Mister Jack

Okay, I'll try that the next time I talk to her.

You're preaching to the choir, man. Imagine how frustrating it is for me, someone who has known her for over 30 years now.

Believe me, that's the first thing I told her, but she "doesn't want him to go to prison."

Been a while since I've posted in here and it's kind of a weird coincidence I do it on the same day someone else revives this thread, but screw it. My mother is legally blind and can't handle her own bills or finances, so a few times a month I'll check her bank account and credit cards online to handle that stuff for her. She trusts me to handle that kind of sensitive info. Anyway, the last time I checked her credit card she had 5.,000 dollars of charges on it. This was unusually high for her so I started looking over the transactions. Lo and behold, I find charges in the hundreds of dollars to clothing and shoe stores. One of them was almost 600 dollars. My mother likes to buy clothes and shoes every now and then but she never spends that much. Even if she did, these were stores that heavily cater to African-Americans, which she is most decidedly not. I call her up to get to the bottom of things. Recently she's been paying this local handyman named Steve to work on her yard and her house. Windows, gutters, things like that. As it turns out, she has given this guy her credit card on a few occasions (what the fuck, mom?) because he has to go to hardware stores to buy the things she wants for her yard. Plants, mulch, decorative stones. Things of that nature, and apparently this MOTHER FUCKER has been going on little shopping sprees on the side while he had her card. I tallied up everything that she didn't recognize and it came up to almost THREE THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS. Something about my mother that you need to understand is that she is way, way too trusting and forgiving and people take advantage of her over this a LOT because she is also well off. I wouldn't call her rich, but she lives comfortably. Against my wishes she has paid for rent, medication, car repairs, and court fees for people whose lives are a fucking mess and who are always coming to her begging for handouts. She has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars getting people out of messes they made for themselves and no matter how many times I tell her it's a bad idea she keeps doing it. In fact, she also paid over a thousand dollars a while back to help fix Steve's truck so he could keep working. Regardless of how foolhardy this may seem to you, that's just the kind of person she is. I don't think it's smart, but it's still incredibly generous and you would think that if you were ever bailed out by this woman you would feel a debt of gratitude to her. WELL HE DIDN'T BECAUSE HE STOLE THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS! After I tallied up everything he fraudulently spent with her card she agreed to confront him about it. If he doesn't pay back what he stole then it'll be time to sue. I don't care what it takes. This guy is gonna get nailed to the fucking cross.

I think it's safe to say there's no way EA would be doing this if their last Star Wars game had done as well on Origin as they were hoping.

God damn is there some shiny trophy at the end of the race to the bottom this year that I don't know about? Between Bethesda, Activision-Blizzard, EA, GameFreak, 2K, and Ubisoft, everyone is shitting in the bed harder than an AVGN video.

So I bet some of you have heard that Bethesda is trying to launch a paid membership for Fallout 76 that's 100 dollars a year called Fallout First? Well as it turned out, they didn't think to register the online domain before announcing it... http://www.falloutfirst.com/

Bad Taste Yeah, Peter Jackson's first movie ever. I ended up seeing this with a movie streaming group as part of a Halloween event. It was supposed to be Braindead, which I've already seen, but audio problems caused the switch to this film instead. You can tell it was made with pretty much no budget. The cast is extremely small for a sci-fi action movie about an alien invasion and I highly suspect that Peter just rounded up his buddies to act in this movie for him, but there's something I find really charming about that. Before he got Lord of the Rings money, Peter was just a guy who wanted to make a movie and he did the best he could with what he had and you know what? It's not half bad. It's extremely cheesy, but once the action scenes get going it's strangely compelling. Peter Jackson's completely insane self-insert character is such a blast to watch that it makes up for any flaws the movie has. Of course, this is an early Peter Jackson movie so that means absolute buckets of blood and gore (where 90% of the budget probably went) which is admittedly a guilty pleasure for me in these schlocky kinds of films. If you have a high tolerance for gore and you're the kind of guy who likes cheesy B-movies, this isn't a bad way to kill 90 minutes. Watching it with a group was a pretty fun time.

Don't laugh. I can't afford a gym membership but I want to lose some weight.

Bone is getting a Netflix show! I am ecstatic about this. Bone is probably my favorite graphic novel series of all time but it's struggled to ever get a proper adaptation for close to 30 years now. They tried to make a movie but the executives wanted to "kiddify" it and fill it with pop stars and other garbage so that never happened. Telltale made the first two volumes into games then never continued. Now it seems like it's finally going to get the adaptation it deserves.

I would actually put Joker in the lower end of good, although I never got around to doing so. A thing I have seen a lot with criticisms of the film is the notion that this Joker doesn't feel like a threat to Batman or that there's no good way to tie it into the DCEU. Even if that's true, I tried to form my opinion based on this film as a standalone movie rather than as the beginning of a franchise. I know that can be hard with how much cinematic universe crap gets shoved down our throats these days, but if you judge the film's based purely on its own merits as a singular movie I think it's pretty decent.

Yeah, nah, fuck that. They expect me to believe that if Blitzchung had come out and said, I dunno, "trans rights now!" or something that they would have penalized him the same? I don't believe that for one minute. Suspending the casters is still a cowardly move when I'm pretty sure they had no idea what the dude was about to say. For god's sake they ducked under the table after he said it. Let's not forget the bootlicking apology their Chinese branch made and the fact that an American team recently did the same thing Blitzchung did and yet they were curiously not punished by Blizzard at all. Oh, and now this is rich. From the looks of it that apology post saying that the decision had nothing to do with China was posted from China.

My god, Iceborne adds so many improvements to Monster Hunter World that I don't know if I could ever go back to playing the vanilla version on another platform. That's not even getting into all the new content. There are QoL improvements in here I never even realized I wanted. Why the hell are actual expansions like this such a rare thing now? It may have cost more but there is way more bang for the buck here than almost any 15-20 dollar DLC chapter I've played in other games.

My third M510 mouse died yesterday. It sucks because the M510 is comfortable and has nice, big buttons on the side but the build quality is total crap. Fortunately I had a warranty on it, which I used to apply the cost to the M720. If you want a wireless mouse with side buttons that isn't 100+ dollars then Logitech is practically the only game in town whether you like it or not. I settled with this one primarily because it's supposed to be rated for ten million clicks. We'll see if that holds true, but for now I do like having an extra invisible button on the left side. I've got it programmed as a middle click for now since clicking scroll wheels can always be a little finicky.

THE HUNT CONTINUES

Aside from Spyro I had also been considering the Crash Team Racing remake when the price dropped but forget that. I also dabbled in Overwatch every now and then and I had played a lot of Diablo 3 with the intention of getting 4 when it came out but no. I may not have a lot but I can honestly say that I stick to my guns when I boycott something. I haven't bought an EA game since Titanfall 2 and I got that for five dollars. Maybe it's only a drop in the bucket but I can still feel good about not compromising my principles. Of course, as gross as microtransactions are, Chinese pandering is still far, far worse.

Can anyone recommend a good wireless mouse? Something that will last for a long time and has at least two extra buttons on the side? I've been using the Logitech M510 for a while now which is frustrating because it's comfortable and works very well for a while but it keeps fucking breaking! I've been through three of these things now and only kept using it because it was always covered by warranty, but I think I need to start looking at alternatives. I'd like to keep it under $100, but I am willing to spend a little more if it means I can get something that doesn't fall apart in a year.

That sounds fucking great. I would love to see Overwatch get banned in China over this if it gets big enough. Even if Blizzard tries to take a half-measure by simply deleting Mei, one of the most popular characters in the game, it would still result in an absolutely enormous scandal. Yes, please. Make Mei into an icon for Hong Kong independence. Make memes into dreams.

So what do you guys make of Activision-Blizzard banning that Hearthstone tournament winner from Hong Kong who called for HK independence during his victory interview? Because if you ask me, it kinda makes me sick. American companies bowing down before Chinese censorship is already a big pet peeve of mine, but most of the time it was just something annoying and minor like removing or altering characters or plot elements in films and video games. This is much more important than that, though. This is about actual oppression of the people of Hong Kong and Blizzard decided to bend the knee for those Chinese dollars. It's so pathetic and cynical and I've pretty much resolved not to buy any more Activision-Blizzard games unless they get their act together, which isn't very fucking likely. I wasn't buying many in the first place, granted. I think the last one I got was the Spyro trilogy? Still, I'm washing my hands of them. Enjoy your Chinese blood money, Blizzard.

Curious about what you mean by this. I just saw it too and I thought it was pretty decent. I didn't love it, but I'm guessing I probably enjoyed it more than you did, even if I agree with some of your other points.

From Tom Holland's Instagram

Final season. I'm glad, actually. Originally the creator said he was going to keep the show going for as long as he had ideas for it, but that always sets off a red flag in my head. The last season went in such a way that I feel like the best thing to do is to wind things down and give it a good ending rather than dragging it out for the sake of it.

Spider-Man is back in the MCU Go back to your lives, people. Nothing more to see.

Ninja Gaiden (NES) Jesus fucking Christ, this is by far the hardest game I've ever beaten in my life, but for the wrong reasons. I've been playing this off and on for half a year on the NES Classic, trying to finally finish it just so I could say I did. The thing about this game is that the first five stages aren't even really all that hard. At least, they weren't for me. Reasonably challenging, yes, but nothing I couldn't handle. Then you get to stage 6 and everything goes to hell. This is the game that forced me to confront the fact that Ninja Gaiden just isn't very well programmed. There are way too enemies who will instantly respawn once you kill them, and they will keep respawning until the end of time. Whenever you get hit you just so happen to get knocked toward the nearest pit regardless of which way you were facing when you got hit. But the thing I absolutely cannot forgive is that if you die even one time to the final boss (who is a mother fucker) on stage 6-4 you get sent back to stage 6-1 even if you still have lives left. They don't even have the courtesy of refilling your health when you enter the boss room! This, by far, is why it took so long for me to beat this damn game. Not only will you probably have to beat stage 6, one of the hardest levels ever made, multiple times, but you need to get all the way to 6-4 with health and preferably items to spare if you want to even stand a chance. This game is crazy stingy with its items too, and naturally if you die a single time you not only lose the items you're carrying but the energy you've collected for your subweapon is chopped in half. Oh, and fuck this jump straight to hell. This might be the hardest platforming jump in all of gaming because that knife thrower and that stupid bird NEVER STOP RESPAWNING. The only way I could consistently get past it--and I probably had to get through it about 30 times--is by glitching the knife thrower off of the screen before making the jump. Even then you still have to kill the bird mid-jump with perfect timing. Beating Ninja Gaiden is a nightmare and if it didn't have unlimited continues I probably wouldn't have been able to beat it for the rest of my life. Sheer perseverance got me through this one and I doubt I'd even be able to repeat it, but at least I can say I've beaten it now.