majestic

Alas, unintentional and a missed opportunity, what a double whammy. Shouldn't do long form posts after midnight. There it shows that I was late to the Doctor Who party, because I watched that episode only after the first season of Game of Thrones, but I can imagine it would be distracting. The Doctor Who episode with Dumbledore was strange for me too. Jason Isaacs would have been a good choice, although when I imagine him or Tom Felton with silver hair I think I'd probably call either Daemon Malfoy. Giving the show a reason for exposition by making men chatty after sex is a justification that, while maybe not ideal, is at least a justification. The scenes in House of the Dragon serve the purpose of setting up the contrast in personality between Viserys and Daemon, but for that an orgy would not have been necessary. Much the same with the violence. The cringiest scene was the one where Ms. Bianco was crying and Littlefinger quickly brought up a girl with semen dripping from her mouth. You're not wrong, Game of Thrones had scenes like that for the shock effect / special interest just as well, they just felt less egregious because it wasn't all at once, or maybe because I liked the show better. Can't rightly say. It sure felt like it was. The violence in itself had a point, same as the nudity, a need to set up the conflict between Viserys and his brother (and it is canonical, according to the history books, but that doesn't mean it is necessary to induldge that much), and that does make sense, but it was simply ridiculous in parts. Particularily the chopped off male reproduction organ of the rapist. The C-section in particular, Aemma is supposed to die in child birth, but adding everything else on top is just for shock value. Although as I said, I was highly biased against the series a priori, and it didn't change my mind. Your milage may vary of course.

Let me helpfully link you to a post from back in 2018 that you can report too:

House of the Dragon, Season 1, Episode 1: Another Prequel Nobody Needed The Heirs of the Dragon It's hard to try and be objective about the episode - or indeed the series - when you can read a certain non-review of it online that was written based on a pre-screening of the first six episodes for the sepcial part of the fandom, and who doesn't love A Song of Ice and Fire's very own Keepers of Truth, the glorious Elio and Linda, first of their names, and heir apparent to the legacy of the books. If absolutely nothing of his sentence makes sense for your, dear reader, then that is fine. It just means you're blissfully unaware of this book series incredibly tiresome fandom fandumb. So, naturally, the first inkling I have, seeing a defense by these two of an adaptation for material they contributed to, is to simply dismiss everything they say and assume the opposite. Confirmation bias is a strange thing, so I am already here, watching a prequel I (correctly, as it turns out) deemed unnecessary, expecting it to be, well, not good, and I was, of course, proven right. What else could it be, in the end. This is probably not fair, but hey, this is about my subjective enjoyment of something, after all. Wokey wokey! Well, let's get the obvious woke nonsense out of the way, the series of course makes a girl heir to the throne. A girl. Preposterous. What woman would ever rule in a medieval society, really, I mean... I kid. Sorry. Of course that's the entire point of the show, and spoilers, this will eventually end with civil war, because Westeros just isn't woke enough to accept that sort of thing, particularily not the King's Council who just declares the male succesor king because why not. Oh, wait, are you mad about spoilers for a prequel series about the backstory of a book series that began in 1996? Sue me. Unless the creative team decides to rewrite the entire history of the setting, I can also already tell you how it ends. The dragons all but die out in the civil war and its aftermath, both contenders for the throne die and it will end with Rhaenyra's son Aegon (by her uncle, Daemon) on the throne, who will eventually be nicknamed Dragonbane because the last of the Targaryen's dragons dies under his rule. Woops. I am so sorry. Hey, did you guys know that Jimmy McGill is going to become Saul Goodman during the events of Better Call Saul? With that out of the way, there is one diversity choice in the casting that caused a bit of a hooplah in the fandumb, and that is changing Corlys Velaryon to have black skin color with silver hair, something that is apparently well justified by the world building in the series (at least according to our Glorious Couple, The Lords Paramount of Everything A Song of Ice and Fire). I don't really care, just like I didn't care a whole lot about Heimdall being played by Idris Elba in the Marvel movies. It is what it is though. Corlys Velaryon, played by Steve Toussaint, reeks a bit of the token black guy, and it rankles even more because as far as I know, he shouldn't be Master of Ships. Or on the small council, like, at all. Guess that's one of the headscratchers Elio and Linda mentioned in their decidedly not a review. In a shocking twist, I kind of agree with their assessent that Ser Criston Cole would have been an ideal - and equally important - part of the cast for the change for more diversity. Although maybe the showrunners didn't want their token black guy to become one of the 'bad' guys, because Ser Criston Cole is going to back the other party in the civil war. The side that doesn't want a woman on the throne. Hello, I'm the Doctor! The David Tennant meme above is funnier when you know that his successor as the Doctor, Matt Smith, is playing Daemon Targaryen, future husband of Princess Rhaenyra. While his depiction of Daemon is fine, the casting choice itself is quite a distraction, and it's therefore not a good one in my mind. I keep imagining he'll whip out his sonic screwdriver or do something otherwise whacky that makes no sense. Alas, though, he rode off on a dragon and not in his TARDIS. The actress playing the young version of Rhaenyra seems to have gone through the Emilia Clarke school of acting. This is not a good thing. In fact, young Rhaenyra seems to try to scream I AM THIS SERIES' DAENERYS at you the entire time she's on screen. Viserys is delightful though, and the show did a good job at depicting his onsetting health issues by him having a wound that will not close. Bad wound healing is a sign of diabetes, and I am willing to extend the showrunners the benefit of the doubt here and call this intentional (Viserys should, in the end, become barely capable of ascending the steps towards the Iron Throne by 'virtue' of his failing health and large girth). One-Upping Game of Thrones Oh boy. So this is what simply had to happen, I suppose. We can't have a prequel to Game of Thrones without one-upping it to make sure that watchers are properly entertained, so the first episode is a condensed version of everything that came before - or will come after, if you want to talk in terms of the timeline - in Game of Thrones. Limbs are hacked off, there's a beheading, a head gets violently bashed in, a penis is cut off and my personal favorite, we're treated to a scene depicting a caesarean section in a time where there's no anaesthesia or a way to make the procedure not, uhm, deadly for the mother, and yes, that includes a bunch of people rummaging around in her insides (oh, and the woman in labor begging them not to, I mean... sure, who's asking her). There are also two scenes at a brothel, one of which is an orgy of a size not usually seen outside of special interest films made in the Czech Republic. This is all par for the course of the show, in case you've watched Game of Thrones, but in this one, it's just there to be there. The violence in Game of Thrones, at least initially, had a purpose beyond shock value, as did all the scenes in the brothels. In this series, they have no purpose other than showing violence and naked people. Because that is what Game of Thrones is. Violence and boobies! Hooray. Production values So, the series apparently had five times the budget for its first season than the original first Game of Thrones season, yet I like how it looks a lot less. The attenion to detail in certain scenes is simply stunning, but a whole bunch of the series simply looks weird and wrong to me, and it permeates everything, from the opening clouds to this particular shot: Well, I don't know about you guys, but that background looks pretty odd to me. Does that look odd to you? Similar shot from Game of Thrones as a contrast. Does that shot look better? It does, right? Probably cost a lot less to make, too. Conclusion Am I glad this TV show was made. I'm looking forward about complaining about each and every episode, for years to come (unless this is a limited run prequel series - I honestly have not bothered to check). How delightful. Sure, there's a chance that the series will improve with the timeskip, but I think the foundational issues of having to 'improve' upon Game of Thrones at every turn and this simply being an unnecessary prequel will not change much for me. This is Better Call Saul all over again, except with a less well working cast and production values that are dreadfully expensive for no visual gain that I like.

He's been hospitalized for a couple of days now after the tumor grew large enough to push against his small intestine. He previously had a gallbladder stent inserted, he's currently fed through a tube and underwent intestinal bypass surgery, but that probably isn't going to help much. Actually not entirely sure that he'll be able to leave the hospital (well, alive, that is, but the post is morbid enough without mentioning it directly - oh, wait ). Tumor resisted any and all attempts to reduce its size to an operable level. It's terrifyingly aggressive, even for pancreatic cancer, but such is the nature of the beast.

Easiest way to finish the Sarevok fight is Potion of Invisibility + Protection From Magic scroll = standing on the trap that fires infinte Skull Traps until everything is dead. Not sure if any mod or the EE patched that out though.

I see, and that makes sense. Alan Rickman is great in everything, he's the primary reason I watched the Harry Potter films and actually liked them - for the most part, at least. Not very fond of Order of the Phoenix or the way the finale drags itself out, but I think we've been over that before. We never really rewatched films outside of me wanting to see them and just putting in the tape when I was six*. Which was, by far and large, the original Star Wars trilogy, I must have watched the films over a hundred times. I'm pretty sure my parents are completely sick of the films. Out of the Pixar films I've watched, I liked A Bug's Life, but that came out at a time where I simply had an appreciation for the technical leap in between Toy Story and A Bug's Life, I'm unsure how the film would hold up nowadays and I don't feel like rewatching it just to check. Finding Nemo was okay insofar as Dory is a character that is a perfect match for a friend of mine. When the film came out she used an image of Dory as avatar and started calling herself Dory in real life. WALL-E on the other hand is good fun, has really nice moments between WALL-E and EVE, and now that I think of it, it dawns on me that the interactions between Hibiki and Uta in Bubble are perhaps a little similar to WALL-E and EVE. Huh. Guess rewatching WALL-E is up at some point. Can't deride something that's not there. Kidding. It's not your taste, actually, just your - admittedly enviable - ability to enjoy apparently everything because it's just a movie**. *We had - still have, in a way, just in the basement - this massive film library at home. Hundreds upon hundreds of tapes, then DVDs, then Blu Rays, and at best they got used once directly after buying them, and only when they were films we wanted to watch but didn't go to the cinema for. **Infuriating when it happens in online games. Yes, perhaps this is just a game, but that does not give you the right to waste my time, filthy casual.

Not entirely certain what to make of this fasco-goth look but otherwise it's... something. Not a bad something though. In spite of the looks, it's not really heavy enough to be metal, so it's in this thread.

Watched enough Star Trek for the parody to work? I loved Galaxy Quest, but I'm not sure if that film is interesting at all without it working as intended. Other than that: Usual and obligatory comment on the Dollars 'trilogy' whenever it comes up: Like some of the commenters on the RL re:View video, I think Once Upon a Time in the West is Leone's best film, even if Clint Eastwood would probably have been a better main character than Charles Bronson - but alas, one can't have everything, right? Casting Henry Fonda as the villain was a bold choice, and from what I recall from interviews one of the biggest reasons Henry Fonda took the role in the first place. Doing something else for a change.

Yeah, I guess I really am an alien. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow's CGI doesn't even try to pass itself off as real, and therefore is infinitely better than the CGI animals in Prey. The film looks like an animated version of a early 20ies/30ies sci-fi movie with a campy 50ies storyline. It is absolutely perfect in what it tried to achieve. Actually, if CGI was exclusively used for films like that, I'd sit here arguing for more instead of less. Is it a good film? Well, probably not. But it's simply wonderful. I was thinking of high budget movies in general, and there are those that are still shot on film, like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I've never watched because I generally find myself not liking Tarantino films (in spite of them usually being more character and dialoge driven than regular films, I guess there's something about his style that simply doesn't speak to me). In epic action, fantasy or sci-fi films, even the big budget titles that don't look terrible fall flat because they're terrible for other reasons. The Force Awakens for instance had good sets instead of everything being CGI like in the prequels, but the film itself was creatively bankrupt to the point where it make Return of the Jedi's reuse of the Death Star looks like a vibrant, fresh idea. But yes, that mirrors the issue with triple-A gaming and (Japanese) animation, but I still think film is still in a better place than either anime or triple-A gaming. Anime often panders to the lowest common denominator in a way that just wouldn't be acceptable in film any more and employes rote tropes and stereotypical characters to that end, and modern character design looks gross and adds a malus to that needs to be overcome by everything else being better than it otherwise would need to be. Triple-A gaming does the same, with a different focus group. Films? Yes, the overwhelming amount of films that come out are trash, and there's a new dime a dozen romantic comedy or superhero film out every day. Yet, still, there's usually a bunch of servicable or better films in any given genre per year of varying budgets. The writing's on the wall, of course, with everything in the streaming world heading towards an inflationary period where everything is simply being drowned in mediocre trash to keep people subbed to a hundred different services. Subjectively, I had more success finding various films I enjoyed that were made recently than either games or anime. Actually a bunch of pretty good ones came out last year or this year. However, as per the initial part of this post, I guess my subjectivity isn't worth much to actual people. Don't misunderestimate (lol ) me here, I do enjoy the occasional so bad it is good film, and I have Masters of the Universe in my top 10 movies of all time list for a reason. Fire Birds isn't one of those, and Top Gun - at least the first one - isn't a bad film by any metric when looking at what it is, factoring in genre conventions of the time and adjusting your expectations accordingly. Something that is much easier when one is provided with contrast in the context of said conventions. It sure feels outdated nowadays and probably aged less gracefully than other films, but that is something else entirely. Still perfectly valid to not like Top Gun. I hated being forced to watch Bridget Jones's Diary too, but the film is arguably a good romantic comedy if one likes that sort of thing.

Episode title: Redhead Force(d) Ghost Gangbang. I'll show myself out.

The wisdom of Confucius applies to movies as well: Even old clothes look new if put next to even older clothes! Best read with an utterly racist accent. Can substitute whatever ancient wise man you want, Buddha, or maybe one of the Dalai Lamas. But yeah, exactly, nothing makes average action schlock look better than worse action schlock as contrast.

Yeah, so my stuff was mostly uncommented and intentionally as arcane as I could manage to make it. Which is fairly easy to do in C, especially if your target operating system is Novell-DOS. typedef unsigned int (far *s_arrayptr); struct mainscreenstructure { int x; int y; s_arrayptr screen[80]; } mainscreen; void screenOutputxy(int x, int y, char *out, long ATTR) { for (int i = 0; i <= strlen(out); i++) mainscreen.screen[y][x + i] = out[i] + ATTR; } void main(void) { _DL = 1; _DH = 1; _AH = 0x02; _BH = 0; asm int 10h; for (register int i = 0; i < 25; i++) mainscreen.screen[i] = (s_arrayptr) ((void 0xB800 + i * 0xA * )( 0xB800 + i * 0xA ) + ( void near * )( 0 )); mainscreen.x = 0; mainscreen.y = 0; screenOutputxy(0, 0, "Hello World", 0xF000); _AX = 0x0700; _asm int 21h; } Heh, that CODE tag is kind of hard to read. In case it's not totally obvious ( ), this clears the screen, then builds a struct full of pointers to every character on a DOS 80x25 screen and writes Hello World directly on the screen, then waits for an input. Because only lamers use printf().

I'm unsure if that's a Sub Rosa joke or not. If it is, that's the most disturbing thing posted here by far. If it isn't, that just shows how disturbed I am.

Can't believe you guys actively dislike Top Gun. There are worse movies out there. Go watch Fire Birds as a contrast, while that's helicopters, not fighter jets, it's... you know, actually like really bad.

Too late, he already set everything in motion. With his mind. Might take a couple of decades, but it will kill you. Eventually.

As an avid fan of animation, for me, that ship already sailed 20 years ago. In cinema, you at least get the odd high budget movie that still looks good, with decently made CGI if there has to be any, or films that do not rely on special effects that work mostly without CGI, or films where CGI is used appropriately, whereas in animation, we will never ever get anything that isn't trash grade digital any more, and worse, to wit: Even animation that once looked good (one can think of Disney films that they want, but for the most part, they're all impeccably animated) is ruined to make it look more modern - and the horrible implication that sits at the back of the fact that filters for this even exist, that modern audiences actually prefer this one-note digital coloring effect where everything looks clean and fake. Kinda like CGI bears, except worse. Resolution and random screencaps from the web nonwithstanding, we went from this: To this: Can someone please put me out of my misery?

Yeah, sometimes when the mood strikes me, I'll grab my old backups and flip through them. The stuff I wrote at school, no wonder my teachers hated me.

As we all know, everything is better when turned into Eurodance. Everything. In the magical year of 1996, this Eurodance cover of Queen's Bicycle Race came out, finally proving that the 90ies surpassed every other decade in music history! Well, and because I'm fairly certain some of you musical heathens here will not appreciate this greatness, let me post the best part as a screenshot of the video: Yes, that's Blümchen cosplaying as Freddy. At least I think that's what this is supposed to be... Heh, and you all thought Scooter was bad, huh?

Well, you asked for it:

Well, back at work, already confronted with the fact that literally everyone else at the company is a complete dweeb incapable of critical thinking and problem analysis, and I'm back at doing what I sadly am best at: fixing someone else's mess. Yay...

Wait, are you telling me that my bank didn't send me an e-mail telling me to confirm my account? What's next, the Nigerian prince did not need my credit card credentials for a lucrative gold mine deal?

Looking at pictures of the stuff, not just for the average Japanese palate.

Looks like this Alex Jones Sandy Hook trial had a hilarious side effect. The plaintiff's council apparently obtained a copy of Jones' mobile phone data for the past two years (sent to them by Jones' defense, no less) and now the January 6th committee wants a piece of it.