Conan Brothers Q&A

OldDeadMan asks "What has changed about your weight-lifting routines now that you're forty?"

Dave: We feel like shit now when we wake up after lifting.

Arnold: When I lift I have to keep in mind the recovery cost now. Also, I feel I'm more vulnerable to injury. Going heavy on deadlifts after doing high rep squats cost me two weeks worth of rear hip pain.

Dave: Middle-age is a bitch.

Arnold: I'm holding on to the 45 to 65 definition. I got another five years! I've noticed a difference, though. I'm not the young buck I once was.

Dave: There's no reason to low-bar squat anymore unless you're competing. I don't do much overhead pressing anymore either. Best to save your hips and shoulders.

Arnold: Mid-position incline bench press is great for some shoulder action and it carries over to the flat bench press better than overhead pressing.

Dave: Also, form is everything. Hit those squats perfectly. No point in doing wobbly bench presses or bent-backed deadlifts.

Arnold: What's the point in doing anything, Dave?

Dave: You have to give yourself a reason to live, Arnold.

Arnold: Besides sexual propagation?

Dave: That might be your biological purpose, but you're a human being, and human beings need their own goals in order to obtain satisfaction in life.

Arnold: Cool.

...

BigBadVoodooDaddy asks "How's life under Trump treating ya?"

Dave: I have a deep-rooted pessimism that was instilled November 2nd, 2016, and it hasn't went away since.

Arnold: I have hope that we can continue as a country after Trump. He's old and will go to where the bad folks go when they die sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we have to participate in our democratic process and do what we can to make our communities better.

Dave: He's destroying the country, Arnold.

Arnold: I know, Dave. This is what the people voted for, though, isn't it? I'm pretty worried about the future of America independent from its degeneration into kleptocracy and fascism. Gen Z seems pretty fucking unhappy. They don't know how to talk to people because smartphones destroyed our social fabric; they're depressed because smartphones have destroyed our hope in the future; and they're unable to afford a house or get a job. Gen Alpha might be worse. These kids are being raised on Youtube and Fortnite.

Dave: Which is much worse than professional wrestling and teenage mutant turtles.

Arnold: I see your point, but television is nowhere near as addictive a technology as smartphones, social media, and pay-to-win video games. Your brain gets a dopamine surge not from actually consuming internet content, but from the anticipation right before you click on a video. This is the most insidious shit ever concocted, and people hand it off to their children without a second thought. We're raising an entire generation to be addicted to constant dopamine surges, and they're not learning how to be human beings. They're being taught how to be consumers.

Dave: Yeah, that sucks. I'm going to go throw my phone in a ditch somewhere.

Arnold: You should! We should all get rid of our phones as a society. There would be no President Trump without smartphones!

Dave: How so?

Arnold: Fox News doesn't even matter. Your average Trump supporter encounters MAGA influencers on Youtube or Tik-Tok. They buy into fascism through 45 second videos explaining how to trick women into sleeping with them or how to optimize their bodybuilding routine. This shit is addictive, as I've mentioned. Pretty soon they're buying into the latest conspiracy theory or whatever propaganda the MAGA trolls are feeding them, because they've never been taught how to think critically, and nobody watches legitimate news sources anymore, since that shit doesn't make money. The smartphone appeals to their emotions, negative emotions particularly, since human beings are wired to pay attention more to the bad than the good. This is how your uncle or teenage cousin became a QANON truther or a vaccine denier.

Dave: So life ain't great, huh?

Arnold: Life is fine! That's the irony of it. Trump is destroying the country, and we're doing okay personally. But a lot of people aren't.

Dave: Will the proletariat rise up and revolt?

Arnold: Don't use commie words, Dave. They might if the economy gets bad enough. Your normal Joe doesn't give a shit that the stock market is booming. If AI is as good as they say it will be (and I have my serious doubts), then nobody is going to have a job. A purposeless human being is a dangerous human being, Dave.

Dave: I don't want my investments to tank.

Arnold: No, but I think they will. Will it be the straw that breaks Trump's back? He's kept the richies happy so far. I don't know. Time will tell.

Dave: What an exciting time to be living through!

Arnold: Shut the fuck up, Dave.

...

 

GamerDad asks "What video games are you playing?"

Dave: South of Midnight was okay.

Arnold: Great presentation and graphics. Mediocre gameplay.

Dave: Every fight against the haints was the same.

Arnold: I did dig the story of a young African-American protagonist descending into a magical world constructed from various rural legends of the Old South. And the game really looks amazing. It's got a stop-motion effect to much of the animation. But as I kept playing, I kept thinking that every new power or gameplay element was derived from Jedi Survivor. "This power is like Force Push. This is like Dash. This is a grappling hook like every other third-person action game of the last several years."

Dave: It doesn't help that every chapter is constructed exactly the same.

Arnold: Hazel (your player character) has to discovered the source of trauma that spilling out into an area's environment and heal that trauma through battling haints and participating in some boss fight, then she has to run from a cloud in a platforming experiences that is also derivative of Jedi Survivor (wall running, dashing, etc...).

Dave: I feel like we're being too hard on the game. It was a fun time, and unique from a story/graphical perspective.

Arnold: You're probably right, but we played a lot of very good games this year. The criteria is increasing.

Dave: Still, check it out on Game Pass or for about twenty bucks or so.   

New Music: Hybrid Moments

 

What is this song about? Alien rape? Damaged love? Does Danzig even know? I doubt it. All I know is that it is a kick-ass punk song. A cover of the Misfits classic.

New Album: The King of Lo-Fi

 

The King of Lo-Fi is the third Theme Park Mistress album, composed of songs written and recorded this year. "Water" and "Horror Stories" are old favorites that I rerecorded; everything else was a new song. I think this my best collection of tunes yet. I'll be updating my post as the album goes live on various streaming services.

Tidal 

Spotify 

 Apple Music

Youtube Music 

New Music: The Coming of Fall

 

A little melancholy piano piece I wrote the other day. Perfect soundtrack for a fall day, eh? 

Videogame Review: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an 2024 action-adventure game designed by Machinehead Games. Its aim is to make the player feel as though he or she is playing through an Indiana Jones movie, and it succeeds rather admirably in that regard. Utilizing a first person perspective with occasional shifts to third person (mostly for platforming), player will sneak through several Fascist-infested locations including the Vatican and Giza. Gameplay is divided into three categories: puzzles, platforming, and stealth-combat. Jones isn't an action hero--he can punch his way out of a jam, but more than one or two enemies, and he's better off fleeing than grabbing a machine gun. The melee system is pretty simple, and although I never really got the hang of how to parry (seems like you have to press it well ahead of when you should) Indie knocked out his share of Nazis during my playthrough. If you grab a gun and use it, every enemy will be alerted, so guns are really a last resort. It's better to flip that weapon around and use it as a Nazi-bashing tool. All sorts of environmental objects can be utilized in combat, from shovels to frying pans to guitars and scrub brushes. Stealth is pretty simple. Just hide out of sight and in darkened areas. Really, the game almost felt like playing a WW2 version of Thief sometimes. One annoying feature though is that Indie's companion Gina will brazenly creep right in front of a Nazi if you're sneaking, but he won't see her like she's a ghost or a figment of Jones's imagination. I'm guessing it was too annoying to have her out the player, so Machinehead Games just said "fuck it" and made her invisible.

Puzzles are never really very hard, which is fine, since you don't want to slow down gameplay too much, and this title is more about the ride than feeling like a genius. One particular puzzle involved a chess-like game where you have to rotate pieces in the same direction sequentially in order to access the next area of a tomb. Platforming involves mantling and using your whip to climb or swing to traverse the multitude of traps and pits that litter ancient tombs. This often necessitates a switch to a third-person perspective, and Indie looks pretty good rendered in the latest version of idTech. The game doesn't quite look as sharp as the latest Unreal Engine 5 titles, but it runs much, much better, and that's with ray-traced global illumination and reflections turned on. On my aging RTX 3080 12 gig, I was able to manage a locked 60 FPS without upscaling at 4k. I did notice copious amounts of pop-in, however, as geometry spontaneously loads into view, especially in the jungle levels.

What really sells this game is that it looks exactly like an Indiana Jones film. The story involves Indiana globe-hopping to keep several ancient artifacts out of the hands of Nazi archeologist Emmerich Voss, who resembles Arnold Toth, the SS officer from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Machinehead Games did the most recent Wolfenstein titles, and they're in their element crafting a WW2-era adventure. Honestly, the cutscenes are a bit long, but they're more satisfying to watch than Indiana Jones and Crystal Skull. Overall, I enjoyed the story and thought it held its own as an Indiana Jones adventure. Troy Baker does an excellent Harrison Ford impression, by the way. Over roughly 40 hours of game time, I never once said "that's not Harrison Ford," while hearing Baker voice Indie.

One note on the screenshots: I played this game mostly on my 4k OLED TV with HDR enabled. Windows doesn't have a good way of taking HDR screenshots, so they take two, one bright and one dark. So some of the screenshots don't look exactly like they did while I was playing.

 

  

Writer's Block: The Jaws of Life

I awoke this morning with an idea for a short story, and this is what I have so far. I think it is time to start working on another compilation of stories and poems. Enjoy the start of The Jaws of Life.

... 

As I stood before those masticating jaws, I suddenly knew that I couldn’t do it.

“I can’t,” I said to the gate agent.

“Excuse me?” he asked. He wore a red jacket with a little mouth pin speared through the lapel.

“I can’t walk inside that mouth, and let that thing eat me.”

“Uhhh,” said the gate agent. His toupee reminded me of a snake trying to swallow an egg.

I looked around for my clothes and saw them in a black garbage bag in the waiting area, so I started walking toward them.

“Wait, what are you doing? He is expecting someone! You’ve been prepared!”

My skin was saturated with butter, and black pepper fell from my graying locks.

“I just can’t,” I said. Part of me wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t. Not with those peg-like teeth and that giant tongue still visible beyond the threshold.

“What am I supposed to say to Him? They’ll make me talk to him, you know! I’ll be the poor sap that has to give an explanation! Look out there! Look at him! Does He look like something you’d want to climb up on a giant escalator and shout inside the ear of? Because that’s my day now, buddy. All thanks to you.”

I looked outside the window and saw Him sitting there, cross-legged on the tarmac, giant hands resting folded in his lap.

“I’m sorry. I can tell them that it isn’t your fault.”

“Of course it’s not! It’s yours! What you can do, buddy, is get back over here and climb past the threshold, and start your journey to the Great Beyond, like every other sixty-year old man! You think you’re the first person to have reservations about climbing inside of a giant mouth? It’s what we do, though, alright? It’s part of the deal we struck with the Gods. It’s the only way to the Great Beyond. You want to see your wife, right? Your parents? All your deceased loved ones? Then stop chickening out and get the fuck over here!”

All while he spoke, his volume had crescendoed from a whisper to a shout. I went over to the bag and put my clothes on, ignoring how the greasy butter made me feel. I knew that part of my hesitation was due to the fact that my system had always resisted the effects of hallucinaginc drugs. Yet who could die this way? Years of propaganda tried to prepare the mind for this gruesome end. However, the sight of that open maw quivering with anticipation filled my mind with more fear than I could even contemplate.

“I’m going home,” I told the gate agent.

He threw up his hands and shook his head, the toupee threatening to come loose from his skull.

“No one will pick you up from here. This is supposed to be a one way ticket. And you have to wear this now. No buts.”

With one quick motion, he slapped a sticker directly on the center of my forehead. I knew what it said.

Heretic.

 

New Music: Drive and Die

 

A sick psycho rocker set to a Cyberpunk 2077 police chase. I came up with the riff weeks ago and used my newly set-up Epiphone Dot to record it. It's got a nice, thick, bassy sound due to the humbuckers and semihollow body. The lyrics are a bit ridiculous, but isn't rock and roll supposed to be about cars and getting laid? Wasn't that what the Beach Boys were singing about? 

Weightlifting At 40; Mullet MadJack; The Value of Game Pass in 2025; Bone Lake

 

Here's a photo of my 40 year old carcass, like some sort of dweeb.

After losing weight last year, I've mostly kept it off. As of this morning, I weigh in at 188.9 lbs, which has been my consistent poundage for the summer. My weightlifting program is a split between powerlifting and bodybuilding, and although my strength numbers have never recovered, I feel as though I'm still doing pretty well, all things considered. Recently, I've deadlifted 410 lbs, bench pressed 220 for 5, and squatted 275 for 5 reps. None of these are particularly impressive lifts and they're far away from my best performances, but let's be honest; at this point, it's about staying in shape while being as strong as you can without hurting yourself. The demands of my job and the pressures of parenthood keep optimal fitness a distance goal. Had I a sedentary job, I could probably lift a little harder. But that's not the situation, and I'm content with my current condition. 

Mullet MadJack is an rogue-like speedrunning first person shooter that I played on Game Pass. It has a very tongue in cheek story about our eponymous protagonist trying to rescue a pop-star princess from the clutches of a Robobillionaire, who has absconded with her in order to prove that God isn't real. As Mullet MadJack, you have ten seconds to kill a robot; otherwise, you'll flatline, because Jack has himself hooked up to a cellphone stream, and the needs of the dopomine-crazed masses require constant stimulation and violence. Is developer Hammer 95 trying to say something about our current internet addiction? Maybe, but the shooting is so good that's it's difficult to concentrate on any message. I picked the starting pistol and upgraded it to level three where I had infinite ammo and didn't have to reload anymore. Time is life, and it's an excellent adrenaline rush to dash from enemy to enemy while the time ticks down. Mullet MadJack scratches the same inch that Neon White did, and I really dig it.

What I really don't dig is that Microsoft just increased the price of Game Pass Ultimate to 30 dollars a month. At the previous price of 20 bucks, Game Pass was a dubious value. For example, I've subscribed for one month, and I just renewed for October at 20 (The price increase doesn't kick in for subscribers till November). I've played over 30 hours of Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, yet I'm seemingly only about halfway through the game. Other than the 16 or 17 hours I've spent with Mullet MadJack, I've only dabbled in Carrion and Hollow Knight: Silksong. My son has played a few games but nothing to completion. So I've essentially paid 40 bucks for Mullet MadJack and half of Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones has been on sale for 55 bucks on Steam several times recently, and seeing how it looks like it might take me two months or more to complete it, how does Game Pass make sense when I could just buy the title on Steam and not have to worry about finishing it before being charged another Andrew Jackson? At 30 bucks, a triple A single player game will have to be finished in a month for any sort of value to be extracted. I'm interested in playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which is currently only on the Ultimate tier of Game Pass. It's been on sale for 41 dollars on Steam recently. If it takes over a month to complete, then I've paid 60 dollars for a 41 dollar game! Sure, I might have time to try other games, but where's the value? It seems like Microsoft has finally realized Game Pass is too expensive, and since they put all their cards in that basket, they're going to gradually kill the service that has kept X Box alive this feeble generation. Oh well. As a PC gamer, I appreciated the value of Game Pass, and my son's X Box Series S is a good entry console, but it seems as though this is the deathblow to the brand. I'm sure console gamers will be excited to pay 700 bucks or more for the Playstation 6 in a couple of years.

Bone Lake (not Boner Lake) is a decent B horror movie. It takes the overbooked Air BnB concept and plays with it a bit. The main characters wear their idiot caps for just long enough, and the violence is suitably gruesome. I liked the cast as well, although I mistook Maddie Hasson for Florence Pugh. It's not the most original flick, but it's a good hour and thirty minutes at the theater. 

   

New Music: The Last Battle

 

A piano-driven instrumental ballad, The Last Battle is built around a Cmajor7 to C-E-F#, which I guess is a C augmented fourth? The progression is closed by an Am6, which is one of my favorite chords, before transitioning to an Em7 to D6 to C-E-F# for the second part of the song. The fast action of Mullet Madjack is a nice contrast to the slow-paced song, but I feel like it might almost be an anime cliche to have a slow ballad over an action sequence. I dunno, I don't watch much anime. 

New Music: Hard To Say

 

A grungy alt-rocker married to Doom: Dark Ages. Used the telecaster on this one. It's my go-to hard rock riff maker. 

The Esteemed Critic Reviews Superman (2025)

 

James Gunn's Superman is a mostly successful attempt to revitalize the iconic character and bring his hopeful optimism and goodness to a new generation. It's no secret that the once omnipresent superhero genre is now struggling--other than the atrocious Deadpool and Woverine, nothing is coming close to Avengers: Engame or the last Spider-man in box office numbers--and we're just talking about Marvel movies, not DC. Gunn is known mostly for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which are humorous, competent fair. Superman has a slavish attention to detail that previous entries have lacked--Jimmy Olsen, Kryto the superdog, and Cat Grant make appearances) and the audience immediately understands that Gunn comprehends the character and understands his appeal, unlike, say, Zack Snyder. David Corenswet wears the cape well, dispelling my fears from the trailer that he appeared a little too boyish. Rachel Brosnahan is a competent, if a little remote, Louis Lane, and Nicholas Hoult is an appropriately vicious Lex Luthor. My main problem with the film is how poorly it fits into the time it was made. There are allusions to events in the real world, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the manipulation of sentiment through social media, but it all feels... wrong. Seeing a little boy raise a homemade Superman flag while an invading army looms over him pulls me out of this universe and makes me think about how America has let Israel run amok in annihilating Palestinians or how the Trump administration has extorted Ukraine. Similarly, Lex Luthor is successful in riling up the people against Superman with one stolen video, the veracity of which everyone just accepts as true, because the experts told them so. That the video is true isn't the point--people believe what they want to believe, evidence be damned--and the optimism that the masses would put their faith back in a legitimate hero and support Luthor getting what he deserves is just so goddamn naive that I have a really hard time stomaching it in 2025. I'm not arguing that Gunn shouldn't have made a hopeful, optimistic Superman movie. It's just that such a film doesn't play well in our current era, and the hero's essence--Truth, Justice, and the American Way--is so incompatible with Trumpism that I'm having a really hard time seeing it through any other lens than that of the cynical, post-hope liberal doomer. That's on me, not Gunn. Maybe something will happen that will restore my faith in American idealism. But right now I can't reconcile a world, even a fictional one, in which Superman can exist.