Skummy

I adored Unpacking. I found it so unexpectedly emotional in a few points, and fell absolutely in love with it when I realised what they were doing.

finished Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, at least the base game, none of the DLC. They changed the threshold for getting the "good" ending from rescuing 50 Mudokans to rescuing 150, so I absolutely didn't manage that. I'm still not very good at this game, but other than the final level and some of the DLC, I don't find it as frustrating as I used to in parts, as what you have to achieve is always pretty clear, and having infinite lives in which to do it was pretty revolutionary for PS1 but feels a lot more normal now. It's basically a puzzle game disguised as a platformer in a lot of places. The Boardroom level can still fuck off, though, couldn't do it without save spamming. Also finished Call of Cthulu last night. It's fine. The intrigue kind of dries up halfway through, and when it gets into the "descent into madness" part of the story, there's some interesting setpieces but for the most part it doesn't have a lot of new material to offer in terms of plot development or mystery. And after all that, the ending is a bit of an anticlimax - of the several possible endings, I got one that probably wasn't the worst, but wasn't the best. Although there's not really a "good" ending, from what I understand.

I never really used to be into YouTubers, or be someone that idly scrolled through YouTube for stuff, I only used it if there was something I was specifically looking for. In the last year or so, though, I've started putting stuff on during my lunch break when walking from home, and these are the non-wrestling related people I have been following most: Stuart Millard - a.k.a Frantic Planet, I've followed his blog for years, but only started watching his YouTube more recently. Very funny deep dives into forgotten bits of pop culture - '70s variety shows, lost media, bad sitcoms, awful '90s and early '00s "new lad" content and early reality TV. He did a series on Royal Variety Shows that are absolutely superb. At least one laugh-out-loud moment for me in every video. NerdSync - someone I'd have probably almost immediately rejected a few years ago for being a bit too earnest, a bit try-hard, and a bit too much of a stereotypical "YouTuber", but I've cooled on a lot of that stuff now. I got into him through the podcast It's Probably Not Aliens, about Ancient Aliens, pseudohistory and conspiracy theories, but this is his main gig - videos about comic books, pop culture, and cartoons, especially Scooby Doo, with the more recent ones usually having a social justice focus as well. I like what he does because it tends not to focus obsessively on in-universe lore like most comic book nerds do, but on the actual history of characters, comics and creators, so there's interesting stuff about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, art and publishing trends - there's a whole video on the disappearance of thought bubbles from comic books - and I find that far more interesting. Step Up - The co-host of the aforementioned It's Probably Not Aliens podcast. Similarly, I can find him a bit too try-hard and earnest at times, but he does good work. The stated objective is to look at how understanding history helps you make sense of the world today, and so any focus on historical events will also link into a "why this is important now" discussion, which I think is the best way to approach history education. A lot of his focus is on the far-right and conspiracy theories, so that end he's just done a really good video on the JFK assassination and conspiracy theories, and a while back did a long critique of Graham Hancock's Netflix series. I haven't really followed any video essayists since the largely pre-YouTube days of the Spoony Experiment and That Guy With The Glasses, so it's been nice to see how far a lot of people have moved on from the worst of that era, and while there's a whole new set of YouTuber tropes that I don't have any time for, it's great that it's not just performative anger across the board any more.

Listened to 78 genres. Top were Singer-Songwriter, Alternative Rock, Crank Wave, New Wave, and Chamber Pop. This was the first time I ever heard the phrase "Crank Wave", and while "Chamber Pop" is on my list every year, I'm still not entirely sure what it is. I played 6969 songs, nice nice. Top songs were: Chappell Roan - Pink Pony Club (fair enough, it's a banger and I obsessed over it) Laibach - Amerika Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Ghost - Jesus He Knows Me World's End Girlfriend - Ghost Of A Horse Under The Chandelier Top artists were: Laibach (top 1%) Alabama 3 Tom Waits PJ Harvey They Might Be Giants Top podcasts were: It's Probably (not) Aliens! Behind The Bastards Deadlock Must See Matches Unclear and Present Danger Spotify stats are always a bit skewed for me - there's a couple of playlists that will be in heavy rotation, because I put them on when I can't sleep, and that's what results in stuff like Sakamoto and World's End Girlfriend, as brilliant as they are, pretty consistently being in my top listens. I usually listen to podcasts while walking or commuting, but I have a couple of playlists of just stuff to put on in headphones if I don't have podcasts to catch up on, or aren't in the mood for them, and that tends to lead to some songs being played a lot more than I otherwise would have done too. Podcasts-wise, there's a couple I listen to more than most on that list, but via Patreon, so they don't show up here. I'm surprised Deadlock is that high, as I only started listening to them late in the year. I can't really account for that Ghost song being high up - it was definitely on one of those playlists, and maybe a road trip playlist or something? Also a possibility that it was getting played a lot in the run-up to the wrestling show I promoted, because I was trying to stay in a bit of a goth rock frame of mind for that one. More important than Spotify Wrapped, though, is JUDGE MY SPOTIFY - https://pudding.cool/2020/12/judge-my-spotify/ Mine came out with; The "you know there's good music from before 2019" thing is because in the last couple of years I've started using Spotify to keep on top of new releases, so whenever I'm working from home, I listen almost exclusively to new albums, which is another thing that will completely throw these things off in terms of what my listening habits are outside of just Spotify.

A couple of their albums really suffer for that, and it's a shame, because there's some fantastic stuff absolutely buried under bad production. I absolutely love The Pogues, though. I got massively into them when I was around 19-21 or so, and still think Shane at the height of his powers was one of the best lyricists around - I'd think that if all he'd ever written was Rainy Night In Soho and The Old Main Drag, but there's just so much there. When I got into him, I was really deep in the kind of Beat generation bullshit idea about drink and drugs being mind-expanding, and how there's wisdom in old drunks and all that, and that probably played a part in how much I got into MacGowan, and also into Tom Waits, and a few other artists too, even though at their best they're not about that at all. Now, I always think of the Alan Moore line, "William Blake said that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, which was naughty of him, because it doesn't" - but listening to the more booze-soaked Pogues songs now, I don't really think he does glorify or romanticise any of it (though, by his solo material, that's pretty much all he ever did). Their songs are earthy and quite unpleasant, and just singing about the world he knew and lived in, there's very little about any of it that makes me think you're supposed to find the subject of his songs aspirational or romantic or anything like that. Whatever. He was brilliant. I love his voice, love his lyrics. There's a lot of shite in the back catalogue, but his best stands up against anyone's best.

I mean, you've watched Doctor Who written by Russell T Davies before, right?

Reed Richards should be portrayed negatively. Pretty much every good version of that character is a self-centred narcissist. He called himself "Mr Fantastic", for fuck's sake.

Taskmaster Hotel is an all timer.

here's Dolly's actually really good version of Stairway, btw:

yeah, so many of the rumours around them were entirely based on the assumption that there must be 35 of them because of the name - but the name is because they're 1/35 scale models. I only heard the Costa del Sol thing within the last couple of years, I don't even know if that's true, I just assumed they were a useless joke item.

I actually quite enjoy when Rifftrax and MST3K do the same film, because they find different jokes and different things to laugh at in the same films. Rifftrax's Manos isn't as good as MST3K's, but it's still fun. And then obviously Rifftrax has no host segments or anything like that, so there's another angle to it on MST3k.

Level 99 is a new one on me, but it is the kind of thing that used to get made up about games all the time - something that is ostensibly achievable, but that so few people will bother doing that it's not at all worth the effort to disprove. The main rumours for Zack that I can remember related to the 1/35 Soldier - just people assuming that meaningless items must have purpose, and making the weirdest possible conclusions about it, along with good old-fashioned playground bullshit.

I've talked on here before about knowing someone who is now in their late 30s, if not early 40s, who still insists that she revived Aeris and unlocked Zack as a playable character in FF7. In terms of first playing it - FF7 was my first JRPG, never knew anything about the genre. I had just started a new school, got talking games with a kid I befriended; I had been playing Little Big Adventure 2, he had been playing Final Fantasy 7. LBA2 felt huge to me at the time - it was relatively open world, had some RPG dynamics, and had a fun point where you go to another world and have to use a different currency - and I assumed FF7 would be a similar game, but it was just so much bigger and broader and I was completely blown away by it. I had played RPGs before, but it was stuff like The Bard's Tale, some Ultima knock-offs, or more recently Diablo, never anything like a Final Fantasy. FF7 was a complete obsession for a couple of years - my first online communities were around it, every conversation at school was FF7, Starcraft, or Metal Gear Solid for a year or two there. It was, and really still is, my baseline of what an RPG should be - I started getting into emulation and retro games purely to go back and play previous Final Fantasy games, and found so many other great games because of that.

Dolly already did a cover of Stairway to Heaven on "Halos & Horns" back in 2002, and it's a much better version than this one. Most of the album doesn't really work for me, though I haven't listened to all of it yet. Wrecking Ball is good, and Bygones is the closest to what I hoped the album would be, in terms of Dolly doing actual rock music, but the rest feels a bit gimmicky.

Abraxas is another one that has been Rifftrax-ed a few years ago - it's a bad Terminator knock-off, but perfect MST3K material.

Aesop Rock's new album is fantastic.

even aside from the MST3K episode (and Rifftrax did a great episode on it too), Sumuru has one of my all-time favourite bits of bad movie dialogue - "what's new at the Dracula factory?".

Laibach tonight, their first UK date since before Brexit. I am excited, even though I don't really know what to expect.

I'm struggling with Loki, it just seems all a bit pointless. There's none of the intrigue that drove the original series, and not enough fun bits to make it work without that. It feels like content for content's sake. My issue with Loki in general has long been that none of it really feels like it needs to be Loki at the centre of it, if that makes sense. It's an interesting sci-fi concept, but the outsider caught up in the TVA's business being the Norse God Of Mischief doesn't actually add anything to that idea, and if anything detracts from it. It's one of the MCU properties that feels like it would be a more interesting series without the Marvel trappings, compared to what little it gains from having them. As much as I love the aesthetic, of time travel being managed by drab Cold War bureaucracy, it's always felt like a Doctor Who two-parter stretched out to series length, and the second season feels even more like that. I just don't know what I'm supposed to be rooting for or caring about.

If Steam isn't a dealbreaker, the first one is one Zomb's Lair - https://www.zombs-lair.com/discworld - I imagine you can find 2 and Noir somewhere too.

Finished Sea Of Stars with the true ending, and final post-game easter egg last night. It's a slow burner, but by the end I was absolutely hooked, just a gorgeous, heartfelt lovely game.

That and the following level were what really hit me, as a one-two punch.

been playing Unpacking lately. It was free on PS+, and I picked it up as it's the kind of cosy game my girlfriend likes, and ended up playing it because I had a bit of time spare before having to head to the airport, and didn't want anything that would tax my brain too much. I absolutely love it. It is relaxing, but for a game of just moving objects around with almost no text, and no visible characters, I found it surprisingly emotional. Each level is a new living space that the central character is moving into, and you get a real sense of the person you are just from the objects they own, what they take with them from each previous home, and what new additions get added to the mix. There's a run of like three levels that were an emotional rollercoaster for me.