the most fascinating things about the set is it features characters that did not make the cut in the movie (not even in the background), so it’s a neat little production time capsule as well.

  

  

• Ron Swanson, The Ultimate Ninja2024-09-03

  What if, prior to moving to Pawnee, Ron Swanson pursued a quest to become the ultimate Ninja?

• Week in Review 2024-09-022024-09-02
  It was a whirlwind week leading into the Labor Day weekend with everyone trying to get everything off their desks before the holiday, so work was chaotic most of the week until Friday. One of the great things about working in California is that for the most part, everyone pretty much agrees that the weekend starts sometime after 2PM on Fridays, and sometimes earlier before holiday weekends, so it was thankfully dead most of the day. The dead time coincided with the release of Star Wars: Outlaws, a game that I bought off mostly positive word-of-mouth from sources I trust and it’s turned out to be a pretty fun game. It mixes game-play elements of Metal Gear Solid (sneaking missions reign supreme in this game), Assassin’s Creed, and Uncharted in an enjoyable way. My favorite moment so far came out of left field, especially since I thought I had a good hold on the tone and presentation of the game until this moment. I saw a prompt about getting a meal in the game and hit it, when suddenly a quirky food preparation scene straight out of an anime started, and then it built on that with a QuickTime eating sequence that took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting a “quickly press the correct controller button displayed on screen” moment, since nothing like that had been in the game up to this moment, but it seemed pretty forgiving by allowing second chances and the entire thing was delightfully charming. It was like a moment out of a Yakuza game. Admittedly, I’ve been playing the game on Story mode since I’m an adult with a job. Like everyone else, I play life on Challenging mode, and I don’t need that nonsense in my games, so I play on the mode that makes the game the most enjoyable to play. It’s an ostensibly open world game, which typically means you’re free to travel around a particular zone and complete whatever quests you want in the order you want, while also discovering new quests or items out in the world on your own volition. The problem with open world games is that they’ve been dominated by game studio Ubisoft over the last decade or so, and they have a very particular style that’s become tired and formulaic over the years, but this game dispenses with nearly all of their usual cliche’s and does something new (for them). It’s been a refreshing change of pace. It’s the type of game that I’ve always looked for when playing an MMO. I’ve been playing online multiplayer games since Shadow of Yserbius on Sierra Online’s ImagiNation Network back in the early ’90s. But the one that really caught my attention was Star Wars Galaxies, an MMO that was truly a sandbox game with elements that were novel for the genre. Most MMOs are essentially theme park games where you choose what type of role you’re going to play — Tank, Damage Dealer, or Healer — that you can mostly level-up by yourself, but eventually must group with others to complete dungeons and defeat bosses. Galaxies was different in that you weren’t on rails, either in the game play environment or what job you had. No one was locked-in to a particular role, as you could level-up in any of the dozen or so jobs the game offered in whatever way you preferred. On top of that, there was an entire player economy that emerged from those jobs, as people could open their own storefronts and serve as vendors offering materials, clothing (of their own design), healing items, and character enhancements. It’s the only MMO that truly offered almost complete freedom of play that none has offered since. And I’ve tried almost all of them. The parts of MMOs that I’ve always enjoyed most is exploring new areas and doing things on my own, like I could with Galaxies. It turns out I really don’t like playing with other people. I don’t want to join a guild or a clan or whatever a game wants to call a group of people who squabble all the time about “loot” and who gets what after grinding end game content to get good gear. Outlaws is the first game I’ve played in a long while that scratches that Galaxies itch, by offering what’s essentially my favorite part of MMOs — exploration, discovery, solo play — while also providing a degree of freedom in where I want to go and what I want to do. Plus, I never having to group with a bunch of people to complete a dungeon and see the end of a particular quest line. Obviously, the game is a theme park, keeping you within boundaries and guiding you to where it wants to you to go. No contemporary game by a major studio is going to offer the absolute freedom that Star Wars Galaxies provided ever again. Even SWG eliminated all of that by radically revamping the game and scrapping everything that everyone loved about it and turning it into a complete different game. It’s a rarity for me to find a solo game that reminds me of my favorite elements of MMOs that also maintains my interest over the long term. I’m only a few hours into it, so I don’t know if its elements will become too repetitive or rote after awhile, but so far I’m enjoying it and the long weekend has given me plenty of time to enjoy it.
• The Saga of Ninja Guy2024-08-30

  I love old ninja movies, especially the ones released by Joseph Lai out of Hong Kong that typically spliced two separate films together to create a new movie. They would typically use a gritty drama or historical epic as the core movie, with scenes of westerners dressed in colorful ninja garb sprinkled throughout that had little, if anything, to do with the main narrative.

  I made this quick edit from 1989’s Full Metal Ninja that actually went above and beyond the usual template and tried to actually tie the two different movies together (even though the plots still had nothing to do with each other):