Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fare Thee Well, Dolly

Leave a reply

I had a much dumber post prepared for today. It’s been rescheduled because I’m legitimately upset about the death of Dolly Parton. I know that all things must come to an end and that includes people’s lives but the world is a little bit dimmer because of it. I could go on about how thinking like this is parasocial as well but I would prefer to just sit with my sadness and see what it makes me feel.

There were many things that I admired about her, the first was that she accepted in many ways that she was a bit ridiculous. She called herself an eyesore instead of a fashion icon. As someone who always grew up weird and struggled to find acceptance, seeing her just doing her own thing always made me feel a bit better.

But beyond that, there was the kindness she showed. This is one of my favorite tweets about her:

It makes me wonder how many musicians were born from her charity. We already saw that one of the greats of our generation, Lil Nas X was covering her music and she was showing support for him as well.

Here’s the performance as well. It’s incredible.

This does bring me around to how I became acquainted with Dolly in the first place. The White Stripes covered Jolene and because I was obsessed with the White Stripes I had to find out where that song came from. I had at the time, foolishly, written off Dolly Parton as a bit of a joke because I was young and edgy, read: stupid.

But then I sat down and listened to her music and realized that she like those other old school country greats, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Alison Krauss, their songs were so universal because they tapped into something deep inside of us. The melancholy and trouble with living. The pain of love found and rejected. That’s why I keep coming across artists from all walks of life covering Dolly because everything she says just resonates.

Losing someone is never a fun thing to go through. It’s an ending and it cuts you off from the possibilities of the future. But for those left behind, it gives us reason to examine those that have left and to learn from them. I for one will try to emulate her kindness, selflessness and charity. Her light might be gone, but we can try and light up the world in our own way.

Working Out Again

Leave a reply

Sometimes I can’t think of some dumb, nerdy shit to write about so I just want to give an update on something else. I’ve been trying to work out more again and this has taken the form of going on more walks as well as using my under desk pedaler more often. My legs have been feeling better, like they feel more energetic if that makes any sense. It’s like they’re constantly asking me to let them kick through something.

I’ve neglected my arms so they get much more achey these days when I have to lift or exercise them. I’m going to be working on that so that I can get them back into punching shape. Not that I want to be able to punch people but there’s nothing quite like having a bad day and then taking it out on the bag. Better than taking it out on a person, anyway.

As for my belly, I’ve started doing daily bicycle crunches and my word they hurt. I know that’s where I got most of the air in my spare tire and I also know that crunches alone aren’t going to fix it. You have to do everything so that my body will start pulling from other fat sources to power me. I added bird dogs, push ups, jumping jacks and this weird cross leg thing to my daily workouts as well. If I do nothing else, I do that.

I’ve kept up with the beet juice from a different post and that led me to a very interesting doctor’s office visit. With my newfound vegetarianism, came an unexpected side effect, intense internal gas in my stomach. I had a doctor’s appointment and told my doctor about this. She mentioned that eating healthier does lead you to have more gas. It was like having your dentist praise how well you floss. I rode that high for a few days.

She told me to stop the beet juice for a week to see if that fixed things. It did but she wanted me to continue it because of how healthy it was. It was then that I learned what the issue actually was. The night before my doctor’s appointment, I had realized I had forgotten my daily beet juice so I drank it and went to bed. That was the issue, the gas in the beet juice had nowhere to go. So it just made my tum-tum all upset. Since then I’ve been using the beet juice basically as a pre-workout drink so that I can keep it moving through my system. It’s really helped.

I haven’t seen any results because why would I? This has only been like three days. It’s like that baboon said to Bojack Horseman. “It gets easier every day. But that’s the trick, you have to do it everyday.”

Come Together Right Now and join me in mocking these set pictures

Leave a reply

Recently there were set pictures released of the four actors who were coming together in the Beatles cinematic universe. Because that’s a thing that we need. Four movies about one band when almost every biopic nowadays can’t get away from the shadow that is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story. A movie that rips on every biopic trope, because there are just so many, with a joyful wink. Much like Pop Star, it was horrendously underrated and deserves to be among the annuls of Anchorman and Superbad for well know and overly quoted comedies.

I could go on about it but I wanted to bring attention to the recent set photos from the new Beatles biopic films. And these four low level drug dealers that are supposed to be the Beatles.

Look at those middle fingers and that up yours. So edgy. Exactly what I think about when I think of the Beatles

A friend of mine pointed out that they look like they’re all on Undercover Boss with how terrible their wigs are. Like John is going to show up in the canteen at Abby Road to find out what Ringo thinks about him.

“Did you hear that John made a really good forty-five minute film of his flaccid penis?”

And Ringo is just staring at him.

Anyway, that’s what they look like. So, to quote Jason Bateman from American Psycho: Let’s look at Walk Hard’s Beatles.

And there we have the difference. Despite looking like a bunch of dealers who have definitely laced my weed with meth as a joke, the four Dewey Cox Beatles still look nice and like they would be willing to help an old lady across the street without robbing her.

The BCU John Lennon looks particularly bad. The beard doesn’t have the same well maintained nature that Lennon’s did a that time. Actually I looked back at it and the Ringo is off. He looks like a regular Ringo that melted because of a magnifying glass. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that the men portraying them are ugly. It’s just the wigs and hair is just… bad.

I don’t know, this isn’t going to get me in the seat for it. I think I’ll hold out for the Smiths cinematic universe where we get a five minute montage of Morrissey cancelling shows over nothing and then getting disappointingly into far right politics.

No More Long Days

Leave a reply

We held to something that we shouldn’t have but we kept it going for as long as we could. You told me, once, that you were so tired of the way your heart made you speak without thinking. I told you that that was the way we fell in love. But letting ourselves be free and being open. You said that maybe it wasn’t worth it.

You reminded me how long the days started feeling. Not just because it was summer but because you were getting tired of me, tired of your job, tired of everything! You decided to put it all behind you. To gas up that old car of yours and make for the west.

You sent me a letter the other day. You told me that you had gotten rid of your smart phone. Bought a burner and were living your life the way you wanted. There was a photograph and you were smiling in front of a little shop. No more long days was the message on the back.

How to Stop the Murder Hobos

Leave a reply

Despite the title, only one person in my group of players is a murder hobo. Still, she influences the others and they sometimes come close to the line and are more willing to step over it. The method I’m going to describe is not to completely stop them from doing it, it’s because of something one of my players said offhandedly.

A different player stated that many of my NPCs are overpowered badasses. She didn’t say it particularly annoyed but more as a cautionary thing. I realized that I might have been doing that and it might have been seen as putting a barrier between them and having fun. That they wouldn’t try particularly strategies because they were worried that it might cause a full party wipe. That’s not fun. If every enemy can easily kill them then you’re in troll mode or Dark Souls mode. That’s not fun for a DND session.

I thought on it for awhile and the answer came to me in those videos where someone starts fucking with someone who just so happens to be a trained boxer. The big person thinks that they can step to anyone and throws a punch at a rando. The rando gets into a perfect boxing stance and bashes his face in. I decided that that should be the same thing in DND.

So, whenever they encounter an NPC for the first time, I roll two D20s and that becomes their level. It requires a little work to make sure that I know how to handle them at each level but it does add an extra level of randomness into the game. It also helps with the creation of fun new characters. They encounter an old woman on the road. They decide to attack her. I roll the two D20’s and it turns out that her level is twenty-eight. Suddenly, you have this retired badass who just so happens to be living in this little town. She blocks the blow with her cane.

“Of all the terrible ideas, you’ve had, this might be the worse,” she says.

She hits for thirty damage and starts throwing out ninth level spells. She doesn’t kill the team. She heals them and gives them a lecture about being better people. Everyone has a good laugh.

I put this kind of into action in the last session because I had an encounter where a giant weasel was sniffing around a tent. One of my players has a squirrel companion that can do this thing called fiery teleportation. It goes up to the weasel to speak to it and the weasel swallows it. The others prepare to fight the bad weasel. The squirrel teleports out doing 12 damage. The weasel only has 9 HP and thus dies. Everyone has a good laugh.

Soon they might encounter something that they don’t know how strong it is. It’s going to make them second guess themselves and drive them forward. It makes the world more fair and more dangerous. When I introduced this concept to my group, I said this to them:

UGH… and thank you doesthedogdie.com

Leave a reply

(Spoilers for the End of Oak Street)

Readers, I write to you in a positive snit. An absolute snit. Let me quickly make sure that word isn’t problematic. Okay, I’m back. It’s good.

I just wanted to watch Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor fight dinosaurs. That’s all I wanted. I was there. I was sat. I was ready.

The movie starts and it’s kind of boring in that it’s hyper realistic in the tension between a pair of people that have been married for far too long. Alright, I’m okay with a slow start.

The boy in the family owns a cute dog. Okay, quick check at doesthedogdie.com and I can see that the the dog is fine. Cool, let’s keep going.

The weird flashing lights happen and the beginning of dinosaurs start appearing. The daughter of the family is sitting on the roof reading and she sees a cat run across the street. The cat yowls. Okay, that’s not great but as long as I don’t have to see it, it’s fine. Back to https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ and…

Son of a bitch.

I tell my sister and we get up. We don’t demand our money back, we just leave. Thank you Regal Pass for making the great loss about 53 cents.

I don’t know why movies need to do this. It’s so unnecessary. I’ve been writing for the last twenty-seven years and besides my heroes fighting monsters or like bears in the wild, I’ve never had to have a dog or cat get killed. I just find it so stupid. You can just have them kill a person. Who cares about a person?

That makes me sound like a psychopath and I don’t care. Because I know that while I don’t like seeing people die in video games and thus have mostly been playing Tetris and simulator games lately, for the most parts those are pretty bloodless and simple deaths. A bullet hole appears, a person falls over. I’m not into the Eli Roth Hostel, graphic shit. I hate that too.

I know storytellers should be allowed to tell a story the way they want to but I just don’t like seeing it. I’m writing this as my two cats hang around me and I would set the world aflame if someone did something to them.

I just think that it should be part of the rating with the strong blood violence and drug use warnings.

Despite being in a horrendous, annoyed snit about all of this, I want to thank those that put in the hard work at https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ so that I didn’t have to see something that would upset me.

You can call me a wuss for leaving a movie over this and I don’t care. Stop using that as an intensifier. It sucks.

Long Way Out

Leave a reply

It’s a long way back to land

I’ve been swimming for so long

Waiting for the waves to take me away

I’m not coming back

I don’t plan to die in the water

But I plan to let it take me away

I’ll be living note in a bottle

I’ll wash ashore and tell you a story

But I won’t have any treasure

I’m Tall and I Don’t Know Why

Leave a reply
I’m the one in the background.

I’m six foot tall and it doesn’t feel that it should be that way. Like I think I was supposed to be short but then like puberty got it wrong and I shot up like a weed. I don’t think I have tall guy energy. I think I’m just gangly and awkward.

It is useful of course for the ability to reach up and pick things off tall shelves. It’s very rarely that I need to use a stepladder or anything like that.

Also, I don’t like to fight because I don’t fight fair or clean. It’s fortunate enough that I have the height on me that most fights end before they start. I remember there was this one time that I was on the train and my knee accidentally bumped into the seat in front of me. The man behind me must have been having a bad day because he told me that if my leg bumped his back again, he was going to beat my head in.

My dad told me to always stand up against bullies. I stood to my full height and towered over him. He said “Yeah!” and sat back down. Didn’t bother me again but I did try to make sure that I didn’t bump the seat in front of me. There’s no reason to be rude.

In my head, I think that I’m much smaller than I am. Maybe that’s something I need to talk about in therapy. Or maybe it’s okay that I know it’s better for me to not to take up as much space as other people. I don’t think that being tall is an achievement, it was just the cards I was dealt. It’s just an aspect of who I am, just one small part. Or a tall part. Lol.