At least the irony isn't lost.

I was going to call this post "Karmar" as in karma, but referencing how British people tend add "r's" to the end of some words, but then I realized that this story is more about comeuppance which is totally different from karma and I'd just be appropriating a cultural concept that doesn't belong to me and it was just irony all the way down. Which brings us to sixteenth century English tapestries.

Pictured: a typical British person, seen here sipping tea
while considering which country he'd like to take over next.

Above: bo-ring.

So, back in September, I braved parking in San Francisco to go see an exhibit about Tudor England at the Legion of Honor. And while there--huh? Why? I don't know, I find it interesting. People develop weird interests as they get older and--don't judge me, at least it's not bird watching. Anyway, one of the tapestries is called Saint Paul Directing the Burning of the Heathen Books because brevity was evidently not valued in English Renaissance tapestry making. 

It does what it says on the tin, and I work in a bookstore and disapprove of violence against books, so I selfied it.

Am I saying that right? "Selfied it?" Anyone know a zoomer?

It's weird how a Florida PTA meeting
made it's way into a 16th century tapestry.

SPDTBOTHB or, "the tapestry" as I think I'll refer to it form here on out, was, along with the rest of the exhibit at the end of its tour and would, unbeknownst to me, return to its owner in Spain for some reason. But then today I was listening to a podcast called Not Just the Tudors--what? I said don't judge me--and the episode was entitled Saving Henry VIII's Lost Tapestry and get this: the titular lost tapestry was the tapestry! You know, SPDTBOTHB? The one I selfied in front of? Wait, that can't be right. 

I'll just leave this closeup of
Henry VIII's codpiece here.

It was commissioned by noted King and sociopath Henry VIII as part of an effort to give him self religious cred, and show up his rival Francis I of France. Evidently they had some kind of weird tapestry collecting thing going. Bro behavior is evidently transhistorical, but whatever, doesn't matter, the point is it's huge (19'x11'), and expensive. It cost two thousand pounds which is like two million dollars in our future money, so it's kind of weird that it, and the other tapestries in the set, just disappeared in 1770. Well, disappeared as in someone took it.

A suitable British institution being one with
sufficient portraits of Queen Elizabeth on hand.

Centuries later in the 1960's, some rando in Barcelona bought it and it's been in private hands ever since. Fortunately someone who knew what they were looking at put it together that this was Henry VIII's lost piece of oneupmanship. The Spanish Government has an anti-export rule that says it can't leave the country, but they're apparently willing to make an exception for "a suitable British institution" that also is willing and able to come up with four million pounds. Yes, of money. Cor blimey, amiright? 

Enter the Auckland Project and their Faith Museum in Bishop Auckland which, I know, I know, in America, if you call something a "faith museum," it conjures images of cavemen riding dinosaurs on their way to hear Jesus's sermon on the Second Amendment. But in Britain it's an actual museum of the history of religion in Britain, and they'd like to put this tapestry on display for all to enjoy rather than see it go up onto some rich person's bathroom wall like Oprah's Klimt. 

I don't care how many top
men are working on it.

And I'm all for it. I might even kick them a few dollars. I'm not English, or religious, and I have no personal connection to this particular tapestry beyond seeing it in an exhibition, but it bothers me whenever I hear of art or artifacts of significant historical or cultural significance just sitting in someone's private collection. It should be in a museum where the public and academics can have access to it. But that sound your hearing? That's the sound of rich and inescapable historical irony. 

The irony of a British museum trying to scrape together enough money to buy a cultural treasure back from a foreign owner. Sure, it's not precisely the same as colonizers helping themselves a nation's grave goods or looting in the name of the British East India Company, but it does feel like a smidge of comeuppance.  

You guys going to think about maybe handing back some of those artifacts
in the British Museum that maybe don't belong to--no? Really? Wow...k...

More like Adsassin's Creed...

Pictured: not the map screen.
Not pictured: the snapping of the
last thread of Ubisoft's credibility.

I mean, I'm shocked but not shocked, you know? By this. By what? By the story at the link, which, since we both know you're not going to read it, I'll sum up: in-game ads. Wait, hang not, that's not new, but what is new is a console game stopping what it's doing--or rather what you're doing--to assault the senses with an advertisement for some other game. In this case, people playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey paused the game to look at the map only to be greeted with an ad for Assassin's Creed Mirage. 

A pharmaceutical ad and not, as one
would think, an ad for a toilet car.

And if you're not a video game player, you're probably like, what's the big deal? And you'd be correct. This hyper-capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in has inculcated the idea that by simply existing in the world we are consenting to be advertised at. Everything comes with ads. Try watching something on YouTube without your video being interrupted--often mid-sentence--by a sufferer of moderate to severe Crohn's or ulcerative colitis and her toilet car.

Green beans, salt, butter, shallots, garlic,
shaved almonds. Done. I just saved you
like a full minute of nonsense vamping.

And the fact that one can usually buy their way out of watching ads suggests that those bombarding us with them know how much we hate them. It's marketing by extortion. Case in point: I made green beans almandine for a Friendsgiving I attended last week, and found myself endlessly scrolling through a meandering and overly-adjective-filled story of the history of the recipe and why the French love green beans. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of the writer's anecdotes about the dish, I hit on the part that tells you how many goddamn shallots you need. And it occurred that this was all padding to maximize the number of ads they could throw in. 

Oh shit, that's exactly what it is...

Basically, what I'm saying is that being advertised at is the worst, and so I'm particularly aggrieved that Ubisoft has set such a dangerous precedent here. Sure, they claimed that this was a technical error and that they were only trying to put ads in the menu screens preceding their games, but I think we all know that this is where this is headed. This was a test balloon to see how strong the outrage would be on Reddit or wherever, and--wait, is Reddit just a free focus group for game companies?

Anyway, it's not whether people like or dislike something ads, it's how much we dislike it. Advertisers are wearing us down. We'd have been outraged thirty years ago if we'd rented a movie from Blockbuster and a Mountain Dew commercial, or whatever we had back then, started playing in the middle of The Lion King, but some streaming services have tiers that allow ads during content, so here we are. The dislike can be fairly strong, so long as it doesn't hit the threshold that makes us cancel a subscription or not buy a game and I'm thinking this was just Ubisoft seeing what they could get away with. 

Look, Ubisoft, we're just trying to forget about the real world for
a little while and murder some hoplites, is that too much to ask?

Today in mountain folk:

You've probably noticed that I'm somewhat biased against PG&E and--huh? You haven't? Because I am and--what's that? That's PG&E? Pacific Gas & Electric? Never heard of them? Lucky you. 

To be clear, my beef is with the higher ups at PG&E and not the workers.
They're great and I very much hope they continue to come fix our power
lines during the frequent--like seriously frequent--power outages. 

Santa Cruz is far too unimportant to
nuke, so here's a New York map.

I may have mentioned previously that I live in Santa Cruz, California. Well that is a lie. I technically live about twenty minutes outside of Santa Cruz, in the mountains. Not because I like living in nature, because I don't. I hate it. But because Santa Cruz is a sleepy beach town with Manhattan-level rent and the only place I can keep my housing costs under 70% of my income is to live outside of Santa Cruz proper. My go to example is a Cold War nuclear blast radius map. If the downtown is ground zero for rent, I live in the slow death by radiation poison zone.

Where I'm going with this is that in the various mountain towns outside Santa Cruz, an aging, and ill-conceived electrical infrastructure means that my power goes out. A lot. The power lines are among the trees which is fine as long as there's never, you know, weather of any kind. Spoiler alert: we get weather.

Pictured: my street, last time there was weather.

Pictured: us, dreaming of that
fancy e-lectricity them city folk have.

For those of us mountain folk, reliable electricity is but a dream. So imagine my chagrin when I read the company has requested and gotten permission for a price increase. The California Public Utilities Commission approved a rate hike of 12.8% to pay for safety measures. Safety measures like burying the power lines that should probably have been buried at literally any point after the 1920's or whenever they were first run up here. 

And, I don't know, maybe I'm just a cheapskate, but I kind of resent having to pay for the electric company's poor planning. The same company and same poor planning that blew up a neighborhood in 2010 and caused several fires over the years, including the Camp Fire in 2018 that killed like eighty people and destroyed hundreds of homes. Maybe instead of passing the costs on to us they could look into cutting executive pay or something? 

"Or, we could, you know, not do that..."

-PG&E execs, seen here smoking 

celebratory cigars which would

 later cause another fire

Today in telling the BBC how to BBC:

Oh dang, did I just figure out why
 the internet is the way it is? 

I don't want to tell the BBC how to--you know? I feel like I've been starting off a lot of these with I don't want to tell blank how to blank but...and now I'm beginning to think that I do want to tell blank how to blank. It's almost like the anonymity of the internet and our culture's recent deemphasis on the value of an informed opinion has emboldened me to sit here typing like I know what opining about when really, I have no basis to be offering any sort of insight on what is clearly a matter for people who know at least--sorry, I was talking about the BBC and Doctor Who. Huh? Well, I was getting to it.

Two shillings to a florin? How did 
these people conquer the world?

Doctor Who is famously incomplete. Back in the 1970's the BBC, the British television studio that produced the series, decided to economize, or cheap out as we say in America. Sorry, that was harsh. In their defense, pre-decimalization money was ludicrous. Anyway, they decided to tape over the masters of TV shows that had already aired. I think this disregard for the ancient American tradition of the rerun was one of the causes of the War of 1812. At least that was the story, according to The Guardian, some of these tapes were simply chucked in the bin. 

Either way, dozens of early Doctor Who episodes were lost or destroyed. Some have been recovered over the subsequent decades both from BBC affiliates in other countries, and from people who taped them off teller. Which is a cute, British way of saying television. But ninety-seven episodes from the first two Doctors Who are lost to the ages never to be found. Except get this: they have been found. I know! It's an emotional roller coaster.

This, but with emotions.

I mean outside of the pledge drive.

Ok, they haven't been found, but according to a film and TV collector called John Franklin, they're just sitting in the personal stashes of fellow collectors who are terrified of reprisal from the BBC. Which, yeah, the BBC? I'm not British, but is the BBC particularly threatening? The people who brought us East Enders and Graham Norton and all those weird puppets who solve crime TV shows from the 1960? That BBC? I suppose the US equivalent would be like living in dread of PBS.

Fine, it's Channel 4 and not BBC, but they
could buy them passes. Look, it's Doctor Who. 

With the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who approaching, Franklin suggests that the BBC should offer the people sitting on these tapes amnesty which, duh? I think is the word? I mean, who even cares at this point? Give them amnesty and life time passes to be in the live studio audience of the Great British Bake Off. Buy them houses. Whatever they want. These folks--assuming Franklin is correct--have to be in their seventies or eighties now if they were rooting through TV studio trash bins back in the early 70's. What's the BBC going to do to them?

Again, I don't know anything about anything, but if this guy's correct and all that stands between nerds and complete Doctor Who Blu-ray boxed sets, why would the BBC--whose short-sightedness caused the problem in the first place--not shower these heroes with riches for saving these episodes from the trash or the degausser or whatever?

Oh, right, because lawyers exists and they spent
quite a lot of money on those ridiculous wigs.

He knows what infallible means, right?

Look, I don't want to tell Catholics how to Catholic, but isn't the Pope infallible? At least according to the rules? I ask because super-conservative, and un-ironically named bishop Joseph Strickland just got his be-cassocked ass fired.

"Clean out your desk, a Swiss guy with a halberd will escort you out."

-Pope Francis, earlier today

Pictured: the Catholic equivalent
of Apple's Infinite Loop.

I'm not Catholic, I don't live in Texas, and I have no wafer in this communion beyond the schadenfreude that comes with seeing a vitriol-filled right-wing nut job gamble with his mitre cap and lose. Strickland was, until today, the bishop for the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, which I think is something like a regional manager? I don't know, see above. Anyway, he'd attracted the attention of the Holy See (corporate HQ), for being rather vocal about his, shall we say, views. Which I think you'll agree, are gross.

"Libs are ruining comedy. Anyone else sick of
the woke agenda? Make 'merica great again!"

-Jesus's famous Rant on the Mount

Catholics are, by and large, pretty evenly spilt politically in the U.S. although the only two Catholic Presidents we've ever had have been Democratic. So when a bishop opens his pious hole about--what? Like pie hole? Oh, settle down...anyway, Strickland got pretty political, attacking marriage equality, spreading anti-vaxxer bullshit, and voicing his support not only for Donald Trump, but the January 6th coup attempt to install him as President for life. You know, just like Jesus would do. 

"No, you don't know him...he lives in Canada."

-Strickland, on his letter-writing friend

And then came last month when Strickland read a spicy letter from a "dear friend" that he definitely did not write himself, in which his friend denounces Pope Francis's "openness" and "welcoming spirit" and gets into some really weird nonsense about the "blood of the martyrs" which isn't at all terrifying. The letter also suggested that the Pope considers anyone who opposes him to be an enemy of the church. In all, it was a damning indictment...from Strickland's friend who totally exists. And I have some questions about how all of this works.

Above: the Cool Pope.

But first, I want to again be clear that I'm not a Catholic or really religious at all, but I do find this kind of stuff fascinating. Like, I kind of got the impression that Francis was considered "the cool Pope," although it's kind of a relative thing. This is a global institution that openly discriminates against women, opposes LGBTQIA+ equality, and spent decades protecting sex offenders, but Francis is, I don't know, less hostile than the last guy? So...progress?

Speaking of the last guy, Strickland's screed including him suggesting that Francis replaced the true Pope, Benedict XVI. Which, I mean, Benedict stepped down and Francis was elected in his place, it's not like he stole the papacy. But I guess as a MAGA goon, Strickland feels obligated to make up conspiracy theories when he doesn't like the election results.

What, does he think they rigged the white smoke thing--oh...
right. He 100% thinks they did exactly that, doesn't he?

Pictured: basically the Pope.

And as much as I'm biased against Strickland, or anyone who's using religion to justify their own shitty behavior and views, isn't he, by virtue of opposing the boss (and not just the aforementioned shitty behavior and views), wrong? I don't pretend to understand papal infallibility, but I think the gist is that if the Pope says something like "hey, maybe stop calling gay people godless deviants," everyone supposed to, you know, do that. The Pope is taken to be the guy who speaks for God. He's basically Locutus of Borg, so what did Strickland think would happen?

I don't care really. Like, none of this affects me personally, it's just that I guess I enjoy seeing someone whose been so vocal in their condemnation of what is, at best, a slight shift towards progress in a two-thousand year-old organization, get so publicly fired. 

Well, hopefully Bishop Strickland can find a use for all those sour grapes.

Party like it's 1979!

Nintendo has a park with rides, Atari on
the other hand, realizes that it's devotees
just want a nap. And maybe a drink.

I'm old enough to have played Atari games, but not so old that I have any sort of nostalgia for them. That is, just I caught the post-crash tail end of if where Nintendo was using mafia style tactics to take over the industry, which we were fine with because the games were objectively better. You heard me. In any case, the name Atari seems now to be little more than brand that's licensed out to be slapped on T-shirts and, absurdly, a hotel. No, really. Oh, and plug and play consoles. 

Just because I'm a snob, doesn't
make me wrong about this.

Tons of plug and play devices full of ancient games and sold as the Atari Flashback, trading entirely on nostalgia. And they've been rather successful at it, which kind of undermines my point, but then these aren't games consoles per se. It might be (definitely is) snobbish of me to say this, but plug and plays are more for casual gamers. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that this is something you pick up at Costco or wherever, hook up to a TV for a month or two, and then stuff in the closet.

"Why is this? Like, why?"

-everyone

Yes, the Flashback series has been successful, there've been seventeen of them--seventeen--but they're not real consoles. The closest thing to a new Atari console would be the Atari VCS. Back in 2021, a completely different company tried to market a three hundred dollar streaming console under not only the Atari name, but using the same branding, VCS, as the original 2600. It fell flat, probably due to expense, lack of a clear market for the thing, and the aforementioned plug and plays.

And it didn't help that virtually everything from that era was already available in digital compilations on like every platform. Compilations that cost way less than three hundred dollars of money. In fact, whatever you're reading this on right now probably has an Atari games compilation on it. Everything does. Everything.

Above: in case you needed another reason to be disappointed in Tesla.

I should clarify that these games were
released while Carter was President. He didn't
program Missile Command or anything. 

So color me befuddled when I learned that there's to be yet another new Atari console coming out next week. Yes, this one is slightly different to the VCS. Unlike the streaming device, this one is basically an HDMI cartridge-based console meaning you can play original game cartridges, assuming they weren't garage sold decades ago and haven't succumbed to oxidation. Or you can buy new, old cartridges. That is, re-releases of games from the Carter administration. Which is admittedly kind of cool. 

Take my money Nintendo, take it!

I know I just complained that Atari games are really, really hard to go back to and--I didn't? Well, they are. Iron Age graphics aside, games of that era usually didn't have any sort of arc to them, they just got harder and faster until you lost. I find them a bleak reminder of real life. It's a matter of taste, I know, but I can't imagine playing Asteroids for more than a few minutes. But I do like the idea of reviving old game consoles. I'm a big enough sucker that I'd buy a new Super NES or Gameboy in anno domini 2023 if such a thing were possible.

But alas, that's not what's happening. Instead, someone looked at the disastrous release of the VCS, and then at the super-saturation of Atari compilations and plug and play consoles (all seventeen of them) and said: "Yes. Yes, now is the perfect time to re-introduce America to the blocky, repetitive nonsense that is Atari of the late 70's."

Would it have killed them to reevaluate that controller though?
I'm convinced that whoever designed it has never seen a human hand
before. I'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome just looking at it.

Hey! Listen...

I'm no economist, but I understand that it's a fundamental principle of capitalism that more money is preferable to less money, and that if something makes money, do it again. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, just that it's a true thing and that's why I find myself feeling some ambivalence towards the news that there's going to be a Legend of Zelda movie.

Pictured: basically everything I know about capitalism.

Above: a stock photo depicting anticipation.

Look, I'm not going to be one of those nay-sayers that says nay about a thing before it's a thing. I'm not a screenwriter, and I'm not a marketing person, and whether or not this movie turns out well will have no real bearing on my life beyond my walking out of it saying either "that was ok" or "that was terrible." But this is the internet, I have a blog, and there's news about a video game movie and I'm sure you're simply rapt with anticipation to know what I think about it. Well, like I said, I'm feeling ambivalence.

"It was acceptable!"

-raves an adult with a blog 

discussing a children's movie

The Super Mario Bros. movie was fine. Good even by the standards of both video game movies and family friendly movies sold to adults on the basis of nostalgia. I enjoyed watching it. I can't now tell you what happened in it, but it was diverting for the ninety-minute run time and it made a ton of money. Which, I guess that's all we ask now of film, as a medium. So like I said, I get the instinct on Nintendo's part to do that again, but this time Zelda. More money is preferable to less money.

I mean, a mirror under the table? Definitely
worth breaking a lifetime of taciturnity.

But there is something a little more adaptable about Super Mario Bros. than the Legend of Zelda. For one thing, Mario talks. I mean, rarely more than the odd wa-hoo and it's a me, but we've heard him communicate. Link, the protagonist of the Zelda games, does not. At least in the games, but we don't discuss the animated series or the CDI nonsense. In-universe Link presumably speaks, but the conceit--with rare exceptions--is that we don't hear him speak. Grunt, yes, but not speak. And the idea of a voiced, live action Link, makes me a bit nervous. Oh, didn't I mention that this is to be live action? Because it is, and that's the other thing that's giving me pause. 

Above: a stock photo depicting despondency.

Like, someone, some actor, is evidently going to don the green tunic and pointy-hat and act for between ninety minutes and two hours and I don't know how I feel about that. Oh, right, ambivalent. And also, I don't know, I think it's going to be weird seeing a talking, real-live Link. Maybe this is how old people felt when Robin Williams played Pop-eye? Or how young people felt when M. Night Shyamalan set thier childhoods on fire with The Last Airbender?

Again, this won't actually have a negative impact on my, or anyone else's life, but as a fan, it's a little hard to know just how to feel about it. 

What? I just assumed Timothée Chalamet was going to play Link.
Didn't you? Like, it's the laziest, most obvious casting so...

Today in temporal kitchen rifts:

Did you know that this is the end of Daylight Savings time and that we were supposed to set out clock back? Because I didn't. And spent a good five minutes thinking that I was loosing my mind when my microwave thought it was six thirty in the morning while my phone existed in some temporal bubble where it was still five thirty. 

Above: how I spent my morning.

Drones. Farmers have drones now.
They can set an alarm like everybody else. 

What was I doing up at half past five or six a.m. on a Sunday? You let me worry about that. And in fact, I do. I think it's a mild form of insomnia, but the point is could we, as a civilization just put an end to this spring forward, fall back nonsense once and for all? My un-researched understanding is that it has something to do with farmers needing to get up to water the crops or whatever, but it's not the eighteen hundreds anymore. Farmers have broadband and wifi, they can handle it.

Pictured: Thunder Bay...wait, seriously?
This place is called Thunder Bay?

I blame Canadians. At least I do now that I did a lazy internet search for "why daylight savings time?" And did you know it's only been around for like a hundred years? And while it was suggested by Benjamin Franklin, presumably between coining phrases and brothel visits, it was invented by a New Zealander called George Vernon Hudson, and popularized by the German empire in 1916 during one of their attempts to take over the world. But it was Port Arthur, Ontario that first implemented it. Incidentally, Port Arthur is now known by the incredibly metal-sounding name: Thunder Bay. So, thanks...

I mean, Pennywise can strike anytime
night or day, so so much for that argument.

So why do we keep doing Kaiser's bidding in this, anno domini MMXXIII? I've heard it's now mostly to save electricity and so that kids don't have to go to school in the dark. Now, I'm a childless shut-in, but it kind of seems like they could just change the time the busses comes instead of asking the entire country to figure out how to change the clock on their dashboards. Time is a meaningless construct already so there's no real reason kids can't go to school at eight-thirty instead of seven-thirty. 

Anyway, I obviously worked out that my clock discrepancy was a result of the end of Daylight Savings time and not say a rift in the space-time continuum in the kitchen, but my point stands. Which point? Oh, that Daylight Savings time is an atavism we should abolish so--actually, you know, as dumb as I think it is, most clocks automatically update to the correct time so the inconvenience is pretty minimal at this point. I suppose I'm just cranky about the five minutes I spent questioning my sanity this morning.

Let's just chalk it up to the ghost of Guy Fawkes exacting revenge for that time
he was caught trying to blow up Parliament. Speaking of, Happy Bonfire Night!