Talk About Tuesday 218

It's another day of babblement, folks, so strap in and prepare for the blabber to begin!

First - The Bleh:

It's cloudy again today :( I was hoping we were done with the gloom for a while, but at least it's 50℉ (10℃) out there.

Since it's been so gray and gross, I haven't been as motivated to exercise, so my knees are being mean to me. My right knee likes to swell when any pressure is put on it for more than a moment. Meh.

The coyote killed someone this week. Not kidding. It caused a fatal accident on a nearby road. Yikes.

Finally: I failed at rice again today. I tried to cook some rice, but it has already burned. I'll try again :(


The Yeah:

I'm watching a YouTuber stuff herself with Malasadas from Hawaii and my jealousy is huge.

I have become enamored of a YouTube channel dedicated to a shark puppet...

I have officially enjoyed two iced teas after years of not liking tea anymore - Teavana Meyer Lemon and (maybe) Lipton Green Tea Citrus. Wow.

I found some old yarn I'd been playing around with and am planning on working with it in a future blog post!

I've been watching a lot of sewing videos, so hopefully, I'll be able to figure out how to hem up my glow-in-the-dark skeleton banner this year!

Congrats to TypeQQ & fam on their recent move!

I have books to read! Plural! Not just Gun, With Occasional Music, but Lawn Boy as well!


The plans:

• Tomorrow I'll be talking about wrestling, including updates about AEW
• Thursday should be secondary inking, maybe some colors?
• Friday will involve a series of BMW short films. You read that right.
• Saturday will have me talking about more games!
• Sunday will likely involve noodles. Possibly Natto. Be on the lookout.
• Monday will have me finishing up the shawl (hopefully). If not, it'll be me whining about having to restart the shawl for the FOURTH time (the previous three have been because I ran out of the yarn I was using...)
• Tuesday is for blabber.

Hopefully you guys will join me for the rest of week 18, 2019 here on the blog!

Also, I'm thinking of creating a set of Master Posts where you can look up the archive of the blog - basically it'd be lists of links. Maybe some descriptions of the blogs? I don't know. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like work...

Heh!

I think that'll about do it for me, folks!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 218: Experimental Shawl

I have been trying a new pattern this week.

It has taught me a very, very important lesson: read the pattern very carefully before you begin.

Here we see the starting chains on my 5mm hook.
I'm using a ball of sock yarn I had leftover.

Row 1

Row 2

Row 3

Row 4

Row 5

Row 6

Row 7

Row 8

Row 9

Row 10

Row 11

Here, I'm trying to show how to do a Front Post Double Crochet.
Yarn over. Insert the hook behind the stitch.

Yarn over

Pull the yarn through the stitch.

Yarn over

Pull Through two loops

Yarn Over

Pull through two. Done

To start normal double crochet after fpdc, yarn over, then put it through the first chain/top after the fpdc.
I did 2 fpdc, so I skip 2 tops, then y/o and put the hook through the next (third) top.
Finish your dc from there.

Row 12

Here we go with Back Post Double Crochet.
Yarn Over, weave your hook into the stitches so your hook is in front of the stitch you want to bpdc into.

Finish your DC and you have a bpdc!

Row 13

Row 14

Row 15

Row 16

Row 17

Row 18

Row 19

Row 20 (I folded it in half)

I thought I'd done this wrong. The numbered rows only go to 23!

And then I read the pattern a few more times. I had initially thought that I'd need far more material, but!

We're going to repeat rows 18-23 until there's a specific number of "flowers" across the bottom. Then there's 4 rows of border.

I'm still not 100% sold that my single strand of sock yarn will be enough...

If it isn't I'll figure something out!

Regardless, here we go on a new project!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 217: East Meets West

I love trying fusion cuisine. You never quite know what you're going to get, but it's usually pretty good, in my experience. Wonton Tacos? Delicious. Jalapeño Popper Sushi? Pretty awesome. Sushi Pizza? Fascinating. Eastern & western cuisines can mesh really well. Most of the time.

When it comes to Japan trying to make Italian food, however...

Well...

It's been hit or miss. Especially with spaghetti...

Now, I'm sure I did something wrong with the konjac-noodle Spaghetti Ramen, but... when we got another pack of Japan-Attempts-Italian ramen, I was a bit (a lot) worried.

Would this be a repeat of the weird, watery, crunchy noodles from last time?

I'm usually pretty happy to see Kumamon's happy face, but I was a bit apprehensive at the "microwave ok!" label...

The picture on the label looked friendly enough. Red ramen with veggies and happy black bear mascots all over the place. I flipped the pack over to see what the instructions were.

They were, of course, in Japanese, but fortunately, Google Translate was working properly.
I didn't get anything about my father or accusations or something...

 Nerves calmed by a fairly calm cooking process, I got out my ingredients. I couldn't reach any open cooking oil, so I kludged it with a buttload of spray and several teaspoons of water.

The noodles also looked very much like... spaghetti.

I should mention at this point that both Z & I were trepidatious about making something labeled as a bolognese with purely powdered ingredients. We were a little worried that the sauce powder would taste like the beef ramen you can get from Maruchan at Wal~Mart. Ugh.

Also, we had about 3/4lb of deli chicken in his fridge that we both felt the need to use most of. I grabbed it and shredded most of it into the pan and set about heating it through.

You know that funky smell deli chicken can have? That went away in seconds.
We were left with that brilliant frying-chicken smell in the kitchen.
Then we dumped in a bunch of pepper & garlic powders!

After I'd heated the chicken up for quite a while (and because we were both getting hungry at this point), I followed the instructions and dumped the brick of noodles in. I also added another teaspoon of water to help loosen the glutinous noodles from each other. At least, I assume the noodles had gluten in them. They usually do. That's what makes them so good (provided you don't have celiac or some other gluten sensitivity).

It... didn't really look too appealing at this stage, and I kind of wished I had some onion.

It took quite a while (and another teaspoon of water) to get the noodles teased apart, and at this point, it all smelled incredible. I was getting hopeful.

Once teased apart, I could tell the noodles were at the perfect consistency.
Microwaving them would have made them fat and soggy.
I'm so glad I stuck with the pan method.

Then came the moment of truth.

Time to add the mysterious powder.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I thought all was lost when I first added the powder because the moment the mixture hit the noodles, it looked pale. Then the magic happened. I added another half teaspoon of water over the top.

And out came the red color! And the herby, tomato smells! Wonderful!

Oh man, guys, this stuff smelled great! I only needed a couple more drops of water to get it to mix together properly, too!

It looks a little... pale in this shot, but I promise, it was a nice pink-orange color!

We tossed the noodles into a bowl and chowed down! 

A much better shot of the color here.

The lunchmeat we'd chucked in there now tasted like stir-fried ground chicken rather than deli meat, and the tomato flavors from the sauce made everything smell & taste amazing. The noodles were firm and bouncy, and everything was fantastic! The addition of the garlic & pepper made everything even better!

But with every noodle, you need a beverage to go with it, and our Noodz Doodz brought us a beverage to try.

Behold: a milk-based soft-drink.

Calpico is pretty popular throughout Asia, from what I hear, and having tried some, I can understand why. I was fairly skeptical at first, what with it being a milk-based soft-drink without bubbles, but... it tastes like lemon ice cream. Not bad!

Speaking of things I was skeptical of at first, let's talk about eel.

Eel is delicious. Broiled eel, specifically. Here's a Black Dragon Roll (tuna, cucumber, tempura crispies, avocado, broiled eel, eel sauce, spicy mayo, sesame seeds). It's amazing. I could live off these things.

I fell in love with eel on my second or third sushi adventure at our local sushi restaurant.
This roll comes from a restaurant one or two towns over.
If you're ever near Tomi's give it a try!

That'll about do it for me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 217: War Clicks

So, the other night was a rough one. I had very little sleep, I had nightmares, and I was not in a pleasant mood when I woke up. I'd forgotten my phone in Z's room across town, and I was just... I was a cranky-pants. So I get to Z's, and we're having a good time watching movies & wrestling when I grab my phone and turn it on.

I had an email.

It was a very kind and very surprising email from someone I didn't know.

Someone who'd read my blog.

Someone who had a game called War Clicks that they thought I might be interested in.

Now, I'm freaking out a little, because it's never going to stop being awesome when people who make the things I like contact me out of the blue, but I'm a gosh-darn professional, and I'm going to put the work into it!

So I loaded up War Clicks when I got home and started playing.

It's pretty fun, guys!

I was pleasantly surprised by how much customization there is!

Generally speaking, idle games don't really give you a lot of avatar customization, and I like me some customization, so finding out that you can actually make a decent avatar in War Clicks was definitely cool. I think this avatar looks pretty intense. How about you?

Boot Camp

You start the game in Boot Camp, an area whose mechanic I'm very familiar with after so much time spent playing idle games. You build up a lot of military vehicles, hire trainers, buy upgrades, etc. As you build up your arsenal, more and more of the game opens up around you. The tutorials are easy to grasp & well-written, and I ended up liking the chunky little soldier guy who tells you how to do what you need to do to keep going!

The War Zone

Now, of course, having all that military hardware means you're probably going to blast someone apart at some point, and here's where things get new. I've played games with PvP before, and I've always hated it (Facebook Tetris notwithstanding) because matchmaking tends to be broken, and I'm just not a very good player with things like this. PvP rarely happens in the War Zone, and instead, you're left to fight stationary images of cruisers, destroyers, tanks, etc. When PvP does occur, it's basically simulated, and I haven't really felt like the game was punishing me for playing a PvP fight without giving them my own money (which is good, because like most people I know, I'm broke). You don't end up doing much of anything in the PvP, and that's perfect for an Anxious Annie like me.

No one calls you names. No one abuses you. No one makes fun of you if you fail. It's just a screen. It lets you remember that, at the end of the day, War Clicks is still a game.

I really appreciate that.

Also, I appreciate the innovations of an Auto-Clicker with a cooldown, optional combat support, and the refueling minigame!

I love me a button-masher!

Seriously, it's a pretty satisfying game. I'll take my warfare in clickable, low-impact mode, please.

No, seriously, I usually hate military-themed games. The player bases, in my (admittedly limited) experience have been bro-ish, creepy, and/or really angry, though when you do find someone who's helpful, they can be some of the kindest, warmest people on the internet. The games tend to be high-risk, low-reward, hoping your addiction to victory will overcome the fairly realistic fact that you've really done nothing and helped no one with these battles.

War Clicks is not those games. It's got fun, clean art, simple, fun "combat", accessible gameplay, and I haven't been called a single slur since I started! Sadly, I had just missed the Easter Event, so I can't tell you how fun that was, but if the rest of the game has been any indicator, it was pretty fun!

Even the music is neat! It's actually my style of music, too, with electronic beats and symphonic strings working together. Very cool.

So thank you, Mr. Jesenicnik of Gamex Studios, for telling me about your game. It's been a blast!

Now, my friends,

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC

Filmic Friday 217: Crime Story

I'm a big fan of action movie cheese, you may have noticed. You may have also noticed that I haven't yet covered a movie from the king of action - Jackie Chan.

This all changes now.

People & Gentlefolk, I give you:

Crime Story

Crime Story is a fantastic action movie following virtuous inspector Eddie Chan (Jackie Chan) of the Organized Crime & Triad Bureau trying to protect (and eventually recover) a, frankly wretched, businessman name Wong Yat-Fei.

That would be the balding guy on the right, here. He's also the one talking.

Wong is a slimeball. He builds tenements and refuses to pay his workers. You don't feel sorry for him at any point. He's even mean to his poor wife, who has a heart condition. You get the feeling she
doesn't really... get what he does.

His workers do, however, and begin to riot.
Eddie talks some sense into them by letting them know he doesn't like their boss either, and to sue his ass to kingdom come.
Just because he's supposed to keep Wong from being kidnapped doesn't mean he
shouldn't let the man experience some financial fear, lol!

Now, things are definitely complicated by the fact that Eddie has absolutely developed PTSD after being forced to shoot a bunch of guys in self-defense. The stunts for this scene (and really, all throughout the film) are absolutely nuts. Jackie Chan is constantly risking life & limb because the Hong Kong film industry had 0 standards for safety back in 1993. Regardless, Eddie is in rough emotional shape. He's in denial that killing people has messed him up. He's also satisfied that Wong is safe until the last moment, when it becomes very, very obvious that he isn't. Due to bureaucracy, however, he cannot get any help in time and Wong is taken and two police officers are horrifically injured, one dying from his injuries. Eddie is devastated, but accepts the responsibility of getting Wong back from the kidnappers.

Eventually, though, we're introduced to our villain, and what an introduction. We first see Hung Ting-Bong with his prostitute girlfriend, who greets him with an elevator quickie. This is not something they're shy about. They literally walk past people with the girl, Lara, still... uh... getting a workout.

Yes, with this guy. No, I'm not sure that's not supposed to be played for laughs.
Just roll with it, man, it's an awesome movie.

Now, Detective Hung Ting-Bong is working with the kidnappers from inside the police station and is constantly trying to stop Eddie from succeeding. He's shown stealing evidence, misplacing vital clues, and intimidating or silencing witnesses (including Lara) at several points. He's bad news, man. He will not stop until he has the millions of dollars in ransom money he feels he is owed.

Eddie, meanwhile, has been doing the rogue-good-guy-cop thing, but he's been suffering the consequences.

Remember how I said earlier that the Wong abduction scene is a little brutal?
I'm pretty sure he's actually driving a car and rinsing his eye out with a water bottle at this point.
It's nuts.

Eddie keeps tracking down Wong and building his case against Hung Ting-Bong, but he's constantly plagued with self-doubt, fear, and pain.

The scene in the hospital where he goes to comfort the patrolman's wife is shockingly powerful.
It's amazing, and truly beautiful.

 Of course, it wouldn't be a Jackie Chan movie without an insane finale.

Eddie tracks the kidnappers to Kowloon and hopes to confront them and secure Wong's release, but he and Hung Ting-Bong have a showdown. Many kidnappers are gunned down, there are multiple insane chase sequences, and eventually a fire is started.

Here's how crazy the Hong Kong film industry is:
They actually blew up parts of Kowloon.
See that? That's a legit tenement. On fire.
Hong Kong cinema is insane.

Eddie & Hung end up trapped, but Hung stays behind so that Eddie can save a trapped child, redeeming himself slightly. The movie ends with Wong being rescued, Hung being dead, and Eddie burning Wong's wallet to make sure that the scummy businessman can actually start a new life somewhere else.

It's a wonderful, insane, beautiful, horrifically dangerous film. I'd love to see it in the original language, because hearing someone dub over Jackie Chan's voice is... really weird. And a lot of the dubbing is bad. I'm talking crappy 3AM Kung Fu Theater bad. It's the kind of dubbing people make jokes about for years. You can tell these guys are acting their nuts off, but some chucklehead in Wisconsin is just stammering into a microphone and calling it good enough.

If you're looking for a good time, check out Crime Story!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC