Destructoid says there will be an English translation of Hobonichi's Iwata-san / Ask Iwata book. I can't wait!!!

Ingredients
Notes ........................ 100000% DV

wow.

Gipsy Kings — Bamboleo

It's a good night for FLAMENCO

fuckin see ya, web site!!!!!

it's so stupid how much of our communication and coordination has been conglomerated into this one bad web site. I believe it's imperative for us to replace this with something(s) else. Otherwise these fuckers are going to keep driving our perception of reality even further off Hell's Cliff! This is not an exaggeration or hyperbole; we live in this current world in no small part due to everybody using facebook to look at pictures of their classmates' summer vacation butt photos in the late 2000s, and as "funny" as that is, it's not been funny for a loooooong time

Five Iron Frenzy — Giants

This song was so scary to me when I heard it in middle school. I didn't understand most of the lyrics. Going back to it and realizing it was about corporate capitalism devouring our livelihoods and liberties was, pretty great!

... I love being excited that media accurately describes our nightmare reality!!!!!!!

not a bad list of high-rotation records from the last few years

everyone believes their own version of the world, and it’s killing us. meanwhile, artists still act like this is an important, subversive act in their work; that failing to say anything is empowering, or provocative, and maybe it is in small doses. but when the dominant form of entertainment is one which refuses to state its values, for fear of alienating the audience, I don’t think it’s very healthy.

on the other hand, the creators of Dark THINK they did this, just because of the ending. but the series hammers its nihilist, deterministic philosophy SO. HARD. throughout, that thinking you’ve created a cleverly-ambiguous story is just… delusional?

Friese: We are big believers in ambivalence. We don't think there's only one answer to a thing. That relates to everything. It's both hopeful and ominous at the same time. In other [projects] we've done before, we don't like to end on a dot. We put a dot, wait a little, and then we put a question mark at the end. It's just a nice nuance with which to end.

Odar: It's really up to the audience to answer it. I have an answer, but it's very personal. You might have an answer, and it's very personal. That's the beauty of storytelling. You will have something very personal toward the story. It's the same with Blade Runner, and how there are still people thinking Harrison Ford is not a replicant; where I'm thinking, "How can you think he's not a replicant?" That's the beauty of that story, that there's a question mark.

I want: the mechanics of a story to remain largely unexplained — the technology, the magic, the maneuvers. Don’t explain every little moment. But I honestly want artists to say what they believe, even if it’s infuriating. because then we can assess its effectiveness, and its merit, without having to dance forever in the ambiguous zone of perpetual commerce.

Dark makes its philosophy clear, and I hate it. But I hate it even more that they think they were being nuanced, and that everybody’s talking about THE PLOT rather than going; “So, what you made was unbearable and empty. After such a compelling start, how did this happen?”

you can leave the particulars ambiguous, but I believe narratives should land in a place of meaning, not meaningless ambivalence. And almost every prominent genre creator operates in the inverse mode: they overexplain the mechanisms, til all the fun is drained from them, and then wants to leave us asking questions about “what really happened” or “what did it all mean?”

It is my crystallizing belief that this mode arises from large-scale commodification. But it’s not the only way!

And yet, as violently as Dark bludgeons the viewer with explanations, people are still going, “Wait WHAAAAAT?” So, maybe, you DO have to suck the life out of the useful ambiguity, while leaving the husk of ambiguity at the end so that no matter what, someone can decide they liked your bullshit waste of time because it’s “up to the viewer to interpret”

get! fucked!!!

My friend Shane said it was like they shit the bed and showed everyone, and I agree completely. The end of the series, after two increasingly-interminable seasons devoid of narrative tension or meaning, told with some of the worst dialogue and ham-handiest editing in recent memory, managed to somehow get Worse and WORSE with every passing minute until the credits rolled.

They set a slow-motion montage of people disintegrating to a discordant cover of “What a Wonderful World,” including a straight-from-fight-club “let’s hold hands while the world burns” shot, and it didn’t mean anything;

they “it was all a dream”ed it, to no end, and it didn’t mean anything;

they made us look at some computer graphics that were BOTH the matrix AND interstellar ON PURPOSE, showed two characters who DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER because they ARE BOTH FROM DIFFERENT WORLDS FROM LIKE AN HOUR AGO look at each other’s child selves through Narnia Time Doors(???? which isn’t a thing at any other point?????) and then learn it was them in their memories AND THEN THEY EVAPORATE BECAUSE THEIR WORLDS DON’T EXIST AND IT DOESN’T MATTER;

they use the WORST biblical Adam & Eve + bullshit German philosophy hodgepodge of symbols to show these two old lovers slash rivals slash aunt and nephew slash they never actually met, sort of reconcile for no reason and it doesn’t matter??????

They said over and over again that it has all happened in an infinite loop and had to be preserved but if the time loop started over catastrophically then there’s LITERALLY NO WAY THEY COULD KNOW THAT BUT IT ALSO DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE THE SHOW ISN’T ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT TRYING TO PROVE HOW SMART SOMEONE WITH A LATE-90S POP CULTURE EDUCATION IS,

BUT THEY AREN’T!!!

IT’S FUCKING STUPID

THIS ISN’T EVEN 10% OF WHAT I CAN CRITICIZE ABOUT THE SHOW, and it doesn’t matter, because no one can hear me, it isn’t my job, and I just have to put it on the mental shelf with every other “I wanted this to be cool and instead I hate how bad entertainment products are, and how I have no role in improving any of them, and it’s also the stupidest thing to be mad about in our backwards world, and all I wanted was to watch an interesting story that other people said was good and instead I have to wonder what’s wrong with everyone, including me.”

Anyway don’t watch it, thanks

hum — desert rambler