Scream Therapy

Jesus fucking Christ I am sick of the American health care system. It can barely even fucking be called a health care system, considering how much it functions as a fucking cartel. The whole fucking thing is driven by greedy, rich shitbag executives and corporate boards, because god fucking forbid anything in America should be based on anything other than capitalism and its principles of helping the rich curb-stomp the non-rich in the name of corporate profits.

We already fucking know better fucking systems exist – people in Canada, England, and France are fully aware of the extent to which American health care is a laughably pathetic sham. We could have health care that didn't suck balls here too, because the few people left in the country who still have functional brains already have plans drawn up to extend Medicare to everyone, which would in turn save American taxpayers $17 trillion over the next ten years.

But heaven fucking forbid we look at any sane plans, because a third of the country is made up of drooling simpletons who don't know any better than to say "thank you" when the fist of right-wing capitalism gets jammed firmly up their rectums – you can identify these people by their red MAGA hats. Meanwhile, another third of the country is completely fucking incapable of telling good ideas apart from ideas that are giant fucking shitastrophes, because their brains have been addled by too many years of running around in circles, flapping their arms, and screaming "BOTH sides are EQUALLY bad!" when one side wants to implement health care actually that does something besides happily fellate the CEOs of health cartels on an hourly basis, and the other side is literally waving swastikas around. Gosh, it's so fucking hard to tell who the fuck to root for!

It's the final third of the country who has any goddamn brain cells left. Or at least it used to be! Now half of this last group has apparently decided that they'd like to get in on that whole "being a hateful dumbass" thing and thinks that the way to fix the fucking planet is to start throwing people in jail just for having a fucking Y-chromosome. Way to focus on the wrong fucking thing, Wokeface McShitforbrains.

So we're down to about 1/6 of the country who has any semblance of an understanding as to what the fuck is going on and what actually needs to be done to fucking fix things. No fucking wonder we're one or two of Mitch McConnell's stupidity hurricanes away from a health care system that consists of people having to be indentured servants to the board members of insurance companies in order to receive a box full of used band-aids and expired aspirin to last them through the year. At which point 2/3 of the country would just fucking shrug and say "Hey, at least it's not socialism!"

Also, we finally painted our house

Pretty happy with THOSE results!

Birthday 2018

(I don't even know what game this is from.)

September ended up a really stressful month in a lot of ways. One of which being that the Kavanaugh nomination prompted a new string of unwelcome reminders of the full extent to which the right wing hates women and the left wing hates men. Seeing seething contempt toward men splashed across editorial pages and expressed blithely, in ways big and small, among liberals I know tends to have the effect of grinding my mental health across the blades of a cheese grater - but I tried to pull myself together enough to have a good birthday this year, and for the most part it worked decently enough.

For the past several years, I've always split my birthday into two weekends - one with friends and one with family. My friends all came over on Saturday the 22nd – Steph surprised me by putting Lego Batman decorations all around the house, China and Ryan got me a small model of the Batmobile from Arkham Knight, Dani got me some high-end Scotch, and Michelle and Ryan got me some Disaronno – the latter two gifts happen to be the ingredients to a Godfather, one of my favorite cocktails.

For dinner, we made pizzas – I grilled steak and hot links to go on a barbecue pizza, and bought gyro meat to make a Greek pizza. We also made a simple pepperoni/jalapeno pizza, and I grilled pineapple to go with the no-bake cookies and lower-calorie key lime pie Steph made me for dessert (the pie in particular was A+++). Then we spent the rest of the night watching the gloriously atrocious Super Mario Bros movie, having way too many drinks, and playing board games.

The following weekend (the 29th), my parents and sister came over, and Dani came back down. One of Steph's gifts to me was that she would run the murder mystery dinner party that she had previously gotten me as a gift (it came in a kit that included everything you need to play). The setup was that the six of us would each play a character in the mystery, and we would eat dinner and follow the game's instructions in order to try to figure out which of us committed the murder in question. I came up with an idea for a dinner that fit the theme of the party ("A Taste for Wine and Murder"). As it turned out, my dad was the murderer and Steph and my mom figured it out correctly. (Our kitten Charlie played the part of the corpse.)

I thought the murder mystery party was a TON of fun (partly because all of our terrible acting skills were on display). I would absolutely be up for doing another one at some point. My parents also got me some money to go toward our new backyard shed, and a 4K Ultra-HD copy of Ready Player One. My mom made oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies (my favorite) and frosted sugar cookies which my sister decorated with drawings that represented different things I like.

I think next year I might be ready to change up the birthday formula a bit. I'm not quite sure how just yet, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

PLEASE STOP SHOOTING LIBERALISM IN THE FOOT

Andrew Sullivan wrote a new article recently, in which a portion was titled "Why Democrats Are Losing Young White Men". It's something that literally every liberal in the country needs to understand right now:

[L]ook at white millennial men. They’ve gone from 48 percent to 37 percent Democratic support. More striking in their case is that they haven’t just moved away from the Democrats, but have now become Republicans. Their support for the GOP in the last two years has gone from 36 percent to 46. Which means that for white men between the ages of 18 and 34, the GOP now has a ten-point lead. It has achieved that swing in the last two years.

We don’t know why this has happened. It may be the economy, lower unemployment, and marginally lower taxes. But that doesn’t explain the yawning and growing gender gap. So here’s a guess: When the Democratic party and its mainstream spokespersons use the term “white male” as an insult, when they describe vast swathes of white men in America as “problematic,” when they call struggling, working-class white men “privileged,” when they ask in their media if it’s okay just to hate men, and white men in particular, maybe white men hear it. Maybe the outright sexism, racism, and misandry that is now regarded as inextricable from progressivism makes the young white men less likely to vote for a party that openly advocates its disdain of them.

A prime example:

I've been trying to sound the alarm bells on this for ages now. The more the SJWs and feminists bury their heads in the sand on this problem, the harder it will be to actually win elections against assholes like Trump.

If you swap the genders and the result is sexist, then it was sexist before you swapped the genders

A webcomic artist I follow on Facebook recently published the following comic:

Hmm. Let's see how that looks from another perspective, shall we?

MY GOD! HOW OUTRAGEOUS!! This comic promotes violence against women! That mother is raising a misogynist! She should be ashamed of herself! I can't believe she supports men abusing women! Her son should be suspended immediately! This is why men end up so terrible! We need to boycott this comic strip NOW!

You don't get to be indignant when people say that feminism is about hating and bashing men, if you then turn around and cheer wildly every time a woman does something terrible or cruel to a man.

E3 2018!

MY TOP 10 GAMES OF E3 2018:

(Click to enlarge)

1) Super Smash Bros Ultimate
My three favorite game franchises of all time are Zelda, Halo, and Smash Bros. This Smash Bros game – the 5th mainline game in the series – contains every single character from every other Smash Bros game up through this point. Every. Single. Character. (Including Solid Snake, from the Metal Gear Solid series – one of my all time favorites who was absent from Smash 4.)

GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME





2) Halo: Infinite
This game (otherwise known as Halo 6) was how Microsoft opened its E3 conference. The crowd went nuts, and for good reason – even if this was just a teaser of a demo of a game engine. (In other words, it didn't show much of anything, other that the ultra-high-end graphics that the next Halo will have.)





3) Unravel Two
The first Unravel game was an indie title (albeit one published by EA) that was unbelievably charming and very pretty to look at. But what took me surprise was how much I enjoyed the platforming gameplay, with swinging mechanics that instantly reminded me of playing the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy on the Super Nintendo.

This game was released almost as soon as it was announced, and I loved the first one so much that I bought this one instantly. (And they added co-op, so two players can play at once!)





4) Forza Horizon 4
The Forza Horizon series is one of my favorite franchises in gaming – it combines pure, unadulterated 'car porn' with objective-based open-world gameplay that, the first time I played it, reminded me of the Tony Hawk games I loved so much back in the Gamecube era. Not to mention that they're some of the best looking games ever created. FH4's biggest new addition to the mix is changing seasons – the game world now transitions between summer/fall/winter/spring, one real-world week at a time (and all four seasons still look gorgeous, in the game's trailer). This is another one that I have zero doubts about picking up later this year.





5) Super Mario Party
It's hard to tell much from the trailer (aside from adding a few gimmicks based on the Switch hardware itself), but it looks like this is a "back to the roots" Mario Party game. The series has had the same niggling problems since its inception: computer turns are too slow, and there's way too much random chance involved. Here's hoping Nintendo addresses some of those sorts of issues in this...er..."reboot". If that's the case, count me in. (It sure does look great in high-def, though.)





6) Doom: Eternal
This is the sequel to 2016's hysterically gory heavy-metal-blaring demon-slaying power trip utopia Doom, rebooting the series into something even more gloriously unapologetic than it had been up to that point. IDK WTF this trailer is meant to show off, but as long as there's more demon-slaughtering set to the background of death metal, I'm pretty much already sold.





7) Gears 5
I have some questions. Who the hell thought it would be okay to change the franchise from "Gears of War" to just "Gears"? Why the hell are we playing as Kate and not Marcus Fenix or his son anymore? Why does Marcus not have a beard anymore, but his son does now?

Questions aside, Gears of War 4 is still my favorite out of all the Gears games (though Gears 2 is a close second). So I have faith in its development team, and I will absolutely give this game a chance. Gears is like Halo: even the "bad" games in the series tend to be a lot better than an lot of other games. But I have questions.





8) Ori and the Will of Wisps
I still haven't gotten around to playing the first one yet, and I'm still excited for this one (admittedly, that's largely because the first Ori game was a critically-acclaimed artistic masterpiece).





9) Tunic
I hadn't seen or heard about this game until this trailer was released, but it's clear that this is an Xbox riff on the classic top-down SNES-style Legend of Zelda games. A pretty blatant riff, if we're being honest – but if you're gonna steal, steal from the best (i.e. Zelda). It sure does look charming as heck.





10) Anthem
This was in my "Top E3 Games 2017" list, too. It's slated to come out in February. Admittedly, I still don't have much interest at all in Destiny-style games. But this one had me sold from the minute everyone started saying "It's basically an Iron Man simulator".

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HONORABLE MENTIONS:

• The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

This is a VERY short (and very FREE) game that was released almost as soon as it was announced. What caught my attention was how much the trailer made it look like an indie film, something that belongs at the Cannes Film Festival, or something like that. And that feeling carries across the rest of the game, as well (which I have already downloaded, played, and beaten twice). I actually love the game quite a bit, even though it's set in the same universe as the Life is Strange games, and I've never played any of those. (A word of warning: this is NOT a kid's game, and if it were a movie, it would almost certainly be rated R.)

• Cyberpunk 2077

From the makers of The Witcher 3, this dystopian-near-future game won IGN's Game of the Show. It does look fantastic – my main concern is that I'll end up not playing it for the same reason I never played The Witcher, which is that I have little desire to sink 100+ hours into a game that doesn't have "Zelda" or "Red Dead" in the title anywhere.

if ( KnotTied(Chris, Steph) ) { Blogging = true; return Blogging; }

Normal blogging will resume soon.

Eventually, I'll write a massive post about the entire wedding, but that probably won't be for awhile as there is a LOT of information and photos to compile and comb through.

Wedding

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Wedding

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