Wide Ruled - 11 Entries
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I GOTTA TALK ABOUT TWIN PEAKS....ok i just got out of a ~2hr discussion about twin peaks with interested parties....but i'm gonna talk more i don't care. there may be twin peaks spoilers in this entry. beware. okkkk uhhh for context: i had seen twin peaks partially years ago when my brother was watching it but i had never given it my full attention let's just say. and ooooh surprise surprise i had to go to WASHINGTON. the US state. and i realized i had to watch twin peaks before then....it became absolutely urgent. i had 3 days to do this mind you. twin peaks season 1 and 2 are 24 hours long, almost exactly. i watched 24 hours of television in 3 days. mostly 2 days actually. i think i entered a sort of fugue state around the end of day 2. i've never watched that much television in my LIFE....i'm not sure i recommend it! i have my duties of course (#myduties) so i elected to miss out some sleep. watching twin peaks sleep deprived probably damaged my brain somehow. but enough about that.
ok well i guess i will elaborate on some points i was just making slash trying to make. for one i think i was led to believe that this show was much more complicated than it actually is. in the material sense, the story is literally just handed to you....i think the absurdist nature of the program leads people to believe that it's some sort of complex riddle that you must train in the swiss alps meditating under waterfalls for years before you can even BEGIN to comprehend. which. sure there's some vague bullshit thrown in there, and i'm SURE you could get really into analyzing the #meaning of the poems or the characters or the hidden symbolism. if you tried. but i think you'd kinda be missing the point.
this has been my experience with a lot of lynch's work i find. the main ideas of the story are very clearly communicated i think. you can interpret the stories different ways, but that's the case with any story. anyways. twin peaks is very obviously about sexual abuse within the family structure, and on a larger scale about the nature of 'good' and 'evil' with regards to the human condition. if bob is a pure, destructive evil...he represents that which purportedly lies within each man that drives them to commit crimes like murder and rape. this is stated outright. i think lynch is grappling with the idea that within all people is the capacity to do such evils, from the perspective of a normal person who is not inclined to. you might expect someone like leo or ben horne to do these things, but never leland palmer. from the perspective of someone 'untainted' or good, the drive to rape or kill is completely foreign (the foreign entity of the demon, bob), but you still know that you are capable of it. that is where the fear central to the philosophical stakes of the story comes from. people, specifically men in this story, do evil things. you can do evil things too. you, as someone unfamiliar with these 'evils', you are scared of your own capabilities. you don't know if somehow, at some point in your life, you will understand the wish to hurt people and give into it. you don't know if it can just creep up on you like that, if it's inevitable. if it could just suddenly take you over, like bob does to leland. and like leland does, if you will destroy the things you love.
so i think that's the main idea of twin peaks. not understanding the desire to hurt people, and because of that being scared that you might do so. i don't think i've gotten my point across perfectly but. hopefully we can all understand...but of course that's just what i think. onwards. laura palmer must've been busy as hell!!!!! how does she make time in her day to A. go to school B. have 2!! boyfriends C. volunteer with meals on wheels D. tutor josie E. use cocaine F. be a prostitute G. go to therapy and H. work at horne's department store. AND she's being mentally attacked by demons and has to fend them off. and of course everyone in the town knows and loves her and she's homecoming queen yadda yadda yadda. and she's friends with donna of course. truly a girl of many hats. how does she pull it off!!!! well. anyways. the idea of laura as the perfect daughter, perfect student, perfect girlfriend etc etc etc is obviously partially used for shock value as in 'but she has this SECRET DARK SIDE oh em gee' and also used for the setup of the story as in 'this horrible thing happening to this symbol of innocence is the inciting incident for this sleepy town 'waking up' to the horrors that lie beneath it....oh em gee' but also i believe it ties in to what the story is trying to say about 'good and evil'...i haven't nailed this down yet i think but. the idea that laura was an innocence that was corrupted....that evil is naturally drawn to such innocences....that both extremes end of the spectrum of good and evil converge...'both the best people and the worst people are drawn to the dead dog'. you see.
not that i subscribe to the idea that laura was so innocent of course. it's made clear she was a troubled soul from the start. i have more to say about laura though. soooo at the beginning of the story, the viewer knows about as much about laura as the average citizen of twin peaks, or at least they can extrapolate as much. she's the sweet, smart, popular, beautiful girl that everyone knows and everyone loves. you don't necessarily suspect anything other than that. then, as the story goes on, of course it is revealed to you her various secrets. her affairs. her addiction. her sexual perversions. her suicidality. all things she kept secret from everyone she knew. 'secrets' is a big deal in the story, of course. as a concept. donna speaks of secrets and lying often, often in contrast to how laura viewed them. but that's a little besides the point. i feel that all of her secrets being laid bare before the town, or at least before the police and her friends and family, gives the viewer a great sense of perversion in how much you pry into her personal affairs. these are things she obviously wanted to keep secret. not only does the nature of these secrets make you somewhat uneasy, but the sense that you are violating her wishes as well. this is one of the things that i believe makes laura palmer such an enduring character. the show is not realistic by any means. the acting style is farrr from naturalistic. but laura, someone who you never directly meet in the story, carries a deep sense of 'realness' with her, i think. mostly because she never appears as herself, and therefore she only exists in life in the viewer's mind. she's the ultimate example of 'haunting the narrative'. you are by design constantly thinking about her, but you don't know what she was really like. you can only speculate. it becomes a little parasocial i think. and this among other reasons is why she is so beloved. she's just completely indelible....i need to frame her portrait on my wall methinks.
man i gotta shut up soon lest this turn into a 4-pager. but yes. lettuce talk about the style of twin peaks. in that it is very much mimicking the style of a soap opera. most dialogue (and pretty much everything cooper says) is just pure 'lines'. it's filled to the brim with melodrama. secret love affairs. family drama. criminals. demons posessing people. people dying and coming back to life. people falling into comas. men gone crazy. nadine's whole deal. star-crossed lovers coming together after a brutal murder. schemes like catherine's to burn down the mill or bobby and shelly's to collect the insurance money. people hiding guns on their person and pulling them out in tense moments. secret doorways and hiding places. shady business dealings. etc etc etc etc etc. why do they do this? i honestly am not sure. it might just be for fun, and the idea that something as intellectual or supposedly deep as twin peaks would take on the style of something considered so low is worth exploring, why not. this aspect of the show is made obvious through the 'invitation to love' program, which i admit was a clever idea. honestly for the slower parts of the show it just feels like you're watching a soap opera, not something cleverly feigning the style of a soap opera. so there's that!
not that it's not entertaining though. it does get a little hard to keep track of, though!!! there are just soooooo many characters. i struggled a lot to remember the names. because most of the names are very common anglo american style names!! ed james jerry albert mike bobby bob hank jack ben pete mike andy dick harold. the list goes on. every time they introduced a new guy i groaned because there was anoooother name i had to remember. this is a criticism of mine. i also think the second half of the second season is much weaker than the rest of the show. once they stray from the laura palmer case it gets a lot harder to follow and loses a lot of its potency i find!! i think they should've focused on her case as it's supposed to be the point of the whole show. i was very invested in finding her killer, a lot of the characters were closely related to her and were pretty pointless once they moved on (coughcoughJAMES coughcoughcough), and that's why a lot of people tuned in...the reveal of leland palmer was very well done, and i think if the story were arranged differently they could've ended it there. the finale being where you finally find out who killed laura palmer would've been fantastic. and windom earle was just not the same i think we can all agree!
omg hiiiii david duchovny. i did NOT know he was in this. i almost screamed when he walked in in that wig. but yes i loooooooove denise because who wouldn't!!! i was prepared for the worst because twin peaks has a track record of using homosexuality for laughs and shock value so i didn't think this would be any different, but whaddya know...it was (i do believe she was added in order to add to the general ambience of 'wow this is such a quirky cast of characters, haha what'll this lynch guy think of next' but i didn't expect them to treat her as well as they did)! speaking of my favorite characters actually speaking of my LEAST favorite characters have i mentioned how much i hate james. he's just sooooo BORING !!!! smashes my fist into the wall. at least donna was doing some weird vigilante stuff and going all sandy from grease for no reason. but they were both pretty dull. maddy was ok though RIP!
anyways. everyone let's listen to 'fuck twin peaks' by bikini kill. i love that song. i wish it wasn't recorded on a calculator. TA TA!!
ohhhhh it's da 4th of July. US independence day. i was just outside wandering the fields looking at the fireworks...there were fireworks going off in every direction around my house. preddy cool. i looooooove me some wandering in the fields. it makes me feel like the girl with the pink dress from that one painting. except i don't lie down because i don't want to get lyme's disease. when i was little i thought it was called lime disease. what an absolute IDIOT ...mdr...
i feel like good things keep happening to me and it's kinda scary. like for the past 3 days or so good things keep happening.....it makes me feel like god suddenly started paying attention to me. scary. am i gonna die. something was hid in a secret compartment inSIDE. MYYYY HEARRRRRT. sorry i was singing that #inmyhead so i wrote it down as well.
i've started playing portal with my brother and not to be all 'one of the most acclaimed video games of all time is really good' but . it's really good. can anyone hear me? guys? ok this isn't funny anymore. guys? AAAHH gets got. by the getter. sorry i don't know where i was going with that one. let's forget about this paragraph ok?
hi. at some point i should probably add more music to that little music player. because right now it's just the same 5 they might be giants songs. from the same album. actually....i should add what you get because that's retroactively my favorite song from that album. what you get is sooooooo. ...... it's sogood. SOOO GOOD! does that reference make sense through text. i don't care. uhhhhhh ok let's think. #mymovies. WE'VE GOT MOVIE SIGN AAAAAAAAAH
uhhhh i saw mad max 1 a little while back. which. after having seen mad max 2 and 3 it just seems so normal.....like you could have me believe that was just australia. but yeah it's good. i kinda preferred it to the other two actually even though objectively it's not as quality i guess. i liked how he just. completely fails to protect his family. he's really just a complete failure of a hero which is interesting to me! and also what happened to his wife in mad max 2.......because they said she would survive. she just didn't have an arm and a leg anymore. did he leave her. or maybe she left him. or she was killed in the nuclear bomb or whatever
OHHHHH also i've started watching startrekenterprise. Jesus H. CHRIST...this show is BAD. sewiously. it seems made to torture me the way voyager did ...because voyager had the most stellar (haha) amazing knockout genius premise of all time and then they hit it with their car and drove away. and it rolled into a ditch. which actually made me insane. i've certifiably talked about how i would fix star trek voyager for over 100 hours. probably a lot more than 100 hours. it consumed me. and enterprise ALSO has a really cool premise that you could really capitalize on.......and i can telllll it sucks. supposedly season 4 is really good though. but then it immediately gets cancelled so. sighs. whatever. kicks a rock. thinking of that tumblr post that goes 'being really into star trek is a humiliating ordeal but it is also a just punishment for being really into star trek'. apt. that was instantly added to my lexicon. SIGHS. whateva. bye.
it's been a while since i've updated this.....oopsies. i picked up some blank dvds and i've been kinda getting into dvd burning....i did one just of some home movies using dvdstyler and i'm working on an LPS: Popular disc right now!! i'm not going to burn it until the series is actually finished (fingers crossed) so that one is gonna be on the back burner for a while. which gives me lots of time to pour into the tasssssk that is subtitling. my dvd player is BUSTED unfortunately and only works in black and white with no controls....lol....but i've been cruising for a new one at garage sales. fingers crossed on the other hand. on the OTHER hand, i didn't anticipate how fun it would be just to make dvd menus...this is my calling. and special features are really fun as well!! dvdstyler can be a beautiful thing...i did have some fuckups with my first dvd thoughhhh ahaha. as to be expected i suppose. for one...this doesn't mean anything to me since controls on my dvd player don't work but . i didn't have the buttons become highlighted when you have them selected. so it's impossible to know which one you're clicking. oopsies. and i had a bit of a fiasco trying to actually burn the damn thing because i had been editing it on my laptop and then i had to transfer the whoooooole .iso file to my pc to burn it. whoops! but i got that figured out in the end.
what else? i've been eating a lot of sandwiches with sauerkraut lately. on sourdough bread. 2 sours....my sour sandwich. and drinking my delicious summer drink of ice water with salt and a tiny bit of lemon juice. this is the only thing that keeps my mouth from getting dry in these dire times (summer times).
i saw tora! tora! tora! last nighttttt or was it two days ago. actually it was two days ago. i'm not like,,, a war film afficianado or anything but i've wanted to see this one for a while just because i found the whole 'both sides' conceit very interesting. and whaddya know i did enjoy it...one thing i wonder is if fuchida was really that joyful all of the time? because in this film it really just is 'fuchida describe your perfect day'. and ohhhhh of COURSE. you have to hand it to them for the attack scenes because Jesus Fucking Christ Oh My Lord. they really just did pearl harbor again for this movie. whaddahell. the first half of the movie is mostly just guys looking at clocks, writing on typewriters and doing ominous foreshadowing and saying things like 'we're certain that the japanese won't attack' or 'the japanese are going to attack us on december 10th i'm sure of it', and then the second is like they were getting payed per explosion the way writers get payed per word. how many stuntmen were injured in the making of this film. every time they showed a massive explosion (especially on a giant ship) you just have to wonder how many hours it took to painstakingly search the entire area making sure no one was there. because if even a single person was in the vicinity they just. get blown up.
i hope the extras were being payed in GOLD for this film. especially the guy who was just straight up on fire. obviously he had some sort of resistant material on but on the fourth hand his face and hands were still just out there. the sheer insanity of this film kind of broke the immersion for me if i'm being honest. very impressive though.
i saw twoooo other films in theatre somewhat recently: videodrome and adolescence of utena!!! adolescence of utena had me kubrick staring on the bench outside the theatre. oh it was FANTASTIC...not better than the anime but that's a high bar to clear. i adored the utena redesign! very princely of course of course and with the black and white....like....her black and white worldview (crowd bursts into cheers). and then with anthy's they just made her skin 30% lighter and removed her glasses and gave her long straight hair and broke into my house and shot a hole in my blue ribbon tapestry and stole my jewelry and kicked my dog for good measure. what the hell guys you didn't have to do all that. white dress was crazy though. anyways. i will need to rewatch this film probably multiple times to actually Understand what is going on in the material, empirical sense, but for my first watchthrough it was nice just to take it all in! something i can't put my finger on (in the anime as well) is the significance of simulacrum - reflections, paintings, screens .....in the film it's a little clearer though as it could definitely refer to the whole fake ohtori academy vs. 'real world' thing. the car thing was definitely a step more bizarre than anything in the anime but it was fun as hellll...also a worthy opponent to the coffin. the key scene i mean. it's just such a great metaphor for sex within the bounds of the academy aka the patriarchy wahhhhh ....and then. 'the outside world has no roads'....omg.
recent question: is there a reason that the wealthy nowadays seem more focused on appearing as normal, middle-class people than the wealthy of the past? i'm thinking pre-1975. i've talked about this for hours at this point but i haven't come up with an answer that seems like it fits. it might just be a random cultural change. i considered the correlation with the image of the rich person shifting from someone who simply had generational wealth to the 'bottom-up' myth of someone who just worked hard and made it to the top. but that didn't really ring true because i feel like the idea of the gold rush rich man fits with that as well...and i don't think animosity towards the wealthy has actually significantly increased over the past 75 years. so what is it. question mark...
i enjoy car maintenance from time to time but what's really fun to me is taking care of a rider mower....because it feels to me like she is my ill daughter. it reminds me of the scene in anne of green gables where minnie may has croup. it's exactly like that in fact. because i have to spoon feed her medicine (gasoline)...and also when the grass is too wet and she starts coughing and sputtering and i have to pull over and tenderly scoop out the clumps of wet grass from the discharge chute.....ok well..that's all i have for you today....buh-bye!!!!!
i just ate the stalest moon pie. seriously. it was like a zombie moon pie or something. i don't even know why i ate it. moon pies aren't even that good when they're NOT stale. it was sitting under a bowl deep in the bowels of a cabinet i never look in...scary...my scary moon pie.
problem i'm having which is not a problem but i'm making it into a problem in my head: i fear i've almost entirely replaced the word 'sleep'/'go to sleep' in my head with the phrase 'knock out'. not in actual speech. just in my head. so about 70-80% of the time when i would use the term sleep i say knock out. and 'knock out' is entirely appropriate in some sentences but sometimes it's just unnecessary. which is why this worries me. for example 'time to knock out' as in time to go to sleep? totally normal thing to say. 'worried i might knock out' as in 'worried i might fall asleep' however...NOT ok. NOT utilizing the english language in the manner i strive to. confusing. so how do i fix this? uhm...i don't knowwwwww. it's just a linguistic infatuation of mine it'll probably go away eventually? right?
haven't seen any films that i care to talk about but i have. ok. takes a deep breath. i have gotten kinda into homestar runner. it's in it's larval stages right now. it's almost embarassing how predictable of me this is. oh well. all that i knew about homestar runner previously i had absorbed as a child as part of the internet nerd cultural melange fed to me by the random teenage boys in the library computer lab. in fact the phrase 'homestar runner' conjures up the image of that room...that was where the warrior cats books were. and the books on US presidents which oh my goddd that's another story. and everyone called it 'the basement' even though it was only halfway underground and still had natural light. interesting when you think about it because UPstairs was the normal kids section and also where they had the magazines which is where my (mostly non-nerds, it was a very small school so there was really only one girl friend group and we were all shoehorned into it) friends always wanted to go, so i just had to go along with and the whole time i would be so forlorn wishing i could be playing minecraft with some 13-year-old named Connor. and arguing about Andrew Jackson. so you see the gutter-penthouse dynamic my local library had going on. holy tangent batman. sorry for giving you my whole life story there. back on topic. Home Star Runner. i guess my second exposure to it was of course They Might Be Giants Experimental Film Music Video. which is what piqued my interest in the modern day i suppose! and then i got the tmbg-h*r song 'tropical lazor beams' stuck in my head and it all kinda went from there. uhhh i guess obligatory You Should Check Out Homestar Runner....it might be for you...and it might notttt. who knows. YOU don't know. until you try. try until you succeed. uhm. that's all i guess. i have some yard work i need to do. and i just yt-dlp'd some stuff to listen to while i do it. beautiful world beautiful world. sooooo there you have it! bye byes! have a nice day! oh god my mouth is still really dry from that moon pie. gwoss. ok. bye!!!!
hi guyse. hello guyse. happy may! it's may...yay! spring is my favorite season and i'm so glad it has sprung but i'd also like it to not be mega cold where i live right now...i opened my window the other day and forgot to close it when i went to sleep and that was a mistaaaake. shivering in me timbers 2026. i just caught a killer cold as well i'm talking running a temperature bad. which sucks big time. but i'm basically over it now other than some congestion so that's nice. but it does make the random temperature swing suck even worse for little old mes.....i was just outside last night and i had to go in because my hands and feet started getting numb...in MAY. but whatever. also a bat flew into my face the other day! that's a littleeee bit of an exaggeration but. yeah it happened. i take night walks a lot because i don't like the sun but i like to walk and now that the bats are out i'm just constantly playing Duck To Avoid The Bat on extra hard mode. it's kinda fun but as aforementioned one hit me the other dayyyyy haha it just grazed my cheek more like but. uhm. ok. hi there. yeah i'm living life on scary mode taking night walks....it's for realsies out there guys.....it's actually not that bad. all that's ever happened is me almost running into a deer a couple times (the darkness...) which could potentially be bad because. antlers. but they're scared of me so it's ok. the predators in my area are just coyotes and foxes mostly but they'd never attack a human. the possibility of getting sprayed by a skunk is there too which is probably the most likely bad thing to happen because i'm always running into skunks. #myperilouslifestyle #livinglifeontheedge
uhmmmm let's see. my movies....uhh yesss i did actually see a movie. i saw JFK 1991....not the greatest of films i must admit. only good part was when Jo Anderson showed up YAY i love Jo Anderson. solely for playing that lesbian from northern exposure. Roslyn. from the episode where it randomly turns into a lesbian period drama. and also Franz Kafka is there. normal television program. that episode changed my life for real....i'm going to roslyn washington soon so i WILL be rewatching it. and can i just say Yvonne Suhor is gorgeous...11yo me could not believe her eyes during that dance scene. i mean wow. she's also on star trek voyager if i'm not mistaken? yeah i'm pretty sure. she's that girl who's macking on Harry Kim. i remember. this is my special power. being able to recognize actors from various films and television programs 1950s-2000s. i take great joy in it as well...
something else about JFK. a little silly. ok ok ok ok so (queso) there's this one background motif that features quite heavily in the soundtrack. i remember it's definitely present during the scene at the washington memorial (longass scene that takes up like a quarter of the movie...whatever). it uses a piano in the lower range methinks. it doesn't matter. EXCEPT...it sounds almost EXACTLY like a recurring motif in the soundtrack of revolutionary girl utena. bear with me here.
ok maybe i'm going crazy because i just went through the entire utena s1 soundtrack and i couldn't find it. uhm. and i skimmed through a bunch of the episodes and could only find it once but i swear it's pretty common. anyways it plays around 17:20 of episode 9...here's that episode on youtube...but yeah!!! that piano part right there is crazily similar to a part of the JFK soundtrack that i honestly don't feel like looking up right now. and i'm sure this was just a coinkydink but part of me wondered if there actually was any connection somehow....maybe i'm just conspiracy-brained after watching JFK. haha. i did some googling to see if anyone else has ever had this thought (intersection of people who watched both rgu and jfk is probably pretty small) and big surprise no one did...but i did happen upon some other stuff i found quite intriguing.
first of all i ended up reading a bit about the Takarazuka Revue which is a japanese theatre troupe founded in 1913 that consists entirely of women. they did an adaptation of JFK the movie weirdly and also inspired princess knight! which obviously inspired utena. pretty neat. and i learned oh! that's where the all-female production of the ace attorney stage play came from. good to know. and also the drag king episode of stop!! hibari-kun! is listed in the influences on wikipedia...crazy stuff is happening. it did have me thinking just how cool it would be to see their productions of like uhmmm east of eden.....or faust....or oklahoma...or the count of monte cristo. or RRR apparently. yeah they adapted RRR. ok.
and second of all i found the website for White Boy Law Office which seems to be an entirely reputable law firm operating out of Hawai'i run by a 76 year old white boy hippie-type. nice. anyways he mentions jfk airport and also that he's started watching anime...rgu is on his list as well as urusei yatsura and ranma 1/2. don't exactly know why this is being brought up on a business page. i'd recommend taking a look through this site, it's cute. he ran ads in the onion back when it was just a newspaper and was reading theodore sturgeon's venus plus x which i have been wanting to get my hands on for forever. i guess it's kinda a hybrid law firm page and homepage. cutes!
helllloooo everybody. this is the big bopper speaking. the big blogger. haha. uhhhh ok so i wanted to maybe do something in this entry a little unusual....this will require doing a little extra code but it should be simple. gimme a sec.
so there's what i'd consider the 'true' versions of those colors. are these divisive? i'm not entirely sure. i feel like i tilt the orange and purple more towards red than most people. and now for more opinions...
'teal' connotes a darker color to me...and turquoise usually means slightly more muted. here's the in-between colors. aka the cuter rainbow.
ok let's see. what else do i have to say. brown is a shade of orange. black and white are colors they're just not hues. color to me means both the hue and the shade. of course many colors exist that aren't listed here...most of which have to do with shade. but other than those there's magenta, royal blue, hot pink and probably more that i'm not thinking of. shade-dependent includes phthalo green, periwinkle, baby blue and baby pink, mint etc etc. that's all for this one i suppose! a little short...buh-bye!
i'm tomodachi lifeing it up. living the dream you could say. ACTUALLY living the dream because this has been my dream since i was in elementary school. i didn't have a 3ds growing up but my good friend did and she had tomodachi life and i was sooooooo jealous so!! this was big for me needless to say. do i have anything to say about it though...lemme think. ok maybe i don't. actually a perfect game. i'm having so muuuch fuunnnnn ^_^
ok what to talk about what to talk about....hm. should i talk about the movie i saw last night or no. is this blog just gonna turn into a movie review blog....oh well. i saw The Mummy (of The Mummy fame) last nighttttt. it is NOT a good movie. i liked the cgi if i'm being so honest but there were kind of noooo redeeming qualities...sad! because if you wanted an action movie there are a million other action movies that are. better. the whole movie is 'i could be watching mad max 2 right now'. maybe this is just because i don't like Brendan Fraser. but yeah it's a very popular movie of course of course but in this instance i just don't get ittt. sorry.
wowwwww i'm being so brief today. maybe it's because it's 7am and i'm still half asleep. my brain hasn't fully booted up yet i suppose. uhm. what else to say. i burnt my lawn yesterday aka introduced a controlled burn. controlled via a very weak hose that was barely breathing coughing up tiny amounts of water, shaky breaths etc. we were definitely stretching her too far. but it's ok because it didn't end up spreading hashtag we got luckyyyyyy. World is Beautiful.
i have the cat extension for MEOW PLAYGROUND the WONDERFUL BROWSER GAME. so i have little cats on my screen...but yeah they talk to you and one of mine has started saying 'i hate water'. does anyone know why this is...i thought it a tad strange. yarrrrrr i named 1 of them mountain deaw and the other critereoncollection and they are constantly starving because i forget to feed them. and they fight and throw rocks at each other. #mybrokenhousehold
hmmmmm tangent. you can set little reminders that the cats will tell you like 'drink water' and a few months ago i set mine to an interview question from the space ghost david byrne interview...shout out space ghost coast to coast. space ghost coast to coast!! sorry that will only make sense to me. but anyways the question was just a confusing syntax thing that was intentionally unanswerable so i wanted to try to think of how to answer it and it's been a long time and i still haven't figured out a good answer. uhmmm let's see. 'yes it is i hope it is not the last' followed by 'what do you mean by it?'...where's a concise answer to that. there are two 'it's in that sentence. whatever......whateverrrrrrr ok
criterioncollection is saying 'why no food why' and 'the hew mon doesn't feed me'. i named myself the hew mon. ok maybe i will take pity on her and feed her for the first time in weeks......there there criterioncollection......she ate cheese and said 'meow meow ^^'. i HIGHLY recommend this browser extension. 5/5 stars.
THE WORLD IS TO DIG IS SO GOOD!!!!!!! yayyyyyy yay yayy yay yay yay!!!! i got hit with a they might be giants beam guys....this album is so good. wow. i love it when music is good and i can listen to it and think wowwwww this is really good. ok ok um THOUGHTS. back in los angeles blew me away and am i crazy or was JL doing a little bit of a jimmy stewart thing there? i think i'm crazy actually i made that up. but yeah it's silly with the references....americans do this all the time in real life unfortunately. wu-tang.....yessss i remember when that came out i did like it but i wasn't ecstatic over it or anything. but listening to it with the full album is a different experience. sleep's older sister is GREAT that was probably my favorite out of the early releases (sorry overnight sensation). je n'en ai pas was great as wellll as someone who sorta kinda speaks french it did make me giggle listening to it the first time. OUAISSSSSS!!!!! love these guys. outside brain after that was a good pacing choice methinks. let's fall in lava might be my favorite song of the whole album it makes me jump for joy! like yesssss let's kill ourselves. and i do appreciate a good classic they might be giants pun song. telescope was really cutes and i loved the instrumentations. the short songs on tmbg albums are always sorta woodland-creature like. telescope is like a little squirrel or something. anyways GARBAGE IN also a contender for my favorite song of the album! i feel like the full weight of this one hasn't really hit me yet but listening to it i can't help but love it already...wowzers. get down, another good double-entendre/pun song which i'm now realizing is a lot of tmbg songs. taking a well known phrase and twisting it a little. this is plentiful in their discography if you squint a little and turn the knob towards recognize patterns. new wave will never die was funnn as hell and following it up with overnight sensation made me laugh. overnight sensation is fantastic of course...i had it stuck in my head for at least 4 days after it released the first time. it really is just a good solid earworm. i want a hit record yeah...number one. ohhh wait now that i think about it character flaw may also be a contender for my favorite song...hmmmmm hmm hm hmmm. it's just too good guys. the instrumentation worked really well together i think ... JL's vocals also really awesome yes of course and i also loved the JF background vocals (always but especially in this one). It's just a good timeeeee this album is a really fun time. hit the ground also has some really cool moments musically....yess the lyrics also. it's all fitting together to me in this one. something about this one is slotting together. scintillating. makes me feel like i've gotten a caffiene rush or something. what you get also gives me this feeling it's like uhmmm fizzy. effervescent. owch. but it's fun. just a good song ok it's just a good song nothing crazy. NOTHING crazy. just a song. ok. ? SLOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH SLOW ATTACK OW OW OW OW OW. slow is SO wow. wowwwwww wait i can't talk sorry i'm listening to it right now. people are right for liking this one i mean wow. wow. also haha can't keep johnny down jumpscare. that made me jump a little when i first heard it.....EVIL can't keep johnny down. in the dead mall IN THE DEAD MALL.......wait this one. yessss. love this one.
solid rock-song wise but the lyrics also caught me a little? if you know what a mean. caught like in a net like a fish. cool wet air and whatnot. it's a good song. a good strong healthy young girl. this song could never get tuberculosis. what the cat dragged in was a fun time! just wow so fun like a bouncy castle or something. i'd love to see it live....hm. hms hmmm hmmms. almost musical-y? i dunno. it's a good one. more sickly than in the dead mall though....what the cat dragged in could probably catch TB. i didn't really like they might be feral the first time i heard it but i'm coming around. it's a good closer! a shiny blue bow. or maybe more of an indigo. but yeah i wasn't sure about the instrumention but on second thought i think it works. the verse is nice. it made me laugh. but YES ok this album. yeah ...the albummmmmmmmm. love this album. man i just like they might be giants....sorry for liking a band...yeah but i was excited hearing all of the individual releases but hearing it all together.....YEAH THIS IS A GOOD ALBUM. it all works. obviously i've had some indecision issues pertaining to my favorite songggg.....uhm i guess i'll say character flawwww? that's subject to change. anyways GOOD ALBUM. GOOD. i know people don't like the cover but i thought it was cuuuuuute honestly. and also honestly. anything's better than BOOK. yeah. but yes a SOLID meal for us theymightbegiantsers. NO bad songs or even like....mediocre ones. i liked them alllllll which is pretty impressive! they all had at least some interest i suppose. yes. you should give it a listen it's THE WORLD IS TO DIG by THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS.
do i have ANYTHING else to say. sorry if that previous paragraph (mega paragraph....) was sorta stream-of-consciousness i'm borderline delirious with exhaustion right now and also listening to music which is distracting. call it an experimental piece on the depths of the human mind....yes. realizing i say yes a lot when writing. hm. is that good or no. swagever. uhm i re-watched the film Brazil recently should i talk about that. being so honest i don't have muuuuuch to say. i like when they shrunk real life rob deniro down to 2 inches with a shrink ray to do the ziplining shots. but yeah if you HAVEN'T seen BRAZIL you SHOULD! it's just. such an experience and i feel like i don't see people talking about it compared to other films in its genre and style-sphere...like guys she's right there why won't you listen to what she has to say? silencing women's voices? just kidding this is a movie about men. they do the 80s/90s things where they lesbian-code the love interest Jill to make it seem wait i need to start saying nice things about this movie instead of my only criticism actually because it's genuinely one of my favorites ever. uh-oh is this turning you off on Brazil....NO...watch Brazil just trust me on this one. It's good. but yeah the lesbian-coding of heterosexual love interests to make them seem more inaccessable question mark (this is especially done with hard-to-get-mean-woman-who-you're-gonna-somehow-win-over-by-pestering-her-endlessly-wow-totally-not-wish-fufillment-haha characters, also a 80s trope)? does nottt work methinks it just makes me mad at the guy. leave her alone for reals. also of course compounded by the fact that his infatuation with her SPOILERS->ends up getting her tortured and killed? ok. but yeah i'd definitely draw a parallel to like...Maggie from northern exposure. if you know her you'll get the picture pretty quick i assume. uhhh uhm ok i ended up talking about Brazil anyways i suppose...sighs. BYE-BYE MY BLOGLINGS!!!
ok uhm. hi again! i just realized i should probably add the very first blog post from the original blog back in 2024 to this one. for continuity purposes. it was about snails. sighhhhsss honestly the way i've coded this blog is kinda really tedious. it's not too bad now but it's gonna suck big time to update this once there's a lot of pages. essentially because i've decided to put the WAIT I'M GONNA INTERRUPT THIS SENTENCE BCAUSE I JUST NOW REALIZED A WAY TO MAKE IT BETTER. godddd wait it's gonna be sooooo easy once i do this one thing. be right back.
heyyyy i'm back and now the blog is way easier to update. wait what was my sentence from earlier...ok so essentially i had it so pages had ids like 1, 2, 3 and so on, and the 'first page' aka the page that is on top and shows up first was id="1". and my javascript thingamajigs that execute the page switches corresponded to those numbers, so to show page 3 the javascript was called show3(). but this meant that everrryyy time i wanted to create a NEW page 1, so every time i updated, i would have to manually roll back every number. change page 1 to 2, page 2 to 3 and so on and so forth. and this was annoyinngggggggg as hell but i just fixed it and i can't believe i didn't think of this earlier. all i did was make the LAST page, so the FIRST entry be id="1". so it counts upwards and i don't have to switch everything around when i want a new page. i can just call it 4 if the last one was 3. so you see.
what else. OHhhh wait there's something. ok. so i am the holder of a lot of extremely trivial knowledge and i very rarely get to use most of it but something lined up a few days ago that made me ridiculously excited. and only i would ever care about this but it was a beautiful moment for me nonetheless. our theater was showing Galaxy Quest so of course i had to go see it. and i had not seen Galaxy Quest for a whiiiiile but i remember liking it of course of course. and during the first act of the film at Tim Allen's Los Angeles household i gasped out loud in the theater because oh my goddddd i recognize that goddamned house!!!! that's the house from episode 1 of Columbo not really epsiode 1 actually a movie that was later syndicated as episode 1 when they wanted to make it a television program 'Prescription: Murder'!!!!! that's where the first Columbo gotcha moment happens right there in that pool!!!! that's katherine justice's character lives surrounded by abstract animal statues to symbolize her emotionality in contrast to gene barry aka dr. flemming's harsh clinical edge and his position as a medical authority cementing years to come of emotionless somewhat deluded bourgeois Columbo killers!!!!!! wowwwwww anyways. yeah that episode's great albeit kinda sexist i could go onnnn but i won't. Galaxy Quest is a fantastic movie and it's one of the films where you do just think oh. this is perfect. not that it's high art or whatever but there's kind of no way you could improve on this. yeah. Tony Shalhoub's character reminded me of during the pandemic when i had made a snowman and named it Tony Shalhoub. that was when i was watching 'Wings' though. ok bye!
heyyyy howsit going. this is the first blog entry since i updated the format! yay for the first real one! ok uhhh let's seeeeee what should i talk about....i saw the John Carpenter film 'The Fog' last night. I went in expecting Christine-level shenanigans (a horror movie about fog???) and i admit i was a bit disappointed. it was decent, definitely with the Carpenter touches. the music was nice. there weren't many good scares, which was disappointing, because if there's no cheese and extravagance i do at least expect some genuine spookiness. i spent the first 20 minutes of the movie confused as to how Janet Leigh looked so young for her age (didn't i just see her as an old woman in that Columbo episode from the mid-seventies? she looks 35...) before realizing i had mistaken Adrienne Barbeau for Leigh. oopsies. Barbeau was great, i thought her character as the sultry radio host was interesting because. yeah. you really don't think about that character archetype outside of the radio setting. my biggest gripe was that the fog didn't kill people...with a movie called 'The Fog' you expect it to be evil fog but they took the easy way out having zombie pirates who just...emerge from the fog. i got reallly upset when they started smashing that stained glass...you're not that good of a movie you don't get to do that to her. also hey, Jamie Lee Curtis AND Janet Leigh in the same movie and they barely even interact? wonder why that was.
okkk enough. what else is there to say. it's Easter! my family never celebrated easter as a kid and i remember going to other kids' houses and seeing that they had gotten egg baskets and fancy stuff and i just assumed they were extremely rich. i didn't know that was normal for most of my life honestly. easter is a nothing holiday to me so i don't have much to say about it i suppose. i do think those little chocolate egg things are delicious though.
ahhh it's also star trek first contact day. aka the....-37th anniversary? of the exact day in star trek canon where we make first contact with the aliens. the vulcans. i will admit i knew this before i knew it was easter. hashtag embarassing. so...37 years left huh. and artemis ii is going where no one has gone before as i write this. although we are way behind according to star trek canon on our history mdr. we should've had the eugenics wars, what, 30 years ago? and of course the bell riots in 2024. oh well. star trek: first contact is admittedly the best tng film but that doesn't make it good in my opinionnn. i'd take star trek v over any tng film every day of the week.
had a long talk today about the experience of being told you look like a celebrity. main takeaways are people are almost never right about this kind of thing. the thing is that various features will immediately lock you into Only Being Compared to People With That Feature. such as blonde hair, red hair, a buzzcut, glasses, etc. if you wear glasses and look exactly like Jimmy Stewart no one is going to be comparing you to Jimmy Stewart they're gonna be saying 'you look like Woody Allen' or whoever. hair color, skin color, hair length and general silhouette are the most important determining factors methinks. it's much more of a if-you-squint type deal.
okkk so this is obviously a work in progress. but i'm borrredd so i wanted to start writing an entry pertaining to this AGPTEK mp3 player and how i learned to put videos on it! this is some verry niche knowledge but i might as well share it right.
okkk so. if you own one of these thingamajigs you probably noticed that there's a "video" function within the toolbox. maybe you tried to put an mp4 in it and were hit with the error message. and who cares right?? no one wants to watch anything on this tiny ass mp3 player screen. but if you're like me you bring this thing with you everywhere so it's kinda cool to be able to store video on it....i dunno! i've had fun with it!
according to the manual the mp3 player only supports "160*128" video. i assumed that meant the dimensions...but changing the dimensions didn't work. the manual says there's a program (amvtransform) that comes with the device that'll help you convert the files so the player can read them...and i dunno about you but i did not have this. this manual is from 2016 so maybe it's a little out of date?
soooo i guess the format they want the videos in is .amv which is a largely obsolete file format that is a little difficult to find good software for! so maybe we're boned except we're actually not because you just have to download ffmpeg and do a little silliness there. i did not figure this out on my own btw this is mostly thanks to this very helpful reddit thread where i got the commands to do this process. with a few tweaks. so stay tuned.
okkk! so if you go to ffmpeg.org you can download it from there. and once you've got that all figured out and you've opened command prompt or your computer's equivalent we can use these commands. the original reddit ones were methinks for a different mp3 player because they flip it for no reason....but regardless here's the ones i used.
ffmpeg -i FILENAME.mp4 -vf "scale=-2:128, crop=160:128" -r 16 -acodec pcm_s16le -ar 22050 -pix_fmt yuvj420p -c:v mjpeg -q:v 2 DESTINATION.avi
sooooo this turns your file into a .avi which uhhhhh i guess NOT what we're looking for but i was to scared to change anything for fear i'd mess everything up. if you are smarter than me maybe you can figure that out!! and also? protip hashtag learnfrommymistakes? name all your mp4s somethinglikethis.mp4 and not Something like this.mp4 because it'll get mad at you if there's spaces. and also the "filename.mp4" should include the path to the file. like "C:\users\username\downloads\filename.mp4". you can just copy the path from within your files and paste it into command center. annnd of course all of your .avi files will then end up in your C: unless you put a destination there too but that's too much work for very little reward methinks! you can always just move them later :3
.avis aren't as obscure as .amvs but both have definitely fallen out of favor so the only converter i could find is one with ads and a daily limit. which sucks but i just spaced out all of my files throughout a couple of days and it was fine. this converter also doesnt do long videos but you can always just split those up into parts.
uuhh uhhh uhh i think that's it!! if anyone who is doing this very specific thing actually finds and reads this....waow. that would make me feel like i was on some sort of holy mission or something. but that probably won't happen unless its causal and this blog entry made you want to go out and buy this mp3 player. but yeah uhm if you do follow these instructions and are having trouble don't be afraid to leave a message on my guestbook! i might not be able to help but we could bond over our shared mp3 player ownership. set them up on a playdate or something. but i hope you do succeed!! it's fun watching tmbg tv segments on a screen smaller than a matchbox...like God intended. so yeahhh ! ok? cool? ok bye!
and here's a little postscript :) if you've read the manual you might know it recommends the discontinued sony software MediaGo for organizing music and playlists,,,and i CANNOT recommend this software enough ok...it was a lifesaver for me.....as aforementioned it is discontinued but there's a download for it on the internet archive (god bless the internet archive amiright guys)....so yeah that's it!
note: this entry was originally printed with the title 'snails are actually so cool it's unreal'
I FREAKING LOVE SNAILS. they are so epic and underappreciated. when i was little i was one of those kids who would go outside after it rained and pick up the snails, worms, and slugs from the sidewalk and put them back in the grass, and methinks that's where my love for them began...
keep in mind all info in this entry applies to only some types of snail. there are many many many different variants all with different attributes, so there will be exceptions to almost all of these phenomena. i'm mostly referring to land snails because they're what i know most about, as well.
regular garden snails have around 14,000 teeth, although teeth maybe isn't the correct word for them...? they have a retractable tongue called a radula that they use to scrape food, which has tons of tiny protrusions to aid in this process. the radular teeth go in a <<< pattern, with a central tooth along with some lateral and marginal teeth on each side, symmetrically. this is caculated in a radular formula which i will not be going into because it's math (ew).
the body consists of one foot which secretes mucus to propel itself and the shell, which holds all of the guts and stuff. this is why you should never pick up a snail by its shell. the shell is its armor and protects all of the important stuff, much like the ribcage in humans. the shell is also NOT REMOVABLE!!!! if i have to hear the phrase "come out of your shell" one more time in reference to snails i am going to hurt somebody. they are born with the shell on (it's really cute cause it's translucent when they're babies :3) and often die if it cracks!!!!! if you are thinking of keeping a snail as a pet, keep in mind that having elevated spaces in their terrarium where they could fall onto something hard is dangerous if their shell is in a fragile state. to keep it strong, you should provide them with a cuttlebone for them to scrape the calcium off of!!! but yeah.... snails never leave their shells! that is part of their body! the phrase can also refer to hermit crabs, who DO leave their shells, although they find new ones because that's like...their house, i think. but more often than not i see it referencing snails and that makes me feel like biting people. to reiterate, when picking up a snail, you should let them climb onto your hand like that one meme format. don't pick them up by the shell.
during the mating process, snails shoot "love darts" into each other, which historians think *may* have inspired the eros/cupid arrow stories in greek and roman mythology!! love darting is a form of sexual selection that occurs in the courtship period of reproduction, and occurs in hermaphroditic (posessing both male and female reproductive organs) snails.
a love dart is very small, although proportianally the length of an arm to a snail though varying in size, and is made up of calcium. during the mating process, both snails will attempt to lodge one or more darts (which are produced in the dart sac) into the other. they aren't literally fired through the air, but instead transferred while both snails are in contact with each other. love darting is not a form of sperm transfer, but instead part of the courtship. likelyhood of two snails reproducing often depends on whether they have been able to dart each other.
snails have two eye stalks which allow them to see further and with more flexibility. they also have little, shorter stalks on the front of their foot that act as nostrils. another PSA: snail eyes are ON THE STALKS....they do NOT have eyes on their foot. about 60% of cartoon snail artwork portrays them with eyes on their foot, from my experience. which is not anatomically correct. and besides, it looks way cooler and is fun to stylize when they have them on the stalks. i can forgive the cartoon mouths on them, but the foot eyes are beyond me.
anyways, that's it! because i'm sharing facts here, feel free to correct me in my guestbook if you see anything wrong <3
Wide Ruled - 11 Entries