Contents
Writing of Mine That Doesn't Totally Suck
Reading
Playing
alChandler's Halls
Spreading optimism since 1999
Akallabęth
October 6, 2024
Musk and Trump
I saw this picture on Bluesky and figured somebody photoshopped a dumpy guy on the stage next to Trump. But it turned out to be Elon Musk, and he really was jumping like a little kid waking up to a snow day in mid November.
By the way, I'm posting a link to a gift article from the NY Times on Trump's cognitive decline. It's been making the rounds.
October 6, 2024
The Human Condition
Via Poorly Drawn Lines.
October 6, 2024
Gonk
Gonk! It's a power droid, a backup battery with legs. I've always felt kind of sorry for the poor things and I was delighted to find one in the game.
October 6, 2024
Tom Bombadil
I finished watching Rings of Power the other night. I've slowly wrapped my head around the fact that the show doesn't negate the books and forced myself not to be too harsh on the thing.
In this season they introduced Tom Bombadil, who trains the unknown istar, AKA the Stranger, in the art of finding his staff. This version of Tom is a lot like Yoda and in the end the Stranger does find his staff and takes a name for himself. And I'm cool with that. Hell, I'll admit that I like Sean Bean's version of Boromir better then Tolkien's so I can be flexible, honest. That being said, I wish we had gotten Tolkien's Bombadil. He's 50% the Dude from The Big Lebowski, 40% Gene Kelly, and 10% Robin Williams. Perhaps they should have held off on Bombadil until the Harfoots got closer to the place that will eventually become the Shire. But they didn't, instead Tom is camping out in the desert acting as a tutor to Wizards. Still, at least Tom and the Stranger got to sing together for a bit.
I expect that next season will see Ar-Pharazôn turn his attention to Sauron as Elendil and Isildur leave for northwestern Middle-earth. I'll probably watch it.
October 5, 2024
Old Friends Reunited
Last week Rolf was over to play a bit of Star Wars Outlaws. So I gave him the captain's chair and took Chucky's chair, moving him to the ottoman. Newton was on the window sill and when he jumped to the ottoman he stared at Chucky. At one point he regularly slept with Chucky but gave that up years ago. When Rolf left and Chucky got his chair back, Newton renewed his friendship with the guy. In fact, he's sleeping there right now.
Meanwhile I finally finished the Viriconium books. I they're great but they did mess with my head so I don't see myself rereading them anytime soon. I've moved on to a nonfiction book about Elon Musk's disastrous takeover of Twitter.
September 30, 2024
Viriconium
I'm on the last book in M. John Harrison's Viriconium sequence, this is the third time I'm reading it and this time it really kicked me in the head.
The last two times I read it I was working, now I have time to brood over the thing. Harrison wrote an essay on the books and among other thing he said:
“What would it be really like to live in the world of…?” is an inappropriate question, a category error. You understand this immediately you ask it of the inscape of, say, Samuel Beckett or Wyndham Lewis. I didn’t want it asked (and I certainly didn’t want it answered) of Viriconium, so I made that world increasingly shifting and complex. You can not learn its rules. More importantly, Viriconium is never the same place twice. That is because — like Middle-Earth — it is not a place. It is an attempt to animate the bill of goods on offer. Those goods, as in Tolkien or Moorcock, Disney or Kafka, Le Guin or Wolfe, are ideological. “Viriconium” is a theory about the power-structures culture is designed to hide; an allegory of language, how it can only fail; the statement of a philosophical (not to say ethological) despair. At the same time it is an unashamed postmodern fiction of the heart, out of which all the values we yearn for most have been swept precisely so that we will try to put them back again (and, in that attempt, look at them afresh).
It was the second book, A Storm of Wings that really did a number on me. And that's a good thing, it's nice to know that a piece of art can still do that to me now and then.
You know, I was going to reread his novel The Sunken Land Rises Again but I think I'm going to tip toe away from Mr. Harrison for a bit. I just bought the new book about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. A book about a wannabe Lex Luthor who spent $44 billion on a service and then proceeded to run it into the ground is just the palate cleanser I need right now.
September 29, 2024
The Heist
I decided to redo the mission I finished the other night for posterity. The idea was that it would be a one take stealth run, no edits, no do overs. Here's how it went. By the way, I now have 250 GB worth of my videos on Kosh. I've got to move them to external storage.
Update: And that's just what I did, moved 250 GB of videos off of Kosh and onto an external drive.
September 22, 2024
Over Thinking It
I was playing Star Wars Outlaws and I had to steal something that was heavily guarded. I got into the place, knocked out the guards, destroyed the security droid and got my target. Then I left the building and there were eight or nine guards outside. Now I've invested 30 hours into the game so rather then shoot it out with the guards I looked around for a way out, because there's always a clever way out. But after several attempts that ended in my death I went to a walkthrough, the first time I've used a walkthrough in this game.
As it turned out there is no clever way of leaving, you just have to kill everybody in the courtyard. So that's what I did, in best Quentin Tarantino fashion. Actually got to use those grenades I've been carrying. Sometimes I over think things.
September 21, 2024
Early Retirement
September 16, 2024
Sofa
Yesterday my new sofa arrived. Newton was pretty cool about the old sofa leaving but was a little suspicious about the new one. When I sat on it he hung back for about half an hour, watching me.
When he saw I was still alive after 30 minutes he decided it was safe and he joined me.
On the old couch I slumped, if I try hard enough I can slump on the new one but it's a bit of an effort and slumping should be effortless. So I sat upright and watched The Batman in preparation for The Penguin dropping later this week on MAX. To my surprise my attention was fixed on the movie and I didn't fiddle with my phone once as I watched angsty Batman do his thing. This was an unexpected side effect and I'll investigate further.
September 15, 2024
Low Expectations
It says something I suppose that I'm pleased with myself that when I landed on an ice planet my first trip was to a clothing store to buy appropriate gear. You know instead of getting angry because I was dropping dead for no discernable reason.
September 13, 2024
Annoyances Star Wars Outlaws Edition
SWO allows manual saves, unless you're in a mission, then manual saves are disabled and it switches to a checkpoint save system. Fine, I've long since accepted check point saves as a fact of life. So then, you're almost at the end of the mission, the games saves and you decide to call it a night. When you go back to the game the next day you boot up the game and there's your character, right where you left her. But every enemy you've killed or incapacitated are back too. It's not a bug, it's something the devs have added from soulslike games.
Huzzah.
September 13, 2024
Sofa No. 2
I'm getting a new sofa delivered on Saturday and ever since I ordered it at the end of August I've been exceptionally neurotic, even by my standards, over the whole thing. But I'm not so self obsessed that I failed to look out for Newton. Whenever I read or watched television on my end of the couch Newton would lay on his (not mine anymore, his) Doctor Who blanket and napped by my side. Since there was no way to explain to him that the loss of the couch was only temporary, I set up his blanket and pillows on the floor in the general area of the old couch. It seemed to help him adjust to the disruption to the way things ought to be.
September 12, 2024
The Apprentice
September 10, 2024
Atmospheric Accelerator
I just finished getting an atmospheric accelerator for a woman who, in turn, will soup up my speeder. This isn't my play through but it is pretty much what I did and I'm posting ConCon's video because I didn't need it, I finished the job without using a walkthrough, although I came close to using one a couple of times. I'm quite proud that my aging brain managed to work all this stuff out by itself.
September 9, 2024
An Observation About My Playing Style
I was trying to break into a secure facility in SWO and I found what seemed to be a fairly good entrance. But no matter what strategy I used I kept dying. After almost two hours I tried two other ways in and was out of the facility in 30 minutes.
I'm guessing that after fifteen minutes you guys would have scouted for an easier way inside. Me, my first reaction is that it's my fault. I'm not coordinated enough, I'm not fast enough. Once I realized that it wasn't my fault I got in and out in good time. I'll try to remember that the next time I take Kay out for a job.
September 7, 2024
Rings of Power
In my Tolkien reread I've made to to The Two Towers. In book four of that volume (Tolkien considered LotR one big book divided into three volumes and six smaller books, two per volume) the plot bounces between Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas searching for Merry and Pippin, and Merry and Pippin's adventures in Fangorn Forest. We don't get to see Frodo and Sam until the next book, when the Fellowship broke up Tolkien split his attention, two books for Frodo and Sam and two books for the rest of the Fellowship.
Anyway, Merry and Pippin and start a chain of events that lead to the ents marching on Isengard. I love this part and since I'm told that the ents, and Tom Bombadil, show up in the next episode and since I'm dealing with ents in the reread, this is the show's best chance to put me in a kinder mood.
September 5, 2024
This has been a Whenpigsfly production.
Any questions or comments can be directed to kaliban13@comcast.net.
Logo courtesy of Mrs. Silverman.