Metal Monday

YouTube Obsession/Reading

For anyone who was a teen in the mid aughts, skateboarding was a big deal. Skating anarchy culture was a perfect pushback to the ultra-conservativism of post-9/11 America. It’s fashion, humor and political-apathy permeated the zeitgeist at almost every level.¹

So it makes sense that conservatives and neoliberals of a certain age co-opt skating signifiers to their identities. Signifiers maybe, but by nature, skating is incongruous with these market-oriented ideologies: There are not hobbies in market-liberalism because hobbies do not serve markets.

Right-wingers will always struggle to fully understand something people do as hobbies. Will Sommer’s piece on right-wing youtuber Tim Pool outlines this detachment.

The skate contest mentioned is hosted at a small, community-run DIY skatepark that does not have the means or the space to host an event of the size that that kind of prize money would attract. Pool, befuddled as to why someone would not take money “with no strings attached” did the next thing his market-pilled brain could think of: He bought the land the skatepark was on for $1 million dollars.

This is where I hand over the subject to Gifted Hater² who breaks down -in detail- just how un-cool Tim Pool is, relative to skateboarding and it’s culture.

Reading

I often say that the Preacher comic series By Garth Ennis is the quintessential 90s comic. It relates the late 90’s excess through neo-lib boomer characters who really want to Make America Great Again. What I like about that comic is that the characters are always that, they are always authentically xenophobic, homophobic, violent characters. And even when they pretend to be good people, other characters usually call them on their shit. It lends to the eternal question surrounding late 90’s media, from the rise of angry teen music genre Nu-metal, to movies promoting absolute apathy like Fight Club and Gladiator: Why, if we have so much, are we still so unhappy?

Yet, I would always hear folks talk about Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson as the comic of the 90s. I wasn’t doubtful, just never had the opportunity to read it before getting it from the library.

And, this comic, is not my kind of comic.

Spider Jerusalem, as a character, is basically if all of leftist doomer-twitter wrote every one of his lines. What makes Jessie from Preacher endearing is that he’s not aware that he’s a violent xenophobic asshole. Spider however is like reading Rage Against The Machine lyrics but without the cool rock music, he knows that he knows he’s the only asshole in the world that knows what is wrong with the world. And ironically, he just comes across more preachy.

Now, I’ve not read a lot of Warren Ellis but the way I understand it, his comics are good-ish but he, the person, is a shit-bird. I really don’t have a desire to read anymore of his stuff if his most popular unique IP is basically: What if Hunter S. Thompson wasn’t cool?

The art is really pretty and fits the feel of the comic perfectly. I always love art in comics that communicate a world and The City is very alive. Like you could turn imagine a world outside the panel. I found myself looking at the book more than I was reading it.

Playing

I can count on one hand how many 100 hour + RPGs I have finished to completion and 2 of them would be Mass Effect. Being that I never owned a 360, I never played the original Mass Effect until the most recent Legendary Edition that collected all 3 games in one box.

BioWare really hit something special with the ME games. The graphics aren’t spectacular, the gunplay is not a draw (not until ME3) and the overall sci-fi story is not unique. Yet, somehow, it all comes together to make a fun and interesting game.

My original contact with the game started at ME2 and I bounced off of it a couple times before I embraced the charm of the “mean” dialog choices. To this day, I maintain that playing a renegade fem-shep in ME2 is one of the most fun experiences in my gaming history. Not only is the “mean” dialog fun but the fem-shep actor is so much better than “wafer-the-dude” masc-shep.

I put “mean” in quotes because once you hear enough of the “mean” dialog options you begin to see a pattern emerge. It’s mean in the way that person who is home schooled is mean, like what they say is not actually mean it’s just not how normal socialized people construct sentences.

I wish I could find the clip from the old LaserTime podcast, but Chris Antista put the writing in the most succinct way: "Shut up. And think about how much you mean to me.”

This the perfect way to describe the “mean” dialog options in ME. I absolutely love it.

Anyway, I just started a playthrough of ME1 and plan on doing the whole series again since its been GULP 12 years since I played Mass Effect 3.

Other Notables

** A great breakdown of Joe Rogan’s latest “comedy” special. 

** Excellent email form Guns.com. First off, the “1776%” is just gold dum dum doo doo, I love it.

Secondly, Do they think the government is going to come take their guns and not bring their own guns? This time a knife will win in a gun fight? Such is the power of the Silverback™ Concealed Carry OTF Knife©. The beta energy in these emails are awesome.

1  I could only participate in the video game aspects of skating, as growing up in the country with only gravel roads is not conducive to skateboarding.

2  Excellent name.