Nineteen years later, Ahmed Best has divulged that he considered suicide after the backlash against his character Jar Jar Binks. This should be a wake-up call to people to stop being douchebags. It makes me grateful that I was never a part of the backlash. I loved Jar Jar Binks. He was the funniest person, so to speak, that six year old me had ever seen. I still don't think he's even as annoying as C-3PO in "The Empire Strikes Back", aka still the best Star Wars movie ever. But that's just my opinion.
Amazon sent me a new Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia to replace the damaged one, so I forgive them. Though I'm only about halfway through this dense tome, I really cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who is interested in this franchise. And why wouldn't you be? It's not only the greatest video game franchise, but the greatest franchise of any kind in the history of ever. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Michael Moore's documentaries don't even come close. But that's just my opinion. On that note, I was wondering recently why Japanese people make most of the characters in their cartoons and comics and video games look Caucasian. And I looked it up and the main answer I found, which sounds legit enough for me to accept, is that they don't. Caucasians think of the default person as Caucasian while Japanese think of the default person as Japanese, so they perceive the cartoon people, who aren't meant to look strictly true to life anyway, differently. This blows my mind and makes perfect sense. But that's just my opinion. I had another adventure on Independence Day, which no longer means much to me now that the leaders of this country are hell-bent on wiping themselves with the principles this country was founded on. I have mentioned before my attempts to befriend a recovering drug addict. At this point, my persistence has gotten her to respond to my texts more consistently when she isn't in jail or with whooping cough, but my attempts to hang out with her have fallen through time and again because she acts spontaneously and can't keep plans. So I spontaneously dropped by her carcinogen-ridden apartment Wednesday morning to invite her to the free breakfast that the Boy Scouts put on. I knocked, and there was no answer, and then I knocked harder and a muffled voice that didn't quite sound like her asked what I wanted and said it was a holiday. I wondered how that could possibly be relevant when she doesn't have a job. But I explained why I was here and she said to come back later. So I got breakfast and came back an hour later. This time, the owner of the voice invited me in. The owner of the voice was not my friend. The owner of the voice was an upper middle-aged woman with two teeth who was sleeping in the front room next to my friend, who was still sleeping. I never got her name so I'll call her Shirley. Shirley shook my friend and talked to her, but she just groaned and rolled over a couple times. So Shirley asked if she could come with me instead. I didn't know how to say no. So we left and she offered me a Mountain Dew from the stash hidden under a pile of garbage outside, and I guess that was worth it. I'm more of a Dr. Pepper guy but Mountain Dew is cool too. It always reminds me of the time my friend, a different friend back in New York ten years ago now, was with us on a road trip to Youth Conference and we stopped at my dad's friends' house and hung out in their basement, and he chugged a can and a half of Mountain Dew and then remarked, "You guys know I'm diabetic, right?" We did now. Then he had a breakdown and laughed hysterically at nothing for half an hour. Ah, memories. Anyway... "Where is it?" she asked. I said it was at the LDS Church at such-and-such address. Shirley said that was too far; wasn't it way on the other side of McDonald's? No, it wasn't. I tried to explain where it actually was, but I think she was drunk or high and I didn't think it would be much use. So I spinelessly went along with her as she suggested going to a closer church building instead. She said there would probably be food there too, as "There's always something going on at the LDS Church, right?" I knew there wouldn't be, so I suggested that if there wasn't I could give her the mostly intact pancake I was still carrying around. She said she would like that. I didn't offer so much out of generosity as a worry that she would start freaking out when we got there and there was no food. We got there and there was no food. So we sat down on the grass and Shirley ate my pancake. As I patiently waited, she continued telling me her life story. How she met my friend in prison, and is turning 51 in a month, and is becoming a grandmother shortly after that, and wants to quit smoking, and is LDS but hasn't been to church in many years. She asked what music I was listening to on my phone. I felt a little awkward saying "Barenaked Ladies" out loud, but I did and she said "Let's hear it" so I took out the headphones and pressed play. It was their 2006 album "Barenaked Ladies Are Me", a really mellow and beautiful and soothing album. She really got into it and started dancing. Then she was finished with the pancake, and she wanted to flag somebody down for a ride back, but I didn't want to deal with that so I changed the subject and we walked. My friend was still asleep. As Shirley went to lie back down, she remarked, "Maybe you don't even know her." That possibility didn't seem to disturb her in the slightest, though. She said thanks and I said it was nice to meet her and I left. I probably doomed myself to cancer with the time I spent standing in that hallway, if my grossly inconsiderate neighbors haven't already done it. The landlord should be in jail for allowing such conditions to exist. But that's just my opinion.
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"The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia" was the only thing I wanted for my birthday, and it came in the mail yesterday. On opening the package, I was somewhat annoyed to find that two of the four packing bubbles were already deflated, and that despite being plastic wrapped this "new" book that I intended to keep in flawless condition forever already had a little dent/tear in the cover. Thanks, Amazon. No complaints about the actual content, though. I've spent hours reading it yesterday and today and I'm less than a third of the way in. It's just so chock-full of pictures and text and diagrams. Two thumbs way up. If you haven't already, go out and get this book.
I alternate between that obsession and the Spotify playlist I'm building. Since most of my tens of thousands of songs became inaccessible, I've been searching YouTube or choosing artists on Spotify for six months, but now I'm putting every song I like or love that I can find on Spotify on this list so it can be my go-to spot for virtually everything for the foreseeable future. Lots of the stuff I owned is obscure and/or independent and not on Spotify, but Spotify also has lots of stuff that I never owned due to time and money constraints, so it's a tradeoff. This playlist takes me back to the days when I was first introduced to the concept of a playlist, and didn't get it. Why would I want to choose only some of my music as opposed to shuffling literally all of it? I've always liked shuffling. Probably because I grew up with a CD changer that could hold five CDs and shuffle all of them together. If I end up with a polka and a rap and a symphonic metal back-to-back, so much the better.
I try to resist my natural inclination toward inflammatory rhetoric, but there is a time and place for it and in this case I'm not going to hold back or sugar-coat it except insofar as to leave out the swear words going through my head. I join with millions of others in unequivocally condemning the Supreme Court's misguided decision to uphold Drumpf's refugee ban. I know my condemnation of it doesn't affect jack but I'm putting it out there anyway so I can stand before God with a clear conscience. As the anniversary of the United States' Declaration of Independence fast approaches, we can all celebrate the ideals that our nation is founded on and now actively tramples underfoot. I am officially no longer proud to be an American. I refused to sing any of the patriotic hymns in church today. We can't just go around pretending that this is de facto a great nation because we said so while it's doing crap like this. We may as well be honest and change the plaque on the Statue of Liberty to read "Screw You."
Last year I detailed at length why the ban is a moral abomination and why Drumpf's excuses for it are an enormous crock of orange feces. Reiterating all that would be a waste of time, so here I'll just remind Americans yet again that when this blight on humanity was running for the Republican nomination, he called for a ban on all Muslim immigration. In any civilized country, that remark, along with any of at least three hundred other indefensible remarks he's made, would have immediately disqualified him from being taken seriously as a candidate for anything - but in this country, basic decency isn't a thing anymore, so the Republican Party, to their everlasting disgrace, nominated him as much because of that remark as in spite of it. And today, millions of imbeciles have chosen to forget he ever said that and have the gall to claim with straight faces that this ban has nothing to do with religion. What is it about, then? Not any legitimate national security reasons, that's for sure. ​Maybe refugees are better off going to countries that will treat them like human beings anyway. But those countries are small and the refugees' numbers are not. 25 used to seem like an adult age. Years ago I made one protagonist in my novel 25 and the other 26 because those seemed like respectable adult ages. Now I understand that adulthood doesn't start until 30. And then, assuming you live a respectably long life without any serious accidents, you get about five years of being in your prime before your body starts deteriorating over the next several decades. If you live to be ninety you spend the vast majority of your life in decline. That's really messed up. If I were in charge, you would stay "young" until you were about seventy and only start deteriorating then. That seems like a far more reasonable ratio to me. Anyway, that's why I have no particular desire to live past my early forties, and considering my eating habits and the unconscionable amount of stress my heart has been through, I probably won't. But today I'm still alive and I'm 25. I don't mean to be dark, I just have no fear of death and think of my mortality all the time, especially as every year goes by faster than the previous one. I obsess over the passage of time almost every day. I'm in a permanent state of midlife crisis, except it's not usually a crisis so much as it just blows my mind every time I think about it. Although most of my goals remain out of reach I'm happy with where I'm at right now and patient enough to wait for the rest if it ever comes, and I could blather on about that and be pretentious but I don't feel like it. Happy birthday to me. I mean, it's over now, but it was happy. Real Fake News from This WeekTrump Calls for American Domination of Space with Creation of a "Space Force" Military Branch; Martians and Venusians Panic Trump Signs Executive Order Ending Forced Separation of Undocumented Families; Thousands of His Supporters Continue Posting on Social Media that They Think Forced Separation of Undocumented Families is Okay White Americans who Gained US Citizenship by Being Born Self-Righteously Assert that Undocumented Immigrants Should Gain US Citizenship "the Right Way" by Enduring Who Knows How Many Years of Red Tape Before They Can Seek Better Lives for Their Families (This one is a little wordy. Try to condense it a bit. - ed.) Canada Becomes Second Nation in the World to Legalize Recreational Marijuana; Winnipeg Native Tal Bachmann Celebrates by Re-recording His One-Hit Wonder "She's So High" with New Lyrics "The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia" Published in English; Local Blogger and Legend of Zelda Fan Experiences Strange Combination of Covetousness and Lust The Best Birthday Song EverYes, even better than Weird Al's. Forgive me for saying that, Weird Al. |
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- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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