The United States was founded on good intentions, which are continually foiled by 1) racism so entrenched that some people think it’s synonymous with being American, 2) ordinary people’s worship of the ultra-wealthy as our “royalty”, who are rich by divine right, 3) a cultural obsession with warfare, and 4) neo-Puritan hypocrisy of such an intensity that it would be difficult to exaggerate it — no matter how bad you think it is, it’s actually worse. One-third of the USA literally belongs to an apocalyptic death cult which extols lies, hatred, and death as the core of their “morality”.
We watched “Incredible Hulk” (2008) and “Avengers” (2012) last night, as part of our attempt to watch all of the recent(ish) Marvel movies in the chronological order of the events in the movies. The Hulk movie was slightly out of order, because it took me a while to track it down — it’s not on Disney+, for some reason.
I enjoyed both movies. Hulk is an incredibly straightforward plot: Army general psychopath finds Hulk, attacks, people get hurt. Army general psychopath finds Hulk again, attacks, people get hurt. Army general psychopath finds Hulk a third time, attacks, people get hurt. I think professional wrestling has more complicated plots than that.
Avengers went the complete opposite direction. I think they based the plot on a quote from the philosopher Didactylos: “Things just happen. What the hell.” It did have a couple of scenes I love, where Black Widow uses people’s vanity and arrogance against them (and let’s face it — people that vain and arrogant are men almost all of the time), and gets them to start monologuing. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
It also has one of my favourite scenes of ordinary people defying power. (You have seen it, even if you’ve never seen the movie — it’s a meme. “There are always men like you.”)
And it has perhaps the most painful description of humanity I’ve ever heard. “They are unruly, and therefore cannot be ruled.” Because “unruly” is a two-edged sword.
“Unruly” means standing up to fascists, sure. But it also means storming the capitol building because you believe the lies of fascists. It means refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated because of ridiculous conspiracy theories. It means ignoring the effects that human activity has on the planet, while the world slowly burns.
I think we could afford to be a bit less unruly.
Oh, and “Captain Marvel” (2019) is better than I remember. I still think Brie Larson was hilariously mis-cast. Her acting style is incredibly subtle — and they cast her in a superhero movie. But it’s a pretty decent movie, and the supporting cast is great, even the kid. I think my expectations were just too high the first time I saw it.
We really enjoyed the “Falcon And The Winter Soldier” miniseries (or as we like to call it, “The Falcon And The Snowman”). I think this measures up to the best of the Marvel movies, and is far better than any of the previous Marvel TV shows and/or miniseries (although “Agent Carter” was pretty decent).
And now, apparently, we are watching all of the Marvel movies we have already seen (which is all of them), but in the chronological order of the events portrayed in them. Fortunately for us, someone has already figured out what that order is.
So first up is “Captain America”, and then “Captain Marvel”. Which reminds me of what a disappointment “Captain Marvel” was. It could have been another “Wonder Woman”, if they had cast someone better to carry the movie. Samara Weaving, for example. Such a missed opportunity. I mean, sure, it made over 6x its budget at the box office (over a billion dollars), but it could have been GREAT, as good as “Captain America”, with just one change.
Ah, well.
“Captain America”, on the other hand, is truly a great movie. Not just a great superhero movie — a great movie, of any kind. Perfectly cast. Perfectly executed.
After several years of consideration (seriously — I started looking into this a little over five years ago), I have decided to exclude Ecuador as a possible retirement destination. It has its appeals, and for the sake of the people who live there, I hope it always will, but for me, the disadvantages are more than I am willing to bear.
It is bad for people to be obeyed too readily. It is corrosive to good manners and a healthy relationship with those around them. When you resist someone with authority, you are looking out for the well being and sanity of that person.
Personally, I think we have too many punctuation symbols. Do we need commas, colons, and semicolons? Do we need three different kinds of dash? If you used a comma instead of a colon or a semicolon, or vice versa (as millions of people routinely do), would anyone be more or less confused about the meaning of the sentence?
My answer is: no, they would not; most people couldn’t tell you the proper usage of a colon vs. a semicolon — or an n-dash vs. an m-dash — if you paid them.
If you are like me (and I know I am), you buy juice mainly to mix it with alcohol. FUN FACT! Mr. & Mrs. T Spicy Bloody Bold & Mary Mix has 19 times as much juice as V8 Splash Berry Blend, and 8 times as much juice as Ocean Spray Cran-Blackberry.
95% – Mr. & Mrs. T Spicy Bloody Bold & Mary Mix
5% — V8 Splash Berry Blend
12% – Ocean Spray Cran-Blackberry
Et tu, Ocean Spray?
On the other hand, Mr & Mrs T Pina Colada Mix is literally just sugar water. “Natural and artificial flavors” comes after “titanium dioxide, potassium sorbate, sodium citrate” in the ingredients. Pineapple juice is not expensive (around $0.06 an ounce). Cream of coconut is not cheap, but it’s not that expensive (around $0.25 an ounce). Mr & Mrs T Pina Colada Mix costs about $0.10 an ounce.
Buying good rum or good vodka and then mixing it with sugar water is OFFENSIVE to me, on a deep and personal level.
The moral of this story is: READ THE LABEL. But if you want me to read them for you, here is what you should buy:
This is your semiannual reminder that the pointless ritual known as “daylight saving time” does not make you lose or gain anything. You don’t gain or lose time. You don’t gain or lose daylight. The amount of daylight stays precisely the same.
Current version of Karelia map, for my maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t D&D game. I like the overall look, but I am bumping into limitations in Inkarnate (which is what I used to draw this). namely, there is no way to group objects into, say, “Labels”, or “Rivers”, and change the size, colour, font, etc. in a simple way. Photoshop can do that fairly easily (no great surprise), so I am thinking about doing the landmasses in Inkarnate (which is easy to do with its built-in textures and POI icons) and then doing the rivers and labels in Photoshop.
Alternately, I am playing with the idea of loading this map into Campaign Cartographer (from ProFantasy), and re-drawing it in that program. Campaign Cartographer is a much more powerful mapping program than Inkarnate, and can do everything (or nearly everything) I would like to do in Photoshop. I have owned Campaign Cartographer for literally decades, and have subscribed to their monthly “Cartographer’s Annual” since 2007, but I have never taken the dive into learning it. It has a steep learning curve.
On the other other hand, I am wondering if perhaps I have gone down a rabbit hole on this whole map thing. Maybe I should just declare it “good enough”, and move on to planning the actual game. Maybe.
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Blackmoor Vituperative
