Blog
-
What in tarnation is in my email inbox
From: Nintendo
Subject: “One or more items on your Wish List just went on sale”I hope it’s something for like five dollars.
It was not.
It was Stray for $23.99.
-
A Recent Letterboxd Review
Superman (2025)
Read on LetterboxdIt’s good! Some stray thoughts:
* David Corensweat nailed it.
* I’m on board for Gunn kind of reducing the mystique of the billionaire schemer and making Hoult’s Luthor more of his Golden/Silver Age version of a petulant flop. Certainly anyone paying attention over the past ten years would get the sense that this is how Musk or Zuckerberg would behave if anyone got in their face. Still, if there were a bit more done to build up the facade of calm-and-collected Luthor, it would have been all the more effective to see him crash out.
* A good amount of Daily Planet and Lois Being a Journalist in this, but now I have to grimace at Clark being the world’s most unethical journalist. Also, they did nothing with Cat Grant and the tertiary members of the staff. Without the source material, these characters have no business here. And then there’s the front page with Malik, a shot which would have you accept that Perry White is going to get extremely sentimental and subjective in the weeks following a major disaster for the city. Which brings me to Malik….
* Part one of the aspects that actually are kind of glaring. The Malik character feels uncomfortably underwritten. Making him a food vendor is already a red flag. And then he gets to have the one human death in a movie that otherwise seems to adhere to the kinder, gentler superhero movie wherein Superman goes out of his way to save a *squirrel.* But Malik is just an avatar for Metropolis and making a person of color hero-worship Superman and then get dispatched as a plot device is probably not the message Gunn thinks he’s telling. Which leads us to Jarhanpur.
* Yes, absolutely I want to see the story of how Superman handles having the power to save people from war and genocide while trying to hold himself accountable. We take one reasonable step into exploring that and then it becomes, once again, a mere given that Clark’s instincts are 100% correct and that he shouldn’t be confined by the shackles of diplomacy or conflict resolution. It works for a progressive audience in our current context where we’re all sick to our stomachs at what’s being done to the Palestinians. You know who else this would have worked for? People supporting the Iraq War.
Still, I’m on board for simply saying “I’m sick of dithering while innocent people are trampled like this.” But the payoff? “I’m sending Maxwell Lord’s private goons to do this in my name.” That whole third act, I was like “Okay, they’re layering the parallel conflict tension kind of thick,” but the Justice Gang did not earn the Han Solo payoff they try to give them. As it shakes out, Superman doesn’t even fly into Jarhanpur airspace during the actual events of the movie. That one cool scene happened offscreen.
* He just straight-up gave Mr. Terrific a Yondu scene.
Still, a good direction for Superman and the DC Universe overall. If Gunn can give me a Guardians Volume 2 sequel to this, it will probably rocket past the Reeve movies. We’re on a good foundation.
-
Buying a Car in Dystopia
I suppose one of the more significant things to happen to me recently is that I got rear ended on my way to pick up my kid, leading to the car being totaled and us having to buy a new one.
The best thing I can say about our car habits is that we’re a one-car family, so I guess our emissions could be worse. But whatever car we do have, one of us drives it daily and when I do it, it’s several inefficient trips.
I suppose this would have been our opportunity to go EV, but the payout from the insurance -while generous – was $9,000, leaving us with a a total budget of about $20K. You can get like a used Nissan Leaf for under that budget, but there were just a lot of question marks regarding an EV that may have been traded in because it got damaged.
The point is, the ultimate choice of car was a compromise. It’s all gas, not even a hybrid. It’s the biggest car I’ve ever consistently had to drive, despite the fact that it’s a “subcompact” SUV. It’s struggling to get 25 mpg at the moment. It kind of feels like I got owned.
I guess I owe the planet a couple of trees or something.
-
A Recent Backloggd Entry
Compelling enough to have me finish it in two sessions, but by the end I was feeling exasperation at the long and drawn-out sequence of psychological head-screw set pieces. Mouthwashing is entertaining in having you piece together a story across controlled time skips, but I at times I felt like there could have been more player interaction between past and present, almost like a Gerudo Temple from OOT mechanic but for the whole game. As it stands, it’s a pretty solid filmic experience, but not a great game experience for me.
I enjoyed making the cake.
-
Travel diaries, January 23, 2025
You ever been frantically leaving messages and calling a dozen cousins to see if they had time to see you over the weekend?
Just me? -
The Self-Illuminating Monotony of Papers, Please
I finally got around to playing this classic that had been sitting in my Steam library for a few months. What proceeded was a strangely compelling four hours of gameplay.
The scary thing about Papers, Please is how much the grind lulls you into just following orders. Even knowing this is something of a morality simulator, the need to just make a few bucks immediately drove me to compromise. The game may have taught me more about myself than I wanted to know. -
Diary Update, January 19, 2025
My brother and I actually had a good conversation.
The consulate situation started off easily enough, because they granted me an appointment as soon as I walked in. But, somewhat predictably, my lack of readily accessible documentation made any process of obtaining an ID card come to an impasse.
