Run for your lives! It's a picture blitz!

Just finished (literally) season one of Supernatural

I'm not going to do any deep dives into the season, just share my thoughts on the season as a whole. It was okay. Definitely one of those inaugural seasons that's nowhere close to bad, but doesn't blow your socks off either. Most of the episodes felt like they were just there to fill the 22 episode order, with only some of them moving the main story arc forward, sometimes by inches sometimes by miles. I really like the main story arc with the Winchesters hunting down the Yellow-Eyed Demon that was responsible for so much of their grief and suffering while struggling to deal with the negative effects that were wrought on their family and personal lives. I feel like season one would have been even better as a twelve episode season instead of a 22 episode one.

I might start on season two this week.

Welp, I won't be visiting that website again

So every since I got this new phone, I've been surfing the net on it a lot more than I did with my old one. Mostly I've been hitting up Google News and their "Discover" feature. Anyways, the latter suggested an article from Bleeding Cool about how Marvel is just killing off characters left and right. I don't read comics anymore, but my interest was piqued and I clicked to give the article a look-see.

I ended up ditching it and the site in short order. Why? Ads. Ads that were so intrusive and annoying that it killed any interest I had in reading the article or having anything to do with Bleeding Cool ever again. It's not even that there were ads because I grok that websites need ad revenue to exist and with how fucked up the ad market is, it's a struggle for even successful websites to keep the doors open and the lights on. Still, there's a limit on how much I can tolerate. Basically, in a few seconds of the site loading, I had to deal with an ad banner at the bottom of the screen (which honestly wasn't a big deal because most sites I've visited have those), two irritating pop-ups wanting to know if I would like to receive notifications from Bleeding Cool, one of them really didn't want to take "no" for an answer. The other one was from my browser itself, so I'm not going to count that against them.

But the coup de grace had to be the ad banner that popped up and covered the entire article. I don't even remember what the ad was for exactly - either for a car or insurance. Either way, it doesn't matter because that was the straw that broke the camel's back. And to be clear, I've gone to other sites just to make sure the ads weren't something on my end and I've not had the same problem on them that I did on Bleeding Cool.

Like I said earlier, I get that websites need ad revenue to survive and I'm okay with that. I will gladly turn uBlock off for websites and blogs that I frequently visit. But, dude, if a visitor's user experience is being bombarded by ads that annoy them and cover up the content that they're there to read, then you're not going to get too many repeat visitors.

What I'm Watching: Supernatural Season One

"Dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days."

Special cameo by some obscure blog I found.

I've watched Supernatural before - two whole seasons in fact - but I've never watched the early seasons...until now. The local library has almost the entire run of the series so I decided to dive in, one disc (four episodes) a day. I'm currently wrapping up on the disc #3 and will start on the next tomorrow.

I'm enjoying season one so far. Some of the episodes are a bit formulaic, but still entertaining. I don't think Sam's going to make that interview for law school, though.

These photos I took aren't half-bad

I finally got a smart phone that actually is smart and I've been playing with the camera on it a lot. It's a definite upgrade from my previous phone's camera.

It does black and white photography pretty good too.

I'm no master photographer, but I'm happy with how these turned out. I've liked photography ever since middle school when I joined a photography class that one of the social studies teachers ran. He loaned us each a camera and a roll of film and let us run wild. My pictures were shite, but I enjoyed the experience. Having a camera on hand now via my phone has sort of reintroduced me to those memories and I'm keen on turning this into a new hobby.

Ivy Wolfe is very pretty

She's also a pornstar, so use caution if and when googling her.

This movie post is sponsored by S-Mart. Shop smart, shop S-Mart.

Be sure to say hi to Ash in housewares.

I don't why it is, but I like old action movies and Cliffhanger turned out to be better than what I expected. Jurassic World was fine, but it doesn't have the rewatchability of the original. Random Hearts was not at all what I was expecting. I only briefly skimmed the back of the DVD case, so I assumed that it was a conspiracy thriller, but it was a drama about two people not only having to cope with the loss of the spouses, but the revelations that they were having an affair with each other.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was a good movie too, but Keira Knightley's American accent was not great. It sounded like someone from California trying to do a New England accent. Earthquake was a good disaster flick with a dumb ending. I would still recommend it if you want to watch a disaster flick.

And of course Army of Darkness was groovy. ;)

I really like this 2000 AD cover

Credit: Tula Lotay, Lisa Wood
via CBR.

Absolutely gorgeous artwork.

Cyberpunk 2077, or, Keanu Reeves probably just made CD Projekt half a billion dollars on the spot

So undoubtedly you, lovely and intelligent reader have probably heard about The Witcher dev's big get for their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game: Keanu Reeves.



Clearly, they're banking on his huge role in the blockbuster film Johnny Mnemonic. And probably those Matrix movies too, but nobody remembers those things.

Joking aside, the trailer looks amazing, but some actual gameplay footage would be nice too. The game is supposed to come out next year and it's been in development for a while I believe, so there should be some available.

There's an Avengers game coming out and uh, it doesn't look great

First, let's look at this picture.

via The Verge's Twitter.

Wooooooooooooow. I know this isn't tied to the MCU, so obviously the characters aren't going to have the actors' likenesses (which probably saved Square Enix a boatload of money in licensing fees) but good Time Lord, this look like the Avengers didn't feel like assembling (Good Omens just dropped, after all) so they sent their understudies instead. Seriously, Cap looks like my older brother, just with more hair.

On the plus side, Black Widow looks like Terry Farrell and I can't knock that.

Now let's look at the trailer.



So clearly this is a case where you can't base your opinion solely on the former, but have to watch the latter. Guilty as charged. I was fully prepared to condemn this game as crappy cash-in on a popular franchise done on the cheap, so I'm glad I watched the trailer because it does the game more justice than the picture ever will. The character models need some work, that's obvious and hopefully Square will use the money that they saved by not licensing the MCU cast's likenesses, but the game doesn't look as bad as I thought it would be based on just that picture.

Thoughts? Post them in the comments below.

Etsy store (not) coming soon!

As soon as I saw this Captain Marvel keychain at Walmart a couple of months back, one thought immediately jumped to mind: that would make a nice necklace.

Now, I'm not crafty like at all (AT.ALL.), but I figured that I could do this without a trip to the emergency room or a call to the fire department.

✨So crafty!✨

I was correct. Obviously, it wasn't Tony Stark building a suit of powered armor out of scrap and junk. All I had to do was remove the big ring and loop one of those beaded chains through the smaller ring. I'm not a big necklace wearing fella, but I like it. I might replace the chain later on.

I feel like Leinil Francis Yu might have been paying a bit too much attention to Sue Richards

Sue must use her powers a lot for *ahem* extra support.

Because holy crap. This sort of thing just makes me cringe because Sue's bust-size is clearly aimed at a male audience who get off on this kind of thing. Unfortunately, it looks ridiculous.

Also, how is she standing on that piece of debris? It's not level, so she should be falling on her face. Just saying.

I dig the Wonder Woman 1984 poster

via Patty Jenkins' Twitter.

I love the colors. The only thing that disappoints me is that it doesn't look like Diana will be rocking a decidedly '80s hairdo.

I've always liked this PowerBook ad

I tried to find a version of this that had more legible text, but Google failed me, so click to embiggen.

The thing I like about this ad is the way Henry Rollins and Terry Ellis are posed. Their respective list of things that they have on their Apple PowerBooks is interesting too: Ellis's list is mundane and boring, while Rollins' list shows a surprisingly writery side of a man more famous for spoken word performances than putting pen to paper.

Damn, that's some cauliflower right there

I saw this ad while browsing* a website the other day and had to screencap it for obvious reasons:

Good (time) lord, how can that dude even hear with those cauliflowered things? Let that be a lesson, kiddos: don't become an MMA fighter unless you want your ears to look like that.

*Yes, I use uBlock, but I turn it off for certain sites if I use them frequently enough.