Still in Arcadia - #2
Life Lately - I don't see colour all the time...
Just about a week ago I was hanging out with a close friend. and of course as best buds do we went out for a drunk cigarette walk (Don't smoke, kids). As we were talking I ended up mentioning how I tend to just forget that I'm Asian, and its kinda been sitting in the back of my mind since,
I used to go to school in the city, but we moved into the countryside when I was 10 and I stayed until I left for uni at 17. The vast majority of kids in town were all white, and to say that Asians were rare would be an understatement. I got used to hanging out with only white people, getting crushes on white people, experiencing white culture, to a point where I kinda forgot that I didn't grow up white.
When I was a wee bab of 10 I had no clue that the other kids were being racist towards me, because quite frankly I wasn't smart enough to comprehend it as such, especially since the majority of it were just microaggressions. When I hit 15 or so though I managed to finally develop enough societal awareness to understand what racism really was and how it's normalized in western culture, but at that age just about all of my classmates were either friends or dropping out to work on a farm so any of the racism was just coming from twelvies and really who gives a shit about what they think. I mean seriously though, my graduating cohort was like 19 kids tops.
Moving out of the country bumpkin town and back to the big city I was suddenly plunged back into a melting pot of different cultures, yet somehow over the few years my circle of friends is pretty much all just white people again. That's right EgoBraniacs - I'm the token POC.
I don't think that it's outlandish for my personality to have been shaped over my teen years to assimilate myself within white culture, and as such I find myself joining their groups more, but it is still weird when I remember that I am different to all of my friends.
Just food for thought.
Too Lazy to Read? - Are those new house keys in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Don't Touch That Dial - He has a penance to pay alright.
The first time I fully watched through the Ghost Rider movie was in August of 2024. I had an old high school friend up in the city for the night and we had just finished a 5 hour D&D oneshot, so of course we do the only thing there is to do and get crossfaded and watch movies. All I need to say is that substances are required to watch this movie.
It is hilariously bad- The editing alone is just completely ludicrous. There are constant flashing lights, poorly aged CGI demons, jumping cuts, and crappy power effects, The fight scenes are almost nonexistent which is such a waste for one of Marvel's coolest characters, and the little cherry on top is that the titular Ghost Rider is played by none other than Nicholas Cage. Now I'm not trying to get all millennial Nick Cage = funny, but he does give a stupid amount of commitment to the bit that adds so much to the bizarre character choices they made, such as his interest in monkeys and jelly beans.
Ghost Rider is objectively a pile of dookie dumps, but that being said, if you happen to have some special little substances and couple nerd friends, then maybe grab a drink, pass the dutchie pon the left hand side, and enjoy this shit fest of a movie- Because i did that a couple days ago and it was still the same exact laughably bad hunk of junk as it was my first time watching. Don't take it seriously at all, be ready to point and laugh, and just have fun with it because the movie is unenjoyable any other way.
In One Ear, Sometimes Both - Shiver me timbers! Me booty's being plundered!
Avast me mateys, the high seas are back. Piracy is coming back in a big way nowadays, and I am fairly for it. I have a microphone yet I still chose to start a blog rather than a podcast so I'm sure that it doesn't come as a surprise that I'm a little homo leftist liberal, and one thing that I HATE is corporate greed. I won't get into piracy as a way to allow people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford the piece of media to still be able to experience it as I'm sure there are others much better equipped to dissect it, but what I will talk about is the blight of the infamous subscription model!!!
I'm nearly certain that we all subscribe to at least one service out there - whether that be for music, movies, food, or... Loot Crate? Is Loot Crate even still running? Anyways- Its inevitable at this point because every corpo big wig loves subscription models and digital copies 'cause it brings in mad moolah, and unfortunately that means that if (and when) they decide to not care about a product anymore then it is simply pulled right out of your hands.
If corpos could have their way then they would own everything and lend it out to you when they please, and quite frankly they already do, and for this purpose I advocate for piracy and, more importantly, physical media. I think that people should be burning albums on cassette and CD, copying movies on DVD, get a fucking stone tablet and carve out the entire script of your favourite TV show, who cares how! what's important is that you gain back the power to hold onto what you enjoy instead of it being lent out to you by the will of some geriatric rich fuck.
Obviously though as a creator myself for all sorts of media, artists should still be supported and if the only way to do so is through subscription services then that's the unfortunate truth. Give when you can, because the people who made the media you enjoy deserve it, but remember that whatever you give passes through the slimy hands of those leeching off their work.
EgoBraniacs, support the artist, not the corpos, and be ready to protect what you enjoy when the haves decide that you are a have-not. Nobody is happy when they play monopoly and that's because monopolies fucking suck.
Pseudo-Intelliterate - If you're picking up what I'm putting down.
I'm not a linguist by any means, so pardon my attempt at a definition. Descriptivism is a way of looking at language in the context of how it is used and understood rather than against a certain set of rules that dictate a set way to use the language. Of course, the term 'descriptivism' and its counterpart 'prescriptivism' are theoretical extremes, because anyone who is 100% a prescriptivist would still be speaking some archaic forgotten language. It's things like "chillax" or "yeet" or "donkey punch" that don't officially mean anything, but people understand regardless.
Descriptivism is how language evolves over time. Instead of trying to tell you about whatever fancy academic mumbo jumbo (Once again, not a linguist), I want to just throw some appreciation towards it, because watching language develop is kinda beautiful.
You get to watch as the language you speak is shaped by everyone else who speaks it live in front of your eyes (Or ears I guess), and it really is something that connects people in an abstract way.
All you EgoBraniacs out there should start making up your own words, start mixing in other languages into everyday life. Who knows? It might just catch on.
What's Cookin' Good Lookin'? - Internet horror is over saturated and I'm part of the problem.
I think that found footage is a uniquely brilliant subgenre of horror that lends itself as particularly approachable for the layman to attempt. The spooky series of videos that constantly have you peeking behind the man in the camera to try and find whatever else is hiding in frame, the poor acting that easily becomes excusable under the guise of a nervous wreck of a protagonist being filmed, it really is enchanting watching the common man craft their stories however good it may be.
Clearly it was only a matter of time before I hopped on the bandwagon too. An artist, a camera, a garage-pretending-to-be-a-basement, and a dream. It definitely feels like one of those projects that I know that I'm overconfident for but I can't stop feeling that way, and overconfidence has never stopped me from trying before (or at least trying until around half way through where I then just stop forever).
Keep an eye out, EgoBraniacs, a found footage unfiction story is officially in the works by yours truly, and I assure you its quality will be at least equal to that of this blog, though how you decide to interpret such a metric of quality is up to you.
Wasting Time - Boomer go bye-bye?
SHOOT! PUNCH! CRUSH! RIP! TEAR! SHOOT AGAIN!!!!!!
There's something special in the simplicity of boomer shooters that appeal to my monkey brain. Running around shotgun in hand, pulling the trigger and watching whatever was in front of me reduced to a red paste.
Before the advent of MilSim shooters like Call of Duty, games like DOOM and Quake had an iron grip on the world of videogames, but it just isn't the same anymore. Hell, during my playthrough of Wolfenstein 2 I swear I spent more time behind cover than I did rampaging. Such a fate is ill-fitting for a franchise whose protagonist goes by BJ. Plus, I miss spamming the interact button on walls like I'm trying to impregnate the world map... Ahhh, the good old days.
I certainly feel like the art of the boomer shooter is being left more and more to indie developers, and quite frankly I think that's a good thing. Every other indie game that I think about picking up is about going from point A to point B as quickly, violently, and radically as possible. Those indie devs just know how to keep the style and, more importantly, the simplicity that triple A corpos just miss.
If you already play shooters then maybe try putting down Super Tactical John Wick Simulator Shooter the Game, and instead play a game where you can just pretend to be The Thing with a machine gun. Its strangely cathartic and I promise It'll cost less than whatever you're shilling for the latest triple A military propaganda game.
If you want a recommendation then- What're you doing? This isn't the recommendation section of the blog. Greedy, greedy, always wanting more... Aw shucks, I'll give you one. Forgive Me Father is one that I've enjoyed very much, and maybe one day I'll delve into it greater detail, but for now that's all you get you greedy fuck.
Call to Action - What I wish they had playing in clubs.
Do you ever hit the clubs and just... settle for whatever music they have playing? Too many a time I get on that dance floor when I realize that Von Dutch is playing only for the DJ to switch the track to something completely mediocre after like 10 seconds. What I WISH they had playing was some motherfucking Emily Jeffri!
I first fell in love with her music with the album SOUNDTRACK FOR AN 80'S HORROR MOVIE (Which might I add has to be one of my favourite album names of all time). All of her music has this ominous, grinding, and dare I say carnal beat that is absolutely hypnotic. It's dark and in your face and makes me want to pound shots and fucking DANCE with that feeling of warm bodies and sweat and carelessness that you CRAVE in a night out.
That album had me fall in love with her music, but her next one, Yours, Sydney, had me firmly cement her as one of my favourite artists of all time. The first told me she could make good music and the second told me she could keep going.
My top songs of hers are FATAL, DENY, love i made..., sex with your ghost, and VERSE. The last on that list is quite different than the rest of her music but it's easily my favourite of them all. None of the others have captured me in the same way that VERSE did, cause by god that song had me listening on repeat my full 20 minute ride home from work- multiple shifts in a row.
Rating: Good bad drunken decisions in a club/10
Et in arcadia ego, and remember, EgoBraniacs, as long as you're reading then you are too. This is E. Arcadia signing off.
I also didn’t realise for a long time when someone was being racist to me through my child/teenhood, mostly because my mind wants to assume the best in people. It took getting into my 20s to realise what they were saying to me, and to finally process the emotion of it.
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