Pinocchini

45 minutes into Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio on Netflix and also Robert Zemeckis's Disney's Pinocchio on Disney+ and there are truly a bizarre amount of parallelisms, such that one who had never read the original book would think maybe the original book started out as a sort of The Hidden Fortress thing revolving around the cricket the way Star Wars starts out following the droids, and Geppetto really did construct the puppet as a replacement for his deceased son, and it was a deliberate act on Pinocchio's part to join the puppet show for fortune and glory rather than go to school and learn his letters and make his papa proud- but like, lol nope, these are all creative liberties that both adaptations took with the story completely independently for some reason. 

The Cricket appears in like two scenes in the original book (dies in the first scene he's in; second time shows up as a ghost); I don't recall Geppetto having ever had a family, and the log was already alive when he started carving it; Pinocchio gets distracted on his way to school, the price of admission to see the show happens to be as much as he can sell his letter book for, and he gets shanghai'd into being part of the show from there when the stringed marionettes who are apparently fully sapient notice him in the audience and call attention to his presence. It's weird?

Go read the original book, is my point. The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It's bug wild, it's a relatively brief read, and it's in the public domain. K.C. "This is fine" Green has a fully faithful webcomic adaptation here if that's more your speed, which I never pass up the opportunity to plug, but like. Seriously what a wonderful book.

From what I've seen so far the Netflix one, well obviously seeing how it's based on the book and not an intermediary adaptation, does have some- some!- of the weirder stuff from the original book, but the Zemeckis one is plenty weird as well for, Zemeckis reasons, and Disney live-action-remake reasons. Probably not worth watching on its own terms, but that's par for the course on Disney remakes; their watchability is reliant on intertextuality. I happen to be on both a Zemeckis kick and a Joseph Gordon-Levitt kick (voices Jiminy in this one, allegedly) so I decided to check it out, and, well I'm fascinated by these very specific adaptational choices, among other things, so I'm not regretting this time, even though it's clear that Del Toro has a lot more on his mind in his telling of the tale.

An hour into both, now, and the parallelisms are drifting apart now, but we'll see if Guillermo Del Toro gets interested in Pleasure Island any time soon (it doesn't show up in the book until near the end, so probably not...) 

Month to Month Resuscitation

 November passed very very slowly, which isn't what has been happening to December. Though at no point in November did I finish the Halloween short story from October? I should do that one of these posts...

Think I already brought up the idea of November having been Nanowrimo and doing all that writing for that project; should've waited to bring it up here maybe because now I'm actually talking about stuff where that would fit perfectly. 

Anyway I say that December's been passing far more quickly than November which still feels true, but it feels like a pretty long while ago where I wrote about being out of disposable gloves.

Cap'n Patches('s Head on the) Writer's Block

So, still uncertain if I'm going to be pursuing that project anymore (I've made two videos so far this decade, but haven't lost any subscribers to my lack of productivity) I realize, a couple of weeks past NaNoWriMo, that maybe my writing of last month has all been a bust, because that's what it had been spent on. Strange. Oh well, onto discussing other projects! And potential brick walls therein...

Cap'n Patches is the Cat of Nine Tales. He's after the Pieces of Eight. Each Tale is going to, well it's not a simple one-to-one tale=tale about piece of eight, but for the rough majority of them that's how it plays out. And I've got every Tale plotted out except for the first one, which I know is going to be a heist but the location I've got them heisting from I've written as being so secure I don't know how they're going to pull it off... 

They say if you've got writer's block then the problem lies not at the block itself but a little bit before it, like there was some decision-making mistake just a little back down the road that you need to deal with instead. I'm not sure how well that applies here, at the beginning and everything. I happen to be a slow, cumulative sort of writer as it is, so I don't know if I'm truly at a problem point or not. I'll start doing some brainstorming tomorrow.

Koloss Head-munching day only a couple of days away now...

And the Computer Came Back But Turns Out It Won't Power Up; I'm Not Sure if They Tested It at the Shop

 Like plugging it in makes it act like it's receiving power for a few seconds, with the lights and the internal fans and things, but then that just quits and it acts like it's not even plugged in at all? Bother.

Anyway I have come to the possibility that maybe, it is a potential possibility perhaps, that it is within the realms of plausibility, that mayhap my cold came from being out in the rain and all, doing the live nativity program on Saturday. It just had an eclipse phase of a couple of days for some reason. I read this science thing! They said that the cold weakens your immune system! And we're just living in a terrifying ecosystem of germs just constantly, apparently.

Whoops I Irreplicably Fried My Drive Working on the Major Project I'd Had Going on for Literally the Whole Decade So Far??

Alright so. I'm not sure how much can be salvaged of this, seeing how the original file was stored on a hard drive that didn't fry, an old C: drive of an old computer hooked up externally to the new one, but... since then, with all the Adobe updates going on and each new year needing an upgraded filetype and thus needing a new file building off of the old ones, I'm sure the project must have at some point migrated onto the new, internal and now fried, drive of the new computer. It was certainly saving to the desktop, and I don't think as a shortcut. 

And it feels like I've been swinging from vine to vine all this time and missed this last one? 

So let me explain that. There had been, like I said, an old computer whose files I managed to salvage, and there are nested generations of that, from that and onto that and from there onto this. And I did manage, I had managed, to get the computer booted after the fry, and everything was up and running, until I restarted it without backing anything up from there-- and really why would I have with everything looking good? 

(The reason I restarted the computer from there had to do with, well, Adobe updates...)

So I'm not sure what the state of the project I'd been working on, the one that had required such intensive processing as to fry my dude, will look like; it was a video file so (most of) the footage it was comprised of is still extant (and much else quite replicable, even if it's going to be a hassle to do so) and the progress missing mostly the editing of those files, and even the data that those files should even be part of the project.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Still too foggy-headed from my cold to really care about much, and the fact that I haven't had usage of my desktop PC in over a week anyway puts further distance on it. Not sure if this is another one of those Greatest American Hero situations where I felt relieved when McKenna spurned my advances, or what. We'll put in a new C drive and, see, where to go from there; too soon to call anything past that, whether I just abandon the project entirely or, what.

Is It Perfume from a Dress That Makes Me So Digress?

 

I love gumbo but it feels like every time I eat it is when I get a cold. That's not how allergies work though? soI'm sure it must be a coincidence.

Recuperating. I slept a lot today. Though not quite enough...

(we'll see how I feel tomorrow)

As from a Dream, Some Music Playing...

 It's pretty dry room all the time, and every day for a couple of years now I guessI've woken up with a dry sort of throat and worried oh no, sore throat, could this be Covid? And every time the answer has been, lol no it's just too darn dry in your bedroom.

I got a humidifier for my birthday! but haven't had the time yet to set it up.

Anyway so I woke up this morning feeling cruddy in the throat and it's gotten worse, and I'm all phlegmy and mucusy- not the symptoms of Covid! but still not that fun. Working outside in the cold, not the best time for that. I don't know if my condition is stable or worsening or bettering, I don't know if I'll be able to work tomorrow or whatever. Mask has been helpful, especially in going into town today to drop my desktop computer off.

I'm not sure if I have anything more to say about that...

Anyway the guy who composed the music for Twin Peaks died. I fell in love with him watching The Straight Story and thinking, what a killer soundtrack, getting some twin peaks vibes from this, and lo! Angelo that is, Angelo Badalamenti, was the, he did both scores anyway, and some other stuff.

ummmm

So I spent the afternoon doing laundry and cleaning up and making Mac and Cheese and reading Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and frequently reaching out to catch drops of watery stuff coming suddenly out of my nose, like Ethan Hunt reaching out and catching his sweat at the last second in Mission Impossible 1996. I would have gone straight to bed after my post-work shower had I had any clean pajamas, so it's good in a sense that I had to do laundry because dinner needed to be made and cleaning up needed to be done. I flit between projects in a way that feels productive but also delirious, fueled by lotion and hydrating fluids, and non-Cats settings of Old Possum verse I invent in a haze. And blowing my nose on whatever I can find, tissues and toilet paper and handkerchiefs I'm going to be washing anyway and napkins from pockets emptied out to launder. And washing my hands afterward, and moisturizing them again after that. (Just reusing the disposable gloves is working, but your hands get sweaty inside the gloves and wet means cold and so you have to dry your hands out, which dries your, hands, out. Naturally.)

Well I'd wanted to go to bed early and now look at it, about the time I usually go to bed anyway (though actually unusually late for a Tuesday.) Still need to do, well, a lot of laundry, but I think we should wrap up the loads for today...

And see how I'm feeling in the morning of course.

twlve twlve twent twent twooo

Well I haven't done Wordle or any of those things in over a week (but that has given me time to check out those mobile gaming apps like I said yesterday; I wonder if I'd have time to Marvel Snap on any given day where I do the wordle?) Planning on taking my computer in tomorrow during lunch; the local computer place/repair place is one of those locations that happen to be open only during my work hours and only on weekdays to boot. So.

Thought I'd have more stuff to say before I wrote this, but already wrote more than I'd thought I had to say as I wrote it.

Top Sci-Fi Economic Developments of 2022 (Seriously)

Alright, I remembered one of the things I was thinking about that made me want to maybe do more than just one post this month! So 2022 (and especially these last few months in it) has been kind of a wild year for weird future sci-fi economy stuff that like, I don't think any author would have been able to extrapolate and see any of these coming. Not that I'm an expert in authors who are really good at seeing economic movements coming or anything? Nor do I have any formal schooling in economics, so if I sound like an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about, well... But I find these things fascinating! and I hope that comes across.

Starting the year with the mainstreamification of NFTs, of course (I think that was this year? They died pretty quick at least, thank goodness) (generally) ugly little hypothetically unique artwork you can buy a link to (which hypothetically then also gives you copyright of the artwork itself, but there were a lot of NFTs being "minted" without the permission of the copyright holder of the art being linked to, and links to like strange intangible concepts and stuff.) That is all based on cryptocurrency stuff of course, massive ponzi scheme stuff but there's nothing new about that. The way the "smart contracts" are utilized to refer to art ownership as a way to get people interested in buying in to the MLM, that part is a little newer.

Speaking of copyright of art, yeah this year also saw mainstreamification of AI-generated art whose neural networks learned from copyrighted art, able to replicate artists' styles and thus potentially leading to loss of revenue in a very tangible way. That is also a weird economic thing!

But more recently! Marvel Snap, the line battle app whose gimmick is being able to up the ante at any point by doubling the points in play (the titular snap) is interesting from an economic standpoint, with the currency of the economy being points of course. Players play against each other but are also matched frequently against bots and that might be like, a guard against inflation or something? Like I said I don't know what economics is. Nor have I yet played Marvel Snap, though I am into mobile games from a ludological perspective so it's very on the table that I'm going to get into this for real in the quite near future.

Meanwhile on TikTok (and I've seen it extend a few tendrils onto YouTube as well) we have an entirely new economy start to form out of nothing! A fiat currency operating on the honor system, basically formalized Brownie Points, Dabloons are doubloons that you pretend to have, in your mind, and you can choose to buy imaginary things at pretend, like, video game potion shops sort of deal. And you do it for fun and not to not starve, because money can be fun! It used to be fun, remember when it was fun? And apparently theres big inflation going on or something, I don't know I'm not on TikTok, and the possibility of me getting onto TikTok is lower than... 

okay the ranking goes: probably going to start playing Marvel Snap, possibly going to use some kind of AI artbot, most likely not getting a TikTok, definitely never getting involved into crypto (unless "involved in" as a NoCoiner, somebody who is like a journalist on the scene and is an expert in it, so like technically involved, but sees crypto stuff as scammy or whatever; it's a dim possibility that I get into that kind of thing more formal-like.)

There we go! I just wrote a whole thing about stuff I don't know much about! This whole thing was a bad idea probably! Yeah I'm posting this anyway

Nativity Shows 2022

 Were the live nativity performances not so early on in the month I probably would not have agreed to be part of them again this year, but they were so I did. They've wiped me out each night we put them on, but now they're over for the season. It was a rainy miserable sort of evening, the wind dying down just in time for the weather to turn drizzly instead; the rain getting worse and worse throughout the night but never so bad we had to cancel a performance like I'd hoped. Probably wouldn't have agreed to be part of today's performances had I known we would actually go through with them, outside in this weather. Saturdays are the most popular for the performances, which help up even today. Audience members had umbrellas; we performers did not. Like I said I'm drained after these performances on a good day.

On a Besoin de(s?) Plus Gants Jetables (titling in French because I can't think of a better post name)

 Apparently the company that manufactured the disposable examination-style gloves that we use at work went under or something, and so they've stopped producing gloves even though the means of production still exist as far as I'm aware? Utterly fantastic. And I haven't been throwing away gloves after using them and washing them instead of throwing them away if they get dirty but they still get old and break, and even just avoiding that by limiting wear (by limiting wearing) the last pair I had, well they had holes already but one of them ripped all the way in two and everything. I've still got one (1) glove, while maintaining the fact that I've got twice that many hands.

All this is to say.

My hands are super dry again, having them be exposed to the elements like this. They'd been dry before, but then I got more judicious about wearing gloves which hasn't been as on the table for me lately. Bottom line: my hands' skin is chapping and cracking and it huuurts, and just regular lotion application won't cut it; we need gloves at work again, and ones from home designed for like gardening, they're useful in some of the instances in which I need gloves but not all.

Finished(ish_) the Lost Metal (Spoilers??)

See the title of this post. I finishedish The Lost Metal, Mistborn Era Two Book Four, yesterday. Listened to it on audiobook and I always start an audiobook over again a second time once I've listened to it once so as to, like, catch anything I may have spaced out about the first time, to make sure I really understand everything. I began it again this morning and am not finished with that yet, so I only say "finished-ish" instead of finished. So, like, I don't have real thoughts or anything yet.

But I did have one thought last night as I was drifting off to sleep. The book, the last of Mistborn Era 2, ends with several epilogues from the perspectives of different characters as they deal with the implications of the climax of the book, a lot of which are presumably going to lead us into the third era of Scadrial in the next Mistborn series. That's well and good. One thing that struck me though (and here's the only true spoiler of this post) there wasn't anything from the perspective of any of the people who'd been living underground, this City of Ember from City of Ember, Downunder from A Boy and His Dog, Vault from Fallout, situation that turned out to be a hoax? They learn the truth about their community, help with the thing at the place, and... and nothing, and we never hear from them again. Do they rejoin society or what, presumably, we don't know. Being in the head of one of them, especially in an epilogue weeks or months later (do they have months on Scadrial, being without a moon and all?) would really help at least get a sense of how they're coping with that; it doesn't even have to be a very long scene. Just some acknowledgement of the trauma these people went through would be nice.

But like I said maybe that is in there; my reading comprehension isn't that great until the second listen-through is finished.

If I Had a Nickel for Every Late '90s Action Movie whose Title has Four Syllables and Starts with the Letter A in which Owen Wilson's Character is Killed Off Unceremoniously...

 ...I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

Short e-mail Story (about e-mail)

I'd been idly wondering how long ago I'd gotten my computer, for, no reason really (alright that's a lie, for like, warrantee reason, but I think running computer hot render for days definitely falls outside of purview of manufacturer defect) and I get settled in here at this laptop, sign back into my email at the tab I'd had that opened up at- and the email it had left off at is the "your order has been shipped" message for the desktop computer! And it was at the beginning of August of last year anyway, wouldn't have been that hard to check anyway, that's just serendipitous. (And the reason I needed to log into my email in the first place was to check if any orders had been shipped yet, for this year's Christmas this time of course!)

Brick(s)

 heeeyyy uhhh remember yesterday I said something about not overtaxing my computer? Turns out that I failed to do that, maybe posting that blog post did push it over the edge, and I now have a very expensive brick! Well actually I managed to get my computer turned back on successfully this morning but then I tried to open After Effects back up and it kept on asking me to sign into my Adobe account over and over and over (because subscription-based services that gateway things you have access to is terrible, and you never own anything you only rent it) so I decided to reboot the computer and hopefully make that problem go away... and for sure Adobe haven't asked me to sign into anything since then, but that's because I haven't managed to get the desktop back up again since, and that was... this morning?? I'm writing this on my MacBook Air right now, which was manufactured in mid 2009 (and so would thus be incapable of upgrading to the latest Apple patch even if it had the storage space for it) and most importantly has zero battery life and so isn't really much more transportable than my desktop computer, and sure the heck boots a lot slower. It still works though. I did manage to, like, get Blogger open on this computer, whereas I can't get anything to do anything on the other one. It's just, not good for much outside of, logging into my blogger account and shooting off a post.

New item for Christmas wish list?

Computer repair services

Meanwhile today I'd been going to watch Brick on Amazon Prime as part of this Rian Johnson thing, because it had totally been there till now, I double checked and everything earlier this month, only, it's not there anymore, outside of renting or buying (which, at least there's that, maybe I'll do that! (or piracy (but really that's more an option I reserve for things that aren't worth paying money for (which like yeah sure leads to my continued dependence on Adobe systems)))) but anyway it had been there as part of the normal package, and it just left without warning, I don't know. Curse you, subscription-based services.

elephantine rumba

 I guess I'm posting every day this month after only doing one post a month all year? I don't know, it may have started out coincidentally but now I feel obligated to post today (but making it a short one because my computer's doing some heavy rendering work right now; we're at the end of day two and it's about halfway finished.) Anyway, my computer is doing some pretty heavy rendering work right now (we're at the end of day two and it's not even halfway finished) so I think I'll make this a short one so as to not overtax with nonrendering work. The process speeds up near the end so maybe I'll have full faculty this time tomorrow; we'll see. 

Yeahhh son (volume three thoughts, w/e feel free to ignore this one)

I posted yesterday about looking forward to some upcoming sequels but not partaking in any of their advertising because sometimes it's fun to go into things blind, especially when you know you'll enjoy them anyway. The Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 trailer dropped today, right about the date I was expecting it to- May release date, Holiday Special lead-in on Disney+, yup yup yup, early December sneak peak season feels just about right. I have no similar peccadillos against spoiling myself on any of this, and it looks like it's going to be, just fine?

Guardians peaked at Volume 2 for me, afterward their being the weakest part of the weakest Avenger joint, Infinity War. (Not sure if that sentence works grammatically, feels like I'm missing a clause or something in there...?, but nonetheless.) Their bits in Love and Thunder were the strongest part of that though?, and Holiday Special was, yeah it was alright, Kevin Bacon should've stayed on as a permanent member of the roster maybe. It feels like the team dynamic has been missing something, which thing potentially be Bacon? 

Yeah I'd been going to say something about Mantis, maybe being mis- or under- utilized or, I don't know what, but now there is also Nebula and Kraglin too! and a lack of Gomora after, those, shenanigans! and the dynamic hasn't had a chance to reassert its equilibrium, it feels like, though there's been plenty of in-universe time throughout which we've only seen little glimpses. Whole things passed in between the Avengers movies and individual characters from those got their own little flicks, which made the flow of continuity feel real and expansive into the sequels- this feels a lot more flaky than that, like the li'l cameos going on peeking into the status quo only serve to emphasize the vast gaps there. Iron Man's world felt lived in and real. The Guardians' world, betwixt 2 and 3, felt like a lesser Laurel and Hardy routine.

But there's a whole like 15 second straight chunk in the GotGv3 trailer that feels like the scene in Vol 2 where Peter is remembering the good times and building up his heart to make his arrow fly and there's a vast horizon as they're falling laughing through the sky and you understand more in those five seconds than you'd be able to from a film's worth of expository dialogue and if You Don't Love Me Now You Can Never Love Me Again And I Can STILLLLL HEAR YOU SAYYING YOU WOULD NEVERR BREAK THE CHAIN, and like I said there's more of that just casually in this trailer alone than the glimpse over the horizon that we caught in Vol 2, and it's just so insanely impressive to me. It feels like Volume 3 is going to be a strongman with chains around his biceps, and from those promising flexes found in this trailer he's bending the metal and will be fully able to, if he wants to, break the, um, chain oh okay so that's where the metaphor came from I actually thought I was being kind of clever there.

(On) Destined (Whale)-Dials

I happen to be in somewhat of a bind right now. I'm excited for, and yet avoiding as much detail as possible about, both Indiana Jones 5 and Knives Out 2. It's a painful contradiction. I told you back at the end of July, halfish a year ago I guess, how I'd even set one of my passwords as relating to Indiana Jones 5, which is definitely true though looking at that I can't for the life of me remember what account I could possibly be referring to with that. I know the new Knives Out is called Glass Onion, by which name I am absolutely delighted; I think I saw the Indiana Jones trailer today revealed as laying out the title thus: Indiana Jones and, something like, the Dial of Destiny. Whatever that could mean. I saw some half-idle speculation months ago that the plot would have something to do with time travel, so like, a sundial? Absolutely silly though (and I mean that with all love and charity in my heart), the way the filmmakers would just invent a new artifact like that when prior entrants in the franchise generally kept to like, real legends (though of course it could be referring to something real but outside of my knowledge; I am not professing to expertise on the subject.)

Dig, yo, who talks like that? Ishmael. Ishmael talks like that. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, or, the Whale is wrecking my vocabulary patterns.

It is, in fact, his chapter on cetology that recalled to my mind the ostensible title of the forthcoming movie! 

When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on it.  On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back.

 Whatever it is though, there are yet months to wait. Glass Onion is far nigh more present. Far nigh? Yeah that sounds like something a human would say.

Wishlist 2022

Paint the Roses

An Alice-in-Wonderland-themed cooperative puzzle game wherein players lay down topiary tiles and use colored communication cubes to puzzle out how to fulfill the whims of the Queen of Hearts and (hopefully) avoid decapitation. Probably spring for the Deluxe Edition which has the Escape the Castle expansion included? It also upgrades the components so it's not like it's saving money over just getting the base set and expansion together, but the point is, Escape the Castle adds replayability not really found in just the base game and you should never leave home without it. 

why did this turn into a mastercard thing all of a sudden

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6375315/paint-roses

That Time You Killed Me

A two-player head-to-head that takes place over past, present, and future simultaneously; plant a seed in the past, have a bush in the present and a tree in the future. Try to use this mechanic to do fun murder and out-time-maneuver your opponent. This happens to be on sale at MiniatureMarket.com right now? I'm not sure if it's only for today or what. It's like part of a, this and every other PandaSaurus game that Miniature Market has in stock.

https://spacebiff.com/2022/03/30/that-time-you-killed-me/

The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering, by Nate Piekos

The guy what runs blambot.com finally compiles his decades of expertise into one volume, ranging from how to decide to do balloon placement to how to size lettering correctly to, how to do the big KASHOOOOOOM sound effects.

The Moons of Barsk

I snapped up the first book (Barsk: the Elephant's Graveyard) the moment it came out, in both hardcover and Kindle, and slurped that sucker up within a single day. And then, like, they came out with a sequel and I slept on it? I've got an audible account now...

Other Stuff

But really expensive so probably I can get it myself, but like. The Mission: Impossible boxed set. There's this board game coming out called Stationfall which is supposed to be great. A Switch OLED. I don't know what happened to my PS4 it just like disappeared one day.

November Update

I haven't posted in a bit, just shooting off a quick update to let you know how I've been and what I'm up to.

I've been busy! Big project! Maybe I'll have it completed by the deadline I'd set for myself! I do have my Halloween short story for this year maybe 3/4ths written; I haven't been able to work on it since, two Saturdays ago really; there was an internet outage during Halloween itself and then November hit and it's like, heck wrapping up this project, that's my NaNoWriMo this year.

I did manage to take time out of my day today to watch all of Zootopia+ though of course.