Hope everyone has a great day as we celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. For those who aren’t Christian, enjoy the time off. I’ll be visiting family and then most likely playing Skyrim (modded of course) or Baldurs Gate 3 while working on the current book I’m reading (Invincible which is a Star Wars EU book).

Have a great day!

Anyone have a favorite Christmas album? For me it’s a tie between Nat King Cole and Sinatra.

Have a great day and enjoy. Nothing much planned for me outside the usual except playing modded Skyrim, watching the Cowboys, and reading.

For those outside the U.S., have a great day as well

Makes me want to get more old Star Trek books and comics

I’ve been told that there is a goldmine of French comics and sci-fi but not sure where to start. I have an omnibus of the one that Fifth Element was inspired by but that’s it. Any recommendations?

I went to the sports cards shop today (usually go about twice a month) and it is next to the comic book store which is great for me. After I got some cards I went to the comic book store and went to the back issue section. This store has a small Manga section and the rest is mostly back issues. As always it was myself and some other dudes going through long boxes. It is like that pretty much every time. A bunch of guys around my age (maybe the youngest being in their 30s) going through long boxes. There is another bigger comic shop near me (haven't been since they had day for women and "non-male genders") that had a big Manga and tabletop sections that had a number of young people and the main product for women is the Manga section.

Every time I'm at the comic book store I can't help but wonder if anyone at Disney Marvel has ever been to a comic book store. Heck, do any of the people in charge of DC/Marvel ever go to any shops. Can't help but chuckle every time I think about some executive saying "look at the overwhelming number of dudes buying comics, clearly that means we need to market to teenage girls". Reminds me of the line by Eric July that modern comics are made for 14 year old girls on Tumbler who don't read comics.

Kind of the same annoyance as when I see those rom-coms or Christmas rom-coms (I make sure to support the Great American Family channel) and you see how they churn out content that is aimed to what women enjoy and nobody is brought in to subvert, you never see an ugly dude in those movies either.

Oh well, like I said it is silly to get annoyed and at least I know where to get older stuff. Like the used bookstore nearby has a ton of old sci-fi and fantasy.

I was recommending U.B.I.K by Phillip K. Dick to someone and said it kind of reminded me of Inception. Made me wonder if anyone can think of any other stories like it.

It was one of the ones that I never got around to watching growing up in the 80s/90s, and I still have quite a few to go through (especially 80s rated R movies I wasn't allowed to watch but thankfully Tubi exists).

The movie was fine, but unfortunately I couldn't help but think about how Disney totally butchered the IP. I cancelled D-Plus in 21 but I heard about the Willow tv show and while watching the movie I couldn't help but say "you really couldn't come up with some sort of family friendly followup without injecting gay crap or current year nonsense into it". They constantly talk about diversity but it seems like the writer rooms are people with the exact same worldview off of a factory conveyer belt. Best example is an article I read when Star Trek Discovery had first started about how the writing room had to do a Star Trek boot camp because they didn't have any knowledge of the IP.

While trying to ignore the immature people wishing evil on those who voted for Trump or people who didn’t go to work today (had to remind a cousin that I went to work when Obama was elected despite not voting for him or in 2020 despite not liking the result) I just had to think that it’s interesting what happens when you don’t have a “deadly virus” causing endless mail in votes.

Also in a sane world the media would re-examine itself. Like I saw so many “actually the economy under Biden is amazing and under Trump it was actually Obama’s economy”. Guess people ignored it

Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance and last night I finished Death’s End (final book of 3 Body Problem). That book series could’ve easily been cut down by hundreds of pages. Interesting idea but kind of hard to follow in a number of spots. I guess I wanted more aliens and space.

I work from home most days and the voting place is like 1.5 miles from me so I went and voted during lunch (lot more people than I thought would be there at that time). I’d say Trump will win but I thought he would win in 2020 (suspicious stuff aside of course). I have a friend who thinks it will be a 1984 style blowout for Trump, but I doubt that since demographic changes have made such a landslide nearly impossible. Another friend of mine thinks it would be poetic justice for Trump to win by a razor thin margin and have Dems/media screaming about a stolen election with their own protest at the capitol that the media downplays.

Anyway, what do y’all predict?

I read it when I was in the Air Force and then again like two years ago. Came to mind when my sister in law was telling me that my 12 year old niece was a big reader and was looking for something out of the ordinary to read

Recently found some Harry Turtledove (Guns of the South and that WW2 interrupted by alien attack series) but haven’t read them yet. I’ve always had an interest in the “what if” story which is why I loved the show Sliders(despite excessive Cro-Mags and downer ending) and love reading up on the multiverse theory.

I have an anthology of mystery stories called sideways in time where each story is a murder mystery that takes place in a parallel earth. My favorite story was a mystery that took place at the equivalent of the U.N. for parallel earth representatives. Another interesting one is The Pacific Mystery. I recently found a book that takes place in the 1950s in a world where the British won the revolutionary war.

Anyway, any recommendations?

Currently binge watching Monsters, The Hitchhiker, Tales from the Crypt, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and the 80s Alfred Hitchcock reboot and it has me missing anthology series. Saw a lot in the 80s/90s. Anyone have a favorite?

If I had to pick just one I guess mine would be the original TZ but I have a soft spot for the 80s version. One Step Beyond is an old but good one. Nightmare Cafe was a good but very short lived series.

I recently learned there will be a Star Wars Legends/EU convention in March about 20 minutes from where I live. Been reading the EU ever since I was 12 when I got Heir to the Empire for my bday. I’m strictly a pre Disney Star Wars fan now. They had a legends convention last year in California with some authors (except Zahn). I’m honestly surprised Disney allows it because they seem petty enough not to.

I remember one of the authors saying that he understood Disney wants to do their own thing but worried about alienating a large group of loyal fans. They could’ve just made more stories in a separate continuity or done some animated adaptations. Looking back I just see it as the normal playbook we see today of telling actual fans to piss off so they can court a new type of fan.

Anyway, I’m really pumped about this

With everything going on, if you want to take a break and have a good laugh I recommend Good Neighbors (also called Good Life). British show from the 70s about a guy with a 9 to 5 job that lives in the suburbs who decides to start a farm on his property with his wife and live off the land. I absolutely love it, but to be fair I have always been into British TV/have had a fascination with all things British since I was a kid for some reason. Sucks that they have gone so crazy with the diversity/inclusion obsession, but there is still a lot of older content I have yet to see and a good thing with the free streaming services is that they have quite a bit of older BBC shows or shows from Australia.

I did the ancestry DNA thing a while back and met some super distant British cousins online, but unfortunately they all live in the big cities so I'll have to wait for a cousin to pop up who has a fancy country estate where I can take a vacation.

Imagine a world where the owners of an IP actually appealed to the fans of the IP. I know sometimes you can expand your customer base with certain products but certainly not when you try to do it at the expense of loyal customers.

I tried to explain to him most polls til Election Day will either show a tie or show her up and not to put too much faith into them. I feel that her “popularity” is a media invention considering she lasted only a few minutes in the primaries, but there are plenty of people who will blindly vote for her like the “mean tweets” people in 2020. To say nothing of any mysterious overnight ballots come Election Day.

I just told him that the media will be pushing her harder than they did for Obama or Biden. I would love to see a landslide like 84 but ever since 2012 this country has sadly shown they will vote based on emotion and what is trendy in a heartbeat.

I moved to where I now live in 09, and back then the shopping center where my local grocery store is had a Blockbuster (it has since become a dental office) and everytime I buy groceries I think about the good times I had at Blockbuster growing up. At least once a month we would order pizza and go to Blockbuster to rent some movies. I remember when that Blockbuster went out of business in 2010 and they had a huge going out of business sale with PS2 games as low as 3 dollars and I bought a ton of games that day (wish I had never given up my PS2). I also remember when I was little it seemed every store or gas station had a corner for video rental.

As a kid working at a video rental place always seemed like such a cool job and as a teen, I was busy with sports and when I did work it was at restaurants or temp agencies. I'm curious if anyone had ever worked there or any other video rental?

Also, you think that model could ever work again with some being more interested in physical media? I could possibly see a rental place but they would have to have some other stuff, but I do know some VHS collectors so you could make it work.

On facebook, I'm in a group for people who like 50s/60s era of television, and recently the admin banned someone who was trying to discuss lack of diversity in tv shows of that era and racial politics. People were saying it was unfair, but the admin said this group is for a specific topic. Years back I would've seen that as harsh, but now I'm all for it. If only we done that with our hobbies once the usual suspects infiltrated.

The larger point being is that there is always some idiot who feels the need to bring in politics or some other issue into a completely unrelated hobby, and can't just let people have an escape. Recently I saw that the Twister movie was attacked for not addressing climate change, and I remember that Far Cry game got bad reviews for not addressing white supremacy.

Of course, the usual thing we hear is that "(fill in the blank) has always been political" or "it is too important". One of the reasons I rarely use reddit now is because of what happened during the "summer of love". I collect sports cards (baseball/football/hockey) and on a hockey card subreddit you had people who felt the need to have long posts about covid or vaccine misinformation along with the usual racial reckoning nonsense. Then of course they jumped all over me for asking what that has to do with hockey cards and I was told "some things are too important". I had to completely get off the Dallas Cowboys subreddit because they went off the deep end at that time.

Anyway, the mindset of these people who just can't let people enjoy something or feel that their point of view has to be brought into anything and everything even if it is some babies playing with blocks will never cease to annoy me.

A friend sent me something he saw his relatives posting from Occupy Democrats saying "now show as much concern for third grade classrooms", and then someone added "or minorities".

I know I shouldn't let it annoy me, but these people don't care about third graders getting shot and killed. They only care if a gunman is a straight white male. Notice how quickly the story if lost if a gunman isn't a white male. They don't care about the kids getting killed if it is a "transgender" person or anyone else who isn't a straight white male. These are also the same people who don't bat an eye at heinous actions if they are done by illegal immigrants, black criminals, or anyone else on their list of darlings.

As for the minority thing, unless a white cop is killing a black person (of course with the media distorting the situation) they don't care. Perfect example is David Dorn. I remember CNN saying "well he didn't die from peaceful protestors"

These are the same jerks who whine about gun violence but weekly inner city shooting is ok.

If an upstanding white person is killed by an illegal/black/other special criminal they quickly fade from the news, but someone like Saint Floyd gets a golden casket and cities burn because of that scumbag but that is ok. Ashli Babbit of course was painted as an evil person immediately.

Sorry for the rant, but that really ticked me off, and I know that isn't very Christianly to let myself get so upset so I'll work on that.

First ones off the top of my head would be UBIK by Phillip K Dick or either Stranger in a Strange Land or JOB by Heinlein.

Seems every year you see this. I live in Texas, summers are hot and anyone who has a heat related death gets tied to climate change. They do this in the winter too. Here in north Texas winters shift between cold and warm until spring but whenever it gets warm in January they act like we are going to die.

I recently found the book at a used book store and I’ve heard good things. Of course they said it will have a “modern twist” and I hate to make assumptions but seeing the showrunner I have no doubt it will be like every other modern adaptation.

Also heard a rumor that an Elric adaptation is in the works, and I’d be shocked if Netflix respects the Narnia source material.

On the bright side, whenever I see that a book or comic is being adapted and the story sounds interesting I just get the source material because an actual adaptation is low on the list of Hollywood priorities

I like asking this every couple of months. I’m currently reading the first book of the Three Body Problem and the book I finished before it was a book about Angels by Billy Graham that my mother gave me when I was in middle school but finally read recently. Better late than never