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th3-0bjectivist · 6 months ago

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Dear listener, this week I’m going to be putting focus on my personal favorite living male vocalist, Chino Moreno, and his Deftones side-project, Crosses (hereto regarded as †††). The vocalist I’m well familiar with, as I’ve been listening to his majestic vocal cords for over two decades. Chino has been an integral part of a few notable side-projects in his time, my favorite being his work with a one-off experimental rock group called Team Sleep. ††† is a duo I initially farted at when I heard some of their work a decade ago. I was content to say, “That was just OK”, and leave them in the rear-view mirror. However, upon a second, third and fourth examination over the years, I can tell you this duo is growing on me like a rare dark crystal in an underground cavern. Just upstairs, you’ll find the music video for their song Vivien from their 2022 EP Permanent Radiant, which is a soft wink to Britney’s “…Baby One More Time”. If you like it, join me downstairs for more.

Ostensibly started as experimental recordings with Chino’s childhood friend, this project was comparatively supposed to be minimalistic and calming next to the Deftones and their generally blunt and aggressive sound. Unlike Deftones, ††† ventures into dark wave territory, and even wanders into ‘witch house’, that being electronic tunes that are heavy on gothic and occult themes. Lush, moody, seductive and underpinned with dream pop and trip-hop styles, this is pop music with some very dreary undertones. A lot of their catalog is Chino vocalizing over what are essentially hip-hop beats, and if it truly can be classified as ‘gothic’, their music absolutely represents the tip of the spear in modern gothic rock. And folks, I HATE listening to most gothic songs like I hate filling out federal paperwork, which would explain why I wasn’t too-too keen on their vibe early-on. If you have trouble interfacing with their sound at first, I was right there with you once upon a time. This group makes melodies that, for me anyway, have taken a significantly long time to properly digest. But damn, I sure am glad I kept going back for more samples! Some of the very best bands out there are the ones that get better every time you listen to their work, and I am elated to report that ††† is one of those bands. My second favorite feature of this group is their drive to deliver something totally experimental to the ears of their audience. My number one favorite feature of this group, is, of course, Chino’s voice. He’s got a dramatic tenor with an incredible range, and I know it’s highly subjective, but I’ve seen this man perform live several times and he manages to hit notes that sound downright and distinctively alien to my ears. While perhaps not the best ‘singer’ on a technical level, his distinguishing and emotive vocals come with a reported 4.5 octave range, which puts him head and hair wax above about 90% of other male singers in terms of natural ability. Just down below, you’ll find Bitches Brew from their 2014 self-titled album. Smash play, enjoy, and far more tunes to come this year, my friends!

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Although not necessarily my cup of tea, I’ll always take a side-project from my favorite male vocalist with a smile and open arms. If you enjoy this group, you should check out Team Sleep, which in my humble opinion is the superior product of any of Chino’s side-projects. Image source: https://www.nme.com/features/music-interviews/crosses-chino-moreno-shaun-lopez-interview-goodnight-delete-robert-smith-el-p-3513976

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love-me-tender13 · 3 years ago

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Four Years Later

Where to even start..

I truly have no idea how I even ended up on here. I opened my computer to do something else (that I couldn't even remember what it was) and found myself reseting my password and logging on. So much pain and growth. It’s impressive to see my thoughts and feeling all written down. I haven’t written in a very long time. I used to be my escape. Get it all out of my head. Release the negative. Now it just feels a little foreign. Again, where to even start..I guess a life update will suffice. I will be 29 in a few short weeks. That marine, he’s still my husband. Going five years strong. We now have two beautiful pitbull fur babies, and a 2 year old son. That’s the crazy part, motherhood. I can’t even begin to comprehend all the emotions that come with that title and I’m already two years in. Hands down THE most liberating, overwhelming, and challenging thing I have ever done to date. The mental hoops to jump through. It’s all exhausting. Even when you don’t feel tired, you are. The biggest part that seem to overtake me is.. I lost it. My brain is literally mush. “Mom brain” as many people seem to classify it as. But I don’t like that saying. It’s too general. It insinuates that moms can’t think. That they have a “dumb” brain. Equivalent to when someone says they have a “blonde moment”. What even is that? I like the term “brain fart” the best only because it reminds me of adolescence and it cracks me up (like it would a child). But to say a mother has “mom brain” because her thinking lags is in my opinion ridiculous. I’m supposed to go all day every day thinking, remembering, planning, making appointments, dinner, cleaning, laundry, literally living for someone else 24/7. Putting my brain into overdrive every second of every day ( yes, even in my sleep- or lack of) and society is telling me it’s not suppose to glitch? Get out of town. See, motherhood. If nothing explains it better than this then, you’re welcome. As I was saying, the mental hoops that come with motherhood. Battling depression and anxiety now I have to battle postpartum depression and heightened anxiety with thoughts of something happening to cause me to lose the one thing I live for in this world, my son. Throw in some doctor appointments, grocery shopping, laundry and playdates with a few brain glitches into the mix and there you have it folks, motherhood. I found it.. The biggest part that seems to overtake me is overcoming generational curses. Breaking those cycles that only caused buried trauma and fighting through these new found triggers. I would have never known that I have a sensitivity to excessive noise if it weren't for motherhood. Sitting in a room with the tv volume on, a fire truck toy blaring it’s engine and a toddler pretending he's lightening McQueen revving his engine and I’m ready to lose my mind. Would have never known. Especially after years of being in a gymnasium or ballfields. They cause triggers, I get overstimulated and I just feel the need to lock myself in the bathroom. I can’t cause oddly enough my toddler knows how to unlock the door but the thought it always nice when it hits. Nap time and when everyone goes to bed is my most favorite times of the day. Sweet peaceful silence. Only hearing what I want to hear at the volume I want to hear it. I wish I could do me time in the mornings but I am still very much a night owl. I stay up later than anyone ever should while battling motherhood but I am just not built for mornings. However, tonight I am tired and ready for bed a lot sooner than the usual. So I’ll end it with this. As I come off as bitching about motherhood please know this. I wouldn’t change it for the world. It gave me my purpose in this life. it gave me a great light to hold on too. To keep pushing through these days. I would have never imagined my life the way it is now. I didn’t see a life past high school honestly. But every day is a victory if I can wake up and get to sleep without crawling back down my dark hole of despair.

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manicdragondreamgirl · 4 years ago

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I haven’t had chemistry since like 2008, and I’m also an idiot who likes to make my friends upset, so I rated the periodic table in order to tilt my friends:

Hydrogen - this is like your childhood friend who has always been with you more or less and always will be down to get a drink and chill even tho you haven’t spoken in years. Solid bro imo 7.5/10

Helium - always down for a good time, even if probably created Alvin and the Chipmunks which in some places is considered a war crime. 4/10

Lithium - Gives me bitchy vibes and is flammable as fuck if I remember. Skinny bitch with an attitude 3/10

Beryllium - idk this sounds like a sailor moon villain lol for that it can have a 6/10

Boron - more like BORONG amirite ha ha wait no seriously I have no idea lol 5/10 clean neutral rating

Carbon - *screaming* 2/10 I will not be taking questions

Nitrogen - cool cool cool tight tight tight 9/10 Nitrogen just is the cool hot chick you wish you were

Oxygen - kid who takes up all the glory for the group project even tho you did all the work, 4/10 for natural charisma

Fluorine - lol what are you knockoff chlorine lmfao bitch 3/10 reminds me of the dentist

Neon - I can vibe with this boy for his contributions to signs which cause my eyes to scream 8/10 modernized Art Deco thanks you

Sodium - 10/10 this is me and I won’t be taking questions next element

Magnesium - magnesium is a close relative of magnificent and therefore I think the case is closed folks 9/10

Aluminum - 10/10 for providing a home to my Diet Coke addiction I’d be dead without you

Silicon - 6.9/10 :smirk:

Phosphorous - This has a very soundly name and it’s welcome to do that but idk, not a fan, seems like he’d be smelly, 2/10

Sulfur - 1/10 pretty sure that dog farts are purely comprised of this and as such if I was leaving negative ratings I would

Chlorine - 7.8/10 for being in pools so we could swim without brain eating amoeba in the south you a champ

Argon - he seems like a nerd jk this guy has a good color 9/10 for just being himself

Potassium - I hate bananas and this word gives me the physical sensation of biting into one but only by thinking of abstract letters and making them into something which we can nutrientise from bananas and to me that shit is bananas, b a n a n a s — 3/10 for making me sing hollaback girl thru adhd word association

Calcium - hm my brain went to mega milk so you get a 2/10 today bud I don’t make the rules

Scandium - pretty sure this is fake lol what’s next faxdium, e-Mailite and copinium? 5/10

Titanium - this song’s a banger and also is the only thing that lets me wear earrings 10/10

Vanadium - if your erection lasts for longer than like idk it’s supposed to then don’t take vanadium wait what do you mean it’s not an ED treatment 4/10

Chromium - decent bloke shame the browser eats all your memory 5/10

Manganese - if a weeb tries to tell me how to pronounce mayonnaise one more time... 1/10

Iron - excellent tool against the fey, in your blood, what a bro, 10/10 this bitch slaps

Cobalt - has a powerful energy; I respect him. 8/10

Nickel - if I had a nickel for every time someone made this joke lol 5/10 he’s doing his best

Copper - taste bad 3/10

Zinc - isn’t that the dude in the green tunic and white tights who saves premcess Lelda or something lol 7/10 those games are good

Gallium - seems like a prick 4/10

Germanium - sounds like a child pronouncing geraniums which are superior 3/10

Arsenic - bad vibes coach 1/10

Selenium - isn’t this just sailor moon lol 10/10 love this bitch

Bromine - farmine wherever you aremine - 9/10 I love a good bro

Krypton - he’s okay I guess 5/10

Rubidium - yet another Steven universe villain who will be redeemed I imagine 4/10 seems a bit dull

Strontium - I feel nothing when I see this lad’s name and that seems like a shame 1/10 I don’t like it

Yttrium - this is an atrium in Yharnam, or something 8/10 would love to sit in one and make contact with higher beings

Zirconium - oh wait THIS is the sailor moon villain from the dead moon circus! 9/10 I enjoyed that arc

Niobium - seems sassy, I like that in an element 7/10

Molybdenum - I hate this one, rancid. 1/10 for making me have flashbacks to difficult Ancient Greek vocabulary there is no fucking way that sound combination is anything but Beta and Delta borking and then Latin being like oh imma steal that

Technetium - 6/10 decent name but seems a bit forced

Ruthenium - 5/10 kindly old lady element I guess lol

Rhodium - 10/10 this ain’t my first rhodium babee this lad has good vibes what a name what a king

Palladium - 10/10 for making me think of paladins

Silver - 12/10 I’m breaking the rules for this silver is the best it is so cool and also it is the other best tool for dealing with supernatural creatures when iron has failed you highly suggest Even if I am extremely allergic to it going into my ears...wait hold on

Cadmium - 2/10 sounds like a total douche

Indium - 8/10, i just think it’s independent and neat

Tin - 10/10 good ear sounds when involving rain and roof shapes and automatically reminds me of Nora Jones’s come away with me album which is also 10/10

Antimony - 7/10 decent protagonist good name all around seems rad

Tellurium - tell ur mom what? That’s so early 2010s league of legends humor bro 2.5/10

Iodine - strikes fear in my soul from having it poured on my wounds but this is why I have more pain tolerance than god 5.3/10

Xenon - I think this is a declension of Xena warrior princess which is a win in my eyes, 8/10

Caesium - kind of has a cunty Latin name, 4.5/10

Barium - yeah boss, bury’im! 7.5/10 I love a good mobster gag

Lanthanum - A bit pretentious on the Tolkien spectrum sorry bud 3/10 sounds like you’d be the dickwad elf everyone hates

Cerium - 6.5/10 I like this one, gives me a clean vibe

Praseodymium - the fuck who sneezed all their alphabet soup onto the paperwork and called it an element Christ we can’t keep doing this 1.5/10

Neodymium - oh my god what did I just say 1/10

Promethium - thank Christ we’re back to greek 9/10 Prometheus was a Chad I could get behind

Samarium - 5/10 gives me boring wizard vibes

Europium - 4.5/10 don’t rename opium chrissake can’t take these nerds anywhere

Gadolinium - 5/10 it’s a starship knockoff but it’s trying to be bold with the G sound

Terbium - 2/10 I don’t vibe with this one

Dysprosium - sounds like an antidepressant that has a lot of shitty side effects 3/10

Holmium - sounds like someone anxious asking their beloved to hold them 8/10 I like hurt/comfort fics

Erbium - you can’t just describe something as herby you daft bastard 2/10

Thulium - sounds like a spell I like it 8.5/10

Ytterbium - macguffin in a shite sci-fi show that gets highly overrated because BBC produced it and superwholock stans emerge and go utterly feral 1/10

Lutetium - bards are an element I agree 10/10

Hafnium - sounds like a river (my dog) sound and has a cute vibe, I’d offer it head pats 7/10

Tantalum - noooo you can’t be sad yuor so sexe haha 6.9/10 tantalizing

Tungsten - 10/10 this is a lad with history

Rhenium - 5.5/10 it’s ok

Osmium - 4/10 I wasn’t a big wizard of oz fan

Iridium - 9/10 sounds like iridescent and that’s in my top 10 favorite words and concepts

Platinum - 10/10 best Pokémon game

Gold - 7.9/10 all that glitters and all but it’s still pretty on some people, silver is better tho

Mercury - yikes 8/10 so it doesn’t kill me

Thallium - sounds like the brother character in a ps4 exclusive western rpg that oddly falls under the radar in terms of reviews and gets shafted at awards for no reason 7/10 I’ll support you tho

Lead - 2/10 that’s gonna be a no from me dawg pretty sure I still have lead in my hands from stabbing myself with my mechanical pencils

Bismuth - 6/10 sounds good in mouth and reminds me of biscuits for some reason, I’ll take it

Polonium - to thine own self be true so stop trying to act like the arts don’t influence science jk pretty sure this is named for Poland but hey that’s where we get the Witcher so you get a pass 6/10

Astatine - 1/10 I don’t even know what you are

Radon - 7/10 this motherfucker knows his shit and how to party, rad is right

Francium - I bring you francium...and I bring you myrdurdium... 7/10 for a good vine

Radium - killed the video star probably 9/10 I can get behind her

Actinium - as opposed to passtinium I prefer actinium in the voice of writing 8/10

Thorium - overrated Norse god 5/10 because lightning is still cool

Protactinum - sounds like some pretentious condom brand 4/10 wouldn’t do it with a dude who bought these

Uranium - I always thought she was a hot sailor scout 10/10

Neptunium - same for her I knew they weren’t cousins you couldn’t lie to me 4kids 10/10

Plutonium - sounds like a macguffin unfortunately 5/10

Americium - I read this with a pivotal letter missing and nearly died, 7/10 for the laugh

Curium - 10/10 gives me Curie vibes and also reminds me of curiosity which reminds me of—[old yellered before the association could set in]

Berkelium - what I shout when I want Burke (fam dog) to slaughter innocents and raze territories 2/10 world was not meant to know his commands

Californium - 1/10 California is cool with geography but probs could stand to chill with the ego sorry to my friends in Cali

Einsteinium - 6/10 it’s alright but we’re really running out of ideas huh

Fermium - 3/10 this one is porny

Mendelevium - 1/10 my brain didn’t like parsing this and I stand by my earlier statement of running out of good names

Nobelium - 0/10 you didn’t name any noble gases this cowards this gas can’t be a noble oh wait it’s NOBEL I take it back 5/10 seems an alright chap

Lawrencium - fear the old blood my sorry dead hunter’s ass I’ll never get back my life from the hours I spent trying to beat this lava shitting bastard 2/10 for being a boss who eats Taco Bell specifically before being challenged to have fresh lava shit with which to punish you for having the audacity to exist in his space

Rutherfordium - my god what a snob 4.2/10 I respect him a little but only because he sounds like a right lad

Dubnium - DROP THE BASS 10/10

Seoborgium - not sure about this one but it can have a 7/10

Bohrium - as an American English speaker this sound combination makes my pathetic throat become a black hole as I try to properly create the sound of it 10/10 I love when my body becomes a massive void in the universe

Hassium - lazy 2/10

Elements 109-118 can go fuck themselves I hate them all, collective 6.66/10 for their general demonic vibe

#the periodic table #made by an idiot #it’s me your manic dragon dream girl #long post

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smokeybrandreviews · 5 years ago

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Heartless

I’ve seen some of the new Doctor Who and it’s kind of terrible. Once, when i was younger, I’d be on the edge of my seat whenever i tuned into this smart, snarky, surprisingly well executed indie-like show. I adored the first few series of the revival run. Eccelston was a decent Doctor but the show took off once David Tennant got the role. 10 is my favorite Doc of all time, no disrespect to Matt Smith or Tom Baker but, for me, it’s 10 all the way. He had the best stories, the best development, the best pathos. He was written brilliantly and i adored every second of it. And that’s the rub; 10 was WRITTEN beautifully. There was creativity and passion and love in his stories. All of that was driven by Russell T. Davies, a brilliant creator in his own right. This cat was the driving force behind shows like Queer As Folk and The Grand. He had a way to ground his storied in reality by focusing on the characters and their motivation. For Davies, the devil was in the detail and his almost auteur sense of showrunning made sure of that. I understand why Eccelston left after one series. Davies wasn’t budging on his vision and Eccelston, being the same way in front of the screen, woulld, invariably, do nothing but clash. It was sad to see him go but we got Tennant in tow, so it wasn’t all bad. I was born in the 80s so, until the revival started, my Doctor Who was Paul McGann. It’s a shame he didn’t get a fair shake. I think he could have been incredibly special in the role. Unfortunate. Eventually, Tennant left, like Eccelestson, but on different terms. Cats had to pry David off the set, he loved the character so much. In comes Matt Smith, all young and gang, instantly warming our hearts to his cool ass bow ties. Matt Smith brought Steven Moffat with him as showrunner and this is where things took a turn, I think.

Steven Moffat is a huge television person in Britain. He’s produced fantastic shows like the BBC Sherlock, Jekyll, and the current Netflix Dracula run. He is not Russell T. Davies. The difference in their writing is wildly apparent. I’m not saying it’s bad but it’s definitely less. Or so it was after Davies left. See, Davies had a cache of writers on his staff while he ran his portion of Who. Moffat was one of those cats. Davies says he never changed a single script submitted by Moffat, and I’m inclined to agree. When you have strict parents, you know to stay inline and put your best foot forward. When Davies bowed out and Moffat got the big chair? That’s when sh*t started to slide. Don’t get me wrong, the show was still entertaining. Moffat hit the jackpot with Smith and Karen Gillan. Their chemistry was amazing. I, personally, enjoyed the episodes with Rover Song as well, although, that seems to be a point of contention among the fandom. However, You can see cracks begin to form when Gillan left. Now, i absolutely adore Clara Oswin Oswald. The idea of her character was great. The execution, not so great. That becomes a theme in Moffat run. By the time Peter Capaldi got to throw on his sonic shades, Moffat was phoning sh*t in left and right, which is absurd because Capaldi is an excellent actor. How do yo outright waste such talent? There were a few sparks of amazing, a few brilliant episode, and f*cking Missy, ultimately though, Moffat went out with a fart instead of a bang. I think, toward the end there, Moffat was tired of the vehicle that made him a star. This brings my to current Who. The BBC installed one of the worse creatives in their social conscious to helm what could arguably be the biggest shift n Who since the first hiatus; A female Doctor.

Now, i was never one of these cats who cared if the Doctor had a Johnson or a Virginia, they’re immortal interdenominational aliens who regenerate their bodies after death. They can be whatever the f*ck they want to be at that point, except ginger, apparently. o be so butt-hurt that their precious Doctor now has boobies is ridiculous. Be upset about who they cast, bro. We’ve had excellent actors portraying the good Doctor for decades. Is this new one, female or not, going to carry that torch? Do they have the ability to do this legacy justice? That’s what should have been the focus, but it wasn’t, so the BBC was able to slide Chris Chibnall into the big chair. That is the problem with this show. A lot of Chibnall’s catalog seems to be crime serials. I’m intimately familiar with Broadchurch and i can make pretty accurate assumptions about Law and Order: UK. He was head writer fir Torchwood, but that ain’t Doctor Who. That’s a different show with a different feel. He’s actually written some of the worst episodes of Doctor Who in the new run, itself. Who’s favorite episode is f*cking “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship?” And the BBC put THIS guy in charge? No wonder the ratings are in the sh*tter, dude can’t write outside of crime dramas! There is a distinct lack of imagination there and it shows in his filmography. Just because you have a tenuous connection to Doctor Who, doesn’t mean you should be in charge of the entire goddamn show! Which is a shame because Jodie Whittaker is an amazing actor!

Jodie is the saving grace of this terrible run and it’s hard to see that with how drab her scripts have been. This feels a lot like how McGann got burned in the 90s but in a different way. Whittaker’s pedigrees is unassailable. Ma can act. She was great in attack the Block and the best goddamn thing about Broadchurch so stepping into the role of the Doctor; a role historically chock full of freedom for the actor to craft any sort of personality for the character, should have been a dream come true. it wasn’t. Whittaker was almost immediately boxed in by the BBC and Chibnall, forcing this weird, focus grouped, visage all over her. She was immediately expected to impersonate a cross between Smith and Tennant, something that sound awesome on paper but is absolutely impossible to pull off once you have a deep understanding about those two characters. 10 was a Doctor who had to live with the knowledge that he committed genocide on his own people. While he was able to smile and interact with others on a personable level, he kept people at an arms length. He abandoned the woman he loved in another dimension because of this fact. Because he feels he doesn’t deserve to be happy. 11 is the opposite. He forgot the number. He stopped counting. He allows himself to love again, both platonic and romantic. He doesn’t care about the Time War and it’s casualties, not anymore. This juxtaposition is impossible to reconcile and it makes for a sh*tty character with no tone, no agency, and no heart. And that’s the problem with this run of Doctor Who so far; There’s no heart.

It seems Chibnall has a rather short leash with this run of the Doctor. Not that he minds it, dude comes across has kind of an executive bootlicker from what I’ve seen. He’s a creative who isn’t all that creative; a writer who has good ideas and not a lick of understanding about how to execute them properly. I could be wrong, I’m not British, but i am observant and it appears to me that Chibnall is at his best when he’s adapting some sh*t or has a framework to build upon. Crime serials have that.They have a structure to their narrative. It you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all that’s why they’re called “serials”. Even with Torchwood, there was a world to build upon and cats to edit his scripts. Being the showrunner for Doctor Who has none of that. There is no structure. There is no framework. There is just pure possibility, awash in the fantastic. You have to have imagination to be in charge of Who and, as far as i can tell, Chibnall is lacking that aspect. He’s lacking heart. Doctor Who feels like Broadchurch, in more ways than one, and that i absolutely a sin. Who should feel like Who. It would be whimsical and tragic and uplifting and heartfelt and genuine. What Chibnall has created in these two series so far, feels like a product. This sh*t was pressed out, manufactured, with not even an ounce of love and that sucks. How can he be so jaded and he just got the job?

#Doctor Who

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smokeybrand · 5 years ago

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Heartless

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asphaltvalkyrie · 7 years ago

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This Post is a Stupid Post

Worrying about my first day at my new job WHICH IS TOMORROW and quoting something that shows what an old fart I am under the cut.

Tomorrow I start my new job… which is as close to my ideal job as I can probably get at this point in time. Dealing with my favorite domestic animal, close to my home, in a small environment.

Oh my god it’s a mirage….

I had some serious misgivings about my last job, and it ended up breaking me. But how much of that was a self-fulfilling prophecy? I’m really, really good at psyching myself out. I’m trying to have a good feeling about this one, but fuck if my confidence didn’t get stomped into the ground. Also I have a very unhealthy belief that things are never going to turn out the way I think they are, so if I think good things are going to happen, I’ve guaranteed that they won’t happen purely by the act of daring to imagine them.

I’m telling’ y’all its sabotage…

I’m trying to just tell myself that as long as I calm the fuck down and keep a good attitude, I’ll be fine. I have 8 years of experience as a vet assistant, and I really do know what I’m doing, even if the folks at my last job criticized me at every step of the way. I feel my problems at my last job came from the paralytic fear of failure that they instilled in me moreso than my actual shortcomings. Though I will readily admit that I do have shortcomings… And they will be noticed.

‘Cause what you see you might not get …

Oh, and the two hospital cats are a fatty fatty boombalatty tuxedo shorthair and a lion-clipped Persian with a near-permanent blep. The Persian seemed to like me (he enjoyed walking across my notes and then sitting in my lap,) but I’m gonna play it cool with the tuxedo since she seems like one of those “less is more” cats when it comes to affection.

You’ll shut me down with a push of your button…?

Sometimes I think the way I stop making sense when I’m nervous is concrete evidence that long-term stress and/or anxiety causes brain damage. I really, really want this job to work out. If I ever get through the legal stuff surrounding my dad’s death and collect an inheritance, it should be just enough to pay off my car and pay for vet tech classes online while keeping my day job. That’s another story. And there I go most likely jinxing myself. But I can’t see the future.

‘Cause my crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear.

(The italicized text contains out of context lyrics from Sabotage, because it won’t get out of my head right now, I just realized how oddly fitting it is, and keeping busy with stupid shit is one of my coping mechanisms.)

#personal

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terryblount · 5 years ago

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Need For Speed Heat PC Review

I was one of the idiots that actually bought Need for Speed 2015. It was during the first post-release sale, and many reviews seemed happy with it. Meanwhile, I had no idea that I was willingly forking over my hard-earned cash for a total, irrecoverable train wreck congealed into a game. Turns out it was not just the worst racing game I ever played: it was perhaps one of the worst games I owned.

My disgust might’ve been skewed by sentiment since I have been playing this series before I was even a teenager. Still, it was impossible to look past the spectacular mess that Electronic Arts had made with their once great franchise. NFS 2015 was so bug-ridden, so hopelessly off the mark from what it was supposed to be, that I outright refused to play Payback. A wise choice as it turns out.

Now comes Need For Speed Heat as a last chance for Ghost Games to prove they can breathe new life into a series that has been driving on fumes for far too long. Like other franchises trying to make a comeback, Heat is likewise a return to form and makes an earnest attempt to appeal to the golden age of Underground/Most Wanted. Has it been successful? Kind of… maybe. Let me explain.

A Race To Save The Franchise

The Need For Speed franchise is in a really weird place at the moment. Since the first entry in 1994 this series has repeatedly set the bar for how an arcade racing game should play, look and feel. In every game EA somehow struck a perfect balance between making games that look gorgeous enough to feel realistic, yet the driving physics never failed to offer players that addictive rush of raw speed.

The problem is that developers such as Criterion, Codemasters and Turn 10 had been paying close attention to the constituents of this golden formula. It wasn’t long before they not only perfected some of NFS’s original mechanics, but actually made it their own within their respective games.

Great to see old favorites

Furthermore, it didn’t exactly help that every new release in the NFS series seemed to be more lackluster and out of touch than the last since Ghost Games took on the mantle in 2013. Where NFS once held the throne, this well-beloved arcade veteran inevitably found itself being outrun by its competition and with too many disappointments in the portfolio to bank on fans’ nostalgia.

Thankfully, this must have been the wakeup call that both EA and the developers needed for a last chance at a NFS renaissance. If all else, the removal of everything that stood against the identity of this series, and the return of an emphasis on underground tuner culture, shows that Need For Speed Heat is, above all, a game that really wants to please and appease fans.

Feeling the Heat

With Need For Speed Heat Ghost Games have wisely decided to go back to the drawing board and focus on the most important aspect of any racing game. Not the cars, not the driving physics, and definitely not the story. Instead, they started, rather than ended, with the one thing that ties all these building blocks together: The game’s setting.

If the game was in New York, I’d bet they would have called it Skyscraper City. Great place to race in though.

Heat takes place in a tropical city located somewhere on America’s southeast seaboard, which they named Palm City. Hilarious nomenclature aside, a city close to the tropics is a great locale for hosting a racing game. Just like Paul Walker (R.I.P.) and Vin Diesel, the player can once again cannonball down the sun-scorched streets lined with palm trees in their custom tuner specials or thundering muscle cars.

Given the location it is to be expected that the game is equally capable of replacing bright, blue skies with torrential downpours which can actually give the world a totally unique feeling to more fair-weather races. Whereas NFS 2015 was so rain-soaked it was almost depressing, Heat has a pleasantly dynamic weather and time-of-day cycle that actually feels natural.

What chu gonna do, what chu gonna do when they come for you…

The day-night cycle of this tropical racing paradise has a function too. If you’re into Dexter, Bad Boys, or just turned on any television in the 80’s, you must be aware of how the cops in Miami are the ultimate badasses of the American police force. You therefore have an idea what the player is thrown into with races taking place right in the middle of their jurisdiction.

It is here that the player meets lieutenant Mercer and his band of intercepters who have taken it upon themselves to stop anything with rims and a spoiler dead in its tracks. Fortunately, they are willing to turn a blind eye towards racing in the day because these events are legit races and drifting competitions with safety barriers and closed streets in which the player can compete to earn some decent cash.

At night, however, the streets turn into a nocturnal racing haven where players have the opportunity to earn more rep than money which, you guessed it, unlocks all sorts of goodies, cars and upgrades for you to spend said cash on. Except now, the Five-0 will be utterly relentless in hunting your speeding arse down, and the player has to employ some swift driving to shake the black cruisers with flashing lights.

I used to press Alt+F4 when this happened in older games. Was seriously tempted to try it here.

The police chases play a much bigger role in Heat as opposed to the last couple of games. Your car has a set amount of damage that it can endure before being rendered immobile, at which point the player is treated to a big, red BUSTED cut scene. What makes this prospect particularly harrowing is the fact that all that rep you earned over the last hour disappears like a fart in a hurricane upon being caught.

I played the original Most Wanted at least four times, but I have misgivings about the police AI in this game because they are just a tad overpowered. Heat never really clarifies how you are supposed to shake them and my little starter Nissan rarely stood a chance during the early stages of the game.

Their ungodly acceleration and cars seemingly made from Vibranium meant that the cops never quite rose above being an annoyance. The prospect of loosing your rep does add to the tension of chases, but the lack of the ability to fight back properly meant that I was happiest to avoid police encounters altogether. Sorry folks, Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted still holds the crown.

My way or the highway

My grievances with the law aside, I liked how nothing felt out of place, and every aspect of the gameplay feels like it was born from within the game’s world and setting. I could even endure the agonizingly generic plot which involves the player and a new gang of misfits sticking it to the man by starting up their own crew. For what the plot lacks in originality, it at least fits the game’s overall theme.

Pick your character, and start your crew. I am just so glad there are no fist bumps.

As for the actual racing itself, well, Heat is a mixed bag at times due to how Mr Frostbite handles driving physics. Despite Ghost Games doing what they can, this engine just doesn’t feel like it was supposed to be used in racing games. It still feels like a first-person shooter engine that has been jerry-rigged to play like a racing game.

This can get hilarious during character customization!

As such, the cars do occasionally feel a bit strange in term of how they stick to the road. Everything from my Beemer to the turbo charged Corvette had this peculiar, floaty sense of handling in terms how they move over the tarmac. It reminded me of driving a vehicle in an online, multiplayer game close to something from the Battlefield franchise.

Getting those Underground 2 vibes here

Still, the circuit races, the sprints, the tight time trials, and even the drifting make for decent auto sport and I mostly enjoyed crushing the competition. The developers have designed Heat with wide, open tracks that have no intention of breaking the player’s speed, yet the controls are responsive enough to maneuver around those unexpected sharp turns. It works, and it feels good.

The middle of the road

Heat is not exactly a huge graphical upgrade from, say, NFS 2015, or even Payback, and I felt that old Mr Frostbite should have been pushing slightly higher frame rates for what was on my screen. Yet, this is still a good looking car game no matter which way you slice it. The whole world is delightfully reactive to rain, and superb lighting adds up to some beautiful shadows and reflections, particularly at night.

On that note, I was looking forward to the awesome vehicle customisation suite making a return, and it was great to get back into it. It still lacks the freedom and scope of older entries, but it is basically impossible not to put together a bitchin’ ride. The ability to download vehicle wraps from the other players in the community is another big win here, and once again I was blown away by the creativity of some players.

Yeah I totally made thi- OUCH! – okay I downloaded this

Unfortunately, the music selection is still one area that Ghost Games needs to work on. While a few catchy reggaeton and hip-hop tracks keeps things going during the chilled moments of gameplay, the racing lacks that ‘head-banging’ factor that kicks the player’s adrenaline up one notch. Heat would have been the perfect game to benefit from a healthy injection of music with a bit more potency.

The return of Need For Speed?

Given that Need For Speed Heat finds itself at the end of a fifteen-year-old legacy, it is really difficult to review this game in isolation. From a purely objective perspective, this was most of what I could want from flashy, fast-paced, arcade racer in market that was suspiciously anemic this year. This game has been built around tried and trusted themes in its genre, and it reaps the benefits.

You can choose every time you leave the garage

On the other, Heat plays it a little too safe at times in its effort to appease fans, and probably EA’s stockholders. While I understand that Ghost Games could all but afford another flop, their palpable fear of pushing boundaries makes the gameplay feel formulaic. While this is a good racing game, it feels like many others I have played, and Heat might have a hard time standing out in public memory.

At the end of the day, Heat is definitely a sign that Need For Speed is back on track, even if the game lacks its own identity. If anything, its very existence feels like a small victory. Despite throwing all the weight of their corporate greed behind their golden boy franchise, this game serves as a harsh reminder to EA that gamers are always willing to spend on what they like.

No cringeworthy cutscenes

Nice control scheme

Great setting

Shared community content

Car selection

Not always online

Police still suck

A bit formulaic

PC Optimisation

Difficulty spikes

PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an XBox One controller

The post Need For Speed Heat PC Review appeared first on DSOGaming.

Need For Speed Heat PC Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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walkthroughfox · 7 years ago

Text

/r/Gaming Game of the Year Awards 2017 - Results

Welcome to /r/Gaming's Game of the Year awards!

Disclaimer: Terrible humor below. This is a popularity contest for those who voted, not a super big deal! The best "Other" category is not always the top answer either.

Biggest Letdown of 2017:

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Star Wars: Battlefront 2 5,519 47.3% #2 Mass Effect Andomeda 2,655 22.8% #3 Destiny 2 1,839 15.8%

How do you get everyone to hate a movie franchise that has a large portion of their franchise indebted to games as well? Lock nearly all progression off behind loot crates which can also be purchased. Damnit EA.

"Other" choice award:

still can't buy gf :(

also

you

... thanks

/r/Gaming's biggest controversy

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Star Wars: Battlefront 2 8,484 72.5% #2 Net Neutrality 2,217 18.9% #3 Mass Effect: Andromeda facial animations 361 3.1%

Early on, EA is running away with the most rewards. Probably not the way they wanted to though..

"Other" choice award:

This terrible poll

You're the one taking it!

"Early Access Done Right" Award

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 PlayerUnknown's: Battlegrounds 3,587 34.7% #2 Fornite 3,113 30.2% #3 Divinity: Original Sin II 2,609 25.3%

The 1v1 battle between games that pride themselves in a one against all free-for-all; how oddly poetic. PUBG walks away one shot away from death, with this one by only a few hundred votes.

"Other" choice award:

The Witcher 3

ಠ_ಠ

Best Debut Indie Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Cuphead 7,880 73.5% #2 Hollow Knight 1,765 16.5% #3 Slime Rancher 464 4.3%

While Golf Story and Hollow Knight were some of this year's best indie games, Cuphead walks away with this one in stunning fashion.

"Other" choice award:

Doki Doki Liturature Club

You all really made me aware of the mistake I made in forgetting this title.

Best Independent Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Cuphead 6,079 57.2% #2 Hollow Knight 1,438 13.5% #3 Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice 1,339 12.6%

I mean, I almost didn't ask this or the last question because I just assumed at this point it would win.

"Other" choice award:

Why is there a trout under the TV Adam? Is this some kind of joke? A cry for help? What am I to make of this? What are you doing? Put down that knife. PUT DOWN THAT KNIFE, ADAM!

https://i.imgur.com/LvSxuKQ.jpg

Most Anticipated

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Red Dead Redemption II 4,261 38.1% #2 The Last of Us Part II 2,855 25.5% #3 Monster Hunter: World 1,878 16.8%

Hear me out. 3 protagonists. A Union solider, a Confederate solider, and a Native American. They have to work together to find a ton of gold somewhere. They aren't friends and are constantly at each other's throats. The game ends with a three-way Mexican Standoff where the outcome is determined by the player.

"Other" choice award:

Every game

That's the spirit.

Best Esports Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Overwatch 3,569 33% #2 Rocket League 2,630 24.3% #3 League of Legends 1,687 15.6%

"Other" choice award:

Rainbow Six: Siege

Wouldn't have won outright, but your voice and opinion should definitely be noted. Rainbow Six: Siege is a community favorite and has stuck around a lot longer than most of us probably thought. Kudos to Ubisoft on this one.

Best Multiplayer

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds 4,338 40.3% #2 Fortnite 1,856 17.2% #3 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 1,499 13.9%

Looks like we've got ourselves some buttery roasted chicken. I might head over to KFC after I'm finished writing this. /r/HailCorporate

"Other" choice award:

The Witcher 3

I've actually seen this voted for in almost every category now, regardless if it even fits. I have a feeling someone went through this entire thing while wearing the Witcher medallion around his neck, "Yessss, my preciuous."

Best Sports/Racing Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Forza Motorspot 7 2,550 29.3% #2 Fifa 18 1,387 16% #3 Project Cars 2 1,213 14%

Even with it's turbulent release, Forza raced to the front of the pack early with the poll position, and held the lead throughout the race.

"Other" choice award:

The Witcher 3

Forgot about the horse racing bits.

Best Strategy Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 XCOM 2: War of the Chosen 3,166 33.2% #2 Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle 2,842 29.8% #3 Total War: Warhammer II 2,035 21.3%

I'm just going to leave my personal feelings on the game (Love the series btw)

http://i.qkme.me/3qykrl.jpg

"Other" choice award:

They are Billions

Steampunk survival RTS. Gotta love it.

Best Family Game The Mario Showdown Award

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Super Mario Odyssey 4,849 46.5% #2 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 4,129 39.6% #3 N/A N/A %

I debated calling it "The Nintendo Game of the Year", but held back since Splatoon (The third place winner) wasn't really even close. In the race between the world's two favorite Mario games, the winner is.. Nintendo!

"Other" choice award:

Hunniepop

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Best Fighting Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Injustice 2 3,808 40.8% #2 Tekken 7 2,200 23.6% #3 ARMS 1,295 13.9%

Guess it really wasn't an ARMS race, was it? HA. Haha.. Sorry I did that joke such Injustice

"Other" choice award:

the one where the guy hits the other guy

Yeah, me too.

Best Role Playing Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Persona 5 2,163 20.7% #2 Divinity: Original Sin 2 2,142 20.5% #3 South Park: The Fractured But Whole 1,986 19%

We were really spoiled this year weren't we? Not every RPG lover will like all of this, but Persona 5 and Divinity proved to be legendary sequels. Then you could kick back and laugh at fart jokes all day on South Park. A deservedly close race. Even NieR was NieR the top (I'll stop soon, I promise).

"Other" choice award:

Horizon Zero Dawn

While very light on the RPG elements, for the number of votes you folks placed it's worthy of being mentioned. Again, I reiterate, we were spoiled this year.

Best Action/Adventure Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 4,779 42.9% #2 Horizon Zero Dawn 2,565 23% #3 Super Mario Odyssey 1,294 11.6%

After coming two points away from tying one of it's predecessors for the highest metacritic score of all-time, Breath of the Wild deservedly sits in the number one spot. While Mario also tied Breath of the Wild in terms of meta score, it seems users agree it's their pick of the two.

"Other" choice award:

NieR Automata

From Video Gamer, "NieR: Automata has more creativity and self-awareness in its little finger than most games have for their entire run time. Don’t miss this because it’s sandwiched between other, bigger games."

Best Action Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Cuphead 3,634 34.7% #2 Wolfenstein II 3,124 29.8% #3 Nioh 1,411 13.5%

Our winner was just a Cup-a-head when it came to the vote totals. A slim 500 votes.

"Other" choice award:

Your mother was the best action I got all year.

Best VR/AR Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Resident Evil 7: Biohazard 3,939 43.4% #2 Superhot VR 2,939 32.4% #3 Star Trek: Bridge Crew 1,351 14.9%

Resident Evil 7 was one of the SUPER HOT games of the SUPER HOT. SUPER HOT. SUPERHOT. SUPERHOT. SUPERHOT SUPERHOTSUPERHOTSUPERHOTSUPERHOT.

"Other" choice award:

Skyrim

That's a SUPERHOT thing to say.

Best Handheld Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Metroid: Samus Returns 3,428 40.4% #2 Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia 1,914 22.6% #3 Monster Hunter Stories 1,824 21.5%

Game Informer said it best, "This might be Samus’ first 2D adventure in more than a dozen years, but it’s a great reminder of why we fell in love with the franchise in the first place."

"Other" choice award:

Pokémon Ultra Moon/Sun

Wins with about 20 votes because I'm dumb and forgot to put it in here.. Also, there was the obligatory "Corey in the House".

Best Mobile Game

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Fire Emblem Heroes 2,963 33.4% #2 Super Mario Run 2,726 30.7% #3 Monument Valley 2 1,798 20.3%

Nintendo went all out for mobile this year. Excuse me, Nintendo Game Software.

"Other" choice award:

Skyrim

Soon you'll be able to play it on a refrigerator.

Best Shooter

Rank Game Votes Percentage #1 Playerunknown's Battlegrounds 2,625 24.2% #2 Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus 2,193 20.2% #3 Fortnite: Battle Royale 1,070 9.9%

You all made the wrong pick. The other moderators forced me to put this in, but everyone knows this game is only played with pans.

"Other" choice award:

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Opens other options, "I swear, if I see one vote for Witche... SON OF A #####!"

MORE IN THE FIRST TOP LEVEL COMMENT

Love game walkthroughs? Bookmark WalkthroughFox.Com as it's about to rain walkthroughs.

#gaming

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itsrainingboyz2men · 8 years ago

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92 Facts

Tagged by no one, I’ve just been gone for so long I thought it’d be fun

Rules: Write 92 truths about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged.

What was your…

Last drink: mango flavored sway sparking water Last phone call: my grandma Last text message: texted taylor @rapunzelstyles “duh” Last song you listened to: something by sam cooke, most likely Last time you cried: yesterday when I found out my ac’s gonna cost $1k to fix

In the past year, have you…

Dated someone twice: just the once Been cheated on: nope Kissed someone and regretted it: not in the past year lmao Lost someone special: uh? only if you count close friendships dissolving unintentionally Been depressed: on and off, yes Made a new friend: yes, if work-friends count Fallen out of love: nope Laughed until you cried: absolutely Met someone who changed you: I’d say so, yeah Found out who your true friends are: ehh? kinda yeah Kissed anyone on your followers/following: nope How many people from your Tumblr you know irl: at least three, maybe more? Do you want to change your name: not really What time did you wake up today: 9am What were you doing at midnight last night: lmao I was sleepin’ Name something you can’t wait for: can’t wait to see Dunkirk in theaters like 3x, can’t wait until Boy gets home from work, can’t wait until Seyit and Şura get their shit together What is the one thing you wish you could change about your life: I would have never stopped writing in college; I used to write all the time and since I stopped several years ago, it feels impossible to get back into it What are you listening to right now: my fan + the Kurt Seyit ve Şura themesong What’s getting on your nerves right now: everything about my dumbass car

About me…

Nicknames: emmy, em, emmeline, carol Relationship: in a long-term serious Thing with Boy (for just about 2 years now?) Zodiac sign: leo Pronouns: she/her Favorite TV shows: oh god. um, game of thrones, jericho, kurt seyit ve şura, gravity falls, the musketeers, txf, b99, all of the star treks ??? there’s more but that’s all for now, folks School: went to 11 different ones before it was over with; have my b.a. in english and history Hair colour: currently fuscia and dark cobalt blue Long or short hair: it’s fairly long Do I have a crush on someone: yah and I sleep next to him each night but I also hear him fart and stuff so it’s not all wonderful What do you like about yourself: I’m pretty resourceful

Firsts…

First surgery ever: uhh I had my wisdom teeth out when I was 18 First piercing: ears at 6 months old (thanks mom) First sport you joined: **forty second fart noise** First vacation: galveston First pair of trainers/sneakers: lmao who knows? I know the first pair I bought myself were those vans skate shoes that were super cool in 2006

Right now…

Eating: nothing; had some red pepper hummus and pretzels last tho Drinking: still working on that mango sway Listening to: this is taking forever so now I’m listening to janis joplin Waiting for: Boy to get home from work Wanting kids: def not right now, maybe at some point? maybe not? Career: still wanna edit, but for now I’m just enjoying my paychecks and insurance

Romantic stuff…

Lips or eyes: not gonna choose Hugs or kisses: both are nice, kisses are the nicest Shorter or taller: typically prefer that they’re taller, but I don’t mind a lil bit shorter Older or younger: i used to really be into older dudes but tbh I don’t really care anymore, as long as it’s not too far off either way and we’re at the same place mentally Sensitive or loud: i mean... Boy is Definitely Sensitive and he can Definitely be Loud as well so Hook-up or relationship: relationship, for sure Troublemaker or hesitant: lil bit of a troublemaker; I’m risk-averse and hesitate enough for the both of us

Have you ever…

Kissed a stranger: yah Drank hard liquor: yah Lost glasses or contacts: only temporarily, I’ve always found my glasses Been arrested: not technically, but I’ve been questioned Turned someone down: uh yes, in the words of the great john mulaney “in terms of instant relief, cancelling plans is like heroin” Cried when someone died: of course Fallen for a friend: that’s how I got into this disgustingly cute situation I’m in now

Do you believe…

In yourself: some days Miracles: yes and no? not in the typical understanding, but great coincidences/timing can happen for sure Love at first sight: not really, no - love is too complicated for that Santa Claus: nah, thanks for that reality check @mom In kissing on the first date: do what feels right, y’all

I don’t know hardly any of y’all anymore, so I guess I tag whoever wants to do it

#about me #god it's been close to 3 years since I've been active on this damn site #everything is unfamiliar

0 notes

adambstingus · 8 years ago

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5 True Stories That Put Every Horror Movie To Shame

Show a group of people a randomly picked news article, and three personality types will emerge. Some ask themselves: “How does this affect me?” Others query: “What can I learn from this?” And then there’s a third group, which rarely wears pants and only wants to know: “What kind of horror movie would this be?” I’m firmly in that last group, and judging by how you clicked on this article, I’m guessing that so are you. So come — let’s grab a bunch of truly creepy news stories and give those stupid, rational types a sample of what the inside of our collective head looks like.

Boats Full Of Corpses Keep Washing Up In Japan

There are many horror plots you’d associate with Japan: creepy ghost girls, giant monsters, the lingering farts of long-gone otakus still haunting their apartment complexes. You wouldn’t necessarily include the classic “ghost ship” story in that list … which is why Japan, being Japan, has taken that trope and cranked it up to 11.

Instead of the traditional version where a ship is found with its crew mysteriously missing (and may or may not make its finders disappear as well, thanks to the vengeful sea ghosts haunting it), the country has opted for a real-life version where mysterious boats full of decomposing and mutilated corpses keep washing up on the country’s shores. That’s insane. Even the most visceral of ghost ship-themed horror movies tend to start with an empty ship, singular. Here, we have a whole bunch, turning up with some alarming regularity, and complete with a ton of well-worn corpses to bring some extra gore to the tale. Is … is this going to be a zombie situation somewhere down the line? Is this how the whole “undead pirate” thing from Pirates Of The Caribbean would really play out?

In the interest of accurate reporting, it should be mentioned that one of the boats has been connected to a unit of North Korea’s army, along with Kim Jong-un’s apparent insistence on fishing as a source of food and foreign income. So the leading boring theory is that these are North Korean ships, risking literal life and limb in order to catch a mackerel or six for the Great Leader.

Wait, hold on. That’s … actually even more terrifying than a dark saltwater god stealing fishermen’s faces or whatever. Imagine that your entire lot in life is sailing notoriously stormy and awful seas in a barely equipped vessel, only for your crew to face the unspeakable horrors of the ocean. Maybe things get so bad that you end up with a Donner Party situation. Finally, after the inevitable gory climax, you wash up in a foreign land, where your badly decomposed mortal remains are collected and cremated by stoic Japanese coast guards who have at this point seen way too much of this shit to give a damn.

Around Act Two of that story, having your soul eaten by a horde of ravenous ocean witches would probably be a welcome respite.

A Company Had A Secret Nuclear Reactor For Decades

Let’s say you’re a resident of Rochester, New York. You’re just minding your own business, pretending your city has famous people who are not Ryan Lochte and Kristen Wiig, when one day, your neighborhood is full of dudes in hazmat suits. Because a company next door had a goddamned secret nuclear reactor in their basement. But what kind of real-life Umbrella Corporation would go and pull a stunt like that … ?

… K-Kodak? The photography company?

What the fuck?

shurik/Pixabay Who knew a Kodak moment has a half-life of 24,110 years?

It’s hard for a corporate entity to seem sympathetic, but Kodak — a company most notorious for manufacturing film — is probably as close as it comes in an era where everyone has a camera in their cell phone. Finding out a firm like that has been gleefully playing with Fallout tech all along is like discovering that your sweet grandpa’s house has a secret dungeon for a 16-foot fuck doll constructed entirely out of rotting ham. Still, Kodak totally had a nuclear reactor. It was called “californium neutron flux multiplier,” and they started messing around with it in 1974. The company is quick to mention that the reactor was just a relatively small one, they were operating it remotely behind two feet of concrete, and they only used it for non-nefarious purposes such as testing chemicals for impurities. They might even point out that they themselves were, in fact, the ones who revealed that they had one in the first place.

To all that I say: Poppycock.

You know what kind of company just abruptly up and goes, “Hey, guys, did we ever tell you the story of this doom machine we’ve had in our basement for decades? We didn’t? Well, how about that, ha-ha!”? One that’s doing damage control, that’s what. I can imagine around least a dozen reasons for Kodak needing an unsanctioned, rarely mentioned nuclear reactor that was suddenly decommissioned in collaboration with the government in 2007. None of those reasons include the words “making photography shit better,” and absolutely all of them include the term “super mutant.”

I’m calling it: They were totally running a nuclear-themed supervillain plot on the side, and something happened in 2007. Maybe their scientists finally managed to create a film that could capture future events, and were driven to homicidal insanity when every image persistently featured forests of flaming skeletons where trees should be. Or maybe, just maybe, they finally managed to recreate my favorite Masters Of The Universe failure Fearless Photog, who proceeded to tear through the facility like the Demogorgon in Stranger Things.

Mattel If nothing else, he’d take found-footage movies to another level.

Family Flees Their Dream House Because Of A Mysterious “Watcher”

The “mysterious stalker in the shadows” trope is present in roughly 95 percent of all horror movies, but in real life, that particular plot device can usually be solved with a call to police, a restraining order, or a swift dropkick right in the dick.

Which makes it all the more intriguing that in 2015, a creepy entity known as “The Watcher” actually managed to stalk a family out of their New Jersey home. And wait, it gets better — said home happened to look like this:

There’s a reason our villain was called the Watcher and not, say, the Melon Baller Eyeball Collector — as befits the majesty of his preferred stalking grounds, he was all about psychological terror. The name of his particular game was threatening letters. And although that could technically put him in a “disgruntled dude who lost the bidding war” or “guy who really hates neighbors” category, he pushed his way into horror movie territory with his … peculiar methods. Here are some choice quotes from his messages:

“The windows and doors allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who I am? I am the Watcher.”

“Have they found out what is in the walls yet? In time they will.”

Or, in reference to the family’s children:

“I am pleased to know your names now, and the name of the young blood you have brought to me.”

Hahahahaha! That’s awesome … ly, uh, awful for the family, that is. The letters kept coming, and as they included apt “young blood” references and hints that the writer actually did keep uncomfortably close tabs on the house and its renovations, the family was too afraid to make the house their home. In fact, they never dared to properly move in.

What really makes this one for me is that as a horror movie, it’s clearly a sequel. Not only does the family heavily insinuate that the previous owners who sold the house to them were already all too aware of The Watcher, the Watcher himself started his campaign of terror (a mere three days after they bought the house in 2014) with a statement that his grandfather and father had watched the house before him, and it now fell on him to “wait for its second coming.”

A real creepy, haunted-looking mansion where every owner is stalked by generations of unknown, hostile entities? Say that sentence out loud three times, and Wes Craven’s ghost will appear to high five you, because you just got yourself a horror franchise.

A Family Finds The Walls Of Their House Are Filled With Animal Carcasses

The Watcher may or may not have been hurling empty threats about “things in the walls,” but in Auburn, MA, one villain damn well delivered … a good 70-80 years in advance.

In 2011, the Bretzius family bought a house. They were thorough in what they were looking for. They had it inspected, looked for radon, the whole nine yards. Everything went well, and they moved in … which is when the dead animals started coming out of the walls.

In 2012, the family discovered to their horror that the walls were full of dead animals, spices, and assorted trinkets, all wrapped up in newspapers from 1930s and 1940s. Intrigued by the what-the-fuckedness of it all, they sent dozens of the carcasses and other finds to experts, who concluded that they likely had something to do with pow-wowing, a peculiar form of Amish folk magic where tricks like this were used to “heal” ailments.

Personally, I call bullshit. It’s one thing to perform a little ceremony for health, like sacrificing a goat whenever you pass through a doorway for the first time (you guys do that too, right?). Stuffing all your walls full of death and spices is the work of a serial killer who wants to show the devil who the boss really is. With that logic, and in the context of Pennsylvania Dutch magic being at play here, I’m forced to assume that the house is haunted by buckriders — demons who ride flying goats from Satan’s flock. Have those guys ever featured in a horror movie? They’re about to!

Still, before the spirits of Bokkenrijders inevitably rise and possess them, the residents of the house are a good example of how haunted houses really screw up a person’s life. Although they are on record for having been adequately “shocked, horrified, and disgusted” when they first found the terror-spell ingredients hiding in their walls, they are more concerned with the fact that this has forced them to do a buttload of expensive renovation their insurance company wants to hear nothing about, and the mold and terrifying smell of the animals has tainted the whole house. That, friend, is the true, mundane yet long-term, horror you’ll face the next time your ceiling starts weeping ectoplasm.

Man Arrested For Smuggling Roasted Black-Magic Fetuses

Wait, what?

I’m … That’s … What?

The Telegraph SIX?

Gold leaf. Jesus.

Look, creepy babies are generally a pretty safe course for any horror movie worth its salt. But it’s one thing to go full Rosemary’s Baby, and completely another to roast fetuses, cover them in gold, and waltz off to the airport with a bunch in your luggage while attempting to whistle innocuously. That’s not the plot of a horror movie — that’s what gets you kicked out of the villain treehouse for creeping out Pennywise The Clown. Even the fact that the guy probably didn’t personally make the horror babies like a good, old-fashioned maniac doesn’t help matters; instead, he bought them from someone else for $6,000 and intended to sell them for profit as black-magic good-luck charms known as kuman thong.

Gilded. Roasted. Fetus. Black. Magic. Good luck charms. That someone out there is actively manufacturing for sale.

You know what? Fuck it. I’m out. I hope you’re proud of yourself, fetus guy. You can’t be spun into a horror movie, because you already are something way, way creepier. In other circumstances, I might say that you won, but I think we can agree that we all lost something precious today. Now, who’s hogging the brain bleach?

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

The proliferation of beer pong and craft beer may have you think that we’re living in one of the peak times to get drunk, but humans have been getting famously hammered for millennia. Like a frat house’s lawn after a kegger, history is littered with world changing events that were secretly powered by booze. The inaugural games of the Roman Coliseum, the drafting of the US Constitution and the Russian Revolution were all capped off by major parties that most attendees probably regretted in the morning.

Join Jack O’Brien and Cracked staffers Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt, Michael Swaim, plus comedian Blake Wexler for a retelling of history’s biggest moments you didn’t realize everyone was drunk for.

Get your tickets here:

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/06/23/5-true-stories-that-put-every-horror-movie-to-shame/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/162144044077

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samanthasroberts · 8 years ago

Text

5 True Stories That Put Every Horror Movie To Shame

Boats Full Of Corpses Keep Washing Up In Japan

Around Act Two of that story, having your soul eaten by a horde of ravenous ocean witches would probably be a welcome respite.

A Company Had A Secret Nuclear Reactor For Decades

… K-Kodak? The photography company?

What the fuck?

shurik/Pixabay Who knew a Kodak moment has a half-life of 24,110 years?

To all that I say: Poppycock.

Mattel If nothing else, he’d take found-footage movies to another level.

Family Flees Their Dream House Because Of A Mysterious “Watcher”

“The windows and doors allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who I am? I am the Watcher.”

“Have they found out what is in the walls yet? In time they will.”

Or, in reference to the family’s children:

“I am pleased to know your names now, and the name of the young blood you have brought to me.”

A Family Finds The Walls Of Their House Are Filled With Animal Carcasses

The Watcher may or may not have been hurling empty threats about “things in the walls,” but in Auburn, MA, one villain damn well delivered … a good 70-80 years in advance.

Man Arrested For Smuggling Roasted Black-Magic Fetuses

Wait, what?

I’m … That’s … What?

The Telegraph SIX?

Gold leaf. Jesus.

Gilded. Roasted. Fetus. Black. Magic. Good luck charms. That someone out there is actively manufacturing for sale.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

Get your tickets here:

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/06/23/5-true-stories-that-put-every-horror-movie-to-shame/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/06/23/5-true-stories-that-put-every-horror-movie-to-shame/

0 notes

allofbeercom · 8 years ago

Text

5 True Stories That Put Every Horror Movie To Shame

Boats Full Of Corpses Keep Washing Up In Japan

Around Act Two of that story, having your soul eaten by a horde of ravenous ocean witches would probably be a welcome respite.

A Company Had A Secret Nuclear Reactor For Decades

… K-Kodak? The photography company?

What the fuck?

shurik/Pixabay Who knew a Kodak moment has a half-life of 24,110 years?

To all that I say: Poppycock.

Mattel If nothing else, he’d take found-footage movies to another level.

Family Flees Their Dream House Because Of A Mysterious “Watcher”

“The windows and doors allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who I am? I am the Watcher.”

“Have they found out what is in the walls yet? In time they will.”

Or, in reference to the family’s children:

“I am pleased to know your names now, and the name of the young blood you have brought to me.”

A Family Finds The Walls Of Their House Are Filled With Animal Carcasses

The Watcher may or may not have been hurling empty threats about “things in the walls,” but in Auburn, MA, one villain damn well delivered … a good 70-80 years in advance.

Man Arrested For Smuggling Roasted Black-Magic Fetuses

Wait, what?

I’m … That’s … What?

The Telegraph SIX?

Gold leaf. Jesus.

Gilded. Roasted. Fetus. Black. Magic. Good luck charms. That someone out there is actively manufacturing for sale.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

Get your tickets here:

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/06/23/5-true-stories-that-put-every-horror-movie-to-shame/

0 notes

viralhottopics · 8 years ago

Text

6 Insane Ways Movies Are Trying To Be Authentic

A great artist knows that the most important details are the ones their audience might not necessarily notice — like the soft clouds in the background of the Mona Lisa, or the surprisingly detailed scribblings in John Doe’s notebook in Se7en, or the recipe for The Antidote that I’ve been hiding in my articles for the past few years. (“Antidote for what?” you might be asking. Don’t worry. All will become clear soon.) This is especially true of movies, that often hide the weirdest and most interesting work in the places nobody bothered to check. For example…

Everything In Zootopia Is Moving All The Time

What most people don’t realize about animated movies is that most of the frame isn’t actually animated. There’s usually a single static background with a few animated cells on top of them — this is clear in low-budget TV cartoons, where the moving frames tend to have a slightly different color from the immobile background, but it’s more cleverly hidden in big-budget Disney movies because of that aforementioned big budget. The reason they don’t animate the entire frame is, of course, because that would be insanely fucking time-consuming. It’s way easier to have one still picture while Batman or Scooby-Doo conduct their slapstick antics on an entirely different layer.

Unless you’re making Zootopia, in which case — for the first time in Disney history — absolutely everything is moving. And by “everything” I mean, in fact, “all the things.” Every shadow shimmers. Every car sputters. Every strand of hair twitches and wafts in the wind. All 30,000 leaves on that tree are moving, thanks to technology developed just for this movie.

Part of the reason this is so crazy is, as made clear in the first paragraph of this entry, it’s completely unneeded. As humans, we’re pretty dumb, and aren’t likely to notice that maybe that bush back there doesn’t have an ant crawling on it. But Disney had to push the boundaries, just like they always have, to create a living, breathing, utterly convincing world that is so magical and wondrous that it never even had to get around to explaining what the hell the predators eat in this universe. A fox can’t live on blueberries, guys.

John Carpenter Hinted Who The Thing Was With Eye Light

The Thing is a movie about a shape-shifting alien who infiltrates a team of rugged, hairy, stern men. The interstellar beast picks them off one by one, feasting on their sweet, succulent, deeply heterosexual juices, until only the manliest — Kurt Russell and Keith David — are left alive. One of the nerdiest film debates in modern pop culture is about the order in which this happens — The “thing” is indistinguishable from a human once it takes that human’s form, so a lot of the tension comes down to figuring out who can be saved and who needs to be consumed through cleansing fire. It’s sorta like being out to dinner with a bunch of your friends and one of them keeps farting.

Director John Carpenter specifically shot the movie so it’s unclear in what order who gets infected, and whether Russell or David are infected at the end. But it turns out there’s one detail that Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey kept secret until recently, and it has to do with eye light.

“Eye light” is a camera trick that puts a slight gleam in an actor’s eye, giving them slightly more life. You can see it here, with Keith David’s character Childs:

And here with Kurt Russell’s MacReady:

But not with David Clennon’s Palmer — who, in this scene, is revealed to be The Thing.

…Which, again, was intentional. That’s supposed to be the hint. Now, does this completely change the movie? Spoiler alert: Nope. I rewatched it, specifically watching for eye light stuff, and I didn’t notice any great foreshadowing or crazy hints. But it’s quite possible I’m just not smart enough to put the whole picture together. Since this is a whole new tool available for our collective movie-watching, feel free to post your wacky eye-light-based theories on my Facebook wall, after you’ve rewatched the movie of course.

Gangs Of New York Has Period-Appropriate Dialects

People love to offer their opinions on whether movie accents are “good” or “bad” because people love to pretend that they’re smarter than they are. A lot of folks ripped apart Charlie Hunnam’s accent in Pacific Rim because he talks like a mush-mouthed victim of a botched neural surgery, apparently not realizing that his real accent also sounds fake (also also that movie is perfect, and none shall dare criticize it before me). Everyone talks weird, and it all sounds insane, so can anyone really say what a “good” accent even sounds like?

Of course, and Tim Monich, the dialect coach for Gangs Of New York, managed to do the impossible by researching dead dialects — that is, ways of speaking that no living person had ever heard with their own ears — and teaching it to modern actors. “But how do you research a dead dialect?” Easily! Well, no, not easily at all — with incredible difficulty, in fact: Monich studied old poems and newspaper articles that were mocking the dialects to try and deduce the way people of the era spoke. Then he forced Liam Neeson and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk that way.

At one point, Neeson’s character called a bunch of his enemies “nancy boys,” only for Monich to clarify that the correct term for the era and location was “Miss Nancies.” Which was a huge relief for all the 19th-century New York hooligans in the audience, who totally would’ve noticed that sort of thing.

youtube

That set points to something else pretty cool about the film’s development. Those buildings you see in the background? They haven’t existed in over a hundred years, so Scorsese had most of 1860s New York rebuilt from scratch in Rome, because “had most of 1860s New York rebuilt from scratch in Rome” is the kind of predicate you can be the subject of when your name is Martin Scorsese. I’m allowed to make those kinds of stupid grammar jokes when my entry is about dialects, okay?

Anyway, here he is poking around the place, rambling like a crazy old man. The poor camera operator can’t keep track of what he’s even talking about. That is one of my favorite videos in the world. I honestly like it better than Gangs Of New York.

Oh, and speaking of dialects…

Arrival Makes Way More Sense Than It Needs To

Arrival is a sci-fi movie about figuring out an alien language and, spoiler alert, using it to see the future (it’s also one of the best movies I’ve ever seen oh my god go watch it so good). And since I brought it up, I know what you’re thinking: “Wow — did they actually invent a language that I can use to see the future?”

No. But they did do absolutely everything else. You know those weird circles that the aliens use to communicate? Yeah, that functions as a consistent language. You could learn to read and write in it just from watching the movie enough, if you’re that kind of person.

Then, they wrote an actual computer program that could interpret the language they made up. The stuff you see in the movie where a computer analyzes the symbol? That’s not just random, science-looking animations. That’s a program, written just for the movie, interpretting a language that was also written exactly for the movie, in real time. Science consultant Stephen Wolfram even came up with a scientific explanation for how the aliens travel. It involves quantum! All this despite the fact that 99 percent of audiences would’ve been fine with the explanation I just gave (which, if you’ve forgotten, is just the words “It involves quantum!”).

But you see, it really seems like this movie was made for that one percent of geniuses in the theater. There’s even a part later in the movie when Amy Adams is standing in front of a white board covered in physics jargon:

All those equations are relevant to the problems her and Jeremy Renner’s characters are facing in the movie right then, but — here’s the kicker — that wasn’t what was on the board when they shot it. Due to an oversight during shooting, the whiteboard was accidentally covered in high-school level physics, so they had Wolfram come up with a bunch of equations to use and then super-imposed them into that scene with computers (a process made especially difficult because of Amy Adams’ hair).

All so that every physicist who saw this movie could finally enjoy a sci-fi flick without ripping their own hair out in frustration.

The Witch: All The Materials And Music Are Authentic For the Time Period

If you haven’t seen The Witch, stop reading this article and go watch it right now. (Then come back and finish reading. I need your click-dollars to finance my underground squirrel-fighting ring.) If you’ve seen The Witch, then oh my god, how good was it? Sorry for fanboying out for this entire column. I promise I’ll get myself under control for next month.

Part of the reason people love The Witch is because it’s so beautiful. Well, there’s a reason for that: Like Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, it was shot almost entirely with natural light. Which, for indoor scenes, meant they had to use as many candles as possible.

I say “almost” entirely because of one scene involving a crow, which had to use a flickering lightbulb, since fire would’ve scared the crow. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not going to spoil the scene with the crow. If you have seen the movie, then there is not a sliver of a chance in hell that you’ve forgotten the scene with the crow.

On top of that, all the music was recorded with period-appropriate instruments, using period-appropriate techniques. Which is not something anybody would ever notice but certainly helps the movie feel unique. Even the story itself — and lots of the dialogue — is based on real accounts of witchcraft and possession from 17th-century Massachusetts. When Caleb is in the throes of a fever/possession, his delirious ranting is word-for-word the rantings of 17th-century children who were, allegedly, possessed by Satan. Making this officially the most metal movie anyone has ever seen. Also I’m going to move on because 400-year-old dead children aren’t very funny.

Meryl Streep Can Do Everything

Meryl Streep is so good that it’s become a punchline. People genuinely worry that she’s too burdened by how good she is, and that people expect perfection from her and take it for granted when she delivers. And after some research, I’ve figured out her secret: She’s not actually pretending. Like Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa, she’s doing all this shit for real.

The first, and most famous, example is her portrayal of Sophie in Sophie’s Choice. First, she learned German. Then she learned Polish. Then she learned to speak German in a Polish accent. Roger Ebert (whose opinions on film are unassailable) described it as “the only accent [he has] ever wanted to hug,” and I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds pretty positive?

But okay, accents are whatever — we’ve seen lots of accents in this article already. Fine! How about the freaking violin? That’s the hardest instrument to learn, according to people who argue about this sort of thing on the internet, and she learned to play in a matter of weeks.

Most recently, for the movie Ricki And The Flash, Streep learned to play guitar… from Neil Young, because that’s who teaches you guitar when you’re Meryl Streep. Jesus, between Streep and Scorsese, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that rich people just seem to have more opportunities to do cool stuff than people like me. Maybe I should become rich? Anyway, Streep then practiced with a band in a bar for months. By the time she actually got around to shooting the damn movie, she had ripped her fingers open on the strings.

Alright, enough gushing about cool stuff I like. Let’s end this article in the best way any article could ever end: with a video of Neil Young and Meryl Streep jamming out on a stratocaster that probably cost more than my fucking car.

youtube

Let’s be real. I drive a Civic.

JF Sargent is a senior editor for Cracked and the only writer you can trust. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.