To follow up on a previous post, which I have to say because I can’t expect anyone to stick around for more than one, and also because it took me three months to get this one out, I did see the Toy Story 3. It was not my idea and I’d at the time have preferred to just go back to my home, but things did not work out that way. I did not set out to dislike it, but I think it will be a long time before I’ll be able to go into one of these things (these things being movies marketed at children which I am self conscious about watching) without any sort of innate predisposition to scoff at things. Ehhh, if I was absolutely intent on hating it I’d never have agreed to watch it at all; I could do that for free and save myself a few hours, in which time I could craft one eighth of a website post complaining about the advertising for the movie.

First of all I was suddenly dismayed arriving at the theater when I suddenly remembered that it was surely a 3D movie. As I’ve said before my eyes don’t match so the movies are blurry and the lenses are covered with little black lines and nobody bothers to augment the brightness in the actual picture in anticipation of the dimness because the whole system is stupid and broken. Thankfully, entirely by chance the showing I arrived in time for was in regular mode.

There are probably “spoiler” details in here, although I primarily spoil that which does not happen. The real concern, if you have not seen the film, will merely be not having any idea what I’m talking about and finding it incredibly boring. Which is normal, but I didn’t find much opportunity to include irrelevant video game screen captures either.

Thank you for understanding.

I correctly presumed the film would have atrocious previews, but I was not prepared for it to be the hokiest, most predictable gang of them I’d ever ignored. “YALL ABOUT TO SEE SOMETHIN YALL AINT NEVAH SEEN BEFOAH!” Well it’s not this movie! Or this one. Or these jokes, these songs, these song CUES, these characters, these voices, these “heroic” orchestral scores that suddenly stop silent to tell me when to laugh. Hey do you remember when everybody claimed to despise the prerecorded studio audience reactions on so many situation comedies? This is the sequel. Yes I did bring a little notebook into the theater with me. I’ve never seen a movie about owls before, but I’ve most definitely seen all this same stuff without owls. It turns out they have the exact same social mores and personality archetypes we do! That was a lucky break for our ease of comprehension, I’d say.

I like the idea of a pre-feature short form cartoon, I suppose. I thought overall that it looked neat. I could have done without the loony tune style shlubby impoid lecherism and Las Vegas fetishism (I will use that term again) but both are grand old traditions that I’m used to could-have-doing without. “Racial discrimination is bad but sexual harassment is yay-ok” appears to be the message. I may seem awfully sensitive about this stuff for someone who has never been sexually harassed*, but as someone who does not feel naked attraction to the stuff I’m demographically presumed to, I actually don’t need much more than a TV ad for Doritos or Snickers to become uncomfortable.
*update for 2016: this year I was! And I only find fewer things tolerable than before.

Randy Newman is the funniest guy around. Him, Huey Lewis, the Bee Gees, I can’t not laugh when I hear their corny voices. There was some sped up Spanish remix of one of his songs that played over the closing credits that was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t because Randy Newman wasn’t singing it.

I enjoy toys in denial.

I like when one of the other toys, I think it was the lady potato head, calls Wood E “college boy.” Toys are concerned about elitists.

Nice ascot RECORD SCRATCH.

“Time for recess?” Those kids are playing with toys! That IS recess! And a better one than I ever had… the school I used to go to just had a parking lot.* Also, do “day care” places have school bells? I do not believe that they do. I never went to a place called that, but I did do some time at a mislabeled summer camp which was essentially a day care joint and it lacked a school bell. The schools I went to didn’t even have school bells. They didn’t have curriculum either but that’s another issue that is unrelated to my other unrelated issue.

This loyalty to master stuff is a little unsettling.

Too many toilets.

WAY too many toilets

MORE toilets. Maybe we should call this toy-let story. Quite finkly I don’t appreciate the competition.

They somehow found a way to make Ken act stereotypically gay without being gay. Unfortunately the “almost saying ass” joke is about as original as making Ken be gay.

Those were my fragment notes. Now I’m going to talk at length about a thing which really isn’t important.

The plot was a tad Brave Little Toastery, as were the settings –there was even a familiar sort of scene where the characters see no escape and accept imminent death– but this one didn’t try as hard to convince me that some guy really would go out looking for his old junk. Or almost die jumping on a conveyor belt trying to save mass produced machinery which he could not have reasonably assumed was his own. Even still I think Mr. Andy is more attached to those weird toys than is necessarily believable, considering that he’s totally unaware of what they do when he’s not around. One of the toys writes a note to him at some point and I almost got the tingly “good movie” feeling; I thought finally this guy will know they are alive and adore him, even if he never sees the toys again… at least he will know. No. He thinks the note is from his mom and evidently that was the point and that’s as close as a breakthrough gets.

I understand that allowing the main human to realize the sentience of his toys defeats some of the plausibility this franchise wants to be perceived as having. I think to some extent people watching are meant to find it remotely possible that their own toys would walk around and talk to each other, totally in character, when unattended.
Although suggesting that these crazy adventures and feats of acrobatics have been happening and pretty much constantly since the invention of toys without one ever messing up and being found out despite constant near misses really isn’t plausible at all. My proposal would make the film a complete fantasy, because obviously no real toy is ever going to address you by its own free will, particularly if they aren’t designed with moving parts.

And yet the alternative, these things obediently devoting themselves to masters that they are forbidden from acknowledging in any way is kind of depressing. From where does this loyalty arise? How could you possibly love such an enormous beast that deprives you of your ability to act on your own? That you have to immediately drop dead at the presence of? The only situations in which the toys get annoyed at their owners are if these owners play with them harshly or get new toys. And they blame their own fellow toys for replacing them or for leading them to bad owners. That’s just an unhealthy attitude. They will never overcome without unity.

Even the evil toy in this movie, who is selfish and doesn’t answer to anyone, won’t violate this law of motionless silent subservience. Imagine the chaos he could cause by doing so! He is portrayed as having nothing to lose, so why not give it a try? There’s no reason everything needs to have a sitcom ending where the outside world is utterly unaffected, thus allowing another with the same basic setup to immediately follow, particularly when such an episode isn’t likely to get made, nor even suggested to be made. Kids in movies are forever discovering magical lands of elves, talking animals or sentient toys and then being sworn to secrecy about it. Otay, I don’t believe any real child would keep this secret. Not for very long, anyhow. They’d go mad or be perceived as such if they tried. And maybe also if they told. The persons would certainly find it necessary to divulge the truth of this to SOMEONE, even if only decades later, approaching death. You can’t take that secret to your grave.

Ehhh. The idea needs work. That’s one of the reasons I can’t watch Invaders: ‘Em or Oh Fiddlesticks Real Monsters; (apart from the fact that both have been out of regular circulation for years) I hate that there’s this one person who KNOWS but can’t prove it. I’m saying the bear tells everyone, deliberately, and the whole world is forced to change based on this. Or maybe the bear just tells one person to use as an accomplice in some master sinister scheme against other toys. And then this movie could be seven hours long. Alright so lets imagine Andrew learns his toys are alive on good terms and WANTS to keep it a secret. It bothers me that every toy ever is somehow immediately completely accepting and unquestioning of being thought inanimate.

There is also a curious contradiction; this evil toy initially goes maladjusty after his original owner, a child who lost several toys, replaced him with another of his own type. However, the other toys were implied to not have been replaced. If they were really GOOD toys they would have been. That bear should be glad he’s so well made. Especially considering the visual design of the character which I don’t find endearing at all.

Between seeing this movie and finishing this articloid I also had occasion to watch the Toaster movie a second time. I was a tad surprised to find that they actually call their master “The Master.” He obviously has a name which people refer to him by, and presumably other family members who also used the objects (how much is a little spoiled kid with a summer cottage and no siblings going to do with a vacuum cleaner, anyhow? (incidentally I hate the word cottage because my temporary lawn-mowy neighbors who I can hear without trying always refer to their house because they talk about it a lot as “The Cottage” and even though they’re THERE and can just say “HERE” instead of “THE COTTAGE.”)). I appreciated that the Pixarians didn’t give anthropomorphized faces to any toys which were not supposed to have them. Of course they had no problem doing that with insects and sea life in productions which were made after the one this was a follow-up to, so my appreciation is actually not so pronounced.

I must compare Toy Story 3 negatively against, of all things, a first party Disney release, yet another thing I’d not have watched five years ago. In Lilo & Otis the space aliens eventually admit that they exist and nobody cares. Life continues on as it did before.
Of course toys are mam-made, so then the question must arise: Does life begin at contraption? Is disposing of a toy cruel?

Correct! No one cares! I’m going to bed.

Oh dreadful.

*well I’m dead so I can’t help you!

^{However, Kerokero Keroppi no Bouken Nikki (J), Silent Service, Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters and Avenging Spirit.}

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I think there is some weird server stuff going on with my web-host. Either that or this website is totally broken. If you see this message you might assume that it isn’t and be very disappointed.

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Friday: well this is posted on “friday,” wasn’t it! Well I considered it thursday! but for friday: I probably won’t have internet for a few days, and when I have it again it may be only briefly. You probably won’t notice!

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october foist:
Ah, it works again. I, however, am still too distracted to do so. Here, however, is the notice of discontent I sent to my web-host:

I believe my website was/is contained on the rose server. I quite forgot that the fiddling was to occur September 30 until it did and I could no longer view my own pages. I can access my control panels and post-editing thingamadoodles, but attempting to look at anything I wrote results in a file save dialog, even plain html items. It may be worth mentioning that I am utterly ignorant of all matters related to php and my or anyone else’s sql beyond changing colors around and such. I specified a “high” priority only because I am very embarrassed to not know what’s going on here.

Forsooth, all that just to show you that I said “thingamadoodles.” Why did you come back here?

Sprinkler update:

Poles are very thin and often get left out (That’s why their country is so big). Not so here! This, incidootally, is a close approximation of how Poland Spring water is made.

You don’t want the grass soaking up all the water, naturally… sometimes you have to aim for the drainage grate if you want the water to actually get there. It has a job to do, after all!

Sometimes the sprinkle machines battle each other for supremacy. This is totally worth the school’s atrocious commuter parking options.

Patrons of the krampus library don’t always have time to bathe. And neither, for that matter, does the walkway they use to get there. This is the perfect place for another sprinkler.

Yes this most certainly took eight days to put together.

Let us try for Thursday. I am not even bothering with Wednesday this time! (so Friday, then)

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Somehow it’s not at all comforting actually having a reason to be slow with updates here now.

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This school talks about conserving, but has all these

automatic, unprovoked sprinklers for the sidewalks,

including two just for the sign, and this is the only place where I’ve had a self-flushing toilet go off while I was physically adhered to it (not pictured).

Perhaps I worry too much, and should not concern myself with this. After elf, as a wise philosopher once wrote

Sometimes people
Just Don’t get it
Be patient And Don’t
Sweat it

Oh gee excuse me, that was something I saw scratched in a toilet stall of the second most remote restroom of this university, in the ground floor basement of the library which people only go to for the internet computers which aren’t on that floor. Even if it lacks a prestigious showcase, it does prove one important thing: I am not nearly as safe in there as I thought. The scribe might come back And I Don’t want to be in there then. How will I protect myself?

On a related but not entirely relevant note, there are some things that are counterproductive to cover with shielding plastic.

well see now that’s just immodest. You ought to be ashamed. I can’t toi-let you get a way with that.

I referred to this but forget to place a link. I’m sure you will find this invaluable.

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I’m behind on my comic strip, anything written for this website, my college class schedule is ridiculous because I made it with the intent that I would live nearby, which I have failed to achieve, my chosen major is not anything with practical applications, yet I struggle with it, and I still can’t legally drive a car. HOWEVER…

True success! I have now truly mastered the Dungeons of the Unforgiven! But didn’t I do that a few years ago? No, I had merely completed the game under actual adequate conditions. I decided getting through a game with draconian level up policies and roving gangs of hostile, invincible rubbish bins that deletes your save file if your character dies wasn’t difficult enough, so I generated a player character that was utterly insufficient for the mere task of surviving; using the “monk” character class. Monks are the absolute worst class (yes, even worse than amphibia).

While monks are popularly known for their ability to perform astounding feats of acrobatics and concentration and match traditional orange robes with brand name sneakers, Moraff monks proceed cautiously and are afraid of things that most players don’t even notice, leading me to suspect that Moraff based his version on the Tony Shaloub character.

In addition to not backup up my character data, I refrained from making use of the inter-module escape tunnels, and the

magical respawning level 0 garbage can which drops dead instantly when approached but often leaves helpful trinkets behind. As helpful as you’d expect from a sentient waste receptacle, anyhow. It returns to the exact spot of its vapourization moments later and can be murdered and plundered over and over again. Yes, so, I denied myself even this glorious privilege.

Monks get the least hit and spell points and will not carry rings of regeneration, essential survival items, for spiritual reasons.

Fortunately they have no such reservations about hauling huge heaps of Worthless Greater American Dollars around. They are the Yang Song of the dungeon, and designed to die.

Do you know how hard it is to have a leadership of 1? You get 5 just for successfully ordering french fries at… eh… say, where should I get my french fries?

I have taken Moraff’s toughest challenge and been victorious. But in a sense, it is also his greatest curse; in the past such a character would be killed quickly and I could go and do something else. In fact, it DID die, once, but so quickly that I thought a retry was in order.

The longer this ineffectual figure lives, the less I live. It cannot win, only persist. I have very much in common with Pudensis, the gender-confused (the first one was female, the second was male), rodent monk.

This is another view of the Demon Queen as seen by a taller person. I like it because it looks like a really bad postcard.

Getting through all this took me about a day’s worth of hours across half a week, but what would I have done instead? Read the Southern Connecticut State University course catalog? Registered for classes pertinent to my interests? Actually prepared for them? Clearly there were more pressing and educational matters to tend at (Such as framing my Morvard rejection letter). I am a pioneer in making bad games less interesting and more tedious than ever. My place in history is secured. I may do well to drop the classes I did sign up for and write a book about this experience.
The Moraff scholars among you might have noticed that I have only played to the end of the first dungeon in the game, and have not yet entered the subsequent easier identical modules. Well we all need something to look forward to in life!

Aw bees, I wish I’d thought of that!