Survival Sunday 202: Trying New Things

New years tend to bring resolutions and planning and excitement. Sadly, I'm garbage at resolutions. I am, however, pretty good at keeping up with trying new things!

Here's what I've tried recently, after a quick trip to our local co-op.

I'm a big fan of Chocolove bars.
They're good chocolate with good poetry. Great combo!
This one is made with the newly discovered Ruby Cacao beans.

The bar itself is not dyed, to my knowledge.
That's just what milk ruby chocolate looks like!

I'm a chocoholic. It's a known fact amongst my friends and family that if you want to cheer me up, ply me with the bean bricks. Or the bean juice, since a good cup of cocoa is the best way to start the day. Especially when you combine it with coffee...

I digress.

This ruby chocolate bar was delicious. It had the kind of mellow smoothness you get with really good milk chocolate, with that silky feeling in your mouth as it melts. And the flavor! Oh man! There really is subtle fruity flavor to the chocolate, which doesn't appear to be added in the production but native to the cocoa itself. It's a little like the smell of raspberries, but the chocolate flavor overwhelms. The fact that Chocolove tends away from oversweetening their bars means that the milk chocolate flavor really shines here.

If you're a chocoholic or you're in love with one, get your hand on this stuff. It's amazing!

I'm kind of cheating here.
I've had Primal Strips before.
And Teriyaki is one of my favorites.

It tastes a million times better than it looks.

I'm a big fan of meat substitutes. I love me some meat, true, but I'm pretty much just as happy with fake meat products (especially chicken substitutes because I have the worst luck with chicken). Primal Strips are vegetarian or vegan jerkies with interesting flavors and various non-meat bases. The Teriyaki flavored strip is made with seitan, which is a wheat-based meat substitute which I love. It's got a great texture, it holds flavoring really well, and you can make it pretty much any shape you want with very little effort.

So I've had the teriyaki strips many times, and I love them. This time was no different, though I finally took pictures. Delicious. I will, however, say that it's not much of a teriyaki flavor as I'm accustomed to from other dishes. It's not sweet (at all). In fact, it has kind of a bland, mild soy-sauce flavor to it. If I were to make any suggestion it would be to try and add some pineapple juice to it so it had more of a sweet tone to it. It's still good, I just feel like it could be better.

I also love the weird spongey texture that seitan jerky has.

I'm not doing a great job of selling you guys on these, am I? :P

Alright, that'll probably be all from me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 202

In this, the second Saturday of a New Year, I bring you:

Castaway

This game is a collaboration between Armor Games and Likwid Games, and it's the start of a whole series of Castaway games.

You play an unnamed protagonist who wakes up with no memories. After naming yourself, you're given a brief tutorial where you pick up a stick and defend a little monster that looks like a little bat-winged Mike Wazowski, which joins you as a namable pet. The rest of the game consists of you getting weapons & armor, magic shards, new monster pets, and quests. Many of these come from the Village you go to early on. There's a mage guild, a village leader, an upside-down boat for an inn, a shop for you, a shop for your pet, and a place to raise new pets from Monster Eggs.

And it's got such nice music and visuals, too!

You'll be fighting and gathering a lot in this game - which isn't as much of a chore as you'd expect because combat is largely automatic once you click on an enemy. You have special attacks with a recharge that you learn through quests, magic (also learned through quests) that take up elemental items you sometimes loot from enemies, and your pet, which can be set to different priorities (attack, defend, etc), but largely, you're just going to click and wait for the loot to drop. It's almost relaxing, to be honest.

And the maps are kinda interesting with their isometric view, multiple levels of map, and the minimap actually telling you where your enemies are hiding!

I still haven't finished either Castaway or its direct sequel, but I really enjoy playing both. I'm just not that good at item & action management, and even the handy health regeneration isn't all that helpful when you're surrounded by enemies who automatically run you down and attack you or who can poison you much worse than your regen can handle.

All in all, Castaway is a great little game with some fun quests and great art & music. I strongly suggest giving it a whirl!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Filmic Friday 202: FX2

Sometimes, you just want to watch a pair of Brian/Bryans fight crime with a robot clown.

This week was one of those times.

And yes, this is a terrible poster for the movie.

Z & I have seen FX2: The Deadly Art of Illusion before, but it's a movie that bears rewatching. Kinda like Manhunter. Or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Or the MST3K of Killer Shrews...

The original F/X told the tale of special effects wizard Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) trying to survive being hunted down by the mob and police alike while schlubby cop Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) tries to catch him (because it's assumed that Rollie is a killer). There are special-effects solutions to problems and it's a fun movie with some really, really dark parts (Rollie's girlfriend is slaughtered in front of him, for instance).

FX 2 The Deadly Art of Illusion is... 2/3 the movie that F/X was. Brown & Dennehy reprise their roles, though you can barely tell on Dennehy's part because he goes from looking like a cross between Magnum TA and Harley Race to looking like Biff Tannen from Back To The Future...

Holy crap. He really, really looked like Harley Race...

Now, don't get me wrong, the callbacks to F/X are amazing, there are rubber boobs, there's, as I mentioned, a creepy robot clown, a pretty decent child actor, a new love interest, a lot of great bad 1990s suits, and it's generally a great movie.

I mean, it starts with a transvestite murderbot who explodes all over the place!
It's friggin awesome!

The problem lies in the third act, where, despite the story being about bad cops, it still comes out of nowhere that the DA is working with bad cops to sell out to the mob, and also there's something about Vatican treasure. Yeah. Don't worry about the spoilers because the leadup to this Papal Subplot is nonexistent.

The plot to FX 2 is pretty much the same as F/X  only instead of faking a mob hit, he's trying to lure out a serial killer/stalker dude. It goes very wrong. He only does the job because his girlfriend's ex-husband begs him to, and he gets killed. Rollie isn't even an effects guy anymore - he designs super expensive toys (such as a life-sized robot clown you control with a cyberpunk wetsuit he calls a "telemetry suit"). So basically the whole movie is just an excuse to get both Brown & Dennehy paychecks. I'm 100% okay with that.

They certainly didn't pay them for the series...

This is a weird poster, too.
It makes it look like Bluey the Clown & Rollie are having a relationship.
And it makes it look like Dennehy is macking on Rollie's girl & her kid.

So the plot is very thin, but the look of this movie, the soundtrack, and the acting are all worth every weird subplot.

Basically, you should watch this movie, dangit.

Also, it made me laugh in the first five seconds because the title shows up on screen in the wrong order.

It shows up as

2
FX

it's hilarious!

Alright, that'll be all from me today.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 202

I know, I know, late as usual. Later, actually, but still...

It takes a very, very long time to make a picture pixel by pixel...

"Pixelsplosion1"; zoomed-in version, MS Paint; 2019

This looked much cooler when I zoomed into it on my Paint program than it does zoomed in on here... here's the original size:

Which hopefully looks better :P

I'm also going to try to write more today, so there's that!

That's all from me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Wednesdaymania 202

Well...

I guess we know what Cody & the Bucks are doing now, don't we? Heh.

It's a really real thing that actually exists now!

All Elite Wrestling is not only a real thing, now, it has wrestlers! SCU have signed with AEW, as has... Joey Janela? Wait, doesn't he have his own promotion? Interesting. Chris Jericho is involved, and so is PAC (you may know him better by his WWE name: Neville). Basically, AEW is, in fact, All Elite.

But what about the Elite from NJPW and ROH who haven't yet signed?

Marty's contract isn't up yet, so we'll see from there. His New Year's Day party was... well, it was a party. Flip wants to join Bullet Club (which is from another BTE video). The Tongans are still BCOG (Bullet Club OG).

No word on Ibushi, though that could be because he got brained at Wrestle Kingdom 13... To be honest, I'm pretty sure he's going to remain a free agent because he's insane and likes the freedom too much.

As for Kenny Omega, he "lost his phone", but that can be seen at one point (I think it's his) in one of the BTE videos, ticking away like the other phones did as their signing to AEW drew nigh. Now, this is interesting to me, because 1) WWE is rumored to have offered Kenny an obscene amount of money to join them, 2) Kenny doesn't have the phone with him right now which means that he might or might not be signing with AEW (though they've faked us out many times before), and 3) NJPW President/CEO Harold Meij has recently said "Our job as a business in New Japan is to make sure our wrestlers are not spending their life worrying about ticket sales, living expense, feeding their family, or injury. They need to be able to focus on the ring".

Basically I know nothing beyond who has signed with AEW - that much I know.

• Cima (aka Nobuhiko Oshima) from Dragon Gate and OWE - a veteran to the ring and to management (he is President of OWE...)
• Chris Jericho - another in-ring/promotional veteran, and someone who definitely appeals to a more mainstream US/Canadian audience...
• Christopher Daniels
• Cody Rhodes (Executive Vice President/Wrestler)
• El Lindaman (aka Yuga Hayashi) also of OWE/Dragon Gate
• Frankie Kazarian
• Hangman Adam Page
• Joey Janela
• The Young Bucks (Executive Vice Presidents/Wrestlers)
• MJF from MLW
• PAC aka Neville
• Scorpio Sky
• Takehiro Yamamura of OWE/Dragon Gate
• T-Hawk of OWE/Dragon Gate
• Brandi Rhodes (Chief Brand Officer and Wrestler)
• Britt Baker (who is how you do a wrestling dentist properly, thank you very much)
• Penelope Ford (Joey Janela's valet)
• BJ Whitmer (formerly of ROH, listed as a "Producer")
• Billy Gunn (Producer)

All of this seems really interesting, and I honestly can't wait to see what comes next.

I hope Kenny does join them.

I hope Ibushi follows him.

Uh...

Also, Kushida is going to WWE - wasn't sure where to put that tidbit, so I'll just dump it here. I think it's a mistake, professionally, but financially, this will make sure that he never has to worry about paying for anything ever again, probably. Unless he gets really badly injured here in the US...

I'll never understand why people from countries with decent healthcare come here to do jobs where they know they'll probably get wrecked...

Alright, that's all from me!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday 202

Last week I talked about things I wanted to do this year, so here's a few short updates:

• My first amigurumi for the blog (Kirby), is coming along, though I do need to find some darker pink yarn for his shoes... also, I do worry about his face, since I'm garbage at embroidery.
• I'm 800 words behind on my book already. I'm not too concerned about that, though.
• I have new colored pencils for art!
• I haven't cooked in a bit, but I do plan to talk about something very, very simple for Sunday.
• I might be testing a microphone or two soon - no word yet on if they'll be used for anything, but I should probably learn how to record stuff, since I'm probably the only person my age in this area who doesn't know how to technology...

Hopefully, I will have more things to talk about regarding the stories I'm writing, but the second story (my backup, which I am 500 words behind on) needs a little work. I'll probably do some note-taking and design work on it today. This design work will also benefit a couple of other stories I've got on the back burner, and they relate to the recent news regarding The Elite. Stay tuned tomorrow for more on that!

I think that'll do it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 202

It's week 2 of our Kirby Project!

I've now officially finished his body - I just need to stuff him and make some eyes for him!

Again, the pattern is here!

This is me trying to show how to Decrease single crochet.
You start by beginning a stitch, but you don't finish.

Instead, you go into the next stitch.

Then you pull all the way through.
To Dec2, you actually start your way through 3 stitches and finish all three together.

Here's the end of that row!

Our Kirby is roughly the same size as a coffee mug!
Cute!

Go Enjoy/Make Something!
FC