Moe Lane's Blog, page 815

Dave Barry’s 2020 Year in Review.

It is a measure of the year that Dave Barry is legitimately worried that handing it in this early might be unwise. I mean, there’s still a week left in the year. Anything could happen.

Anything.

Via @IMAO_, and Frank was right: it was a doozy.

12/23/20 Snippet, TIMMY AND THE CHRISTMAS ELF.

Backtalk!

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“No kidding?” Timmy said as he crouched behind a dumpster right next to the pile. “Keep your voice down,” he said as the witch joined him.

“Why?” said the witch. “You worried I’ll scare him away?”

“I want it scared,” said Timmy, as he reached into his jacket with his good hand. “And it won’t run away. It’s gonna try to kill us.”

“Well, you’re hunting him. Poor thing. What did he ever do to you?”

Timmy looked at her, honestly confused. “It’s an elf. Didn’t you learn about elves in school?”

“We don’t learn about fairy tales,” the witch sniffed. “We learn about math and history and real things. Not stupid enchanted creatures that don’t even exist.”

“It shot me!”

“And I’m a witch! You still didn’t tell me what I can do, you know.”

Timmy honestly couldn’t remember if girls were this weird in the old days.

Happy Festivus!

“I got a lot of problems with you people*, and now, you’re gonna hear about it!”

*I do not actually have any problems with you people at all.

Tweet of the Day, This Demonstrates The Pre-Sapient Status of Octopuses edition.

Apparently they can be jackwagons. Maybe it’s the hefeweizen talking*, but isn’t that a good working definition for sapient behavior?

Scientists have discovered that, on occasions, an octopus will “punch” a fish for no reason other than “spite”https://t.co/o3uYm1iiN6

— Abbie Cheeseman (@cheesemanab) December 23, 2020

Via @CalebHowe.

Moe Lane

*We bought a remarkable amount of booze for Christmas. Beer, wine, whiskey because you can’t have Irish Coffee without whiskey, and this sherry bourbon thing that went to my sister-in-law so it probably doesn’t count.

Last week’s Not-Shocking news: HBO Max now on Roku.

Yeah, I missed this because CYBERPUNK 2077. But we all knew this was going to happen. HBO Max needed to be on Roku, and Roku needed to be able to add that channel. They were always gonna make a deal; they just needed to figure out who got what.

I’m of mixed minds, here. On the one hand, I was willing to pay for a year-long subscription if it meant getting The Snyder Cut. On the other hand, this deal will do nothing to help the movie theater industry. And, on the gripping hand: there’s a bunch of DC Universe stuff that I can watch now. So there’s that.

My review of CYBERPUNK 2077 so far.

I dunno how far along I am in terms of the CYBERPUNK 2077 storyline: I’m at level 25 or so, and I’ve unlocked the entire map, and I’m starting to get the good stuff. So I’m that far along. I should also note that CD Projekt Red didn’t give me anything for this review, more’s the pity. I don’t like that I have to give that kind of disclaimer, but that’s the world we live in now.

Short review, so far: I’m playing it on a PC, so it’s great.

Slightly longer version: …I’ve been up far too late playing this game for the last week, and I’m only now slowing down. The dialogue is excellent, the storyline is engrossing, and the mechanics are largely fun*. I fully understand that people might strenuously contest that last sentence, on the grounds that they can’t get the game to work on their Playstation and/or Xbox. I also sympathize. But as a PC game it’s worth the money. I understand it works pretty good on Stadia, too. Go figure.

Moe Lane

PS: My current machine is an AMD Ryzen 7 8-core, 3.70 Ghz, with 16 gigs of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. I admittedly bought it with this game in mind, but it’s not particularly tricked out otherwise.

*The crafting system needs work, and some aspects of leveling and hacking money are not intuitive. Neither were smart weapons, but I worked that out on my own.

.reliarT tsenoH TENET ehT

I liked TENET more than Honest Trailers did. Which is to say, I liked TENET. But even I will admit that I’ll have to watch it a couple more times with subtitles on before I can figure out what the hell was going on in that film.

So why did I like it? Because it was trying to say something, and I react well to that sort of thing when it’s coupled with this level of SFX magic. Besides, I saw it in the theater. I miss theaters.

The COMING 2 AMERICA trailer. …No, really.

I started watching the COMING 2 AMERICA trailer going Meh. They had two minutes to sell me on the concept. Did they?

…Maybe? They definitely took a swing at it, at least. And it’s got Wesley Snipes in it! Why didn’t COMING TO AMERICA have Wesley Snipes in it? The dude’s funny!

‘The Holly and the Ivy.’

The Holly and the Ivy, Medieval Baebes

Movie of the Week: Hogfather.

Although Hogfather is more of a TV two-parter. Nonetheless, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Christmas story is fun to see on the small screen. I may watch it tomorrow, once the presents are wrapped.

Moe Lane