I've Had Enough of the Once in a Lifetime Shit

 

 This is my worried face.

Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. Donald Trump elected President. A three-year long pandemic. Russia declaring war on Ukraine.

I'm getting tired of this once in a lifetime shit. What the fuck is next? Aliens descending from the heavens? Nuclear fusion? A Star Wars movie that satisfies all corners of the fan base? God forbid, Half-Life 3?

Reality has become surreal, to the point where I expect the unexpected. I'm fucking Batman at this point, planning for contingencies within contingencies. Does any of it make goddamn sense? No, of course not. But I'm the fucking Batman.

If only, right? Would a billion dollars take the bite out of uncertainty? Would it alleviate my fears of global war, disease, or catastrophic climate change? Is there a reason besides ego for Elon Musk's Martian ambitions? Questions bequeath questions, and answers are as fleeting as optimistic thinking. In response to runaway inflation, should I be putting all of my money into something tangible, like gold or silver? Or should I ride the river of the stock market? Who the fuck knows.

I'll tell you what. I hope the goddamn aliens come down from wherever and clean up all of our mess. Tell us that we're not fit to govern ourselves, let alone manage a planet or a nuclear arsenal. Put the natural system back in order. Clean up all the microplastics in the ocean. Suck up all the excess carbon in the atmosphere.

I've had enough of these interesting times shit. Give me Leave it to Beaver and lazy Sundays. Wake me up in some sort of Mormon alternate universe, where everybody is as bland and wholesome as a piece of white bread. Well maybe don't go that far. But let's reel this crazy back a bit. I don't want to see the fall of democracy in America or world wide ecological collapse. Please?

Wait a minute. Is nobody in charge of reality? Who's overseeing this simulation? Where's Lawrence Fishburne with his pills?

Juggernaut AI Is Pretty Cool, so far

 

So like a jabroni, I signed up for the Juggernaut AI app, a reactive training program created by Garrett Blevins utilizing the knowledge of Chad Wesley Smith, one of the most accomplished athletes and coaches in the strength world. Smith's accolades are impressive: he's has posted a top ten all time powerlifting total, as well as won two national championships in the shotput and earned his strongman pro card. Top powerlifters such as Marisa Inda and Andy Huang are Juggernaut athletes. Really, it's hard to think of someone more qualified to teach you how to get strong than Chad Wesley Smith. Maybe that's why the Juggernaut AI app is a rather expensive thirty-five bucks a month. Initially, I balked at the price, then I realized that I've been training for over eight years and haven't made a considerable amount of progress in a while, so what do I have to lose? Thirty-five bucks a month isn't much. After using the app for a week, I'm pretty impressed so far. Before starting a program, you select whether you want to do powerbuilding (bodybuilding with a powerlifting focus) or powerlifting. I selected powerlifting, and the app asked what bodyparts I wanted to work on. I selected biceps and quads, and then entered my maxes on the powerlifts. The app then generated a 188 day program for me, with the first couple months focused on hypertrophy (gaining muscle), then strength, and then peaking for new maxes. It tracks variables such as sleep and desire to train, and then adjusts your program accordingly. It definitely starts out pretty light: I was doing bench presses with 155 lbs and yates rows with 135. However, the volume is high, and my lats were sorer than they'd been in years. You can swap out exercises during your workouts if you wish, and Juggernaut features an extensive library complete with descriptions and videos on how to do each exercise and what it works. The exercise library is really impressive, and a great feature. The main way the Juggernaut AI app tracks your progress is by RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) and RiR (Reps in Reserve). I'd never worked out using these metrics before, but the RPE scale is easily explained. For example, if you're supposed to perform 10 reps with 155 lbs at an RPE of 6, that means you could have easily done another four reps. A 6.5 would mean you maybe could've done 4 reps, while a 7 is 3 easy reps, and so on. Reps in reserve is self-explanatory: a 4 RiR means you need to leave 4 in the tank. I'm a little apprehensive on basing a whole program on how a lifter feels, since I've had good workouts while feeling like shit, and vice versa. Nevertheless, I'm excited to see how I progress, and I'll definitely defer to Chad's judgment, since the program has a growing user base. I'll have a review up months from now.

Bad Poetry: My Children Are Killing Me

 

I go to bed with worry

and lie restless with worry

Until the worrying subsides 

Just enough 

To let my consciousness

Fade away.

Then my oldest pees the bed,

Not once, but twice.

Then my youngest wakes screaming

So my wife puts him in bed with us.

Eventually my other son gets in bed,

and so it's a goddamn party

At two in the morning,

My oldest snoring so loud

That the windows rattle,

While my youngest flops around

And talks to himself

For over two hours.

Every time I edge close to sleep,

He bats it way with a leg kick,

A face slap,

Or a question as to my presence in bed.

What kind of sick CIA torture

Is this shit?

I would kill somebody for the chance

To have a week's worth of uninterrupted

Sleep.

Such is the parent's lament.

This is the price we pay

For having the next generation.

Save us, youth.

Please be worth it.

 

The Pointlessness of Boba Fett

 

Sorry old man, we have no use for you.

Seven episodes in, The Book of Boba Fett reveals its true purpose. We watch as the Mandalorian tracks down his old ward, Grogu, who's learning to be a jedi from none other than Luke Skywalker himself, gloriously reconstructed using a voodoo mixture of CGI and flesh and blood. Luke looks great; Mark Hamill's digitally de-aged voice sounds unnatural and a little too robotic. Luke eventually offers Grogu a choice: either take Djarin's shirt of mithril chainmail, or chose Yoda's tiny lightsaber. Finally, in the last five minutes of his own show, Boba shows up in a round table meeting as he prepares his gangsta family to take down the Pike Syndicate. Boba doesn't even show up in the previous episode, which also stars the Mandalorian. Why is Fett a side character in his own show? Well, the answer is that Star Wars shows now function to launch other shows involving Star Wars characters, none of which will ever be free of the burden of epic heroism. Even age and his character's death in The Last Jedi can't keep Mark Hamill's Luke out of Star Wars. Although I doubt that we get a Disney Plus series involving the adventures of Uncanny Luke and Baby Yoda, an Asoka Tano show is apparently in the works (she also shows up in episode seven of The Book of Boba Fett). So the reason Boba has his own show even though he's largely rendered superfluous by the Mandalorian, is that Star Wars characters never die, even when they should. Boba was a guy in cool armor who disintegrated people and was chummy with Darth Vader; the Mandalorian took his concept (cool armor, bounty hunter) and developed a character and culture to fill in the void. I guess that's why Boba is such a softie now. Instead of a ruthless bounty hunter, he spares nearly everyone who tries to kill him in an attempt to be a kinder, gentler crime boss as opposed to Jabba's grotesqueness. It's all vaguely entertaining, but I'm afraid Star Wars shows will never again be as focused as that first season of the Mandalorian, which told a self-contained story without Luke Skywalker or Bo-Katan appearing to excite the fanboys. 

I feel as though Star Wars is a fiction weighed down by its backstory and its continuous desire to connect everyone in its universe to its central characters. Maybe that's why Visions, a series of non-canonical animated shorts developed by famous anime studios in Japan, is the freshest Star Wars I've seen in years. Visions takes the lore and has fun with it; we get two rival siblings battling in space atop a monstrous star destroyer; a sith ronin who eliminates other sith; and a robot who dreams of becoming a jedi. I've always thought Star Wars would be served better by taking a Final Fantasy approach to its material. Make everything sort of feel like it's in the same universe (weird droids, Western tropes, lightsabers, empires and rebels), but don't feel compelled to actually connect every single piece of fiction. If Disney had chosen this path, they wouldn't feel compelled to computer animate Mark Hamill's face over a younger actor's, or bring Boba Fett back from the dead, when the poor old guy should've stayed in that sarlacc pit.

Fuck My Phone

 

Seriously, fuck this piece of shit.

It took me years to buy one. All those years with a flip phone, a primitive device only good for talking and texting. Eventually, the ease of processing credit cards through Square and an unfortunate washing machine accident resulted in my purchasing of a smart phone. I won't be like everyone else I said. After all, I'd witnessed how people eschewed conversation, the beauty of nature, quiet observation, and obstacles in their path to pay attention to their phone. I didn't get it. What happened to our attention spans? Did we really need to be on the internet all the time? Could we not take a minute of boredom?

I understand now.

The minute I have a question, I think "I'll look that up on google." The minute I have nothing to do, I hop on Reddit and see what's on the front page. When I hit the weights, I take my phone with me, so that I can use it to calculate my percentages as well as keep myself entertained in between sets. It's an alarm clock, a weather forecaster, a repository for all of my data and precious things. It's a goddamn vampire is what it is.

Somehow, my smart phone has made itself essential despite being a thing I lived without for almost the entirety of my life.

What it does is never let me disconnect from the internet. The internet is a cruel place, a techno-capitalist nightmare of garish design and ADHD distraction. I'm starting to quote people from Reddit like they're real flesh and blood people. Which they are. But I don't know them.

Can't we sacrifice convenience for a little bit of humanity in return? Can't we turn back the clock and decided "hey, maybe it's not great to always carry the internet around in our pocket." The answer, of course, is no. People love their smart phones. They spend hundreds of dollars on them.

I want to toss mine out in the fucking driveway and run it over with my car. But I won't.

Who will tell me the weather?

I Got an NFT to Sell You, Moron

 

You can own a piece of this priceless artwork!

Hey, moron. Yeah, I'm talking to you, crypto-bro. We're all going to make it, but by all of us, I don't mean you. Well, it could be you, if you fall for the next scam. All you got to do is cash out before the bubble bursts. And it will burst. Despite being around for ten years, nobody uses crypto as a currency. And why would you? The value can literally change in the middle of a transaction. Not to mention it takes ten minutes to process a transaction with Bitcoin. Oh, and using Ethereum will cost you twenty bucks, maybe even fifty. Who the fuck knows? It's all made-up bullshit, with so much obfuscation that your average person just might buy into the hype without understanding how much of a scam it all is.

So yeah, Pointless Venture is cashing in. Straight from the blockchain, we will be issuing non-fungible-tokens for Dumb-Fat-Bastard, produced by our hard-working NFT collective, Dumb-Fat-Bastards. Our cryptocurrency, which exists entirely in my imagination, making it just as real as any other crypto, will be called ScamCoin.

A shot of the miraculous blockchain, the tech that will revolutionize fraud!

I assure you, the humble buyer, that if you give Dumb-Fat-Bastards your money, we will not produce a single thing of substance. Any attempts to contact us will fail because we're a DAO, which is short for go fuck yourself. If you're a tech-literate individual with low social skills, a small amount of expendable income, and absolutely no financial literacy, then jump on the hype train, baby! Daddy Elon is taking us to Mars, and only the true visionaries are invited! Good morning and good night!

Here are some other potential NFTs we are working on:

Muddy Penis!

A pile of shit!

Mutant waving high!

Hey, at least none of them feature fucking apes, eh?

X Box Series S Review

 

It's a small, attractive console with a simplistic yet elegant design. Hah.

Although I'm mainly a PC gamer, I purchased an Xbox Series S a while back, mainly so that my Playstation-owning buddy could come over and crossplay Halo Infinite multiplayer between the Xbox and PC. It also functions well as a backup gaming machine, which is something to keep in mind, since if my 5700 xt broke I'd be out at least 600 bucks to replace it with something similar.

As a budget machine, I think the Series S works really well, especially with last generation games. Halo 5 runs at 4k and 60 fps; I ran through the tutorial section of Gears 5 and it seems to hit the advertised 1440p/60 fps that Microsoft claims the console was designed for. However, Halo Infinite is another story. Performance mode in Infinite is a dynamic 1080p/60 fps, and boy, that resolution scaling is pretty noticeable, to the point where I'd say that Halo 5 looks better on the Series S. If you sit a distance away from your tv like I do, that's not a big deal. If you sit closer, however, you'll notice those resolution shifts. Regardless, the Series S is still a great deal compared to a budget PC or a last gen console. An Nvidia rtx 3050 will cost you at least 250 bucks, and realistically you're looking at probably twice that. So for the price of an entry level graphics card you can buy a Series S. Also, the updated Zen 2 8 core CPU will ensure that the Series S ages much better than an Xbox One X or a PS4. However, there's no doubt in my mind that this console will probably be targeting dynamic 1080p/60 fps or native 1080p/30 fps in the next couple of years. The GPU is just too weak. Halo Infinite might not be a well-optimized game, but it's still a cross-gen title, and as developers push the power of the X Box Series X and Playstation 5, that advertised 1440p/60 fps nonsense will be forgotten. Keep in mind that the high end consoles can't even do native 4k/60 fps. Demanding titles such as Halo Infinite, Forza 5, and Deathloop all use dynamic resolution scaling to hit 60 fps, with the resolution often dipping down to 1440p. In the words of the great poet Flavor Flav, don't believe the hype.

So yeah, the Series S is a great budget machine, perfect for Game Pass. It's Quick Resume feature let's you immediately resume a game you've been playing, and the whole process, from turning on the console to resuming your game, probably takes less than ten seconds. If you're a budget gamer or looking for a cheap console, it's a great option. Just don't expect it to rival a mid-range PC.

God of War, Eight Hours in

 

God of War is an excellent cinematic experience with high production values, amazing graphics, decent beat 'em up controls, and somewhat repetitive puzzle design. All in all, I've enjoyed it immensely on PC; however, I have a few critiques. First let's examine what this game does well. The entire game is one shot; there are no camera cut aways (unless you count bringing up the inventory), and the close angle makes the game feel intimate and cinematic. Kratos, the player character, has a long backstory that I, as a primarily PC gamer, was not aware of, although the game will eventually fill you in on some of it. In the opening scene, he's cutting down a tree, one of the last requests of his dead wife, and his facial expressions are instantly readable, and you sense the weight sitting on his shoulders. Throughout the entire game Atreus, Kratos's son, will accompany you, and their relationship is the main focus of God of War. Kratos is gruff, untrusting, harsh, and distant, while his son is precocious, trusting, and optimistic, and watching their characters develop is something I have rarely (if ever) experienced in a video game. As they travel through the realm of Midgard, they encounter a host of gods and monsters, all pulled from the weird, wonderful world of Norse mythology, depicted here in all of its strangeness. Originally released in 2018 as a Playstation 4 exclusive, God of War is gorgeous, its dense environments packed with color and detail. Really, it's amazing they released this title for the last console generation. On PC, it sports graphical improvements, such as higher textures and improved shadows and reflections. Unfortunately, on AMD GPUs, there are occasional frame drops, especially around the Lake of the Nine area. Capping my framerate to 60 lessened the severity of these drops; I noticed a few as low as 54 fps, which isn't very noticeable on a Freesync monitor. Just something to keep in mind, as the experience is apparently much smoother on Nvidia hardware. From a design standpoint, my biggest critique is the busy inventory screen. You can craft and upgrade Kratos's armor, Atreus's armor, and their weapons; additionally, you have several screens worth of skills to buy for both characters with XP. In a game very focused on its characters and immersion, I feel God of War too frequently asks you to pull yourself out of the game world to focus on RPG mechanics that don't exactly fit this type of button masher. Also, as you make your way through the game, you'll find yourself switching between combat, which occurs a little too infrequently for my tastes, and puzzles, which all feature Kratos throwing his ax at something. This puzzle design is a little too monotonous and frequent; I'd much rather focus on destroying dark elves and wraiths. Kratos and Atreus don't often fight more than a handful of enemies at once, and I wonder if this was a design limitation of the PS4 (maybe too many enemies tanked the framerate). These are fairly minor quibbles. If you're looking for a cinematic third person action game, then you can't go wrong with God of War.

Screenshots:

Batman and Robin's Political Debates

 

Robin is enjoying a nice cup at coffee at his favorite Gotham shop when he sees a huge black truck pull up.There is a blue and black American flag flying on the left, while a Trump flag rises like a specter of doom from the right of the bed. The door opens, and Batman climbs out. He is decked out in his heavy assault body armor, but now there are little Trump heads dotted all over the front of it, as though some dumb bastard gave a toddler a bunch of Trump stickers and told them to go to town. As he enters the coffee shop, some people audibly gasp. Batman marches up to the counter, sits down on a stool, and barks at the barista.

"White mocha, on the double. Hurry it up, honey. My taxes are subsidizing your poverty-level wages."

Robin chokes a little bit when he hears this. He knows Bruce hasn't paid any income taxes in about four years.

A little boy comes up to Batman and asks for his autograph. The Batman shakes his head, sighs, and then scribbles something on a napkin before handing it to the kid.

"Batman? Why does this napkin say 'get a job?'"

"Because I'm done doing handouts. When I was your age, my parents were gunned down before me. What do you think I did after that? I got my ass up and started working. Let that be a lesson to you."

"Is the lesson capitalism destroys your capacity for empathy?" asks Robin, coming over to the kid's defense.

"Oh Jesus, I didn't know you were here," says Batman.

"It's been a while, hasn't it? What's up with the redneck ride out there?" asks Robin.

"I don't want anyone to mistake my political stance on anything, anymore," replies Batman.

"That's why you're covered in Trump stickers?"

"I want him to be the last thing criminals see before I destroy their faces," says Batman.

"Your feet are firmly planted on the road to fascism. Fuck democracy, eh?"

"The United States is a republic, not a democracy."

"We're a democratic republic. A republic is just a representative government. Did you get that from Fox News or something?"

"Robin, our culture is about to be destroyed. There's no holding back. If we don't act now, there won't be an America to wake up to!"

The mocha arrives, and Batman tries to swig it down like a beer, but it's too damn hot, and he spits most of it back at the barista, who cries and runs to the back.

"The ends justify the means, is what you're saying. You and your ilk are ready to burn it all down because of the increasing social liberalism of society, even though you could hide in your country clubs and five star dinners with the rest of the rich parasites and never even encounter a minority. Christ, Bruce, you're not some country bumpkin. You're the one percent. You're not supposed to fall for this brainwashing."

Batman smiles. The mocha has painted a mustache on his upper lip.

"Who says I'm falling for anything?"

He gets up, throws some change on the counter, and flips off the rest of the clientele before throwing a few crotch chops their way. As he burns out of his parking spot, the air is filled with thick diesel fumes that linger like a malevolent spirit.

"I'm the head fucker of Fuck-You-America!" screams the Batman as he tears down the road. "So fuck you!"

How to Know if Your Neighbor Across the Street is a Methhead

 

If your neighbor drives around in the middle of the night making deliveries with his pitbull's head sticking out the window, you may be living across from a methhead.

If weird, worthless piles of shit start accumulating in front of your neighbor's apartment, then they may be trading meth for junk.

If two jabronis are wearing headlamps in the middle of the night while crouching down in a field, working on god knows what, then you may have methheads as neighbors.

If you put something out next to the trash and you see it the next morning in front of your neighbor's place, no matter how worthless, then yeah, they might be methheads.

If random cars pull up and your neighbor gets inside for about thirty seconds and then gets out, then they are probably selling drugs, most likely meth.

If your neighbors don't seem to work or leave the house during the daylight hours, then they are either vampires or methheads. Same difference, really.

If your neighbor's teenage children prowl the streets like Malcolm McDowell in a Clockwork Orange, then you either live in Aurora and/or your neighbor is a methhead.

If you've never seen your neighbor dressed in anything besides pajamas or ill-fitting camouflage pants, then once again, you either live in Aurora and/or your neighbor is a methhead.

If one of the randos working on your neighbor's Toyota POS bears a great resemblance to Lord Voldemort in a tracksuit, then they are all probably methheads. 

Honestly, if anyone moves in across the street from me, I assume they are a methhead, and I'm right one-hundred percent of the time, every time.

God Bless America.

How to Recognize Fascism

 

Here's how you recognize fascism.

There is always an Other holding the nation back. Liberals, feminists, minorities, homosexuals, transgenders, immigrants. The language used to describe said groups is always hyperbolic and riddled with lies. Trump affiliated QAnon conspiracy wack-jobs accuse the Democratic Party of running a pedophile ring in order to harvest the adrenal glands of children. This is sadly ironic, considering how many Republican politicians have connections to known child abusers or are in fact child abusers themselves. Here's a list, just off the top of my head: former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (convicted pedophile), former Judge and GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore (accused of pursuing teenage girls), Congressman Matt Gaetz (currently being investigated by the FBI for sex trafficking of a minor),and Congressman Jim Jordon (refused to do anything to stop his wrestling team's doctor from molesting over 300 people while coaching at Ohio State, despite numerous allegations).

The truth is dependent on a certain point of view. Like a degenerate Obi-wan Kenobi, a fascist despises objective reasoning, science, intellectuals, and any criticism, legitimate or otherwise. Ever notice that people like Carlson and Trump constantly whine about the elites, as though they themselves are not part of the one percent? Carlson is the heir to the Swanson frozen food empire, and like Trump, he tries to depict himself as a populist. One reason why fascists constantly muddle the truth is that they aim to drown us all in a "flood of shit," to paraphrase Steve Bannon. Joe Biden had an dubious sexual assault allegation pop up during 2020, almost certainly to redirect media attention away from Trump's 26 accusers. A false equivalency is when two situations are compared as though they are equal, and it is a strategy frequently employed by fascists to equate misdeeds. Sowing doubt is the mission, and pretty soon the truth loses all meaning. It's harder to hold people in power accountable when you can't determine what the truth is.

Mindless Loyalty to a Leader. Any critic of Trump has been purged from the Republican Party. Liz Cheney lost her position as House Chair because she voted to impeach Trump for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6 riot. Anthony Gonzalez and Adam Kinzinger have retired after voting to impeach. Every Republican politician now walks on eggshells, careful not to disparage their Dear Leader, lest they lose reelection or suffer death threats from the Trumpian masses. The Right is obsessed and insecure about their masculinity, so it's pretty humorous to watch these paragons of masculine virtue cower in fear like soy boy beta cucks from the long, short-fingered arm of Donald Trump. The fascist knows that they have no honor and no true ideology. Power is their only concern, and they will do anything, no matter how debasing, in order to keep that power. Ted Cruz is perhaps the best example of this. Trump insulted his wife's looks, accused his father of killing JFK, called him "lying Ted," and Cruz became one of his most argent defenders. One only has to look at his recent humbling before Tucker Carlson to realize how pathetic he and other Republicans truly are. 

Contempt for Democracy. Republican politicians don't believe the Big Lie that 2020 election was stolen from Trump, but they'll be damned if they don't steal the next one. In 2021, 19 states enacted 33 voting laws to make it harder to vote, and you win no extra points for guessing that every single one of those states were controlled by Republicans. In wake of Democrats' 2021 victories in Georgia, state Republicans have given themselves power over local election boards, purging Democrats and black people. Their base is primed by Fox News and internet media to see the opposition as an existential threat, one worthy of using violence against, if necessary.

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

It's best that we call it like we see it before it is too late. The Republican Party is a fascist organization. It is hostile to democracy, liberalism, science, and American values. Anyone not under the sway of Trumpism needs to wake up and realize what meager political power the American citizen has is in danger of being swept away.