I legit think 1984 is a good book for the wrong reasons. It's not a scathing critique of the communist party of Russia but rather the panopticon police state late stage neoliberal USA became.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within.
I like this passage.
I think that Orwell set out to make a critique of Stalinism, but because he literally never set foot in the Soviet Union he ended up making a critique of Britain, or Anglo society generally. It's similar to how criticism of China today is always some kind of projection.
I read a fact recently that 1984 is the book people most often lie about having read (edit: it apparently was a br*tish survey so may not reflect every Anglo). That lead me to actually pick up the book, and I was struck by how easily the comparisons could be made to contemporary American society. The problem is that, as evident by the original fact, any discussion of the book is dominated by a group of people who never read it and instead evoke it like a magical spell to prove that communism is bad.
I try not to be an Orwell defender, because fuck that guy, but his books are better/more radical than a lot of people give him credit for. In 1984 and Animal Farm the revolution was explicitly good and improved the quality of life for everyone, but thats usually shadowed by his critiques against "Stalinism" and cults of personality and police states.
Also Homage to Catelonia was one of my radicalizing texts, there was a fantastic awakening of leftist zeal in me when as he described the new revolutionary societies that were forming, its all very cool even if some of it is supposedly made up.
I love energy drinks. I'm going to get all the cancer from them and I don't give a shit.
"Those cause kidney stones, you know."
:yes-chad: Then I will be awake and alert while pissing gravel
I got my kidney stone from "healthy" vitamins
Fuck you vitamin C, all my organs hate vitamin C
Rick and Morty, just don't treat it like some high-brow entertainment
black licorice is great and everyone who disagrees has a limited palate
There's nothing limited about not liking the taste of a trash heap in the middle of July.
you pretty much have to grow up with it, it is often mixed with chocolate here.
Star Trek: Enterprise
Those cheap sugar wafer cookies that only old people eat
Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures
heck yeah, I had to get vanilla this time the store was out of strawberry. The chocolate ones are a little sus imo.
Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures
Oh shit I remember loving this game as a kid, even though I couldn't figure what to do at all and just ended up hang gliding to my death over and over.
Star Trek: Enterprise
As a fanatical Voyager fan, you have my solidarity.
Anime, even modern anime, at least on this site.
A lot of it is reactionary and I bail if I spot pedo-bait, but I like low-stakes trash shows about a dude in a fantasy world with video game powers.
Yo you should set aside four hundred hours of your life and play a game called Kenshi.
I think funnily enough the most unwanted song is more popular than its counterpart, mainly because the guys are actually talented musicians and put effort into making an interesting song out of nonsense, compared to how uninteresting a song will be no matter the effort if you just put every generically popular thing into it.
I want the alternate timeline where Del Toro did Hobbit.
I'm not really a massive movie guy, but I have noticed that a lot of people criticize movies that are based on books when they leave out large amounts of material from the books, as you're missing out a lot of what made the books good, which is understandable. I've also noticed that a lot of people criticize movies that end up doing a Part 1 and Part 2 thing - Deathly Hallows, Mockingjay, etc, for being cash-grabs, which is understandable. But these seem like criticisms that are pulling in opposite directions. It seems very difficult to do a book adaptation that doesn't piss off a substantial number of people from at least one of these camps. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the only one that I know of that actually managed to do it great, and so, a lot of people like it.
In the case of the Hobbit, it goes too far into the latter category on all accounts - it's really a Part 1, 2, and 3 for one book, and pretty obviously seeks to emulate the Lord of the Rings success case by trying to copy it, and fails. But I like it for really digging deep into the whole book. It's almost the perfect example of what happens if you actually seriously try to transcribe a whole book into a movie or set of movies. And then it has to add even more (most of it superfluous, like the stupid fucking romance between elf lady and dwarf man, and gandalf and galadriel) in order to not make it too boring to actually watch.
So I guess I like the trilogy because of that reason. To me, it's a perfectly enjoyable if not objectively good set of movies that are almost certainly just cashgrabs seeking to exploit your nostalgia for some actual good movies using a ton of CGI. And it represents the madness of trying to go too far in one direction. And a lot of people dislike them, but setting all the troubled movie production that fucked over New Zealand's actor union and cashgrabbyness aside, I think they're a perfectly fine way to waste a day. They're fun movies, y'know? They're simultaneously a bunch of action scenes sprinkled with decent humour and obligatory serious emotional scenes, and an unintentional statement about the hubris of film production studios.
I like vanilla ice cream, reading intentionally convoluted writing, and being interviewed.
I didn't start really appreciating vanilla as a flavor until my 20s. Growing up I either saw desserts as "chocolate" or "not chocolate, dont care"
that's interesting, I've been craving chocolate over other deserts more as I get older.
yes, I've been called basic for liking it many times. Some people also associate it with poverty, so they think I shouldn't like or want it.
My only experience with olives used to be the black ones on pizza. Gross. Kalamata olives though are delicious.
Lot of people don't really care about their soap, but I go apeshit over nice handmade soaps. Also, cologne samples are really nice. Not really things that people hate, just things I'm into that nobody seems to give a shit about.
I do watch a lot of those Investigation Discovery paranormal shows like "The Woods Are Haunted" and "A Ghost Ruined My Life." Those are good fun.
