Video beefs again

 I recently watched 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) to find another example of cruel treatment possibly leading to destructive behavior. Pepe sells the vial or the monster to the scientist, who locks it in a cage outdoors, half-ass covers it with a tarp and walks away. The thing is growing so fast that if you don't treat it kindly and help it right away, the chance is lost.

I don't know if I've been over this a trillion times, but How Its Made would have been better as How It Works. It's just manufacturing machines and basic assemblies. When the electric razor was produced, nothing of the mechanism was shown. I wanted to know how it makes the blade move and see the inside parts when that happens.

Also learned the song, "Something" by Elvis Presley. It was exactly the challenge level I needed. Different timing, 3 kinds of 7th chords, writing my own E6 to save time and put it in the right place, 2 similar basslines and a fill. Awesome! I did write to E guitar though, so that was sandbagging a little.

Watching No Reservations (tv series), a chef said that if someone closed his restaurant, he would just make a new one. Years ago, I was in a band and there was a dispute over whether to give our demo recording to someone for publicity. Band members argued that the song would be stolen and I asked if they could write another song. They said no!

Evaluation of a situation

 There are many who claim to know everyone's problems, origin of and solution to. Nobody could truthfully claim anything like this. I only propose an idea about how to look at things and determine what's going on and why. I only propose that we take all elements, forces and effects into account. No individual issue, item or subject is the sole cause of any situation. If someone is "acting out", there are subjects withiin them and outside, around them contributing to the situation. Something has angered them and something has pushed them so far as to have that level of activity that available on their menu of what to do. If a mechanical part breaks, the part may have been installed wrong by someone in the previously mentioned type of situation as well as manufactured wrong for a host of other reasons or damaged in shipping, usage, accident, abuse... There are so many factors at play in anything.

A factor not considered in film reviewing is why so many are centered around and driven by conflict. Video media like TV shows and internet postings too. I got more "ultra hippieized" by some recent trauma and realized this while watching a long line of conflict. What else could happen? Exploration and explanation are good and included in things like travel and food shows. I defaulted to Anthony Bourdain's video catalog when I had my video conflict revelation. This caused a drive for documentary style movies and TV (most movies are REALLY negative) and music videos and concert footage. Another source of negativity is the BBC. On their nature shows like planet earth 2 and life of plants, conflict and disgust dominate. I've watched stuff in which the anteater is glossed over as quickly as possible so the rest of the duration could be used to show the ants. Underwater? Get out the macro and look for the most insect-like crustaceons. BBC just has to show animals fighting, eating one another in slow motion repeated multiple times, or the grossest shit around.

Some of the concerts are blowing me away. These musicians really fucking throw down the gauntlet as far as setting a bar in technique, writing and performance. Black metal guitarists are showing rhythmic variety untold with right hand picking. A power metal band, Sonata Arctica live in Finland, almost makes me cry with music that goes straight to the me inside me. Hindustani classical sarod and sitar players are turning out to be bonkers good sometimes (or some folks) and totally incoherent or annoying with others. I wrote some about music evaluation last post. This language of music is all I really understand. English speech in America is pretty fucked up if you listen and think.

Old JRPGs and Hindustani classical music

 I like the older, lo-fi, retro, vintage jrpgs for a few reasons. The 1st is less status effects. I've had my folks blinded, silenced, confused, turned to stone, etc. for decades in Final Fantasies. To go without for even a few minutes is great. Simplicity of game mechanics makes any of these games playable by me, as soon as I figure out the yes and no buttons. Being able to play it for a little while without crushing defeat helps. I like blocky, old graphics sometimes and newer, slicker graphics at others, for diffrent reasons. The old graphics are expressive, cartoonish, creative  and charming. New graphics are great for more action. I don't want action. That brings the next point: the old jrpg grinding zone-out. Time is forgotten and running each battle more in my favor takes over. This currently leads to falling asleep, but with more rest it works.

Another odd thing I like is Hindustani classical music. Lots of concerts were available on archive and I was just looking for interesting or watchable concert videos. I've heard enough so I can tell what the musicians are doing most of the time. I'm recognizing repeating patterns and matching up the strings and percussion understandably in my head. I've heard enough music to listen for things like using multiple parts in a song, variety of technique and within said technique, note choice and phrasing. Some of the Hindustani sitar and sarod players are real shred-masters at their instrument. Westrn European note frequency and rhythmic variety are absolutely left in India's dust. Some of the metal guitarists I've heard might be able to hold a candle to this by sheer riff generation. I'm thinking of Jon Nordstrand of Dissection. Storm of the Light's Bane, Feathers Fell, Where Dead Angels Lie, The Somberlain... His rhythm guitar alone provides enough riff generating variety. Abbath Doom Occulta of Immortal is king of right hand picking though. The one thing I prefer in western European system is recognizable, repeating parts that come back. These Hindustani folks are just on a long solo and most of it improvised (told in 1 of the videos by a sitarist). If they had a hook chorus to come back to, we would really be cooking.

More trash talk and hyper-reflective thoughts

 I need to play an open mic night. The fucking club owner would want to meet what did that. Variety and heartfelt expression galore! Venomous rage on Colors of the Wind, a slow and complex version of Black Metal, Gloryhammer and Rhapsody call to arms anthems... Fuck would I be different from everyone else!

Image out of order, literally. I get words and phrases stuck in my head. Most recent was Ephel Duath, the mountains around Mordor in J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion. I found that out by looking up the place name from the series I knew.

When my thrash/death metal band, Pazuzu hit the stage with the vocalist from Agiel, whom I had heard on the local radio show, Sonic Insanity, his good performance made me want to do better. When I worked with Justin at the bike shop, his productivity and control of the situation made me strive for similar things. People you are around effect the end result like an environment can effect it. MCC was far away and I drove pretty freely to stores. Brockport was close and very few stores. Obvious.

I'm all blackened thorns and craggy rustication on the outside, but filled with true hippie peace and psychedelicism inside. Just like the G-funk guys who really did it right. Their songs say things like "I just want to hang out with my friends, but I live in a hostile place and have to be strong and imposing because of it."

Digestive Distress

 My guts are eft. I'm at a diet of fish, fruit and vegetables. Nuts give me diarrhea and rice gives me constipation. Last night, I was having problems, but not quite so bad. I broke up gabapentin to make myself work and it was ok for a little while. I broke the same gabapentin tonight, but time is the only force which will show whether this is effective.

I've been comparing my "basics" loading of the handheld emulator vs. android games and the emulator stomps them hard. Ads? Ha. Paid content on a game over 10 years old, before it could possibly do that? Then the games. I load old emulator shit and most of it is playable without instructions. Open a new android game and it's longer than the FFX sphere grid tutorial. Some would point to greater complexity of the games. If they are so fucking great, why is it just this laundry list of requirements? Why not some choices? This is a "game", right? That would indicate the user guiding some aspect of it besides whether to conform and complete requirements like in this hell I'm using the game to escape.

Frankenstein, the famous movie. I watched some of it recently and saw the section involving when the "monster" comes to life and his early experiences. The doctor's evil henchman finds that Frank hates fire, so he waves a torch in dude's face every second he can. No fucking wonder Frank was freaking out! Remove the fire, and we have a clumsy and ignorant being in need of instruction, not a monster. Don't teach him anything about how to navigate the world even and we see what happens. Doctor Stein and his lackey made a monster from a blank slate.

If Billy Gibbons, the ZZ Top guitarist, plays his regular stuff on a 15 string guitar and ignores all the other strings and frets, does that count as him playing the instrument?

I realized I like fear with my fun because of robo for so many years. That's just how robo does it and now my brain is programmed. This is why evil nurse was so much fun. This is why bad energy and ghost cat is fun. No wonder the bad energy is focused on the laundry room that used to be the bathroom. No shit the bad energy is there, or should I say "all shit" it is there.