whose flood market

[DiscoBallClock]

yeah like holy shit if it was just like "break into bad mans hide out to save woman" that'd be understandable but "INVERTO TIME DOCTOR MANHATTAN YOURSELF AND CRASH A CAR INTO YOURSELF IN THE PAST AND CQC FIGHT YOURSELF IN THE PAST BUT IN REVERSE TO SAVE WOMAN" is a bit much lol

also i'd need to spoiler my last post, this film is new, where are my manners

yeah, exactly, it just feels too much of a hassle when the world is in imminent danger, that was a huge chunk of the movie. i was gonna say that time isn't a factor for obvious reasons, but it kinda is since present Satyr is acting upon his plan

lmao the amount of times i had to whisper to my friend "what the fuck is happening now" during that film was a little embarassing. I found it really hard to follow

yeah, to be fair I only truly understood the whole time mechanic when the protagonist goes through the turnpike at Talinn and goes into the backwards world, because only then did you experience things as the reverse objects did. up until then I was kinda grasping at straws. that could've been a bit clearer I guess

[k9]

dunkirk was a good movie that i have zero intention of rewatching because fuck it was stressful

I didn't actually get to see dunkirk, I should probably give it a look. i really like nolan films.

also FUCK YEAH new page so that GODAMN AUTOPLAY WILL FUCK OFF

turn your speakers down and don't watch it with headphones on, i'll say that much

I get that the jacked up audio is on purpose to "mAkE yOu fEeL tHe hOrRoRs oF tHe wAr" but come on. I saw it at the movies back then and it was kinda tortuous

Tenet has that problem too (especially in a specific part of the movie in which there's a lot of noise) but it's less jarring

the first time the protag fires and bullet and then catches it again jesus christ my fucking ears my head hurt so fucking bad after that film

[DiscoBallClock]

dunkirk was a good movie that i have zero intention of rewatching because fuck it was stressful

I didn't actually get to see dunkirk, I should probably give it a look. i really like nolan films.

also FUCK YEAH new page so that GODAMN AUTOPLAY WILL FUCK OFF

turn your speakers down and don't watch it with headphones on, i'll say that much

I get that the jacked up audio is on purpose to "mAkE yOu fEeL tHe hOrRoRs oF tHe wAr" but come on. I saw it at the movies back then and it was kinda tortuous

Tenet has that problem too (especially in a specific part of the movie in which there's a lot of noise) but it's less jarring

the first time the protag fires and bullet and then catches it again jesus christ my fucking ears my head hurt so fucking bad after that film

the start with the orchestra was kinda harsh, but the worst part was the final battle. holy shit, the noise made it hard for me to concentrate on what was going on

[k9]

I think my ears had adjusted to it at that point lmao

[DiscoBallClock]

i have kinda sensitive hearing so yeah

that aside, it was a pretty solid Nolan flick. Pattinson is a good actor, must've been frustrating to be stuck with the twilight label for so long

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

true cinematic 32kbps MP3 audio amplified 300% in audacity like the old masters intended

[k9]

true cinematic 32kbps MP3 audio amplified 300% in audacity like the old masters intended

a wise man with many wisdoms

[DiscoBallClock]

true cinematic 32kbps MP3 audio amplified 300% in audacity like the old masters intended

it's not a true cinematic experience without a ruptured eardrum. see, if you were in a war you'd also have to deal with loud noises, that's how immersive it all is

[PhantomCatClock]

my theatre has these seats that cost extra and vibrate along with the movie. I'd imagine punji sticks on a solenoid wouldn't cost too much more to implement.

[GreyClock]

I think I might go to Japan after this thing blows over/I get vaccinated. Anyone ever been to Japan?

[DiscoBallClock]

I think I might go to Japan after this thing blows over/I get vaccinated. Anyone ever been to Japan?

it's one of my dream trips, tbh

I have several friends who took the trip and from I've gathered from them, it's best to go for at least two weeks (especially since flights going from Europe are expensive). i've also heard that urban Japan and rural Japan are very different, but equally interesting

I'd honestly be pressed not to come back with a final fantasy bodypillow a lot of souvenirs

[VCRClock]

ya sure go

I was studying abroad when I went, so I never thought about "length of trip," but better to have some extra days to be jetlagged and confused before you figure out where everything is

if you go to a mcdonald's in a major city they may even flip the laminated menu to english 4 your sorry ass; if you're going places where tourists are they'll be ready for you

I have no specific tourism recommendations other than that if I were to plan a trip, I'd probably want to research people and places doing things related to my specific interests and make those my must-sees

like "instant noodle museum" is fun, ok, but I'd rather find a store that sells stuff I either didn't know about in the first place or that I'd have to mail order for $$

vintage stores are fun to look through (not to $hop at) because it's all the stuff that the obsessive nerds who write the guidebooks to vintage sportswear have picked from god knows where USA

I committed to Not Buying Records at the time, but obviously wish I could have

I did not bathe with snow monkeys; I don't regret it
I stayed at a hostel that was apparently built for transient workers in a seedy part of osaka; recommended

[PhantomCatClock]

a japanese private investigator known to the local underworld as Osaka Dick

[GreyClock]

ya sure go

I was studying abroad when I went, so I never thought about "length of trip," but better to have some extra days to be jetlagged and confused before you figure out where everything is

if you go to a mcdonald's in a major city they may even flip the laminated menu to english 4 your sorry ass; if you're going places where tourists are they'll be ready for you

I have no specific tourism recommendations other than that if I were to plan a trip, I'd probably want to research people and places doing things related to my specific interests and make those my must-sees

like "instant noodle museum" is fun, ok, but I'd rather find a store that sells stuff I either didn't know about in the first place or that I'd have to mail order for $$

vintage stores are fun to look through (not to $hop at) because it's all the stuff that the obsessive nerds who write the guidebooks to vintage sportswear have picked from god knows where USA

I committed to Not Buying Records at the time, but obviously wish I could have

I did not bathe with snow monkeys; I don't regret it
I stayed at a hostel that was apparently built for transient workers in a seedy part of osaka; recommended

Any particular places to go? Like Osaka for instance? This is a very early days, spur of the moment type idea. All I have planned so far is to stumble around Tokyo for a bit.

Any interesting stories from your time there?

I can't picture Japanese cities having "seedy" parts. What are they like? I mean, rationally speaking, I'm sure there are lower income areas and vagrants and petty criminals and unstable people like in any other country, and Yakuza members need somewhere to karate fight and stores to buy their weird censored porn or whatever, but... -- Even though it's in a different country, sort of like where that family from Parasite lives? I know very little about Japan, which is part of the attraction I think.

[PolyhedronClock]

olskoo came back and he's chilling in the discord with us

[VCRClock]

Any particular places to go? Like Osaka for instance? This is a very early days, spur of the moment type idea. All I have planned so far is to stumble around Tokyo for a bit.

Any interesting stories from your time there?

spoiler: no concrete advice or very interesting stories, just runaway trains of thought sorry

My program was based in Kyoto, so I only spent a few days in Tokyo. I'm looking at a travelogue entry for details here. I took an overnight bus trip through a company (Willer Travel) that was fine, but sent me unsolicited promo emails for maybe a couple of years afterward. Travel and lodging would have been cheaper if I'd booked it in advance.
I was there with a few other people from my program for some of those days, and I think they might have put more into deciding on places to go than I did. My notes say, like, "park, temples, science museum." This does not jog my memory. There are a shit ton of temples and shrines, some more interesting than others. I described the science museum in Ueno as "a lot of fun," but I might have denied ever having been to "science museum" if you'd asked me 15 minutes ago. I ate convenience store prepared food a lot, because I'm a coward and it's cheaper/easier than fumbling through ordering at a restaurant. Tagged along while my friends were looking for video game stores, and in the process, accidentally ended up in a store where we were greeted by a cardboard cutout of some underage ero game heroine. A "we weren't, um, I wasn't..." moment for sure, not that anybody was watching us.

If I get the chance to go back again, I%u2019ll make sure to reserve a hostel bed and bus tickets early, figure out some concrete places to go (not just neighborhoods) and maybe even find some restaurants beforehand, and actually take pictures. I%u2019ll try applying the LIFE LESSONS learned here to other travel plans in the near future, too.

What I really remember about this excursion, well documented in my travelogue, is that the day I checked out of my hostel, after I had lunch, I was afraid of missing my (night) return bus. It was to depart from someplace in Akihabara, and so I tried to kill time, staying in the vicinity, on my feet and with a full backpack on, no doubt, for like 12 hours. Instead of, like, finding another interesting place to go. Which seems like a no-brainer these days, but at the time (late 2011) smartphones were just starting to happen in Japan; we students had been outfitted with flip phones, and that kind of research would have required a computer. So the strongest parts of the memory are half-waking overnight bus trips and/or plodding around killing hours before my return bus, soundtracked by a bossa nova mix I was listening to a lot at the time.
To double-check the details of my bus trip I went to an Internet cafe, but it wasn't a "buy a coffee please, swipe your card to use this workstation for 30 minutes" place -- if you've ever heard of people going to "all-night" karaoke so as to crash in the booth until morning, it was the kind of place that would facilitate that. I checked in at a front desk, you had to register (with postal address) for a membership card that would enable you to use the facilities. It was a sort of labyrinth of intentionally dim, essentially private, leather-seated cubicles containing computers you could use, and vending machines, or something similarly discreet and anti-social, outside the cubicles to provide necessary hydration.

anyway even though we've all got smartphones now, I guess the moral is that deciding to go to "a neighborhood" doesn't necessarily put you anywhere you want to be. I also think of Tokyo, specifically, as a city like New York where there might be interesting stuff going on, but it's very important that Major Sportswear Brand has a flagship store there, and there's gotta be Starbucks and so forth, and it's those places that are always right in front of you; the people of (Tokyo/New York/LA) are here to be the cutting edge of international cool as the rest of the world watches. To an extent, The Biggest City in the Area has no personality. There's so much space to explore, and so much of it is filled with things that are of no regional interest. If you wanted to find someone in New York City with a New York-sounding accent, you'd probably have more luck the further away you got from Manhattan.

I guess, also, my travel philosophy is now something like "I'm probably already seeing/hearing what people in The Biggest City, and those who move there from Iowa, are trying to do; but I probably have no idea what the coolest people in Des Moines are up to."
Of course, if you're just after things like historical sites, museum artifacts, natural beauty and such, those are pretty easy to find on a map. But even something like "a creative, but not extremely hyped and expensive, restaurant" is the kind of thing that happens somewhere between Biggest City and Bumfuck Nowhere. (Did GreyClock ask about this? Did GreyClock ask me anything that wasn't about Japan? Why can't I just shut the fuck--

so Osaka is a big city in a part of the country where another dialect is spoken (in English translations of anime, characters from Kansai are often given an American Southern accent). It has characteristic foods and such. I felt like it had more personality and strangers were friendlier. But I spent a pretty short time there, too, and I was never on any mission besides "see the sights and try the food." I did both, but again... had I been looking for something in particular, I might have found more. Once in New York, I decided to go to an interesting event at Union Pool, a bar I'd never been to, and on the way, I unexpectedly passed Desert Island Comics. "So that's where that place is!" But I'm not confident at all that I'd have ended up at either place, if I'd never been to New York, but thought I'd try walking around Williamsburg a bit. There are places in Brooklyn where I've done just that and come up with nothing.

I haven't seen Parasite (sorry) but the area I was talking about is Shinsekai. I don't remember seeing a lot of homeless people, or even piles of trash like you'd expect to see elsewhere, but for instance, there was a sort of covered shopping street nearby where most businesses looked shuttered, and one of the couple of open spaces was someone selling secondhand clothes, much of which was uniforms or workwear for manual laborers.

[DiscoBallClock]

Any particular places to go? Like Osaka for instance? This is a very early days, spur of the moment type idea. All I have planned so far is to stumble around Tokyo for a bit.

Any interesting stories from your time there?

spoiler: no concrete advice or very interesting stories, just runaway trains of thought sorry

My program was based in Kyoto, so I only spent a few days in Tokyo. I'm looking at a travelogue entry for details here. I took an overnight bus trip through a company (Willer Travel) that was fine, but sent me unsolicited promo emails for maybe a couple of years afterward. Travel and lodging would have been cheaper if I'd booked it in advance.
I was there with a few other people from my program for some of those days, and I think they might have put more into deciding on places to go than I did. My notes say, like, "park, temples, science museum." This does not jog my memory. There are a shit ton of temples and shrines, some more interesting than others. I described the science museum in Ueno as "a lot of fun," but I might have denied ever having been to "science museum" if you'd asked me 15 minutes ago. I ate convenience store prepared food a lot, because I'm a coward and it's cheaper/easier than fumbling through ordering at a restaurant. Tagged along while my friends were looking for video game stores, and in the process, accidentally ended up in a store where we were greeted by a cardboard cutout of some underage ero game heroine. A "we weren't, um, I wasn't..." moment for sure, not that anybody was watching us.

If I get the chance to go back again, I%u2019ll make sure to reserve a hostel bed and bus tickets early, figure out some concrete places to go (not just neighborhoods) and maybe even find some restaurants beforehand, and actually take pictures. I%u2019ll try applying the LIFE LESSONS learned here to other travel plans in the near future, too.

What I really remember about this excursion, well documented in my travelogue, is that the day I checked out of my hostel, after I had lunch, I was afraid of missing my (night) return bus. It was to depart from someplace in Akihabara, and so I tried to kill time, staying in the vicinity, on my feet and with a full backpack on, no doubt, for like 12 hours. Instead of, like, finding another interesting place to go. Which seems like a no-brainer these days, but at the time (late 2011) smartphones were just starting to happen in Japan; we students had been outfitted with flip phones, and that kind of research would have required a computer. So the strongest parts of the memory are half-waking overnight bus trips and/or plodding around killing hours before my return bus, soundtracked by a bossa nova mix I was listening to a lot at the time.
To double-check the details of my bus trip I went to an Internet cafe, but it wasn't a "buy a coffee please, swipe your card to use this workstation for 30 minutes" place -- if you've ever heard of people going to "all-night" karaoke so as to crash in the booth until morning, it was the kind of place that would facilitate that. I checked in at a front desk, you had to register (with postal address) for a membership card that would enable you to use the facilities. It was a sort of labyrinth of intentionally dim, essentially private, leather-seated cubicles containing computers you could use, and vending machines, or something similarly discreet and anti-social, outside the cubicles to provide necessary hydration.

anyway even though we've all got smartphones now, I guess the moral is that deciding to go to "a neighborhood" doesn't necessarily put you anywhere you want to be. I also think of Tokyo, specifically, as a city like New York where there might be interesting stuff going on, but it's very important that Major Sportswear Brand has a flagship store there, and there's gotta be Starbucks and so forth, and it's those places that are always right in front of you; the people of (Tokyo/New York/LA) are here to be the cutting edge of international cool as the rest of the world watches. To an extent, The Biggest City in the Area has no personality. There's so much space to explore, and so much of it is filled with things that are of no regional interest. If you wanted to find someone in New York City with a New York-sounding accent, you'd probably have more luck the further away you got from Manhattan.

I guess, also, my travel philosophy is now something like "I'm probably already seeing/hearing what people in The Biggest City, and those who move there from Iowa, are trying to do; but I probably have no idea what the coolest people in Des Moines are up to."
Of course, if you're just after things like historical sites, museum artifacts, natural beauty and such, those are pretty easy to find on a map. But even something like "a creative, but not extremely hyped and expensive, restaurant" is the kind of thing that happens somewhere between Biggest City and Bumfuck Nowhere. (Did GreyClock ask about this? Did GreyClock ask me anything that wasn't about Japan? Why can't I just shut the fuck--

so Osaka is a big city in a part of the country where another dialect is spoken (in English translations of anime, characters from Kansai are often given an American Southern accent). It has characteristic foods and such. I felt like it had more personality and strangers were friendlier. But I spent a pretty short time there, too, and I was never on any mission besides "see the sights and try the food." I did both, but again... had I been looking for something in particular, I might have found more. Once in New York, I decided to go to an interesting event at Union Pool, a bar I'd never been to, and on the way, I unexpectedly passed Desert Island Comics. "So that's where that place is!" But I'm not confident at all that I'd have ended up at either place, if I'd never been to New York, but thought I'd try walking around Williamsburg a bit. There are places in Brooklyn where I've done just that and come up with nothing.

I haven't seen Parasite (sorry) but the area I was talking about is Shinsekai. I don't remember seeing a lot of homeless people, or even piles of trash like you'd expect to see elsewhere, but for instance, there was a sort of covered shopping street nearby where most businesses looked shuttered, and one of the couple of open spaces was someone selling secondhand clothes, much of which was uniforms or workwear for manual laborers.

this was a lovely read VCR

(quoted bc new page)

[GreyClock]

(Did GreyClock ask about this? Did GreyClock ask me anything that wasn't about Japan? Why can't I just shut the fuck--

No, go right ahead. I enjoy reading this stuff. (Also posting it, as you'll find out presently.)

I'm not much of a "fine diner" or whatever. I went to the Bubba Gump Shrimp thing on Times Square once. I enjoyed their fried shrimp, it was only later that I learned it was in fact a tourist trap and shithole. Nah, going to a restaurant in the middle of Times Square is probably a terrible idea. I also had probably the best pizza ever after walking into a random empty Italian run place somewhere in Lower Manhattan. (Might've been a mob front!) I get the general idea behind what you're saying. In fact, I wrote a post once about how I'd like to go on little trips by train and stop off in random towns I've never heard of. I can't find it anymore though, NOW WHOSE FAULT IS THAT HUH?!

Connecting my stay in New York with that philosophy, I do regret not going down Long Island. It's probably mostly a suburban hell, but something about that place is just strangely appealing. I don't know what that is exactly, for example with this (tentative) Japanese trip I have a strange urge to walk around a college campus over there? Can't put my finger on the why.

Anyway going to Tokyo is probably the antithesis of that idea. Maybe doesn't matter though. I can eat Big Macs from Mickey Mouse's laminated asshole in the M&M Store one moment and turn around and knit a scarf out of locally sourced eels with some old Japanese lady the next. Find some sort of balance. Why not?

Before the lockdown I went to German city of Oberhausen on one of those little trips.

This is the Google Maps thumbnail for that city. I had a beer right there under that patio umbrella on the left.
That square was probably the highlight of the trip. The rest of the town was mainly tacky jewelry stores and places to turn that jewelry into tattoos or vice versa.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. It was just a day trip. Let's call it an experience.

[DiscoBallClock]

On the topic of travel experiences, a few years ago a small group of friends and myself had decided that we wanted to spend our NYE in a different way. So we decided to book an Airbnb in Alcácer do Sal, a town which is a 1h drive from Lisbon. Our rationale was that Tróia (a sort of resort-town for the wealthy) was nearby, meaning that we could hit some bars if we wanted to, but we could also just chill at home if we didn't feel like it.

We arrived at Alcácer at around 7pm of the 31st of December. It's a small town with nothing much to see, even though the view of the river was alright. We wanted to get some dinner, but soon noticed that there was not a living soul on the street. Worse than that, there wasn't a single bar, restaurant or café open, which meant that we had no opportunity to get said dinner nearby. We drove across the entire town and I don't think we saw a single person or any open establishment anywhere. Naturally, the next idea was to go grab something from the supermarket to cook at home. But alas, even the Walmarts of Portugal (disclaimer: not actual Walmarts) close at 6pm, so even though we drove for an entire hour, we couldn't find anything open either. At 9pm we were distraughtly munching on small cans of Pringles that we'd just bought at a gas station convenience store.

After driving some more, we finally found an open restaurant at about 10pm. It was a typical portuguese restaurant: the paper table cloth, the old and almost opaque glasses, the standard bread/butter/olives/cheese couvert, and the age-old menu which wasn't really different from any other portuguese restaurant's menu. We figured that a group of families was having their NYE dinner there, because the whole place was empty save for them: little children ran around the place while their red-faced fathers laughingly downed beer and wine. The waiter was surprised at our presence there, and after we explained how we got there, he said that nothing ever happens over there on NYE anyway. So much for crashing rich people bars, then.
Anyway, we gorged down on food (it was 10pm after all), got a bottle of wine and headed to the beach right before midnight. Turns out some kids were there; they'd brought fireworks, so at midnight we were on a small corner of the beach, looking at the sea and its reflection of the fireworks some random kids had set off. It was actually quite nice.

At the end of the night we decided to wander around the ghost town that was Alcácer do Sal. Granted, there wasn't much to see or much to do (and neither was there anyone to be seen) but there was a castle, so we went there. There was something rather eerie but exciting at looking at the stars (a privilege we don't get in the city) atop of a medieval castle.

I can't say the whole thing was exciting, or that we saw interesting things. But the whole experience was really fun. I'd choose something like this for this year's NYE.

[VCRClock]

Connecting my stay in New York with that philosophy, I do regret not going down Long Island. It's probably mostly a suburban hell, but something about that place is just strangely appealing. I don't know what that is exactly, for example with this (tentative) Japanese trip I have a strange urge to walk around a college campus over there? Can't put my finger on the why.

My hometown isn't on Long Island, but it's like Long Island in that it's full of people who take a train every day to work in Manhattan. I haven't travelled in Long Island extensively, but I feel like if I did, I'd probably first end up in a "beach town" staring down stores carrying salt water taffy and wooden tchotchkes. On the other hand: De La Soul, Public Enemy, and Biz Markie (among others) all came out of places on Long Island, and started out performing there.

What's weird about Japanese schools, in my experience, is that they seem to be exactly what you'd expect, though I was mostly on one college campus with a couple of visits to other schools. Maybe schools will look a little different on the outside, but "generic school hallway background" isn't too far from the truth. American schools could look like something that was built in the 1920s, or a sprawling prison complex. Every US school I attended had classrooms in all sorts of weird shapes resulting from how the building was built. I'm pretty sure every Japanese classroom I was in was a formulaic square or rectangular purpose-built classroom. It's strange to me that Japanese schools will just devote entire rooms, likely in a secondary building, to storage and activity space for clubs and stuff, which can be a more serious commitment than American school clubs where it's not a big deal if you can't be there for some reason.

I've been out of college for 7 years now, but last year, my job regularly involved making deliveries to a college campus during class hours. It was a strange thing to come out of my fairly solitary 30th year, the handful of people I know and work with, and walk through a sea of young people who are probably trying to fuck each other, may not have found their best friends or decided what to do with themselves yet, have so much possibility ahead of them. I'm wistful because I got into a narrow rut at the beginning of college and stayed in it until I graduated. Oh well. Go get 'em, kids.

On the topic of travel experiences, a few years ago a small group of friends and myself had decided that we wanted to spend our NYE in a different way. So we decided to book an Airbnb in Alcácer do Sal, a town which is a 1h drive from Lisbon.

This was interesting. I had a similar kind of thing happen -- I visited Marfa, Texas, where the gist is "it's really remote and sleepy, BUT a bigshot artist bought a bunch of land there in the 70s? and put some art on it, so that building that would be an abandoned gas station is now some other bigshot artist's personal studio, BUT it's still the middle of fucking nowhere." It's a tourist destination for Instagram reasons and bigshot artist reasons, but what I didn't know is that "operating like a tourist town" means that if you show up on Tuesday, instead of on the weekend like a normal person, several tourist-oriented places won't be open for business, and "several" feels like a lot when you're in Marfa. Marfa is the kind of place where if you live there (and some non-artist small town people do), there are some things that you have to drive to another town 30 miles away to buy.

No conclusion intended. Just another experience. (There was a reason I was there on Tuesday, but I don't have time to get into that in this post.)