Mangela Lansbury

Sometimes I see that a game was released this week and do a double take -- hasn't that been out for a while? I thought I played it and got bored of it. This must be the Game of the Year edition or someth--no... original release... guess I just read a lot about it! That's not really different from me thinking, "I got everything about that movie from the trailers and feel oversaturated from the press blitz" with movies, either.

We care a lot about sex. Like, a lot a lot.I've seen some weird videos like Vampires of Budapest from the 80s up through this weird... Cocky Boys? Video of some like bizarre wizard/immortal being training thing??? It's weird and they have weird, interesting, esoteric plots and I have no idea why. Edit: submitted early, hahaaaaa it's late and I'm on a phone

And, for as many bad things as I can say about Evangelion, if someone says that it's meaningless garbage, boy do I get obnoxious about how wrong they are.

Yes. Without a doubt.

There's a lot considered, kind of thoughtful stuff in Eva, but it's wrapped in so much nonsense that I don't think it's really worth the effort. It's a confused show -- in part because it was a trailblazer, so it's kind of forgivable. It's an interesting character study that gets way up its ass with a convoluted, gimmicky plot, which ends up shelving the characters a bit too often, and then they end up having explosive development. It can be worthwhile, but it takes a lot of effort and you have to slog through a lot of bad to get to the good. I just think it's too much work, but I can see why you would disagree.

If you've watched anime at all, you've gotten the gist of Eva. It's not that important to watch if you don't dig teen angst overlaid with pointless religious imagery.

The thing that bothered me most about the Peggy/Stan thing was its proximity to her conversation with Don. The conversation with Don seemed real and human, and the Stan thing seemed like subduing that only really happens in Hollywood. It was just jarring. I would have probably felt different about it if there has been more room to breathe between the two. Now that I've had time to think, "Hey, big ole dumb me, it was the finale, they didn't have all the time in the world and they couldn't really do that any earlier," I'm more okay with it, but the bubblegum tone of that interaction still rubs me the wrong way. It's not that it's rom-commy, just that it's a kind of hyperreal scene surrounded by very real and human interactions.

someone call the house unamerican activities committee, think we got us a pinko here

I don't see it as undercutting his progress at all. He was at rock bottom and called Peggy, who told him he could come home. Don has finally reconciled the two aspects of himself, so he can be happy and spend his time around people who respect and care about him. There's no one else left in his life but the people he thought didn't care about him at all, but Peggy shows him that they do. It's an ending that makes sense to me, but I'm still having a hard time articulating it because it's full of opposites and contradictions. It isn't completely neat and clean, and that's kind of the point.

Apartheid is great because of the example of the miraculous, outstanding history of the success of Rhodesia, which uh... hasn't existed for a few decades...??? What a genuinely horrific person.

There are a lot of things that tend to or approach infinity, which basically means they're almost infinite. If you've ever done limits, I'm sure you've had solutions that approach infinity -- they're almost infinite, but not quite. We can't express the values of either, but there's a fine point to be made that one is almost infinite and the other is infinite. Set theory is bizarre.

Since dating is back, I'll update people on the French guy I mentioned a little while back! I am in a healthy relationship that all my friends approve of. This is foreign territory.

But there actually are varying degrees of infinite! Some infinites are larger than others. The set of all positive integers is smaller than the set of all numbers, but both are infinite. It's a concept you can give some leeway to!

Susumu Hirasawa's soundtracks (Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent, Paprika) always add something for me, but I'm also a huge fan of Susumu Hirasawa in general. The .hack//sign soundtrack added a lot to that anime for me, too. It was really video gamey but also kind of not and added a lot of atmosphere? I don't know, I haven't watched the series in forever but the soundtrack has stuck in my head ever since.

There are no real rules. Everything about what you can get past or not get past is... squishy? Malleable? It changes, and it's different for any person consuming any particular piece of media. There are just too many variables involved -- maybe a person who can't get past the objectification in Bayonetta 2 can get past the objectification of Game of Thrones because they've been a fantasy enthusiast since they were young, so the objectification in Game of Thrones is of a variety that they're accustomed to so, while they see it, they aren't hit by it on a personal level, but they can't take the Bayonetta 2 objectification because they never really got into the anime style so it's unfamiliar enough to be offputting. Or maybe it's something else entirely! It's not a matter of double standards, just different things affecting different people differently.

It's not the problematic content you like, but the container it comes in. You have to be able to look past the problematic content. For something like the Witcher, where the problematic part is more exclusion of races, it's easy to look past because you never see it. It's just something you realize after a while. For something like Bayonetta, which if I remember correctly he reviewed pretty well from a gameplay standpoint, the problematic content is right in your face all the time so it's harder to work past -- and, for him, impossible. It's not a double standard. It's just that not all problems are equally personal or important to all people, and the different manifestations affect different people differently. Sometimes you're going to be able to see past a certain thing. Sometimes you're not. Looking at the content critically is possible either way.

Rainbow Brite would be like a bad trip if you reimagined it as a live action movie, and Strawberry Shortcake had some stuff released recently, I think?

Um, dinosaurs can't be detectives, guys.

Finally, the box from Hellraiser has some competition in the worst torture in cube form arena.

It wasn't ambiguous at all to me. The Germans were malnourished and stranded and they couldn't feed and clothe them, so they made them dig their own graves and murdered them. It's a little fake Holocausty and gross in a hokey and kind of expected way. It was the least interesting part of the episode for me, so maybe I just tuned out and missed something.

I've had a few really good job offers from weapons manufacturers, and I find the best way to not burn bridges is to be honest. Just say, "I'm sorry, but I don't think I could live with myself if I did that." But only if you can live without the money from it. It's a weird conversation to have, but it's not impossible. You have to walk a weird line, but unless people are crazy, they know the industry is controversial and they've made peace with that. It can lead to a kind of political conversation but as long as you can navigate those waters and the other party is accepting of an opposing point of view, it shouldn't be impossible. Just don't be combative.

Fuck communism yeah freedom

Is Archie still the best selling comic in America? I don't think Diamond tracks their sales, and I'm too distant from that whole comic sales tracking thing to know how to look that up anymore.

I get solicited for donations from the college my dad went to. We have the exact same name, but come on. Come. On.

Danielewski released a new book yesterday! Volume one of, what, 27? I'm probably going to pick it up after work today and read it immediately. Anyway, here's a nice little profile piece with him http://lithub.com/did-mark-z-danielewski-just-reinvent-the-novel/