Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
A couple of days ago, I posted about art history class at the University of Maryland. TL;DR: I attended that class only three days: the first day, the penultimate day, and then the last day for the final exam. None of those days provided meaningful instruction on the topic, yet I passed the final exam with complete, utter bullshit.
This won’t go over well with some elements of the interwebs, but it’s a 100% true story.
At the University of Maryland (go Terps!), no matter what your major, each student had to take two classes from each of four categories of classes in order to graduate (plus two semesters of English). For a physics major, meeting the math and science requirement was easy, but the artsy-fartsy requirements took some work. I selected Latin because I had three years of Latin in high school (easy A!), and then took <throws dart at the class catalog> art history.
I showed up to the first day of class. Then I showed up to what I thought was the final exam, but it was actually the last day of actual class. So, I had to show up one more time for the final exam, which was walking through the university’s art gallery and discussing the art. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to say something like, “This is a Victorian era painting inspired by the Bakersfield style of brush stroke” or some shit like that. All I can remember was critiquing the art from a purely subjective point of view. You know, stuff like, “Oh, it’s a great use of color,” “What fine craftsmanship,” or “I’ve done better myself.”
Craftsmanship?
That final exam was our entire grade, and I passed. I didn’t get an A, but I passed. How the hell did that happen? I completely made up everything I said. Do you think that I could have done that with, for example, calculus?
“Addition and subtraction? That’s for the plebians. We of the elite members of the society use scelpenation to calculate our sums. Let me tell you how it works. . . .”
I invented scelpenation.
Of course, I couldn’t. I’d get an F- and be beaten with reeds. Mathematics is objectively true. Just hold up two fingers with each hand and bring them together as many times as you’d like. The two pairs of fingers will always become four fingers. Sorry, but some degrees are worth more than others. Let’s face it: They just give art history degrees to anyone.
Yeah, you read that right. Captain Kirk and William Shatner were both born on March 22. Shatner was born in 1931, and Kirk will be born in 2233. This may be out of place considering that I’m writing this post on May 7, 2022, and who knows what will happen to my captain (or me) between now and then, but I wish them both well . . .
Yeah, you’ve heard it all before, but now you’re hearing from someone who used to swear by daylight savings time (“DST”). In fact, I wanted the United States to switch over to DST permanently. I heard scientists claiming that it’s bad for you, but like any American, I rejected the science. I didn’t want an evening commute to be dark.
I was an idiot.
As I discussed about a year ago, I purchased a home with window treatments that let sunlight in even when they’re closed. The result has been that I wake up earlier, and the sunlight is far less jarring on the brain than an alarm clock regardless of how soft the alarm is. Humans, and every other living organism, evolved around the sun, not around alarm clocks, developing circadian rhythms (i.e., “physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a 24-hour cycle”).
It’s far easier to get up in the morning, and I have far more energy even after putting on a lot of my bad weight again. I also easily fall to sleep most nights, which is something that has been elusive nearly my entire life. This despite always using my cell phone when going to bed. Daylight savings time screws that up. Now I rely on an alarm to get to the gym on time, and if I had to be to work before 9 am, I’d still be in that jam.
I had a goal to see three movies this past weekend. This isn’t something I’ve ever done, but I wanted a lazy weekend where I didn’t have to do anything. No fixing up the home. No significant work on my 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons database. Hell, I didn’t even go to the gym, and my martial arts class was cancelled, so no work out. Just pure laziness. I needed the break anyway. Now I’m going to ruin it by, instead of just posting a stupid meme, writing this post. This is far more thinking than I wanted to do this weekend. Yeah, it’s a low bar.
65 Million Years Ago
First up Friday night was 65 Million Years Ago. This movie will not win any Oscars, not even for special effects, cinematography, or costume design, but it’s only about 90 minutes long, which is about how much you can take before wanting to tap out. The story was as original as a movie can be nowadays, and the fact that this ship crashed within a day of the dinosaur-killing meteor hitting the Earth is reasonably explained. It’s still a crazy coincidence, but there’s some sense to it. The movie is, as you probably know, about a spaceship that crashes to the Earth, and so a guy with some sort of hand-held rail gun(?) and hi-tech grenades takes on a bunch of dinosaurs. So, it is what it is, and you all know what it is going into it, so if that interests you, I think you’ll be (just) okay with it. I was.
These were the scariest dinosaurs. Think really energetic Komodo dragons.
There were no scenes during or after the credits, but there are some visuals during the first part of the credits that you may want to watch.
Cocaine Bear
Because 65 took only 93 minutes, and Cocaine Bear — only 95 minutes — was about to start, I bought a ticket will sitting in my seat (while the credits were rolling; shut up). Future students in film school will be shown this movie to show them how not to make a movie. The pacing was off. There was a part of the movie that dragged. It was terribly unrealistic, and not at all faithful to the story on which it’s based. None of the characters were sympathetic (maybe one exception). Several bad guys got away, and we were expected to sympathize them. Despite all of that, it was an incredibly fun watch. I don’t regret a single minute of the 95 I spent watching it.
I even rooted for the paramedics to die. I hate exceptionally stupid characters.
There are two mid-credit scenes.
Creed III
Knowing that I was going to see this movie, if for no other reason, because Hollywood’s next big thing, Jonathan Majors, is in it, I decided to watch Creed and Creed II this week, and I loved them both. They represented the perfect start to a sequel trilogy. They used Sylvester Stallone, and they followed the basic formula of the good Rocky movies while still carving out their own path, both structurally and artistically. Great idea, and great execution. I was looking forward to Creed III. Unfortunately, this movie was a huge disappointment, which is weird. Besides Jonathan Majors, the backstory is strong as hell. This won’t be a spoiler if you’ve seen the trailers: Majors plays Damian Anderson, a childhood friend of Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed. He took care of Creed, and was the #1 rated amateur boxer ever. (Seriously, he said that in the movie.) Adonis lost his temper and created a bad situation, and when Damian bailed him out, he was the one that got in trouble. He spent 18 years in jail watching Adonis climb to the top, and now he wants revenge. All of this is interesting, and the cast is pretty good, but there’s no Sylvester Stallone, and the execution on the main story is piss poor. It was rushed and unrealistic. Don’t misunderstand me. I can go into a movie like Blade and say, “I’m going to suspend my disbelief and accept vampires exist.” Not everything has to be realistic in that sense, but once you commit to your premise, you have to follow through. You can’t just blow up shit, especially in ways that defy logic, and expect me to roll with it. It was just stupid at times, and I’m too smart for that. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone even if you like this kind of movie.
It could’ve been much better.
There are no mid- or post-credit scenes.
Rounding out the month for me are three movies I want to see: Shazam! Fury of the Gods (opens Friday), John Wick 4: Chapter 4 (opens the following Friday), and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (opens the Friday after that one). April will be a slow month with only one movie, Renfield, worth seeing in the theater, but then May brings what should be my favorite movie of the year, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3. June has only two movies of interest: The Flash (June 16) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June 30), so things will definitely be normal after this month.
That, the Washington Capitals, the Winnipeg Jets, and the XFL were the basis of my lazy weekend.
Is Wisdom Wednesday a thing? If not, it is now, at least in my small corner of the universe.
If you’re currently eating, I guess you should finish before you read this.
I was at the urinal Velocity Wings in Chantilly, Virginia and noticed this writing on the wall of a stall. I found it funny enough to take a picture of it.
I don’t know if it’s still there. I haven’t been to Velocity Wings in a few weeks. But considering whose birthday it is today, talk of “shit” seems appropriate to me.
Last week, I shared a random memory of a Tonight Show interview. Today is an interview from Joan Rivers’ Late Show. The link should take you to the relevant part, which is at 5:35. Here, Dave discusses the split with Van Halen and the fallout from it.
Side note: The fact that Rivers took this gig created a personal rift with Johnny Carson.
What I remember about this is that Van Halen — Eddie in particular — was deeply critical of Dave in the press, and Dave always took the high ground. For a while anyway. A couple months after this interview, I heard a snippet from another interview on the radio. Paraphrasing to the best of my recollection (which, based on these posts, is pretty good), Dave’s response to Van Halen was, “Well, I’m out here forging the future, and Van Halen is still living in the pasture.”
Still, I took Dave’s side in the mess because he didn’t fight back until Van Halen pushed him over the edge. Of course, I don’t know any of these guys, so I never really cared about their personal battles. I just knew that they were both producing music I loved, so the breakup worked out great for me.
As a reminder, one of only 14 concerts I’ve ever seen was Hagar and Roth’s joint tour.
Las week, I had ChatGPT, write a guest post. It was meh. Today, I decided to see if it could analyze me. My input was:
Can you create a blog post for me based on an amalgamation of all of the topics that appear on my site at https://www.gsllcblog.com?
Its response was:
Sure, I’d be happy to create a blog post for you that brings together some of the key topics that appear on your site at https://www.gsllcblog.com/.
In an instant, it summed up years of writing with the following:
Title: How the Intersection of Pop Culture, Philosophy, Science, and Gaming is Changing the World
Introduction: Pop culture, philosophy, science, and gaming are four topics that have captured the imagination of people around the world. While each of these topics can seem distinct and separate from one another, they are actually interconnected in fascinating ways. In this blog post, we’ll explore how the intersection of these four topics is changing the world in exciting and unexpected ways.
Section 1: Pop Culture Pop culture has a huge influence on society, shaping our ideas about what’s cool, what’s important, and what’s possible. From movies and TV shows to video games and comic books, pop culture is everywhere we look. But pop culture is more than just entertainment; it’s also a way for people to connect with each other and share their experiences. We’ll explore how pop culture influences our beliefs and values, and how it helps us create a sense of community and belonging.
Section 2: Philosophy Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, and ethics. While it may seem abstract and esoteric, philosophy has practical implications for our everyday lives. We’ll explore how philosophical ideas have influenced pop culture, science, and gaming, and how they can help us make sense of the world around us.
Section 3: Science Science is the systematic study of the natural world, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest galaxies. It has revolutionized our understanding of the universe and given us incredible tools for improving our lives. We’ll explore how science has influenced pop culture, philosophy, and gaming, and how it continues to shape our world today.
Section 4: Gaming Gaming is a rapidly growing industry that has captured the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world. From tabletop RPGs to video games, gaming is a way for people to explore new worlds, connect with others, and express themselves creatively. We’ll explore how gaming has influenced pop culture, philosophy, and science, and how it is changing the way we think about entertainment, education, and even social justice.
Conclusion: The intersection of pop culture, philosophy, science, and gaming is a fascinating and complex topic that has implications for nearly every aspect of our lives. By exploring these four topics in more depth, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world around us and the forces that are shaping it. Whether you’re a fan of pop culture, a philosopher at heart, a scientist in the making, or a gamer at the keyboard, there’s something in this amalgamation of topics that will capture your imagination and inspire you to think differently about the world.
So, it talks about what we’ll explore, but never explores it. When I pointed this out, it provided a “more detailed blog post,” but spit out basically the thing, just more wordy. Meh. Also, I wound up breaking it by putting it in a position where it couldn’t deny that it lied to me. I asked it to generate D&D characters, and long story short, with very few minor exceptions, it used the 5th edition ruleset to generate both 5th edition and 1st edition characters. Even when I typed in the ruleset for creating a bard, it continued to produce illegal ability scores, impossibly low hit point totals, inaccurate armor class calculations, incorrect spell lists, etc. This is how it ended.
I must admit, it seems a bit crazy to argue with AI, but I was seeing if I could piss it off. I’m not sure if I succeeded.
Remember, kids. Artificial intelligence isn’t truly intelligence. Yet. On that day it is, we’ve probably got bigger things to worry about than lost revenue.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Everyone insists they have a good memory, but our brains form fake memories all the time. I’ve used YouTube to test my memory quite often and found that my long-term memory is pretty accurate. The weird thing about my memory is that I sometimes remember things as a mirror image of the way they were. That is, if I remember footage from a TV show where person A is on the left and person B is on the right, their positions are swapped. However, I remember incredible detail about everything else in the footage. Here was a random memory that popped into my head when my cousin shared some footage from Saturday Night Fever. It’s an interview on the Tonight Show with Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta promoting the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive.
And part II.
I remembered almost every minute detail of this interview, and because it’s the Tonight Show, I didn’t reverse the image in my head. The host is always on the right side of the screen, and it’s impossible for a healthy brain to forget that.
Unfortunately, my short-term memory is beginning to suffer, and I sometimes have trouble getting words out when speaking. I also have some difficulty forming new memories. As Kareem Said said on Oz, “Life is balance.” I guess I had this coming, but you can imagine how frustrating that is for someone who historically forgets nothing. While I could stand to lose a lot of childhood and young-adulthood memories, I hope the cognitive decline remains slow.
Tomorrow, I’m discussing memory, so for Caturday, here’s a video on feline memory.
By the way, with all my talk about cats, I don’t own one. However, I bought a house this year, so my tax withholdings were wrong. I’m getting about $2,300 back between federal and state. Hence, I’m buying some cat stuff and getting a cat. Maybe I’ll get two. My understanding is that if they have a playmate when they’re young, they learn the limits of violent behavior. Of course, I’ve always enjoyed “fighting” with the cats I’ve owned, so that’s not too much of a concern.
Play What You Want 