Yet Another Take On The Last of Us II That Nobody Asked For

The problem with the game is simple: I like one character, and he dies early on.  Beyond him, I just don't like any of these people.  And forcing me to play  half the game as a character I actively hate was a chore.

The whole thing was too long.

Nice music though, and pretty good production values.

Also, please don't make me kill dogs in the future.

Update: God, how could I forget the cringe-iest sex scene ever?

"I wouldn't trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'"

I feel the way about Dave Grohl that I do about Sting -- why listen to his later stuff when you can pump Nirvana (or The Police) straight into your ear-holes?

My music snobbery aside, this piece on (not) opening up schools this fall is excellent and even a pretty wonderful love letter to his mom, a public school teacher:

"Every teacher has a 'plan.' Don’t they deserve one too? My mother had to come up with three separate lesson plans every single day (public speaking, AP English, and English 10), because that’s what teachers do: They provide you with the necessary tools to survive. Who is providing them with a set of their own? America’s teachers are caught in a trap, set by indecisive and conflicting sectors of failed leadership that have never been in their position and can’t possibly relate to the unique challenges they face. I wouldn’t trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' if they had never sat behind a drum set, so why should any teacher trust Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to tell them how to teach, without her ever having sat at the head of a class? (Maybe she should switch to the drums.) Until you have spent countless days in a classroom devoting your time and energy to becoming that lifelong mentor to generations of otherwise disengaged students, you must listen to those who have. Teachers want to teach, not die, and we should support and protect them like the national treasures that they are. For without them, where would we be?

May we show these tireless altruists a little altruism in return. I would for my favorite teacher. Wouldn’t you?"

Amen.  If anything, Grohl is pulling his punches.  We have no plan for opening schools this fall beyond "try not to get sick and die."  It's pure Trumpism.  And it's going to get children and adults killed.

Celebrated Summer

Albert Ayler, "Sun Watcher"

I just taught my last adult class of the semester and handed in my final (hardcopy) grades for my college classes.

I have no right to complain.  I went from teaching five college classes to one, basically, via video recording.  In my defense, I did have to learn two new programs from scratch (one for distance learning, one for distance evaluation) with little to no help from my boss.  I think I also mentioned some drama over the "we won't have a grading curve this semester but then again we will" situation.

But it's over.  And it's strange to think I'll be in Korea for a full August for the first time in over a decade.

I just got some new books though, so I guess vacation is off to a decent enough start.

Maybe I need another Project Herzog in my life.

LOL Hermann Goring

Remember when @DouthatNYT assured us that Trump was an incompetent fascist and not, ya know, a fascist fascist?#Portland #PortlandProtest

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 21, 2020

Speaking Of The New Normal

It's obvious America can't survive another four years of Trump, and while I'll be cheerfully knocking down some adult beverages if Biden pulls off a win come this November and Trump and Barr don't try to enact a coup d'etat (I'll offer you 1:3 odds on the former, 3:1 on the latter) we're still fucked as a nation.  Unemployment will likely be around 20 percent.  Homelessness will be rampant.  A solid 30 percent of Americans will be acting as an embittered fifth column (led by FOX News).  And given that Trump basically wasted half-a-year on COVID containment, we'll be no closer to defeating the virus than we are now.  Schools are going to open way too early this fall, and we're going to be hearing about dead kids and teachers in about six to eight weeks.

Simple, really.

That said, to get meta, it's high time we accept the simple fact that America is a failed state.  It's high time we start talking about America as a failed state.  Hell, I'd bet most Trump voters would agree with me, before or after a Biden victory.  They're a hell of a lot angrier than I am, and I'm pretty angry that my once pretty-good-not-perfect country is now a dumpster fire of white resentment.

It's just strange I guess.  As an 80s kid (born in 1974) there was no doubt as a nation we'd suffer ups and downs (Reagan, Bush II, and Trump as the downs), but to actually arrive at this point is hard to fathom.  It's to realize the experiment in human freedom, or the possibility thereof, is over, and the results have been less than salubrious.

I guess the next question is whether or not we should just accept what's obvious or get to work putting the unworkable back together.

Come this fall we get a slim shot at maintaining The Union, or we allow the Republican Party to continue to exist in any meaningful way beyond a forever-minority party.

Love and Death In A Time of COVID

Weddings and funerals are always important, and in more traditional societies like South Korea especially so.  So what to do in an era of continued social distancing, where churches are some of the worst hot-spots for the spread of coronavirus?  Koreans are experimenting with distance celebration and mourning, with some degree of success:

"'We weren’t planning on a big wedding ceremony, but we were going to hold two separate gatherings — one for my family and their acquaintances and one for our friends,' Jung told the Korea JoongAng Daily. 

But after infections swung upwards, we canceled the family ceremony since seniors are at a higher risk [of infection]. We decided to go ahead with the one for our friends, but we only invited those whom we felt were closest to us and would be able to truly feel happy [for our marriage]. We left the choice [to attend] entirely up to our guests. The party started in the evening and went late into the night, and we tried to spread people out so that the restaurant didn't get overly crowded.'

Since July, offline ceremonies are slowly resuming, but industry insiders say outdoor venues have become a lot more popular, probably because it is easier to practice social distancing at those venues and guests feel more comfortable.   

'Outdoor weddings are in vogue since the outbreak,' said Lee Yu-na, Manager of Sales & Marketing at Banyan Tree Club & Spa Seoul in central Seoul. 'Smaller weddings were already quite popular but due to the pandemic, more and more people are looking into having such weddings. Just two years ago, the average number of guests per wedding was about 170 to 200, but now it has fallen to about 100 to 150. We often also hold weddings with less than than 50 guests.'”

The good news is that if South Korea can make these kinds of adjustments, there's no reason other countries can't as well.

Twiddling My Thumbs

I'm in my office for the next few days basically waiting for students to call me if they have a complaint about their final grade.  (Those were entered into the school computer system last week.)

It's a strange custom, no doubt, and it doesn't help that with distance learning we basically went up to August with our semester schedule.

It's hot and humid, grossly so.

I'm reading articles about how America probably won't go "back to normal" until 2022 due to Cheeto Hitler's utter incompetence.

In a best-case scenario where Joe Biden wins with enough down-ticket momentum in the House and Senate to make it impossible for Trump to start a literal coup headed by Barr, he still inherits a pandemic and a historically shitty economy.

There's your little hint of sunshine for today.

"a Usain Bolt-type performance"

Are we approaching the limits of competitive eating?  Possibly!:

"The theoretical ceiling has been set at 84 hotdogs in 10 minutes. The current world record, set by Joey 'Jaws' Chestnut earlier this month, stands at 75.

James Smoliga, a sports medicine specialist at High Point University in North Carolina who authored the research, described 84 hotdogs as 'the maximum possible limit for a Usain Bolt-type performance'.

The analysis is based on 39 years of historical data from Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, an annual spectacle of gluttony held on Coney Island, New York, combined with the latest sports science theory, which uses mathematical modelling to project trends in performance."

This is the second time I've done competitive eating with my adult students.  They were pretty unimpressed the first time, if not shocked to see so much food wasted.  But I'm so tired from grading, so what the hell.

Yet Another Last of Us II Hot Take Nobody Asked For! (Minor Spoilers)

I'm about four hours in and I'm just so damn bored.  I loved the first game, but remember how much I enjoyed it for the story first and the stealth / scrounge game-play a distant second.

A trans non-gender-conforming antagonist [ed: but antagonist isn't the right word, is it?]?  Like any character, if they are underdeveloped I just don't care about them.

Granted, I'm a grown-ass man now and I don't play vidya games nearly as much as I used to.  A consequence of this is that I just can't "plow through" games to get to the interesting bits.  Not enough time or energy on my part.

And frankly, Ellie has grown up to be a pretty big asshole.

I'm not sure if I'll finish it.  Then again, I'm off work for August and not going back to America for the first time in over a decade.

And I'm all out of Werner Herzog movies.

"not that kind of person"

A few days ago the mayor of Seoul committed suicide.  His secretary, who has yet to be named, has come forward with her story:

"In one account, the lawyer said Park saw a bruise on the secretary’s knee and said he wanted to make her feel better, before he “laid his lips” on the area.

'He summoned the victim to a bed inside a room in his office,' Kim relayed, 'and physically touched her by asking her to embrace him, and invited her to a secret chat room [on the encrypted messaging app] Telegram to constantly send her promiscuous messages and photos of him in his undergarments.'

Kim claimed that the Seoul Metropolitan Government was aware the victim was in pain because she had described her encounters with Park to her colleagues and asked for help. The office, however, did nothing to save her and kept denying Park’s unsolicited sexual advances, saying he’s 'not that kind of person,' the lawyer continued.

 The secretary asked to be transferred to another team, but the request was not acted upon promptly, Kim implied. The lawyer said her first consultation with the secretary took place on May 12."

We all have a long way to go to crush and stamp out workplace sexual harassment, and sexism in general.  But I just choke on the line "not that kind of person."

US Exceptionalism

Florida just reported more CV outbreaks in one day than South Korea has, ever.

SK population: 50 million

Florida population: 20 million

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 13, 2020