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Saturday, September 15, 2018

Goddamn, Destiny 2. That's good stuff.

Say hi to Michael Salvatori!


Maybe it's just because I've been putting up with mediocre synth for the last 56 hours of my off time but I heard a piece of music in Destiny last night that is just so good. Share with my cello playing dad good. I had to tell him it was from an Israeli indie film or he wouldn't have bothered but he liked it. 

Here's Our New Beginning from Curse of Osiris:





Saturday, September 1, 2018

Zen and the art of Diablo.


Thanks, Breath-Art!
I've been dieting. When I say I've been dieting I mean I changed everything about what I eat and drink for 3 1/2 years. It's been a long road to it's current incarnation but family members have hesitated to recognize me so I'd call that progress. My diet is as incredibly simple as it is agonizingly painful. 4 days a week I eat what I want. But the other 3 I stay under 800 calories.

Bad days where I'm at work I've found I can keep busy and thus I can keep my mind off things like bread. Sweet, precious, crumbly, toasted, bread. But bad days where I'm off? It's a more delicate operation. Sometimes I have stuff to do, friends to see movies with, furniture to rearrange, trails to run, but that only takes up so much time in a day. There will come a moment where my stomach cries for 12 lbs. of pesto sausage penne and I must drive the demon out.

I've been a fan of "loot grinder" games since the first torchlight; Obama's second year seems like a lifetime ago dosn't it? The best of them challenged me till I broke. They all had an end game that would always smoke my ass. It wasn't as discouraging as that sounds. I wouldn't give up on a Borderlands character until at least two full runs. I was ready to try something else by then but I could have kept going for twice as long and not run out of game. I'm always impressed by that. It proves you've made a loop so successful some people would choose to play it for the rest of their lives. Millions of people played Diablo II last year. That's from W's first term.

My point is these loot grinders whether they be an action RPG like Diablo or 1st person shooter in Borderlands transition to a zen experience if you play them enough. Something that's fun but only requires 40% of your attention so that you can listen to music and make a plan to get a better job. I sh*t thee not I got over serious emotional baggage by finally rolling the perfect critical chance stat for a necklace all my characters could share.

Maybe that sounds sad. But to me that was tangible progress in an indifferent and occasionally cruel world. It was a little project I worked on while mining a vein of John Le Carre audio books on youtube. Somewhere in the middle of our kind of traitor I looked up and noticed I'd maxed 6 characters in Diablo 3. I had cracked the end game while gaining 3 lbs. of lean muscle. The culprit of my pudge all these years ended up being sheer boredom.

In the time under my digital bodhi tree I've listened to nearly 80% of the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, everything by Umberto Eco, an embarrassing amount of Miss Marple and I bought a suit 4 sizes smaller that the last. I have meditated on myself, my writing, and my treatment of others; becoming a better person with a firmer grip on my dignity. I owe much to my mantra:



Monday, August 27, 2018

I feel like I should want to watch Hereditary.

...this seems nice.

I've got it. I've paid for it. I want to see what all the fuss is about but... I know too much of the ending's broad strokes. It's a bummer to put it lightly and I don't feel like going through that. I find politics much more terrifying right now than a film could be. For once I see a horror film largely being called great, something that happens only once every 4 years, and I'm good.  My past self is sucking his teeth at me, knowing I've become something I hate.

But I like how guacamelee makes me feel. I'm gonna stick with that!

 


Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Everyday can't be the best day


But some days you try to use a coupon for what you think is for $11 off a $45 prescription and it turns out that's what it cost now. $11. For a year. Also my bosom podcasting buddy Chance gifted me Gucamelee! 2 an hour before I was going to buy it myself. On account of me magically saving nearly $400 a year. Remember that? I do.


Monday, August 20, 2018

Disenchantment's theme is sneakily great.


It's not as immediately catchy as Groening's past projects but the more I hear it over the course of the season the more I like it. It's a gentle mariachi/klezmer swirl and it's a lot like the show. It may not blow your mind immediately but keep listening. There's got more layers than it lets on.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Chilledcow Radio

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5b48bb7cc15b9700072bf196/lede/1531510329339-lofihiphop.jpeg?crop=0.9029535864978903xw%3A1xh%3Bcenter%2Ccenter&resize=2000%3A*

So as always I'm late to a party, or at least later than a vice puff piece on one of youtube's best kept secrets. It's a bunch of chill hip hop beats looped endlessly day and night while a studious girl with googly eyes on her headphones writes in her diary.

I wish I had an echo or something so that this played in my apartment all the time. The songs can get repetitive at times but after a while I started to dig it. They're like mantras and I hear them even when I'm not listening to them, if that makes any sense. It's audible prozac, is what I'm saying. I hope y'all can do chilledcow a solid and like and subscribe:

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Danny Mcbride is coming for the Coen brothers.

Image result for mcbride arizona

You don't make a movie like this and call it Arizona without evoking two of the brother's best movies and you know what? I'm all in on a movie like this written by comedy writers. Not that the Coens aren't funny but over the years (the tail end of eastbound and Vice principles) Mcbride got DAMN funny. And that's exactly what this looks like. Plus where the hell has David Allen Grier been?