majestic

I think I'm the only person to like the Enterprise theme song. The one from the first two seasons, not the changed one from the later two. On the other hand I also like Meat Loaf, so maybe there is something wrong with my (music) taste.

I could watch James Spader play Raymond Reddington all day long and not get bored. As an avid X-Phile I'm also constantly impressed by how coherent the plotting appears to be. I'm sure it isn't, but for something that's running that long and deals with layers upon layers of conspiracies not falling prey to the Chris Carter Effect (tm) or featuring a completely tangled mess of a kudzu plot is pretty impressive.

The Last Jedi suffered from being a bad film, in addition to being a comedy with sci-fi elements instead of a fun sci-fi romp with some comedic elements. Trying something new doesn't truly rank among its faults so much, at least for me. Subverting expectations can also be good, just not in a middle film of a trilogy. Jar Jar Abram's plot threads from The Force Awakens were all pretty much standard Star Wars and/or fantasy fare so a little subversion might have been a good idea, but taking a complete dump on its legacy didn't work out. For all its issues I still liked how Kylo chose the Dark Side and tempted Rey the moment he had any agency. I dislike Snoke being disregarded because I am, for all my other faults, a man of simple pleasures. I like me a mystery or two and quite frankly, and Snoke ultimately being of no consequence was... disappointing. Him being a manufactured front for Palpatine even more so, but that's something else entirely. The whole situation could have been salvaged by Kylo Ren assuming the mantle of the unredeemable antagonist that Star Wars generally works with, but Disney lacked the commitment to follow through and wanted him redeemed, so there we are. Empire is quite clearly the best of the movies, I'd rank Return as equal to the original film right after that though. I've said that before in several other threads, being a complete space battle nerd it's impossible for me to not enjoy Return of the Jedi, warts (well Ewoks) and all, but I can - objectively - understand why people would rank it as the least of the original trilogy. I don't think it deserves to be put beneath Revenge of the Sith or Rogue One. That said, it's not unreasonable to want a fun space romp to be a competently made film, and entries seven through nine of a universe to stick to its own rules would be really nice, and I'm not even going to begin to talk about how the choices for the later films make the earlier ones seem silly or pointless. What exactly was the point of Anaking choosing his son over the Emperor? Palpatine's alive, Luke isn't. GG Disney, GG. There's still time to turn back. Don't... just don't. Spare yourself the pain of watching Klingorks lay siege to the United Federation of Gondor. Or an angel from the future appearing to help humanity escape Skynet's apocalypse. The Undiscovered Country is great because it is also a showcase on how to deal with current political situations within the Star Trek universe. Unlike one of these recent shows, what was that? Star Trek Picerd or something. Heh.

But not all gay people actually practice anal intercourse. And what about heterosexual guys who enjoy a good pegging or two by their spouse? Especially true for the US.

Return of the Jedi gets blasted for unoriginality and being creatively bankrupt (i.e. a second Death Star, really?) while Rogue One gets praised as the best Star Wars movie since Empire. Seems legit.

I just commited a completely untested hotfix to our production system that touches two seperate processes, one of them business critical and happening over night, meaning quite frankly right now during night shift. I'm thinking about ordering this:

Nah, I'm pretty sure you look like Baldy Man.

His filmwork so far's been pretty good and Ragnarok was hands down one of the best Marvel entries, but he wrote one of the weaker Mandalorian episodes - and that's a weak episode in a show with barely any highlights. I'm mildly interested at this point.

Our school had a leftover Siemens server with BS2000 on it. So happily we set off learning that the single best way to crush the hopes and dreams of any 14 year old who really wants to learn how to make software is being taught how to do that on a mainframe operating system in COBOL. I swore to myself that I never will do that for a living, and look at me now, almost 25 years later I'm doing the next "best" thing, working as ERP dev. I guess I can say at least it's not SAP, right? That's got to be worth something. Right? DISPLAY "Ain't all bad though, I get to crack jokes with one of our developers at work because... well, because our old warehouse management software was actually developed in COBOL. Yeah, it's a bit, say, outdated but still in use." UPON TERMINAL STOP RUN. Oi, and one valuable lesson that I've learned was that some teachers are just bastards who revel in being unfair and soul crushing. We had one of them horrible witches. She actually stood there and said something like "A good developer knows the intricacies of the language they're using" and I did just that for an exam we had. COBOL is a bit verbose. And by a bit I mean it's literally like writing an essay. All commands are written in plain old English. Except for exentions to the language that were made with quality of life in mind. To be honest I have no idea how modern COBOL looks like, what we learned was COBOL-80, and that came out, you guessed right, in 1980. So anyway, what we had to do among other things was doing some typical school stuff, changing units of measurement from one into another. Temperatures, as it were, that's one of the basics right after Hello, World!. In quite frankly any other iterative language you'd just write F = C * 5 / 9 + 32 to convert a proper temperature scale into something completely random and silly and be done with it. Not so in COBOL, nah. That would look like: MULTIPLY C by 5 GIVING C DIVIDE C by 9 GIVING C ADD 32 TO C GIVING F DISPLAY F UPON TERMINAL Or of course you could read the language documentation and find out that someone in the past noticed that this is ridiculous and added a COMPUTE statement. So what did I, knower of intricacies do? Of course: COMPUTE F = C * 5 / 9 + 32. (Notice that . there. It's necessary for COMPUTE but not for the other statements. Now that's a WHOLE OTHER can of worms). Yeah, so that test, guess what? Failed it. I should have demonstrated my knowledge of basic COBOL verbs, not the intricacies of the language. Silly me.

Our government is both patting themselves on the back and running a major gaslighting campaign. After watching Ischgl (Tyrol as a whole) export Corona literally everywhere else in the name of money tourism they issued a massive lockdown order with edicts that were (or rather, are going to be ruled) unconsititutional, gave law enforcement a carte blanche to harrass people as they please and now they're pretending that the orders were never meant to intrude upon private meetings or people's ability to go places as long as they keep the distance rules. It's ridiculous. Up until last week the police was forcefully breaking up private gatherings and issuing heavy fines and now we're supposed to believe that there never was a government mandated order to not go visit your friends and family? That they appealed to our better sense and everyone just stuck to it? Several incidents of law enforcement breaking up private parties and heavily fining participants. People were accosted by the police for being outside all by themselves, fines given for other people passing by because distance. My neighbor was harrassed while she was waiting for her train to come after having to go to work, even with a permit. People with a holiday or weekend home were expressedly forbidden from going there (so how does that work if I'm allowed to drive around as long as I'm alone and I can do what I like at home?). Sure, there are bastards in the police and I suppose a bunch of them were using the situation to assert and exercise their power over the common man, but, yeah. They just acted like that because they wanted to, right? Not because that came down from the top. Riiiiiiiiiight. Sure. Here's to hoping courts will see right through this charade and people hopefully won't be deterred from suing the manure out of the bastards. We get it, the lockdown was deemed necessary to contain the disease after reacting way too slowly after watching Italy for a while, and it might as well have been. Who knows. Hindisight is 20/20 and all that stuff, but really... just grow a spine and admit to messing it up. Sheesh.

Everything is better with Eurodance magic added, exhibit B: Edit: Well to counter the happiness overload, have some more German Dark Wave:

Why waste this on pupils, I need this for users. Like, immediately.

What's that "sad" supposed to mean, Hurlshot? You don't like herring either? Although when it comes to fish steaks in sauce I'd very much rather go with mackerel or tuna. Herring is best pickled and with onions and some hot sauce (and yes, onions, not gherkins, silly Germans ). Like... Mmmmm. Supposedly cure hangover, but yeah, as you guys probably know, nothing cures a hangover except copius amounts of mineralized water and time.

No, no, yes. They're mostly an interactive ARPG Barbie Dress Up simulator where you pick what you want your characters to wear without it really mattering all that much and then watch them kill everything. And I mean watch. Because apart from picking where you go the game runs without input. And no, that's not hyperbole. At least, not much...

Food porn time, lentils for today's lunch: And thanks to you guys talking about sardines, dedicated to Hurlshot, He Who Has No Taste (just kidding (or am I?)), sardine spread for later:

It probably goes without saying but don't forget the restored content mod. And, eh, skip the droid planet. Really. Just... don't bother.

Having happy little accidents, not making mistakes. Heh.

Of course he's Avery Brooks. Shady looked like him in my dream with the Meth dealers. Anyway, whenever people on a message board share their actual pictures I ususally end up bein weirded out by them not looking like their avatars. It would be quite a let down if Fio wasn't a real dragon for instane. Heh.

How do you turn an already good pop song into a betterer version? Why indeed, just make a Eurodance cover: Warning, Video might be NSFW in Utah.

Canned sardines are great, but I usually just go with ones in spiced olive oil (the ones from Nuri) and then put them on some tasty buttered rye bread and onions. Or combine everything into a nice spread, i.e. sarindes, butter, hard boiled eggs, onions and pickles. Season to your liking (garlic, pepper, etc.).

Browsing through my MP3 collection. Heh. Trips down memory lane, the bane of my sleep since... well since I've been old enough to travel memory lane.

If we set that in the Kelvin timeline it could still be directed by Baybrams, would have younger actors and a Trek 'verse that fits much better with the description. See... things come together anyway. (Also, why does the Kindle edition of that book cost 19€ on Amazon?)

On one hand Rise of Skywalker was the only Star Wars film of the new trilogy I wasn't bored at some point. On the other that was achieved by cramming three movies worth of stuff happening into an incoherent mess that I only enjoyed so well because The Last Jedi killed the past for me. What we really need is a Star Wars / Transformers crossover directed by Michael "Jar Jar" Baybrams.

Become? Bolsonaro never was anything but a stain on the human race. He's in good company, they seem to be very abundant these days.

Eh, does that link in all honesty compare monomyth based stories like Star Wars to epic poems and works of literature featuring a classical tragic hero (point in case, Hamlet) to make a point that classical literature never was about good versus evil before the rise of nationalism? Not only is that painting a varied and long subject with immense history in extremely broad strokes it is also flawed, I think, because that central conflict was always there, just not externalized as much, and the differences especially when compared to traditional folklore can also be attributed to the duality of good and evil as separate entities as taught by Abrahamic religion (instead of being an internal conflict beholden to divine will, i.e. fate as it was for classical Greek drama and epic poetry). Of course Hector would never stop being Trojan as much as Achilles would always be Greek. As playthings of the gods they simply had no choice. How would Darth Vader be possible in such a framework? That concept would be ridiculous to the people of the time as much as the concept of the gods controlling and playing with humanity is (well should be) to us if applied to the real world. Homer would scoff at Darth Vader changing sides? Yes, probably. Because were Star Wars a classical Greek epic, the force would be a capital "Force" and thus (a) "God" and the conlcusion of the conflict fated. Or if it were a Greek drama Luke would probably vanquish Vader, be utterly destroyed by Palpatine and then Zeus would lower himself down from the heavens to set right the wrongs. Deus ex machina was a staple of Greek drama. Today it's considered bad form (this has also something do to with how pervasive the concept of fate is in culture, no?). Back to your point I'd also argue that the term literary ficiton is somewhat arbitrary. Literary fiction is, essentially, what the literary academia decides that it is (not that academic consensus is a bad thing, it just takes a while to be formed). Go back a century and you'll have people arguing that Jane Austen wrote romance pulp and will never be considered literary fiction in much in the same way that students of the liberal arts these days argue that fantasy fiction or video games will never be true art and worthy of study. The concept alone seems ridiculous, a tenured professor at Oxford teaching Classical games of the 90ies? Bad literature is bad, but fantasy fiction isn't the only genre that has a lot of terrible books. I'll never get tired of bringing it up but the absolutely worst novels of the past few years were firmly in the housewife porn and romance genre and born of ascended fan fiction. Please, go and read Anna Todd's After series and then come back and argue that R.A. Salvatore writes bad Forgotten Realm novels. I mean he does, but it's by far not the worst you could come across.