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nintendowife · 3 years

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The year is nearly over and it's time for my personal game of the year picks again. Finished a record amount of games this year (53, full list of games at the end of the post). COVID-19 pandemic didn't really cause an increase in my gaming, the main contributing factor was Xbox Game Pass for PC which allows me to easily pick up and try out a variety of games. As a "blast from the past" I finally beat a Nintendo 64 game Blast Corps together with husbando, a game I had been stuck in in the 90s. Like usual, I didn't play many games released in the current year so most of my picks are older games. But without further ado, here are the best of the best.

1st place: Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PC, also available on PS4, Xbox One)

Thrilling and serious crime drama featuring the legendary ex-yakuza Kiryu who finds himself in absurdly hilarious situations at every turn. This is a game you don't want to miss, but playing Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami prior to this is recommended.

+ Amazing story with various charismatic and memorable characters + Some incredibly funny side quests and entertaining minigames + Gorgeously detailed environments in 4K + Cool soundtrack and superb voice acting + Majima Saga is a nice continuation to events of Yakuza 0 + Well-made PC port with no issues besides occasional amusing ragdolling - Lack of different fighting styles make battles a bit repetitive - No Ansel support

See my posts about Yakuza Kiwami 2

2nd place: Octopath Traveler (Switch, also available on PC)

Classic JRPG of modern times with quality of life improvements and gorgeous presentation. Each characters' stories, the game's engaging turn-based battle system and mechanics kept me glued to the screen for over 125 hours.

+ Fun and rewarding battle system with a good amount of team customization and strategy with subclasses and skills + Beautiful visuals mixing old-school sprite graphics with modern lighting effects + Splendid soundtrack, dual audio option and great Japanese voice acting + Likeable characters with their own individual stories and engrossing overarching story that lets you find the connections of the characters + Quality localization with rich language. I learned many new words and H'aanit's old manner of speaking added a new layer of immersion. + Nice quality of life features like fast travel and seemingly unlimited inventory space - Random encounters (they didn't actually bother me much in this game as the battle system was engaging) - Sudden crazy difficulty spike when encountering the real final boss

See my posts about Octopath Traveler

3rd place: Portal 2 (PC, also available on PS3, Xbox 360)

Immersive sci-fi first-person puzzle game with fascinating game mechanics and tons of great humor. Portal 2 lives up to the universal praise it has gotten.

+ Interesting premise and great writing + Well designed physics-based puzzles + Difficulty is just right, not too hard and not too easy + Super good voice acting and soundtrack that fits the environments spot on + Great humor right from the starting tutorial + The first-person camera immersed me into the game - Some issues like autosaving at unfortunate moments

See my posts about Portal 2

Honorable mention: Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U)

Sci-fi action JRPG with a surprising twist in its story and a peculiar setting where the player isn't really the protagonist. Battle system is fun and rewarding once you get a hang of it.

+ Impressive world that made me go "woah!" and "ooohh!" + Cool sci-fi story + Great use of Wii U GamePad + Skells (flying mech suits) make traversing the vast world pleasant + Online multiplayer is still active - Tedious fetch quests (wiki/guide recommended) - Soundtrack isn't consistently good

See my posts about Xenoblade Chronicles X

Honorable mention: Ruiner (PS4 & Switch, also available on PC, Xbox One)

I'm in love with this game. I've played it on 4 platforms already and I'm waiting for my Switch physical copy. Ruiner was in my top 3 games last year so I'll just give it a honorable mention now.

+ Amazing world-building and atmosphere + Great soundtrack + Fast-paced action gameplay that stays fun even after multiple playthroughs - Some glitches in PS4 version, Switch version aiming doesn't feel as accurate as on other platforms

See my posts about Ruiner

Honorable mention: Death Coming (PC, also available on PS4, Switch, mobile)

Kind of like a point and click isometric Hitman game. Humorous game where you need to figure out how to reap as many souls as possible, causing fatal accidents with the environments.

+ Fun assassination gameplay with well-designed, wildly imaginative levels + Charming graphics and presentation + Hilarious ways to kill targets - More levels would have been welcome

Nominees for my personal Game of the Year 2020

Only games I have finished in 2020 have been included.

A Plague Tale: Innocence (PC) ACA NeoGeo: Metal Slug X (PC) Bayonetta (PC) Blast Corps (N64) Carrion (PC) Cat Quest (Switch) Costume Quest + Grubbins on Ice DLC (PC) Death Coming (PC) Doki Doki Literature Club (PC) Etrian Mystery Dungeon (3DS) Final Fantasy XV + DLC episodes (PC) Gears 5 (PC) Gris (PC) Helltaker (PC) Her Story (PC) Hypnospace Outlaw (PC) Katana Zero (PC) Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS) Lonely Mountains: Downhill (PC) Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite (PC) Mr. DRILLER DrillLand (Switch) My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (3DS) Observation (PC) Octopath Traveler (Switch) Paper Mario: The Origami King (Switch) Pikmin 3 (Wii U) PictoQuest: The Cursed Grids (Switch) Pikuniku (PC) Pokémon Shield (Switch) Portal 2 (PC) Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology (3DS) Rainy Season (PC) Ruiner (PS4) Ruiner (Switch) Star Fox 64 3D (3DS) Stella Glow (3DS) Streets of Rage 4 (PC) Super Bomberman R (Switch) Super Mario 64 (N64) Super Mario 64 (Switch) Super Mario Sunshine (Switch) Tacoma (PC) Tetris Effect: Connected (PC) The Gardens Between (PC) The Messenger (PC) The Touryst (PC) Thimbleweed Park (PC) Watch_Dogs 2 (PC) Wilmot's Warehouse (PC) Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U) Yakuza Kiwami (PC) Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PC)

Wishing you all a safe journey to a brave new year 2021! May it be blessed with plenty of quality gaming.

#game of the year #goty #yakuza kiwami 2 #octopath traveler #portal 2 #xenoblade chronicles x #ruiner #death coming #pc #nintendo switch #wii u #ps4 #nintendo 3ds #nintendo 64 #n64

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bspargo · 4 years

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Post#9 Ishigaki石垣島

Day 1

After a short flight to Ishigaki we got off the plane to a hot, humid climate even though it was during winter. After a bus ride to our hotel I went exploring the local area. After we had dinner at an Izakaya with a huge lazy Susan and tried a variety of dishes.

Day 2

Next morning the group had breakfast provided by the hotel and we got on the bus for Kabira bay to ride a Glass bottom boat. The boat held the entire tour group, overlooked the huge amount of corals as it moved along the bay. We seen a huge variety of fish including giant clams. After we did some exploring around the bay and had lunch at a local restauant. There was a notable condiment at the restaurant it was awamori the okinawan spirit, with a whole chili inside the bottle. After we got back to the hotel it was free time, so we decided to stop at the Don Quixote on the way home. I spotted a huge fireworks section to my surprise as fireworks are banned in Australia and fireworks are supposed to be a summer activity, but since Okinawa is a tropical island I guess they sell year-round. We got back into town and searched for something new for dinner, we had Japanese cuisine every night so the group decided to have A&W for dinner.

Day 3

The tour group caught the ferry to the tiny island of Taketomi. We rented bicycles to explore the island. We stopped for lunch before taking off and immediately I noticed the walls all over the island. I seen some workings using the corals from around the island to make them. We stopped at a beach nearby (everything was nearby) and went for a swim in the south china sea. I noticed how shallow the water was in Taketomi, in fact most of Okinawa’s beaches looked like this. The beach had no waves, crystal clear water and was full of sea cucumbers. The sand was full of dead coral, and the water was surprisingly warm. We went to visit another beach on Taketomi know for it’s “star sand”. I already prepared my own vials to fill and take home as a gift. We then rode back for some kakigori and seen a huge water buffalo pulling a huge rickshaw full of at least 15 people. We didn’t have time for my much anticipated kakigori (Shaved ice with flavouring), so we left for the ferry. The group had dinner at the same Izakaya from the first night, ordering a large variety of food to share. I finished the night with a small group and went out to a local bar that had live music, the band was really fun and sung local songs with the entire restaurant singing and dancing together.

Day 4

I got up early to prepare for my most anticipated day yet. After breakfast at the hotel I waited just outside for the local dive shop to pick me up for a day of scuba diving! I met two Americans and both from the navy, Okinawa’s mainland is host to the majority of american bases which in itself is a concern for the islanders. Although Ishigaki didn’t seem to have any American presence maybe due to the small size or proximity to it’s neighbouring country. I began the dive with a debriefing in the docks. I was so surprised to find the ship itself was the dive shop! From making payments to having the newest gear on the shelves it had it all. The crew were so efficient, as they debriefed one other member was preparing the gyudon, (Meat bowl) one of my favourites. We left for the dive site, I took in the amazing views of the island while talking with the american couple about living in the navy. We reached the site and I geared up, my diving instructor showed what rare fish to look out for and brought his own underwater camera and writing board, to give me the name of the fish underwater which was a first for me. As I jumped off the boat and pierced through the water I could see an underwater paradise full of colour and life. The vastness blew me away, there was such a huge variety of fish and corals and some of the weirdest fish I have seen in my life. We made our descent 10 metres down for a better look and drifted over the reef at a slow pace. From tiny incredibly bright slugs to poisonous sea snakes (that came too close for comfort) Ishigaki’s reefs were amazing! After almost breaking my neck from trying to look at everything my diving instructor pointed ahead of us and I seen the biggest coral I have ever seen I later found out it was 10 meters in height and 70 meters in circumference making it one of the largest coral colonies in the world. After we surfaced I had lunch on boat with the Americans as we shared stories then changed locations for the next dive. Altogether I had three dives around 50 minutes each although my last dive was cut down to 30 minutes due to the depth (Oxygen is compressed so more is used). I finished all three dives and the charter headed back while I slept, exhausted. After my ride back to the hotel I asked the receptionist a recommended place for fireworks, then I got a group together and we left to get the fireworks I seen at Don Quixote. We also got a bucket to put out the fireworks and meet up with some others on top of the huge bridge leading to the park. We found a quite park table overlooking the sea and prepared only to be surrounded by a huge amount of cats that tried to eat our fireworks. After letting off a few we scared them away and had fun launching the explosives. Reminisced about my childhood as we used to have fireworks when I was young, although you needed a license for them, it was still accessible. When we finished cleaning up the group left for a yakiniku restaurant I found, it served the famous Ishigaki beef. Although it was expensive it was worth the price, defiantly one of my favourite foods! To finish the night a small group of us went out to a collection of small Izakaya all connected together (Similar to Hakodate) called Ishigaki island village. We ended up at a standing bar and struck up a conversation with a local. He then bought us some drinks and the best oden I’ve had in my life. As I was looking for the communal restroom I seen the two american’s I met while scuba diving, they were at the bar just across from us so I stopped in to say hi. They later joined us for a few drinks and we made some more local friends. We then we left for another bar without the american couple. It was a strange Mexican style bar a favourite of our new friend, we played the didgeridoo and drank tequila. Next stop was karaoke we were joined by another small group and after a few songs we said our goodbyes and the karaoke was paid for before we had a chance! A great way to finish the night.

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ratherhavetheblues · 7 years

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TERRENCE MALICK’S SONG TO SONG “It’s always a free-fall now…”

Although Song to Song (2015/ 2017) adopts the design priority of a pell-mell rout by an army of short-lived wild things being long-term softies, there does emerge, for our sense of counter-attacking against the nearly non-stop jumpiness, a pair of visitations from sagas less spasmodic. The first is the silent, black and white, white-hot film melodrama of massacre, ripping into the midst of a palatial, ultra-modern household owned by an Austin music producer, Cook, besotted by the capacity to marshal hookers to his bed and thus drive his wife, Rhonda, to suicide. Along that so-called life to the fullest, he tells himself, “I can’t take this life straight.” He goes on to ask his former-waitress, former-Kindergarten teacher wife, part of an unstable harem, “What’s your fantasy? What are you afraid of?” She tells herself and whatever else could read her thoughts, “When I was a girl I loved everything. You killed my life…” [in the course of a marriage which delivered a nice house to her destitute mother]. That wild premonition including axe-murder and flowing blood reminds us of a jaded screenwriter, Rick, in Malick’s Knight of Cups (2015), who disregards a video in the foyer of a chic office tower, a decorative production in black and white whereby several women blend into each other from their long, jet-black hair, apparel, make-up and eyes. Rick’s sidelined, spent force may not be going anywhere, but the surreal artwork along his retreat becomes part of a rescue mission which speaks to the defunct Rhonda’s once loving everything, to no avail. (The two marital casualties meet when she is his server in a diner. “I have a condition,” he quips. “I can’t be left alone…” [“Help Me, Rhonda”]. The distance between Song to Song’s death-spiral and Knight of Cups’ going swimmingly in an infinity pool (like the one Rhonda OD’d in) gives us to understand that a very different consideration has become necessary.

The second way the spinning calamity finds some authoritative righting derives from Cook’s increasingly raw thrashing around for a return to the spirit of music he once cared for and received great wealth from in return. Hoping to rally his gentle and devastated wife, he comes up with a reddish, syrupy preparation the prospects of which give him something like a sense of rejuvenation. He ladles the concoction into her mouth and joins her in being infected with a stupendous elixir. This is far from and yet unmistakeably quoting the “taste of cherry” by which an old man expects to revive a suicidal cynic in Abbas Kiarostami’s film, Taste of Cherry (1997). Neither bid comes to fruition. But Kiarostami’s startling denouement, brushing off the complainer as dispensable dead-weight, informs the nihilist in our film today with a world of wit and wisdom from which someone might proceed with body language an entity like Cook chooses, instinctively, to do without. (He takes Rhonda to a Longhorns game where they see a touchback in favor of the home team. Overdrive and its penalty—just like nature; just like this whole two-hours-plus of digging their own grave.)

One other, presumably more obvious, motif can provide substantive illumination for this art work wrought in the key of massive, confusing surrender. Though I haven’t looked at a lot of commentary about Song to Song, I have been struck, in what I have read, by the complete indifference toward what a musical career entails—and particularly what a rock and roll career entails. All of the responders I saw could have been dealing with a conclave of numbed but randy and careerist shoe manufacturers. Concerts, clubs and musicians abound; but only their career, romantic and lame comedic considerations get a look in. (In fairness, that is what every surface is saturated in.) Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll come our way in order to distort the still validly vivid music industry, the better to have the film become a long, loud cry of pain which, for those who are really attending, brings forward in its wake the home of an elusive sublime, remotely like the products of a cyclotron.

The scope for misunderstanding here is so pronounced that presenting another complement seems the only way to offset the myopia and contempt being showered upon Song to Song. Looking for the barrel of fun here is a self-damaging business; and looking for that compensatory self-sacrifice prods us toward (too much) resignation as a prescription for disappointment. The lead-pipe ugliness of the lives and events on tap can only shine as instalments of (unsuccessful) overturning of the entire fabric of dominance which has obtained across the board and across the eons. This film is about rock and roll; and do we need to be reminded that, unlike accommodating, obscurantist jazz and jaunty folk devotions, the whole point is taking you somewhere your half-assed world history won’t? And that, my friends, is what art is all about. Instead of rocketing out killer performances, Song to Song’s artist-in-charge is well aware (perched as he is in the midst of the Austin musical overdrive) that rock is a massively failed invention. (Here the optics of “festivals” are so calamitously dead you’d rather be taking a chance on Intensive Care than be having the time of your life like that.) Once again, we need the modesty to realize that major artists don’t piss around with millions of dollars and they don’t lose control of the depths they won’t do without. The drowning of those on camera does not purport to be an expose or an accurate measure of the full range of the music land. It very pointedly brings to focus the worst which the métier can and does display often. (Everybody knows that the field is weighted down with ass-holes; but ass-holes who occasionally excel in important ways, for a few months, anyway.) In presenting such a tailspin, Malick is intent on setting in relief the dangerous and necessary drafts awaiting the steps beyond their parents’ rancid ideals. There would be no such incisiveness in celebrating the business fat cats who always opt for paragon, mainstream co-opted status in Rock’s Hall of Fame. Believe it or not, the heart and soul of rock and roll is much more important than that news of the day filler. And so, the specimens making quite a mess in our film today may be obsessively, exasperatingly repetitive about insistence beyond their strength; but they are not a ridiculous joke (having at least got on to the playing field which very few will touch).

Despite those tantrums amidst a cult-like circle unable to resist nonsense in word and deed, no one seems to find that there is one figure instrumental in setting the macabre pace for a constituency of otherwise inconsequential slugs. The mad priest to those bush-league hangers-on is of course, Cook, the only one we see who has clawed and delivered his way to a fortune and now, within a mysterious doldrum, has become a tolerated former eminence—like the director looking pretty good to Betty in Mulholland Drive—still a big deal to suckers like Faye (a protagonist, but not the protagonist, having become, after a stint, more to her capacity, of being his receptionist, a placebo taken in by not merely the invalid but the doctor himself. Another self-perceived diamond-in-the rough who intersects the dubious cloud of invention from which Cook once had the fire in the belly to strike gold is BV, a singer/songwriter who, though not derived from the corporate pool, soon shows himself to be roadie material.

Fittingly, it is the latter two, in their now being on the spot to confront the creative imperative, by which this pitching picture begins. Faye tentatively opens a door a crack and a black void confronts her. Then, at a club, she having at least got her foot in the door, she silently talks to herself about the ingredients having gone into the hugely problematic ambition to be a viable musical force, suddenly absorbing her. She recites what she’s probably casually confessed a hundred times in the orbit that is irresistibly seductive big-time Austin, to assure all and sundry she’s a woman of the time who could touch a wide and lucrative constituency. “I thought sex was supposed to be violent [a notion she probably picked up in the sixth grade]. I thought it would bring me to find something real…” Clinging to Cook in bed while such clichés clang to the floor, she confirms her situation of being at the fringes of the music business, notwithstanding being a regular at the boss’ tony house amidst band members no longer needing or even trusting him but curious witnesses to a pile-up. The cut to a mosh pit at a festival few have bothered to attend provides an ironic (and silent) commentary regarding Faye’s tottering theory of far-reaching gusto. The pace of visual variety is rapid; but let’s pause to contemplate how one reaches the state of an absence of feeling something real. Whereas it might come down to trading in cheap clichés, we can make a working premise that the spirit of true rock and roll uncanniness has put in a brief, tantalizing appearance (as it has for nearly all of us), but that its blessing has been frighteningly rescinded. Also adrift on that basis is BV, who says to himself, “All the people [the head bangers and Faye becoming an item] with violence in their hearts. Every kiss felt half of what it should be…” The concluding first scrum, to which we have to apply firm attention to see its being more than a bit of driftwood in the wilderness, hands over to us Faye presenting to herself the prayer in voice-over, “to know the right people… to get through the fence…” She follows with, “I wanted experience. Any experience is better than no experience.” She walks by an hors d’oeuvre table consisting of a young girl lying on her back hoping to reach the right people. Cook makes a twosome and both of them essay slow, small approaches to each other, having a glimmer that flash may not be necessary. Their hands in close-up, touching each other, come up empty, a formula missing an essential factor. When the camera returns to all there is of Faye, she intimates, “I thought he could help me… I paid my dues…” Saying that in a Malick film (as such carrying the centuries-long trek of phenomenological research and the anchor of the avant-garde) is asking for trouble. There are dues to be paid here, so costly that no one in sight (save one) can afford them.

Why would a corporate leader lead the kind of life Cook does? Is it valid to suppose that his going to the well of possibility, to meet his company’s recent roadblocks, directs him to unexpected weightiness in the music defeating him. No such weight interferes with the job-searches of Faye and BV. They join him on a junket to Mexico in his private jet, replete with a pressure system which establishes a play of weightlessness (nice try, but gimmicks and drugs do not replace maturity). In the land of crazy booze and crazy piety, the tourists, crazy drunk on tequila, crawl along the dark alley which begins to look like home. (The bite of the tiger being grabbed has ineluctably instituted in the hangers-on something more painful than bitching about waiting for a fat job to fall into their lap.) The following day, watching as the wannabes twirl on a mesa, Cook rushes to a conclusion that is not totally out to lunch. “They have a beauty in their life” [he puts to himself, and us] that makes me ugly…” Their dancing is tepid and his assessment is vapid. But the chill of mortality is unmistakeable. As the new coupling supplants the old, BV asks Faye about how seriously she is involved with Cook. “You can tell me a lie. That’s the fun about me.” As this tide of half-hearted earthiness and flaccid assessments builds up a sadly eventful inertia, there remains for us to delineate the variables of a calamity which, though seemingly pretty far-out, is the story of each of our lives. The moment when Faye leaves Cook finds her telling him, “You have too much pride.” Does that dismissal betray her ambiguity about being an avatar of feeling something real?

The conspicuous detour those three turn into a nauseating miasma might be said to be going somewhere, by contrast; but the not “fun” about them is that they’re light-years away from what rock music can and does sporadically accomplish. BV had had some songs out; but the only aspect of that event we see is his complaining that Cook had registered them in his name alone. “It was supposed to be 50-50,” the disenchanted voice of the millennials reminds the disenchanted Gen-Xer. The boss’ riposte is to tell him, almost certainly correctly, that he’s deluded in thinking himself a musician. BV spits at the skeptic’s feet as he departs that false and final start as a musical money-maker. Faye soon doubts that BV is for her, having a hankering for professional efficacy in everyone but herself. Cook, perhaps in the spirit of farce, offers her a recording contract. She’s soon onstage at a festival with a couple of dozen other new finds, the whole set-up strongly redolent of a large guitar shop with amateurs here and there dribbling out a few chords. Soon she’s even less impressed with her “career” than sleeping with Cook. “I don’t want to do this anymore…” Sooner or later she and BV reunite and leave Austin for BV’s rural homestead (where his father is ailing and his brothers are in and out of jail). They purport to be made for each other, he working on an oil rig. Emmanuel Libitski’s camera work endowing, as throughout, currents of epiphanic power which the advanced species do, as throughout, their utmost to kill (here in the form of a stunted life deemed to be full). The various bits of enhancement from the classical repertoire go nowhere in addressing a non-classical crisis. One composition, the early pop tune, “Runaway,” does, with irony and tatters of vigor, bring BV and Faye to as close to a moment of kinetic truth as they’re ever apt to enjoy.

The many ageing notables, and simply old, surrounding this situation of retreat by Faye and BV deftly complement the disaster in the foreground. We have Patti Smith coming across like a den mother, counselling Faye in the verities of romance, long-term satisfying marriage and life as a widow. (She also resembles the nutty old gal foreseeing “trouble” at Betty and Rita’s short term rental in Mulholland Drive.) Then there’s Iggy Pop, in the mode of a youthful ancient—bare to the waist, of course—holding forth, with far more ancient than youthful, on filmmakers engaging musicians to enliven their productions. We have a ska band hanging around Cook’s place, discussing physio therapy and tattoos, with instruments nearly but never played. One glimpse of a festival concert features dancers shaking their bums, to an effect as thrilling as the Frank Buck zoological featurettes in the 1930’s. Playing against that water-torcher there is Faye in a brief and delicate lesbian encounter, remarkable for its momentum being undone by self-consciousness on the part of Faye and trendy self-serving on the part of the French house-sitter. BV, along that trajectory where each in their own way have turned their back on Cook but still haven’t seen each other as a godsend, starts thriving on the optics of eccentricity—much easier to bring off than real distinction—dating a woman about 15 years his senior, until his mother pulls the plug. Also within that broad miasma on the spot to deliver something better, there is his little tantrum about discovering how many liaisons there were with Cook (slamming kitchen draws and turning on the gas to torch a piece of paper). In this same kitchen-sink distemper he complains of the French girl and gets told, “I don’t have to tell you…”

With nothing those unskilled laborers demonstrate being up to paying the dues they’ve unsuspectingly been embarrassed by, Malick introduces the only visitor to Austin who isn’t road kill. One of the encounters, during the first separation from Faye is a former girlfriend of BV’s, a musician attending to business who is immediately recognizable as not desperate. She gives him a long look being a preamble to discovering if his entertainment confines had matured to something else. Faye had just embarked, after being compelled to admit BV was a shiftless drifter, on that abortive contract with now patently entertainment-cynical Cook. Here was the other side of the coin. Her undemonstrative career satisfaction is palpable in face of BV’s cluelessness. On the heels of their recalling what didn’t work the first time, and her recognizing now nothing has changed, at the airport tarmac, where she will embark on a tour, she pitches the gambit that she’d give their partnership another try, suspending her busy concert schedule. A brief rainstorm adds to the implausibility of the direction she has mooted. “You miss me?” she asks. “Yeah,” is the ambiguous word BV uses as a pleasantry but she uses as spotting a visceral implacable foe. Then, as she knew he would, he declares, “Honestly, I can’t answer that…” [meaning, “I can’t stand living with someone whose honesty puts me to shame]. Then I gotta go,” she says, knowing—like the swimmer at the end of Knight of Cups—that there are bigger fish out there if the one in her face fails. (Just after this, Faye tells Cook, “I want out!” That she and BV are meant for each other—up at the farm, she exclaims, “I want that, too!” [the kitchen, not Cook’s kitchen, having become too hot]—brings to bear a safari on our part as to the paradoxical nightmare driving them to the simple life. Patti, imbuing Faye with her best shot, tells her, “I could play this chord all night!” (It was Faye, early on, who described her romance with BV, “We thought we could just roll and tumble, living from song to song, kiss to kiss…” Nibbling at the fringes, but dreary compromise in the wings. Her dad, concerned that she was no longer a constant and dutiful daughter but having entered the shark tank of show biz, tells her, “We just want you to be happy—a bit of a disconnect inasmuch she was having a taste of what could hardly be termed “happy.” The underground corridors she had stumbled into [like Alice] may deliver, were she tough enough, a delight of sorts; but “happily ever after” is far from what nature is about. “I thought I could do better than others.” BV tries on one of Cook’s expensive jackets. “You want to be me?” the multi-millionaire asks. “It’s [his fabulous property] all for sale… I don’t like it…” He asks, as they confront the dazzling yard on a lake, and an infinity pool, to take seriously the question, if he can rise to it, “What do you see?” BV replies, “The pool.” Cook corrects, “Stage! Show! It’s always a free fall…” He had also, as a kind of warning to the unwitting cynic, “The world wants to be deceived.” Dabbling in the big picture which Cook’s dangerous aura had prompted, an unprepared BV trots out the ingratiating cliché, “They say. ‘Follow the light.’ But where do you find it?”)

We do have here an affair of chords; and shared songs; and love. But in bragging that one chord is enough, Patti is embarrassingly showing her age. One chord repeated can set the stage by clearing away the sticky muck of mundane entertainments and happiness. It can activate a partnership as between someone like BV’s long-gone girlfriend, music and nature itself, the representatives of which make a flicker here, but only that. (The consensus that a sloppy, self-indulgent spray of incidents has been allowed to put in an appearance does not take into account the volatility [with its barracuda stresses] implicit in creative action, though seldom exposed where practitioners more self-deluded than Cook take satisfaction in being entertaining. Finding more rhetoric on the home stretch— “I played with the flame of life,” but only that—Faye shows herself to be a dutiful student of Patti. BV declares, in the same vein of compromised impressiveness, “I gotta go back and start again. Like a kid. I didn’t have the right heart in me. You’re the only one I loved.” Faye, in that same deceptive key, intones, “Mercy was a word I never thought I needed! You were looking for simplicity. I want the same!”

There is a “simple” side of this destination; but, as the girl who could read BV like a (comic) book well knew, there is a lot more. A chord, a sensual impetus, brings to the song a menu of notes or activities (far surpassing mere aural statements). And it also includes a default step of sheer motion by which to refresh cloying trajectories. Fluency with silence (not the same thing as voice-over) is a must most of us find very difficult. The subsequent range of chords and harmonies and discords are innumerable. It includes bringing to light initiatives like rock and roll, more or less redolent of its uncanny sensual dynamics, its creative roots. All this is indescribably hard, indescribably necessary and indescribably enriching. Its interplay of such alertness could be described as song to song, far from Faye’s enumeration of easy listening.

And yet, Malick has shaped this enigma in such a radical way that still more is required of a correspondent. The tenor of most of the films I’ve dealt with have been adequately coverable by descriptions rooted in the term dynamics. Here, Malick tells us, not in so many words, to deliver what it is about dynamics that makes it so bloody hard. Stemming from reflections beginning from two and a half millennia ago, and really catching fire about two centuries ago—and taken up, after its fashion, by quantum physics and avant-garde art—the notion that human sensibility is vitally instrumental in the essence of nature has nudged us from its mysterious outcomes; but its generator has proved to be rather forbidding. Trying to delineate that fuel source involves the paradox that nature itself comes about in two stages—a first endowing entities, including sentient entities, as materially passive; and a second (and decisive) spark, provided by sensibilities (like musicians) taking to heart the need to kick things up a bit. Many try to deliver that kick, but most make a mess of it, the dip to inertia being mercilessly in effect. That mess is the core of world history. Like the entire avant garde film world, the search is on, in Song to Song, for those few who are in for the long haul.

#terrence malick

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thecoroutfitters · 5 years

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

The humble cardboard box can save us time, money, and labor in all sorts of ways. Especially starting out or if budgets are tight, it’s hard to beat good ol’ generic cardboard boxes on a number of fronts.

The multitude of uses – and our ability to then reuse cardboard after many other uses – and our ability to source them for free makes cardboard an absolute must-have for preppers.

A Few Downsides

Cardboard is vulnerable to water, and will melt into a mess if it stays humid or damp or gets soaked (however we’re actually going to make use of that later, though).

Cardboard is also both vulnerable and attractive to a multitude of little bugaboo pests, and it’s not as tough as some storage totes or crates.

Not much is going to protect cardboard from rodents if they’re present, sadly, but there are some fixes to reduce other downsides.

For a little extra strength, just add tape to seams. We can also line boxes inside or out (or both) with plastic trash bags to add moisture resistance.

Including used dryer sheets, bay leaves, and dried tansy flowers and stems can help keep many insects at bay.

Sourcing Free Boxes

The crazy thing here is that it’s actually easiest to get our hands on the really good cardboard boxes.

Most gas stations receive cigarette cartons in pretty sizable cardboard cases. They’re not as thick as some boxes and they (usually) don’t have lids/flaps, but they’re also really easy to work with and a reasonable size for either packing lightweight items or using for mulch, weed exclusions, litter liners, animal beds, and to cut up for animal enrichment.

Being both roomy and easy to work with, two cigarette cases are ideal for combining with some straw and black plastic lawn bags or Mylar sheets to create “hotboxes” or “cat cookers”. They’re great for barn cats and other small livestock, and even indoor pets that feel the cold keenly when the power goes out.

(Don’t use plastic or Mylar for rabbits or pups that will chew.)

Liquor stores also usually have a plethora of boxes. They keep some in for customers, but are usually happy to provide the rest free for the asking.

Those boxes are particular goldmines, because they’re very sturdy – these things were designed to hold several gallons of liquid in heavy glass bottles, after all, and to hold up to the weight of other boxes holding the same stacked atop them.

They also have inserts that can be handy for us.

For smaller but seriously heavy-duty boxes, check with independent gun stores. Availability will be a little more hit-or-miss, but some sell enough by the box instead of the case to make it worth swinging by.

Large, heavy duty boxes can also be had from both moving companies (used, post-move; don’t buy from movers – “wowser” expensive), appliance stores, and some electronics stores.

Useful Pots

When you have as much stuff as preppers commonly start accruing, keeping things neat and tidy can be huge. Boxes were pretty much invented for this purpose. The many ways they can help with organization, especially the ones with divider inserts, is worth an article (or five) all on its own.

Their uses go way beyond just storage, though.

Hone Aim

Since they’re cheap/free and come in many sizes, cardboard boxes also make great shooting and archery targets.

Empty or flattened, they’re accepted on pretty much all public ranges in the U.S. that don’t require you to buy their specific, overpriced targets.

We can draw our own on them and not spend anything on targets at all. We can also leave them intact to draw the head-on and profile views of game animals or bad guys so we’re presented with different angles as they bounce/shimmy from impacts.

*Fewer public ranges are cool with shooting at things on the ground, so we may want to add some wrapping paper tubes or thin tree branches that will turn our boxes into caltrops.

Intact, we can also fill them with more cardboard, phone books, or old pillowcases/ripped jeans filled with dirt to create air gun and air soft targets appropriate even for hallways and small backyards.

*Be sure you have enough stopping power for each gun and each ammo by testing it somewhere with for-sure solid backstops, like a gravel-filled filing cabinet or an actual range berm.

Save the boxes from Range Day. Preexisting holes don’t hurt for some of the other uses.

Critter Entertainment

Entertainment for animals isn’t just for the fun of it, theirs or ours. Providing engaging experiences creates a barnyard with animals that are less snappish and easier to handle. We’ll also spend less time finding and putting our critters back in fences, and getting heads/horns out of fencing, ladders, and buckets.

Enrichment has even greater benefits in situations when animals that normally forage or go out working are cooped up, and when feeding is a static experience.

Since almost everything likes cardboard boxes, not just kids and kittens, and most critters like eating, it’s a pretty easy fix. Any ol’ box will do.

From cattle to goats all the way down to rabbits and chickens, we can cut some shapes or poke small holes in boxes and stuff them with nummies.

Soda boxes and large boxes are great for softer and bulkier feeds like hay, leaves, and small branches from safe fodder/forage trees and shrubs, or treats like apples and carrots.

Small, sturdy boxes that will hold their shape against more abuse are perfect for grain and kibble feeds, table scraps, nuts and seeds, or peels/ends from veggies.

Particularly in late winter and spring, chunks of sprouted fodder mats and sprouted grains and beans can be big time treats as well as huge boosts to health. It doesn’t have to be something special, though.

Just presenting their daily ration in a variety of places and non-bucket containers, and just making them work for it instead of only taking a few steps and eating from a feeder can have enormous benefits for animals tiny or massive.

We can also present multiple boxes, or drop boxes over feed pans in some places and toss some dummy boxes around so our animals are searching and working.

If we want, especially for small sheep, goats, rodents, and chickens, we can up the time input and creativity involved even more.

Cut 4-9 circles out of cardboard, slot them, and create balls that roll around while they’re chomping their greens, leaves, and hay.

The more internal compartments we make and the smaller those compartments are, the more challenging it is to get feed out, and the more time they’ll spend engaged.

Anything that makes feeding interesting and gives them something to do, decreases the inclination to invent fun games like “let’s climb a roof” or “everybody dig a bog” or find interesting toys like the watering lines or gate latches.

*Nothing will stop young goats from springing around and off objects and other living creatures like demented high-bounce balls. That’s “normal”.

Do be hyper aware, though, that we’re training our livestock to chase, kick, poke inside, bat with heads, and tear open cardboard boxes.

That can backfire if we also use boxes to guard noses/paws from rat traps, or for brooders and cat cookers, smaller-animal safe zones, beds, or transports.

Also ensure box-trained critters can’t reach, say, boxes of holiday decorations or the deliveryman’s drop-off spot. (Oops.)

Don’t be scared off now, though. Boxes are a cheap, easy way to create contented critters. Contented critters make for a quieter, more peaceful barnyard, and there are big physical benefits that come from good mental health, just like humans.

Weed Control & Soil Structure

Cardboard makes a great weed exclusion, either for walkways or as a base layer for garden beds. The thicker we layer it and the more it overlaps, the better and longer it’ll perform that function for us.

Cardboard as a weed exclusion layer is particularly helpful for beds built on gravel, patios, or sandy soils.

A good base several layers thick can help keep moisture available, acting almost like a tarp initially with water pooling, especially if we build it up some on the edges. As the water sits and starts penetrating, the boxes start softening and soaking it up. They hold that moisture, but allow excess to drain. The water they’ve retained will wick up into the soil as that dries, where plants can access it.

We can also use cardboard (and shredded printer paper) if we have heavy or thin soils.

Rip it into small pieces or run it through a leaf or branch chipper-shredder, then create a composting trench or mix it into the surface of beds at the end of a growing season.

It provides the same absorbency as for sandy soils, but it also creates and retains pockets for air and moisture to penetrate. As it breaks down, it increases the carbons in soil like any other organic matter.

(See http://www.theprepperjournal.com/2018/06/13/prepper-must-haves-shipping-pallets/ for some of the many things that will kill us faster than the chemicals in/on cardboard boxes.)

Cardboard can be handy even if we already have really nice soils. Spreading cardboard around big vines and letting them sprawl across it as they grow decreases weeds, but it also help us see fruits and keeps those fruits clean.

Spreading out cardboard also makes it fast and easy to collect nuts/seeds and fruits that drop readily when ripe, like many ground cherries or shaking elms for samaras.

Laying even little patches of cardboard can also help with pest control. Slugs, squash bugs, and others will hide under it at different times of day. Wander out, flip it, and dispose of the garden munchers.

Cardboard: The Wonder Freebie

Cardboard boxes may reign supreme when it comes to packing things, but their usefulness goes far beyond storage.

They’re handy floor protectors, and make it easier to slide furniture when rearranging. We can cobble them into lightweight shelving, and turn them into countless nearly-free games for our family.

They can soak up oil, patch windows, pinpoint leaks, prop an uneven chair or dresser, or fill in tiny gaps around A/C units.

It’s hard to find a single item that can do so much for us, especially with so little effort.

When that item can also be sourced for absolutely free, while usually adding no more than a few minutes to our daily/weekly/monthly travels, I call that an unconditional must-have.

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from The Prepper Journal Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

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esthermeronobaro · 7 years

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Candy Cranks: Global Feminine Bike Recon

This article was first published in the May 2010 issue of SLUG Magazine. Read it online or in print on page 24.

In a world (wide web) where typing “girls on bikes” into Google gives you boobs straddling top tubes, Candy Cranks is redirecting your search options. Founded by Meg Lofts in March of 2009, CandyCranks.com is where women from all over the globe come together to share all things bike-related from the female perspective.

Why is such a place needed, a man might ask? Attend any sausage fest … I mean, bicycle event in Salt Lake City and it will be quite obvious that’s not where you go to meet the ladies. The ratios don’t even out much internationally, either, which is why Lofts, a resident of Sydney, Australia, became proactive. “The idea for Candy Cranks came about as I didn’t have any female friends that wanted to go cycling with me. None of them owned bikes and they found the idea of riding on Sydney roads daunting. I can’t say I blamed them, I was terrified when I first began cycling in Sydney, the motorists can be very aggressive and there are not many cycling paths around the city. I’ve experienced cycling in other cities around the world where women cycle freely to commute, shop, go to a cafe or just go for a ride, I was hoping to encourage my mates and Sydney women that cycling can be a great way to get around and a really fun thing to do,” says Lofts.

In the beginning, the contributors were friends of Lofts’ living abroad. “The first cities represented were Sydney, London, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Milano and Berlin, which I thought was a great cross section. I never expected to have the amount of authors we have today,” she says. Now Candy Cranks features authors from 29 different cities around the world (and counting), including renowned bike havens like Amsterdam and Portland, and off-the-grid spots like Honolulu and Shanghai. The CC community is as diverse in its content as its contributor’s hometowns, featuring traveling bike cafes in Japan and “Blessing of the Bikes” events in NYC.

“I love hearing about what the other authors get up to, I first learnt about Bicycle Dance from Rie, the Nagoya [Japan] author. I had no idea there was a huge culture out there dedicated to Bicycle Dance, it’s amazing,” says Lofts.

Lofts herself participates in all kinds of events, her favorites being themed alley cats and dual slalom races. Obviously passionate about cycling, it has been part of her life from a young age. “I’ve loved riding since I was a kid, I was always taking off with my brother’s BMX and getting into trouble for it. My father would make these ‘Frankenstein Bikes’ out of a mixture of all my brother’s old bikes and then spray paint the whole thing one color. They were pretty embarrassing. I bought my first road bike when I was 16, it was way too big for me and I had no idea how to use the gears. It wasn’t a very cool thing to do at the time so I used to ride to different neighborhoods so my friends wouldn’t see me,” she says.

Candy Cranks caters to every kind of cyclist out there, “Because the authors come from all over the world, there’s a great variety in the style of cycling, and the types of bikes they ride,” says Lofts, who has a variety of bikes herself. Her current whips include a Balfa Belair for cross country, a hand-built Steiger road bike, a tandem she uses to tour with her partner and a Candy Cranks fixed gear among others. That’s right, Candy Cranks also features frames and other cycling products, from entire framesets and chainrings, to t-shirts, caps and jewelry all designed by Lofts. “I started out with one chainring design and it’s expanded from there. I love designing and coming up with new ideas, so to then see your idea developed into an actual product is really fun. Initially I was designing with females in mind, but as it turns out, we have more male than female customers,” she says. The frames are built by her partner Tarn Mott, who owns Primate Frames (primateframes.com.au) and the chainrings are sent to get cut by a manufacturer and hand painted by Lofts. Currently, she is looking into supplying CC products to some shops around the world as well as speaking with a publisher about releasing a Candy Cranks book.

The core motive for Candy Cranks, however, is to inspire women around the world to pick up a bike. “I noticed that there are very few female fixie riders in my country and by writing for Candy Cranks, it helps me to show that cycling is a healthy, sociable sport that girls can still have fun, only with a bike in tow … It’s definitely hard to convince these girls to step out of their high heels and splurge on a bike, but so far, slowly but surely, they’ll get the hang of it and are more willing to give up their Friday nights to ride instead of hitting the clubs,” says JJay Ali, CC author from Singapore and owner of the fixie label PEONFX (peonfx.com). Devan Council, an author from Nashville, Tennessee, says,

“It is really refreshing to for once get the female perspective on riding; my blog feed is full of cycling blogs written by guys. The female perspective is a very important and often overlooked one; in that way Candy Cranks really helps us get our ideas, progress and opinions out there. It also helps to know that there really are a lot of girls out there riding who are experiencing some of the same obstacles as myself.”

The bicycle has been a symbol of feminine independence for more than a century. American civil rights leader Susan B. Anthony said in an 1896 interview, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

So whether you’re a woman looking for a way to feel that boundless sense of liberty, or you’re just a guy looking for a fresh and diverse perspective on cycling, add CandyCranks.com to your RSS feed and take control of your own handlebars. Women interested in contributing to the blog are encouraged to contact Lofts at [email protected]. Salt Lake City recently became a part of the CC community and also has its own female cycling blog where you can find local events and bike-inspired posts at SaltySpokes.com.

#words #candycranks #girlsonbikes #bicycles #bikeclub #feminist #SLUGMagazine

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