I just find this whole segment SO odd. It's like they're trying to lean into this negative vibe that video games are scary, and dangerous. Then they use examples that are in no way dangerous or scary. They're just different than things they did at the time, but in no way harm anyone.

They also use deceptive editing. First they talk about the 900 numbers which cost per minute. And it's true. Those absolutely existed for video games. You could call them, and pay like 99 cents per minute to listen to a pre-recorded message telling you how to play the game. Think of a guy reading off a gamefaqs walk through at a time when gamefaqs didn't exist. So that was one of your only options. The other option was magazines and books. Strategy guides came a bit later. I remember seeing them in the late SNES era. I remember a Super Mario RPG stratagy guide. I remember a Chrono Trigger guide. Earthbound actually came with it's own strategy guide.

But I don't remember that with NES era games. What are you going to put in your Super Mario 3 strategy guide? "Go right."

Yeah, you could list all the secrets, and put a map, and screen grabs of each level. But, how many pages is that really? 10? You could probably put the full level for 5 levels per page, and that turns into 10 when you front ant back each page. So SMB1 had 32 levels. That'd be 4 pages. SMB3 had 90 levels. So 9 pages for that strategy guide.

I think the problem was just NES games didn't have the complexity and length to necessitate a strategy guide. SNES had a MASSIVELY improved space to work with. games for the first time were massive enough to make a magazine sized book dedicated to this game. That's how much the games grew. That's how much content there was now.

But on NES, it just wasn't there yet. And the internet wasn't a thing in the 80s either. So these 900 numbers made BANK.

But the 900 numbers were not exclusive to video games. I remember the NFL had one probably in each city I would imagine. I remember commercials during NFL games that we could call and hear all the news and info updated daily, from our Cleveland Browns. Sometimes they had interviews with the players. I know my dad said a guy he worked with had called that number, and sometimes it was just the audio feed of what interview he did with sports center, or a local radio station. They also had a guy who just spread gossip. The one my dads coworker was convinced of in the early 90s, was that Bernie Kosar was going to buy the team because Art Modell was frustrated with the conditions of the stadium. Keep in mind, that was 1991. Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Browns. Until Cleveland sued Art Modell, and they couldn't be the Baltimore Browns. So they became the Baltimore Ravens. Which are still a team to this day. After they moved to Baltimore they claimed they had been fighting the city to get a grant from Cleveland to fix the stadium, but Cleveland said no. So instead of a billionaire owner fixing his own stadium, Art was asking for tax dollars, and Cleveland said no. So he left with the players. And Cleveland had to wait until 1999 to get the longest term worst team in the NFL. Since 1999 I think the browns have made the playoffs twice. And only in the first round. Bars in Cleveland make BANK.

I also remember a 900 number for the WWF (now known as the WWE) with the Mean Gene Hotline. They had a guy who interviewed wrestlers onscreen. Well, they gave him a hotline where he interviewed wrestlers daily for the hotline. Which is easy when all the rumors and gossip are controlled by you, since your show is scripted. So you can get Mean Gene to say "Folks, I think Hulk Hogan might be due for a comeback!" if you know that Hogan is 2 weeks away from being healed from an injury. You know you plan for Hogan to be at the next show. So you have Mean Gene give that out as gossip, then it turns out to be true. Now you got people addicted to getting the early news. And they're paying money per minute to listen to outcomes of predetermined matches, before the matches are even announced.

But the segment makes it seem like these 900 numbers for video games are predatory for just video games. They had 900 numbers for everything back then. Every sport had one. Every soap opera on daytime TV had one. Religion had a lot of 900 numbers. They had one that would give you the winning lotto numbers before the numbers were drawn. Which is weird because they were never right once. Nobody ever won money with their numbers. Ever. But they had a disclaimer before each call stating that they are not responsible for any gambling done with this information. Which is basically like saying "You agree not to sue us, if you don't win the lottery."

And then, immediately AFTER the 900 number part, they say that an 89 year old woman calls Nintendo daily to play legend of zelda.

THAT IS VERY DISINGENUOUS!!!

Because they didn't lie. I'm sure in 1991 there was an 89 year old woman calling Nintendo to talk to a game counselor to get help with her game. I'm not disputing that. The part that feels like they're manufacturing outrage is the fact that while Nintendo DID run a daily hotline where you could talk to someone, who would walk you through the game, they did NOT do so through a 900 number. They did it through 1-800-255-3700. That number does not charge money. That number is still in operation today. I don't know if you can still do the whole game guide over the phone thing.....but they will help you if you need. Like if you need to send something in for repair. Or if you need information on how to do a thing with your switch. Or where to find this product. I imagine game help requests had to have died off since......let's call it 2002. I know that would be pretty late to still be running a hint hotline, but I don't actually know when they stopped. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe they will just read gamefaqs to you over the phone. I guess I can't say I've attempted to do that in maybe close to 30 years.

I remember as a kid I would call about Metroid, and Zelda and Punch Out. That was was the late 80s. I think I stopped around 1996 when the library got an internet demo computer. And then you'd go to best buy, and they have all these demo computers of the computers they're selling. And back then, it was just a legit computer unrestricted connected to the internet. Now, I will admit I never attempted to go to a porn site while standing on the floor of a best buy. But as far as I could tell, they didn't filter anything out from the internet back then. I remember going to Nintendos website, and I had a notebook and a pen. I would just take notes. And it didn't even feel like it was inconvenient. I'm sure Gen-Z reading this story is like "YOOOOO!!!!! MY BOY WAS COOKED IN THE STONE AGE!!!"

But no. That's just how it was. You had the library. You had demo units at best buy. You could print from the library. I think back then it was 10 non-color sheets. That might have varied by library, but that was my experience.

I feel like I'm rambling....

Ok, so I can tell this idea is crazy, but I can't tell if it's good.

The basic idea is, imagine a giant woodstock style weekend. With the massive property and hundreds of thousands of people.

Instead of tents, imagine if there were plastic houses. With kind of like a lego connection to assemble it. So you just click it into place, and maybe tighten something to make it secure, but essentially you assemble this little temporary housing, and then live in it for a few days. Then disassemble it, put it in your car, and away you go.

I was thinking you could also use it in a pinch if you have a sudden burst of refugees all in one place at the same time. It's not optimal, but sometimes wars happen, and you have a massive shift in population faster than housing can catch up with. This would temporarily alleviate that problem to some extent.

I'm currently playing "Cassette Beasts". Pretty fun game that takes the pokemon formula, and turns it on its head.

I will not play long and involved 300 hour games. It's too much. I want bite sized games.

The internet said this game is 25 hours long. Except thats bullshit. There are 130 monsters. I've caught 16. I've been playing for 17 hours. I don't know if this game has "gym leaders". But if they do, I haven't seen them yet.

I have no bad words about the game, other than the fact that it takes 10 minutes (I timed it) to go from not yet opening the game, to get to a title screen. It also crashes pretty regularly. Meaning you gotta wait 10 minutes AGAIN.

But the point is, I've barely scratched the surface of this game, and I'm approaching the time period where most people have beaten games.

Am I just bad at games?

About 6 years ago I had an analogy. The analogy was birthed because during covid discussion of vacines would go off the rails as idiots got emotional from their news talking head bullet points. I would try to make a point, and rather than listen, and engage in critical thinking, I was getting CNN and Fox News talking points argueing things that were never even said by me, but they were being argued as part of a broader discussion on tv.

So I needed a fake topic that no one had emotions over. Something there were no talking head points on. No parachute for these mouth breathers to fall back on.

At the time, the 2020 election was about a month away. Trump was still president. I feared a 2nd term would be far worse than his first. Sanders a few montbs prior, before the summer, was looking to be the only option democrats had. Which would have been great. Then Biden came out of 5th place in 2 weeks, and became the top pick. So I made an analogy of the differences between the parties.

I said:

I want you to imagine that Russia has a government building with a very healthy lawn. A government lawn. And for some reason it's seen as a mark of national pride. A lawn that Russia uses to belittle the USA. They claim to be the superior country, because their lawn is greener. So now the USA has to make the lawn of the white house greener than the Russian lawn.

Here's how the democrats would handle it. They would have 50 different viewpoints, and argue for 50 different solutions. In the end, nothing can get done because they're all argueing which method will result in the greenest lawn. In the end, they do nothing. Brown spots remain on the white house lawn.

Meanwhile republicans don't argue. They just find the guy with the loudest voice, and all get behind his plan 100%. Even if it's terrible. The end result is that trump finds an intern, gives him $100 to go to home depot and buy as much green paint as he can. Then they'll paint the lawn green. Only to discover that the 4 buckets of paint isn't nearly enough to paint the whole lawn the same color. So their response is to just dump the paint all in one spot. Let it flow where it runs, and then call that a huge sucsess. Even though all you did was slightly color a 30 foot radius of a huge farm a slightly greener green. Then take publicity photos in just that one spot, and brag about how you did it. All the while the democrats, who did nothing, are blaming the republicans for not actually doing the job. Both sides calling the other a hypocrite for doing nothing but blaming the other sides failures.

---

Ya know.......now, 6 years later, we got a UFC event on the white house lawn, and they repainted the pool so now it's becoming a swamp. Because blue paint promotes warmer water in pools, and creates conditions that allow algae to grow.

Soooooooooo, remove the russian element from my fake analagy. Change the paint color to blue. Put in the pool instead of the lawn, and now somehow I lose the ability to use that analogy because now people are emotional over the white house lawn and UFC. Now people are emotional over republicans painting things at the white house with disasterous results.

I specifically thought out my analogy to be so stupid that people won't get tripped up in the minor details, and instead concentrate on the core contrast in how the parties (don't) work.

Now I'm fucked. If I start to use that analogy, they'll just say "Oh, they lost the right for the white house lawn to be a matter of national pride when they put on that UFC event."

Or

"They won't use green paint. They probably have extra blue paint left over from the reflection pool."

sigh

Ya know.....you can't just take the stupid things I say, and make them reality.

So, I'm watching some old pro wrestling. Specifically WCW Starrcade 1996. The match is Rey Mysterio Jr VS Jushin Thunder Liger.

Just to catch everybody up to speed:

Rey Mysterio Jr is an American wrestler, of Mexican herritage. His hometown is San Diego.

Jushin Thunder Liger is a Japanese wrestler.

Both of these men wear masks, but very different styles. Jushin's mask and overall style reminds me of ancient Japanese fables of dragons, and very sharp edges, and kind of like an anime come to life.

Rey Mysterio takes the overall theme of the tradition of Luche Libre masks, and makes it his own. Once you know Rey Mysterio's style, you can always instantly tell his mask from the millions of OTHER similar style masks. His style draws elements of Mexican culture, religion, and sometimes the number 619 (which is San Diego's area code).

Ok, now that we're all caught up to speed.....

I'm watching this match, and at this point in time, Jushin is known around the world as the absolute legendary best in the style that he does. It's a very fast paced, move around the ring. Do all the things. Jump around. Flip around. You get the idea.

And Rey has a very similar style. Important to note that while Rey would later overtake the spot as most famous cruiserweight, he had not even come close to that yet. Rey is very early in his career. He's still proving himself and low on the card, but with potential.

Jushin has been a legend all over the world, and is just coming to the end of what was considered his peak. So you got Jushin in the end of his prime, against future legend as he's just fighting to get onto the card. So to see them meeting here is kind of a fascinating dynamic. If this match had never happened, it's the type of thing fans would have drooled over the concept. A dream match. Endless debates would be had over how the match should/would go.

I hope I'm hyping up the concept well enough to raise interest in seeing something like that. Because if I have, then I will have done a far better job of selling this match than WCW did. Because this crowd is BORED!!!

That's when it hit me. This show is in Tennessee. The crowd is like 80% at least, "good ol' boys" style of white people. So what they're seeing is a Japanese guy vs a Mexican guy. Yes, he's from San Diego. He even makes that part of his whole persona. His finishing move that he uses every match is called "The 619". Very much American. But still, Mexican heritage.

They aren't bored. They're racist. They don't want to cheer the Japanese guy, because he's a foreigner. They don't want to cheer Rey because he's a Mexican. So their only option left is to just sit there awkwardly in silence and wait the match out.

And that was 1996. Nothing has changed. If anything they've boiled over even worse. We see this big arching shot of this crowd that's somewhere between 15k-20k people. I am willing to bet that statistically speaking, someone in that crowd shot was part of J6. I'd put money on that, if we had any way to identify every person and confirm if they did or didn't. The only reason I don't say it was more, is because this footage was shot in 1996. Which means anyone younger than 39 at J6 couldn't have been in this crowd.

But think of that. This isn't a divided crowd. A crowd of this size all came together, and all collectively agreed that it was OK to be racist together, and not cheer for the guys who weren't white and american.

Our problems in the modern day are the same problems we've had since the post civil war years. And this match shows that. There was no meeting where they all agreed beforehand. This was just the natural instinct of the entire crowd.

Because the match was great. You couldn't have asked for these two to give a better match at those points in their careers. Rey wasn't as seasoned as he should have been, but still great. Jushin was slightly getting over the hill, but still great. Performing in a style that was still relatively new to American audiences.

So it's new, it's fresh, it's fast paced, it's TV ready. This match today would fit right in, since the style is more established now. This match should have gotten an amazing reaction. Instead silence.

1996?

2026?

They're the same picture.

In life there are 4 types of people. Doers, thinkers, watchers, and instigators.

The doers do things. They have a plan, and they just do it. Doesn't even have to be their own plan. But it becomes their plan the moment they do it.

The thinkers don't pay attention to what has happened, they think of what they want to happen. They study what works, what doesn't work, and why. Then they think of their plans for the future. They may not even be the one to execute the plan, but they set the plan in place.

The watchers watch what everyone is doing. They don't influence outcomes. They just watch, and take notice of what is happening to develop a greater sense of information gathering.

And the instigators are usually self motivated. They stir shit up, to divide people for personal gain. Usually there is no plan. Just the fastest path to get others divided, and see how to benefit as it comes.

Well I'm a watcher. And 30 years ago I began noticing trends. I'd see local politicians tell my city (Cleveland) that their administration was going to be the one to bring Cleveland back on top. And then nothing happened. Then the next Mayor said they were going to put Cleveland back on top. And nothing happened. And then the next mayor said they were going to put Cleveland on top. I was at one of these city hall press confrences in 2004. I asked newly elected Mayor Jane Cambell what the plan was to put Cleveland on top as she claimed. Her answer was basic politician speak. Saying a lot of words to get people to nod their heads in agreement, but not actually saying anything of substance. I watched as everyone in the room clapped and smiled and was assured by her obviously prepared answer. This wasn't a plan. It was a dodge. Don't answer the question, but make everyone feel as if you did.

Around this time, it started coming out that Mike White, Mayor in 1996, was found guilty of corruption, fraud, financial embezzlement. The works. Then I watched as everyone around me started nodding and saying they knew it all along. Bitch, no you didn't. You didn't say a word. I didn't know either, but I was 13. I still watched as everyone felt luke warm about Mike White. And somehow this became Jane Cambells problem. She had a very short term. Never heard from her again.

And then came Frank Jackson. Again, I saw the reaction as luke warm water. He stayed mayor for like 15 years. Just because every election we hadn't heard of any new fraud. Then towards the end, his grandson was involved with organized crime, and he hadn't done anything of note his entire tenure.

What I also notice is that people like this, the doers, they don't face real reprocussions. Occasionally they do. I'd like to have seen Mike White imprisoned. That didn't happen. Instead, he just faded into obscurity. Stole millions in tax dollars meant for the schools, in a time when I was going to school. I remember our schools never had enough books. Never had enough supplies. Teachers underpaid. All so this asshole can get another bonus.

And you can apply this at a national level too. The athletes that make it to the big time. The NFL, THE NBA, the MLB, ect. They can rape women, and keep their jobs getting paid millions of dollars. They can drink and drive and when the cops come, they don't reach for their handcuffs. They reach for their cell phone to grab a selfie.

So 30 years ago, I said karma isn't real. There are good honest people in this world. You'll never hear from them unless you work with them, or are family to them. But they don't get a massive bonus sent to them from a corporation for helping the needy, the sick, the elderly, the mentally different. They don't get a free pass from law enforcement for making an honest mistake. Some of them get shot by the police for being not white.

Look at our president. Go out on the street and ask 100 people if they think he's a pedophile or not. I would be shocked if it wasn't a 100% yes. Yet, there he is. He's the president. I STILL think he rigged the system to do it.

Think he'll face jail time? Think he'll be hit with Karma? Did Nixon get a jail sentence, or a pardon?

Karma isn't real.

So, if you research the history of space exploration, you'll find one result keeps happening over and over and over and over.

They keep exploding.

It's not surprising. Their basic foundation is that they are rockets. Even from their original designs, rockets have always been built with the purpose of exploding. They're weapons. But, before they were weapons, the ORIGINAL idea, was to use the propulsion to exit Earths atmosphere and into space. The only problem is that when this was being designed, I forget the guys name, but he was a scientist that the nazis had captured. He designed the rockets for space craft. Hitler then took the designs and thought "Let's blow up London!"

So, once the war was over, the United States came over, and recruited him into NASA. His designs were how NASA got started. Modified versions of his original designs are what Apollo 11 used to get to the moon. So, the design CAN work. However, there were 10 Apollo missions before that didn't reach the moon. The first one ended disastrously.

The Challenger shuttle ended in disaster.

Even though they aren't NASA, recently in the past month Elon Musk's SpaceX had an explosion. Jeff Bezos also had a rocket explode. So this is still an issue.

And I always wondered, what would happen if you just took a commercial jet, and flew above the clouds? Well, they DO fly above the clouds. So what would happen if you just kept going "up"?

And I'm sure you can't just grab a stock Delta Airlines 747 and fly into orbit, but why not design a space craft, which more resembles the take-off of an airplane? Drives forward really fast, and then lifts? Except it's not flying NYC to LA. It just keeps lifting and lifting, until it's in orbit.

You could put thrusters on it to go forward in space. And then for landings, you wouldn't drop off into the ocean. You'd just land at an airport. The crazy thing is, the people of NASA are so talented, that they could route the whole thing, in a way that they land at whichever airport they want. So they'd know ahead of time NOT to schedule any landings or takeoffs for this 3 hour period of time when the space craft lands.

And I bet with enough time, they could get the experience to reduce that 3 hours, into 15 minutes. Knowing exactly when they'll arrive. Also no more of this breakaway pods that fall back to earth after detatching, or the other ones which just float out in space forever.

But I'm sure I can't be the only one with this idea, so I figure the most likely is that it's a scientific restriction. Where they can't do it, because......and this is where the explanation would be.

Anyone know the explanation?

Ok, so this idea actually can't happen, but just imagine the possibilities.

I want to travel back to 2002 when they were making the Sam Raimi Spiderman movies. I want to take the cast they had working the Daily Bugle. I want them to star in a sitcom that is shot like The Office. The entire show takes place inside the Daily Bugle, with J Jonah Jameson basically having the Micheal Scott role. Except in the J Jonah Jameson style.

And since you only ever get to see/hear from 3-4 people besides Jameson, I figure you could fill out the cast with entirely new characters made just for this show.

No....I didn't just think this up as an excuse to get more Betty Brant/Peter Parker interactions. I also really like the actor who played J Jonah Jameson in those movies. Really nailed the role.

OH! And I guess Eddie Brock will eventually show up as a freelance photographer you see every few episodes, but just in quick scenes. Which, unfortunately would mean Topher Grace. Always hated that casting call. He would have made a GREAT Spiderman. Terrible Eddie Brock/Venom.

Well, now I'm just ranting I suppose.

Ok, so I won't bore you with the back and forth details that led up to this. The important thing to know is that I needed to talk to a human at the IRS to ask a very simple question that would take just a few minutes to look into.

Me trying to call for 3 days dozens of calls dealing with this shit. I eventually figured out how to prompt the AI to let me push buttons to reach menus.

After all that I plotted out what each option does.

ALL OF THEM either lead to a pre-recorded message that says to visit the website, OR attempts to transfer you, before telling you there are no agents taking calls for that option.

Eventually, I wondered what would happen if I said to the AI agent "TAX FRAUD".

Boom. Straight through to an agent.

I feel bad for lying to the hotline, but also, I was left no valid options to talk to a human. Once I said tax fraud, my issue which I had spent probably 100 calls in 3 days trying to get through, was over in 10 minutes. And 6 of those minutes she put me back on hold to research my issue.

Fuck AI

Ok, so it's a dance club. Except there's no music. And to get in you need to wear tap dancing shoes. And the dance floor instead of being dark, is EXTREMELY bright. Like painfully blindingly bright. So all you see is bright light and silhouettes, and all you hear is just constant taptaptaptap of feet shuffling and dancing on the dance floor. Mixed with groans of pain.

Like, imagine just total exhaustion to the point of being uncomfortable. All while drinking alcohol in mostly silence. Talking is discouraged, like a library.

I hate this idea, but that means I think it would be extremely popular with normies. Because I'm a weirdo.

So, imagine being me. I have a dead end job working for some asshole corporation. The cubicle 3 down from me has a dead guy in it. No, I'm not joking. There is a literal skeliton sitting at a desk, where Jeff had a heart attack, and died. That was 2 years ago. His body has decomposed, and his skeliton remains. Covered in spider webs.

Thats when I pull out this letter from my grandpa. He's recently passed away, and in his will he left me his farm. So I say "peace dudes, I'm out".

Now I arrive on my farm. Holy fuck, grandpa clearly let this place go. I need to clean this yard up! Stones and logs everywhere! Now I got this bitch Robin who I just met telling me my new house is a piece of shit, and I should upgrade it. Funnily enough, she's the one selling that service. Kinda seems like her comments have a financially benefiting motivation.

So it's been a few days, I've cleaned up the bulk of the farm. Still some really big logs, and really big stones, but otherwise I got some seeds planted, and some farmable land. Things are coming together.

That's when I notice I have mail. It's from Pam. She's never met me, but she feels entitled enough to send me a letter asking me to bring her a pale ale.

Are you serious??? THATS where this bitch is at in her life? She's SUCH an alcoholic that she's now soliciting booze from me, a total stranger, through the mail??? Oh, fuck off!!!! Yes I helped Clint look at some ores. He asked if I can go find 10 ores and show them to him. Then I kept the ores. He just wanted to inspect the quality that's coming from this mine. It's his passion.

Yes I also brought Willy 2 rainbow trout. He didn't want the fish. He just wanted to share his love of fishing with a newbie. It's a small town, and he just wanted someone to relate to.

But you? You live right next to the bar. You're so lazy that you're asking for alcohol delivery from a stranger through the mail. THIS is your passion???

Pam. You need help. These aren't healthy actions you're doing.

So I was just watching a video on youtube where a guy looks at various designs of Batman's costume, and explaining why certain versions of the suit make sense for the project it appears in.

And as part of his B-Roll, he pans over a shot of comic books. One of them has Batman in a very Batman generic pose. On a rooftop, just looking into the distance. That pose.

But the thing that caught my eye, is it also said "Writer - Kevin Smith".

Whaaa? Holupaminute. Is this a case of just two people unrelated having the same name? Or are you telling me that the guy who directed Clerks is now a writer for legit DC Batman comic books????

Like, statistically there HAS TO have been someone who got into a car crash, or had a skydiving accident, or whatever. Just whatever made them go into a coma around August 30th 2001. Then not wake up until around October 2nd 2001.

Everyone around you would have had wild raging emotions. Suddenly EVERYBODY is really racist towards Arabs. But nobody wants to be the one to tell you what happened. Plus, everyone around you knows that you'll be on so many drugs you'll forget in 5 minutes.

So you may not even find out until like Oct 16th, when you're out of the hospital, and everyone around you is getting pissed off at you for pretending like you don't know about 9/11. I don't remember the term "gas lighting" existing at that time, but the practice existed. Back then gas lighters were just called "assholes".

Can you imagine waking up to THAT???

Ok, so I work at a Wendys one day a week. I just got off shift, and we close at 1am. At 12am I put a whole bunch of patties down on the grill, so I could start cleaning it by 12:30, and be done by 1am. That way I can walk out the door.

Well......usually we have a rush at 12:40-12:59. Except tonight we didn't.

At 1am, I still had 15 big patties, and 15 junior patties. We're supposed to chop them up into chilli meat, but I said fuck that. This massive billionaire corporation won't even let us take home the food we're going to throw out anyways. So I said fuck them, and took roughly 30 patties that they weren't going to throw out.

Now I'm at home with a dilemma. I'm not going to eat 30 patties in a week. So I put the small patties in 2 ziplock bags, and the big patties into 2 other ziplock bags. I put them in the fridge, but I'm wondering. Should I just put 3 of those bags in the freezer, and leave 1 in the fridge to eat throughout the week? Will the freezer bags have any issues? The meat is already cooked. I'd essentially just need to take out a bag, put it in the fridge, and by the next day I could put it in the microwave for a minute.

Is there any issue with doing that?

I don't see many movies. Maybe 1-2 a year? I absolutely have not seen even 10% of the MCU movies. I saw The Avengers in 2012. Then I saw Wolferine and Deadpool a couple years ago.

I liked the Avengers. I felt like the story was the story. I'm not a reader of The Avengers. I know who the characters are, but there's absolutely huge character defining events that I would have no clue about from the comics. That being said, I liked the movie. I probably missed stuff if I would have been a comic book reader, but that's ok. The movie stood on it's own, and I understood the movie.

Wolferine and Deadpool I did not enjoy. Full disclosure, I've not seen any of the X-Men movies. I've not seen any of the Deadpool movies. I know the characters. I used to watch the X-Men cartoon in the 90s. I don't read either of the comics. And I've also not seen hardly any of the MCU movies. I'm not a megafan who gets every little reference. So MY perspective of that movie was that stuff just kind of happened. And you're like "Ok, I guess this is happening now". But from a story perspective, it makes no sense. A good example is that in the movie they just randomly bump into Gambit and a few of the X-Men. Just by chance, then the big scene happens, and after that the X-Men being in that movie made no difference. So I'm just sitting in the theater thinking "Well what the hell was THAT all about??" Later I find out that the actor who played Gambit was apperently an internet obsession to get him to play Gambit, and it's not even the same actor from the original X-Men movies. So the point of the scene is to get that actor to play Gambit, specifically to satisfy the specific portion of the audience who got super invested in casting news from 10 years ago, and were vocal that their favorite didn't get cast. Cool. I was unaware of ANY of that as I watched the movie. And that's all that movie was. References and call-backs to things I was unfamiliar with the source material for.

That brings us to Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

I enjoy spiderman comics. I'm not currently reading any, but I dip in and out of the comics from a historical range. I have a book which shows off the original stuff. I guess technically it would be considered a reprint, but it was released in 2023 or maybe 2022. So I can see where it started from. I also have a bunch from the 80s and 90s. I also watched the cartoon on fox in the 90s. Technically I'm somewhere in Spiderman 3 from 2007. I liked Spiderman 1 and 2. I've seen 3. Don't care for it.

I also saw The Amazing Spiderman. I think that was around 2012? But I never saw the sequal, and I'm just now finding out that there were 3 other spiderman movies in the MCU. So I never saw those. I also never saw that animated one from a few years back. I forget it's name.

So, my question is, given what I'm familiar with, am I going to enjoy this movie? Or will I just be left feeling confused and empty? Please don't give spoilers on anything. Keep it generic. I'm just trying to get an idea on if I'll like the overall presentation of the movie. I want to see it, based on a 20 second commercial I saw. I do not plan on researching anything about the movie. I want my only impressions to be made in the theater.

That being said, will I even enjoy it?

So, here's what I don't get about bigger comic studios. In this case Marvel.

If this guy can make a costume on his own, and have it look this good, why wouldn't Marvel make these suits a bit more professionally? They could make like 1000 of them, and then hire actors of that frame to wear one at the local comic book shop. Just randomly walks into the comic book store, and just sort of hangs out doing improv, in character.

Marvel sells more comics long term, because if you're a kid, and you go to a comic book store, and ACTUAL SPIDERMAN IS IN THE BUILDING, even if you're not already a Spiderman reader, now you are. Because you got that amazing experience.

On top of that, it sells comics immediately, because part of his act could be he's just Spiderman, and he's come into the comic book shop to see if anybody has heard of his comic book. And when people play along, and say yes they know who he is, and he's famous, he can play amazed, and proud. Then he can see his own comic, and be amazed how good it looks. Just whatever the current issue is at that time.

Then he could ask the people around "Wow, this comic is great. You're getting this comic, aren't you? I think you're gonna like it a lot."

Stuff like that. Just crowd participation in a way that sells the comic.

The comic book shop benefits because they get an attraction that they don't have to pay for, which helps sell comics.

Marvel benefits from selling more of their Spiderman comics.

Fans benefit from getting a photo op, and a unique experience.

I see no reason why I'M the first person to think of this. They've HAD TO have already had this idea....but then why don't they do it anymore? Were the costumes they had made up just not good? Was it hard to find a string of local improv actors of the same build as spiderman willing to take VERY part-time work? Like once a month maybe? More if he's willing to travel.

Wait, yeah. You could have them travel, since it doesn't have to happen on any specific day. It's just a random appearance in a random city, driveable from the actors location. So if an actor lived on the eastern half of the country, they could probably make a living traveling as spiderman to different cities every day. They'd just need to live within driving distance of about 20 different cities.

They could totally make a go of this. And not just Spiderman. DC could do the same thing with Batman. Different build, so different actor, but still. I do think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might not be suitable for this. So I guess some comics won't be able to do this. But a lot could.

This needs to be a thing.

I did laundry for the first time in months, and now I'm at the bus stop, and all I can smell is how amazing this hoodie is.

I just don't have anyone around to say "Smell how good my chest smells!" and I wanted to tell someone.

SOMEONE COME BURRY THEIR FACE IN MY CHEST AND SMELL ME!!!!

So guess what guys! There's a program for android called "Game Native". It runs windows games on android, natively!

And I have a Retroid Pocket Flip 2, which is a retro handheld that runs Android.

So, I've played Stardew Valley since launch, but I played it on Nintendo Switch.

So now I'm playing on "PC" for the first time. It's the first time I can use mods!!!

So I'm only on Day 17, year 1.

So what mods should I use? How do I install them? And if you know anything differently that needs to be done on android/game native, let me know. But I can access the container, and do windows tweaks in "windows" if need be.

So. What mods do I need? I'm ok with wiping the save file if need be. I didn't get too far.

So, just a heads up for anyone who hasn't had red vines in a while, I have some bad news. I haven't had red vines in maybe 2-3 years. I bought some last night, and.....enshitification.

They are sooooooo thin now! They used to be girthy tubes. Like the size of straws. Now it's less of a vine, and more of a hollow slightly wobbly stick. Still tastes how I remember. But there's like half of what it used to be.

Would not have bought it if I knew how bad it got. Figured I'd save you guys some money for anyone who cares about this sort of thing. Which, given the community, I would assume would be the vast majority of you.