2025/12/30
It's like 23:45 but I'm going to pretend it's past midnight and I made this post tomorrow. My last entry, earlier today, was pretty depressing, but I forgot to mention it's also my mom's birthday and I made an eggplant lasagna and a pineapple "pavê" (traditional local dessert).
Eggplant?? Well, it's been 22 years or so since I last ate meat, and my mom quite likes vegetables and is a fan of my dishes. Unfortunately I only thought about taking pictures when both my sauces were already reducing (basic béchamel of flour, butter, milk, nutmeg, and my personal tomato passata with olive oil, thin garlic slices, tons of chopped onions, basil and thyme from my garden) and I was grilling the eggplants (with a bit of olive oil, salt and black pepper). With all due modesty, and I'm quite a good cook, and girls that wanted me just for my body didn't know what they were missing.
Here's a picture from the assembling (using mozzarella cheese).
And finally them ready... yep, I made two, and we ate like 1/3 of one so we're gonna be eating lasagna for a few days. Doesn't matter, they are delicious :)
The pavê was already in the refrigerator, but turned out great too. It's a crème pâtissière (milk, sugar, egg yolk, cornstarch, I added light cream, condensed milk, and shredded coconut), a pineapple compote (just cut a pineapple in cubes, added sugar, and cooked until it formed a nice syrup), "cornstarch biscuits" (they are common here, and I dipped them in that syrup), and a dark chocolate ganache. I'd marry the hell out of me!
Hmmm... I used to cook a lot, one of my friends just told me the other day we should get together to make some pizza again (yeah, I do them from scratch), I wonder if I should add a new tag to this blog and start posting food too.
2025/12/29
A week since my last entry, I don't even know what to write. I wanted to write before, but I have been procrastinating with everything I could, and even while I'm writing this, I'm not sure I'm going to end or publish it today or even soon, I just hope I finish before 12:00, when I promised myself I'd start doing some house work. On my free time I'm not feeling like doing anything, just laying in bed, staring at the ceiling or sleeping.
This week I finished watching the second season of Gen V (2023-) with my mom. It was okay, I mean, I think it's way above average for TV series, and I like that The Boys TV series has very little to do with the comics. Yeah, I do like the comics way waaay more than the show, but if I were to be seeing the same story again I'd be quite bored, and it would happen the other way too, so I hope that someone that watched and liked the show and jumped to the comics enjoyed experiencing these characters again but on a totally different story - for me, it was reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? after watching and enjoying Blade Runner so much.
So I was downloading for my father the stuff that was uploaded this month, and one of the movies was Wake Up Dead Man (2025) and I decided to save this one for me too to watch later with my mother, since she liked Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion (2022). It was cool, like the other two, some fairly enjoyable entertainment.
Saturday night I was planning to go to a concert with some cover bands, some friends would be there, but a cousin I didn't see for seven years decided to visit and he arrived at 21:00, so I went to pick him up and didn't go to the show. He is staying at my father's, that night we had some pizza and watched The Penguin Lessons (2024), fucking silly name for a movie but it's actually pretty cute, perhaps melodramatic in a cheesy way, but a nice movie. The memoirs of an English man that moved to Argentina in 1976 to teach English at an upper class school right during the fascist military coup, and when the school was closed he decided to visit Uruguay, where he saved a penguin from an oil spill and was kinda forced to become its caretaker, taking it back to Argentina with him. The movie isn't actually about fascism and resistance, but you can't remove it from its background, so it's heavily political in a way, from dialogues to showing the regime kidnapping and torturing people, and the start of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, while still being very easy-going somehow.
Sunday (yesterday) we watched Superman (2025). Eh, another superhero movie. "Oh, but symbolism, Israel, Gaza." yeah, Star Wars too with the Vietnam War... yeah, it's there, but it doesn't affect the people that should be affected, and the movie is still meh (funny scene from Wake Up Dead Man, guy describing Star Wars and obviously sounding like Darth Vader and goes like "Yeah, we are like the Rebels" and that's how it works, everyone sees themselves as the heroes, always... Wake Up Dead Man has a heavy political undertone and social commetary by the way).
Almost 13:00. I know I'm spiraling out of control, it's getting worse, but somehow I felt it already early this month and got an appointment, even though I was going out and seeing people, trying to occupy myself writing here, thinking I was getting better on my own, I only got out of the comfortable numbness - which I wish I didn't. I've been untreated and unmedicated for several years already, this shit is so fuckin expensive and I'm embarassed of asking my parents for money, but on Jan 7 I'm seeing a doctor, and maybe I will be back on drugs... really, I just want to function, manage to do something without my head sabotaging me, this made-up weight holding me in place.
Eh, I feel childish for this outburst.
2025/12/22
Imagine they got Cronenberg at his peak to direct a '50s silly family sitcom? That's Meet the Hollowheads (1989) by the make-up artist Thomas R. Burman - probably the reason he was never allowed to write or direct a movie ever again.
In a cramped and chaotic future with bizarre biotechnologies, Mr. Hollowhead will have his boss for dinner, and with a promotion at stake, Ms. Hollowhead is doing her best to get everything in order. A mix of intense colorful super soaker and high sugar cereal ads, '80s cynicism, urban decay and industrial surrealism. A pretty silly story with some great witty humor poking fun at consumerist culture and a horrendous view of the future where technology is not guided by ethics - oops, we been there for a long time.
Silly, niche, massively underrated. It deserves a cult following.
Another movie I watched recently was The Blood of Heroes (1989). In this post-apocalyptic world, teams of juggers travel from village to village to challenge local teams and collect trophies. After our hero team arrives at the ambitious main girl's village and she fucks up one of their players, she joins them to travel the wastelands jugging around... the sport? The stupidest mix of hockey, gridiron and gladiator games. If a team collects enough trophies it can challenge a team from the big league and perhaps enter it and live a life of luxury full of broken bones and shit, because if you were not born in the ruling class, being their entertainer is the only way to not die a poor farmer.
Okayish post-apocalyptic action movie. This one has a big cult following and even international Jugger competitions!
Kurosawa and Bergman are two other directors I love and I'm trying to watch their whole filmographies. They seem to be unable to make a bad movie, even in their more constrained imperial propaganda and made-for-TV productions, they are still damn great directors. I recently watched Scandal (1950) by Kurosawa, that I guess wouldn't figure in any list of his best movies, but was still a nice watch, about a famous singer that had a picture taken with a random guy and tabloids sold it as if they were having an affair, and I guess it's a critique of the Americanization stupidization of culture of its time.
The other movie I watched was Summer Interlude (1951), about a ballerina reminiscing about her past and the wounds that made her current self. Bergman is always so humane and intimate. Beautiful bittersweet movie.
This was a good last few days in my movie-watch. The Blood of Heroes was the lowest point but I still enjoyed.
2025/12/21
Oh, I actually finished watching the first season of Alien: Earth (2025-) some time ago already.
So first episode, big ass ship falls in the middle of the city and hits some big buildings, they send search and rescue teams, and each is like six soldiers and one medic... what do they carry to search and rescue survivors on a big ship crash in apartment buildings? Big ass automatic weapons, full body armor, one single first aid kit that only the medic carries, and probably has rounded scissors. What they don't carry? Any kind of equipment to lift, cut or break debris, ropes or stuff to climb up or down, a stretcher to carry survivors... top notch search and rescue team!
So main girl was a dying girl with a mysterious illness and they put her conscience in a synthetic body, saying that's how humans are going to be immortal... oh boy, I hate that trope so much, but at least they made it clear later, and no shaming in spoiling here: You can't "transport" your conscience, it's not a metaphysical entity occupying some other dimension. Your conscience is your brain working, your brain dies so does your conscience. What is possible, however, is to program a chatbot to say it's you.
Moving forward: They get a bunch of other dying kids to turn into immortal synths and repeat the Peter Pan motto ad nauseum... of course these synth bodies aren't like the other synths from the Alien universe, they are actually super fast and strong, and why not give them the mind of a child? I mean, who has more maturity, emotional stability, focus, commitment, discipline and well developed ethics than little kids? Just give them ultimate weapons like every damn anime ever does.
Oh, main girl's brother, who believes main girl died, is the one medic of the search and rescue team. She sees him on TV and decides to go help him, so she has this guillotine paper cutter in her room, for all the paper she has to cut all the time with her full-time job of being a kid, and just turns it into a sword and puts it on her back like she has magnets or something. Main girl goes to talk to her boss, and boss thinks it's a good idea to test the kids' capabilities and take them all for a field trip, they all put on some uniform and so, but nobody thought the idea of her carrying the paper cutter on her back like it was a sword was fucking stupid, they just let her put it on her new uniform... and I have no idea how it's hanging there without a sheath or something...
Oh yeah, of course there was an alien on the ship, and it kills dozens of people in mere seconds, but whenever it finds the main girl's brother it wants to savor the moment.
So, hey, I wasn't very impressed by the first episode, it's okayish and kinda funny, incredibly anime-like, but I did actually like the series because it adds several factions everywhere. There are more human companies, there are more alien species and they are all dangerous as fuck, like everything in the universe is an apex predator that can survive in any environment, and at the end a new faction is formed... so yeah, I'm excited to keep watching, the kids are all cool. I made it sound dumb but it's pretty cool.
Oh, several entries ago I mentioned starting the fourth season of The Witcher with my father and it not being so bad. I take it back. The pacing is awful, main guy did absolutely nothing the whole season, it was like a big filler, perhaps the monsters he fights are cool quests in the game and it was an attempt at fan-service? I didn't play the games so I don't know... only thing I liked was the last fight of The Rats. I honestly don't remember much of the other seasons, I think I even liked the first season, but the other two were already tedious. So after completing The Witcher we started the third season of The Wheel of Time, and I struggled to remember what was going on with the story... that mage fight in the tower was cool, but the overall series I rank below The Witcher - although this last season was more boring than usual.
With my mom, though, she has been binge watching soap operas like hell, but she just finished one, so perhaps today we manage to watch a few more episodes of Gen V (2023-). I don't remember where we stopped, but I was enjoying it so far.
2025/12/20
Of course I love some Mad Max shit, but the truth is that Western post-apocalyptic movies are cheesy as fuck (wait, are Australians Westerners?), only Eastern Europeans have the correct amount of depression, despair and hopelessness to nail the genre!
In A Visitor to a Museum (1989), by Konstantin Lopushansky, we see a devastated world after an ecological and societal collapse, and a man who is seeking to visit a museum that is now buried under the sea, like a forbidden fruit of wisdom that will mean his death. The director's previous work, Dead Man's Letters (1986), is one of my favorite movies ever, beautifully hopeless and nihilistic, making A Visitor to a Museum not look so depressive and oppressive, although yes, it is. It's far from a commercial movie, it's slow and contemplative, dialogues are a medium for expressing ideas instead of just moving the story forward, and the more you are paying attention, the more meaningful they are. Obviously I liked it a lot, but it's not an easy movie to recommend to people used to mainstream cinema. Also, if you were to watch Lopushansky for the first time, I'd recommend Dead Man’s Letters instead.
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972), directed by Peter Medak and written by Peter Nichols, is the best movie I watched these last few days, however, it's so damn uncomfortable it's hard to rate it. Supposedly a black comedy (and I have no trouble laughing at fucked up stuff), it managed to break me. It's about a couple taking care of a nearly brain-dead daughter, the toll it has taken on their lives and relationship, and the way they found to still function. Brutal and honest, I think it takes a while for the movie to find the right pacing and for the deep emotional scars to leak through the morbidity of the situation. Strongly acted, painful, funny somehow, I tried to take some screenshots, but the funny scenes and dialogues just look of poor taste without its crushing context.
I love Luis Buñuel and I'm trying to watch his whole filmography, and even in his most boring, uninspired, commercial pictures made out of contractual obligations, he can't help but let transpire through his work his disdain for the ruling class, the bourgeois hypocrisy and the corrupt essence of the society of appearances. A Woman Without Love (1952) is one of these movies. An adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant story, it's a competent melodrama, but I struggle to highlight anything, and even though I can't say there is anything bad either, I guess even in its time the reaction must have been "Yep, that's a movie".
The other "meh" entry here is Powaqqatsi (1988), by Godfrey Reggio. His previous experimental non-narrative documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is pretty iconic, a bombardment of short sequences about humanity, technology, industrialization and nature, that without saying a single word, forces you to narrate and link the images together in your mind, letting it roam through free association. Powaqqatsi is more third-world focused, but it repeats the formula, losing its impact.
I keep watching low-budget sci-fi stuff in hopes of striking gold (and I did several times), but this also means digging through a lot of crap. One of the movies I watched recently was Et Skud Fra Hjertet (1986), and it's not all bad, it's a group of soldiers having to transport a dangerous political prisoner in some post-apocalyptic world, the transport is attacked and our main character, who now has to survive the wilderness with the prisoner, comes to question the system and shit. It has a somewhat interesting ambiguous ending but it doesn't make up for the poor general production and overall dull directing and script.
I watched Robot Jox (1989) when I was a kid but I could never find that movie again. Not knowing its name, whenever I tried to search it online the only results I'd get were Pacific Rim. Thanks to Letterboxd I found it and decided to start watching the other entries of that universe. Crash and Burn (1990) takes place several years after the events of the first movie, the story isn't really connected, and the worldbuilding is way more coherent and interesting, but it's still a bad low-budget sci-fi that dabbles in interesting themes but doesn't make a good story or production out of it.
I also watched Death Collector (1988), Deadly Reactor (1989) and Star Slammer (1986), let's just call them awful, horrible and kill-me-now.
I also watched Droid (1988), it's been a while since I downloaded it and I had no idea what it was, for starters it's a very bad movie, but it's funny in its own way... well, it's a cheesy dystopian neo-noir erotic movie. While I found Droid pretty meh, there are some cool erotic movies out there. I absolutely love Things to Come (1976) and Café Flesh (1982) - this one is actually porn, but very trippy, surreal and depressive porn. Is porn even worth it if it does not give you existential dread? Love Café Flesh.
2025/12/18
My last post got me reminiscing about teenage drunk adventures, but mostly with the adults around not caring... there was this one time, around 15 or 16, a friend of mine was going to go out with his girlfriend but her cousin from other city was visiting that weekend and they wanted someone to keep the cousin company. I didn't even ask for details, the idea of a "double-date" didn't even cross my mind, I was going even for literal baby-sitting if that was the case - because that's what friends do -, but the girl was only one or two years younger than me. My mom was going to the store so I asked her to bring me two bottles of wine, which should be enough to start the night.
I got to my friend's place, his mother was there but she was cool as fuck and used to seeing us drunk, and the girls were there, and we started drinking, but it was just me and the cousin because the couple got busy doing naked couple things in the bedroom. I wish I remember anything about that time we were just drinking and talking there, I have no idea how I entertained her but, given the results of the night, I did a hell of a job, and it's a skill I wish I still had. The girl was actually pretty fun and spontaneous, also pretty pretty. So we downed those two bottles waiting for the couple, and after we left the house we were walking downtown, somehow, we ended up having a piggyback race... she probably just jumped on my back and the couple decided to race us, I don't remember the results, but I do remember that when she was going to dismount she let her arms go before I let her legs go so she just kinda pivoted and hit the back of her head on the pavement. In my mind I was like "fuuuuck, I messed up hard!" but she just got up and laughed it off - the wonders of being drunk haha.
I don't remember much more of the night. Where we stopped, who we met, how much more we drank, just that later we went to a square that had a public fountain because that was the place the girls were going to take the bus back home, and the place was empty, and obviously we, drunk as fuck, went for a swim (the couple weren't as drunk nor wanted to get wet I guess). At one point I was going to get out of the fountain, she grabbed my arm, pulled me back to the water and kissed me... boy, in my head it looked like a movie scene, but I know drunk people making out doesn't look so good from the outside, and we just spent some time there in the water... we were probably being very noisy before when we were climbing the fountain and playing, someone had called the cops, and this is another set of adults of that night that didn't care about us being drunk at all, they were pretty cool actually, just told us to not go back to the fountain. Not much later the girls took the last bus home, my friend and I walked back to his place, and further developments don't matter, I never heard of her again.
I can't remember her face, and I'm not even sure I remember her name correctly (dude, I'm talking about time here, not alcohol), even though it's a night I will never forget... maybe she feels the same? Or was she embarrassed when she sobered up the next morning? She was a fantastic girl, though, how did I not try to stay in touch? Well, same reason I didn't even think of that night as a double-date... I was kinda already involved with someone at the time... oopsie.
Tomorrow I go back to commenting on movies. Watched quite a few good and bad things these days.
2025/12/17
I watched Another Round (2020) the other day. My uncle had recommended it to my father so I downloaded it for him but saved it for me to watch too. Do you like Mads Mikkelsen? It was a quite nice movie. I liked how natural they are about it, a bunch of high schoolers getting wasted and no one being judgmental about it, let the kids have fun. This is something that feels familiar to me, and I'm glad to see it's still natural in other places, and that bores me to death when I see American moralism. I remember my first year of high school, here we usually are 14 and turn 15 in the middle of it, the rich girls in my class made big birthday parties, but they wanted boys to wear tuxedo or some shit, dance waltz, and like hell I was spending money on that lameass Barbie-dream, those parties were probably boring as fuck, I didn't go to any, however, the few boys that had big parties it was basically renting a place with a pool and a sports field, getting some food, and tons of alcohol that the parents themselves were providing... so we'd spend the day at the pool, play volleyball or something, and get drunk.
... yeah, technically, it was illegal as fuck, you have to be 18 to drink, but if parents are watching, only those "karen"-type would care.
Perhaps I should have saved this rant for Old Man Yells at Cloud, but I'm not feeling like elaborating enough. Quoting my bio: "Here we used to start to go out and get wasted around 12 to 14, so when we are around 20 to 22 we had already partied so hard and fucked around so much that we are ready to become responsible adults. Isn't it better to be irresponsible idiots when you indeed have no responsibilities, and give a good use to all those puberty hormones?"
2025/12/14
I had a bit of a cold, it was raining heavily when I left home so I got a bit wet when going to the gig too. I was wearing a mask and didn't shake hands with anyone and tried to stay in a corner when bands were playing, I hope I didn't spread anything to anyone... anyway, today I'm feeling like crap (the cold got worse).
Today I was trying to get in touch with people from that other city I used to play, checked my phone contacts and only one still had a profile picture (so the others changed number), last time I saw them was 2019. The guy I still had contact with was the drummer of the band I used to play, Suco de Lixo, but he also would play in a band called Grotesque, and they are the ones I was trying to get in touch with. He told me he left the band some time ago but it's still going on with other people, only the original bassist remains there (great guy, last time I crashed at his place I forgot my favorite cap there, a trucker hat from the band Rot - grindcore since 1990, I wonder if he still has it...), and then he hit me with the obituary, three of our friends died since we last talked... shit...
2025/12/13
Spent a few hours today talking to a friend about cultural production and so. He was my ride last gig so I could have some beer, I was going to be his ride this gig but he got a cold and is not going, I also got a bit of a cold, it rained a lot this week, but I'm going... still about 4h to get ready and leave and I'm kinda too anxious thinking I don't have time to finish writing this entry even though I don't plan to write much.
Do you have panettones in your country? They are very traditional here. I found this very good brand, they make a very good panettone with pistachio cream, I bought some back in November, they were about BRL$20 each (about USD$3.70) - and now close to Christmas they are already around BRL$60.
I didn't buy any for me, this last week I went around giving it to people I like, none of which I have a close friendship with but I do consider friends even though we kinda have a more "professional" relationship, like the two girls from my mom's physiotherapy, the owner of a veterinary clinic that helped me so much in a big rescue, his son that is a veterinary, and the secretary that is also kinda the manager (and she got pretty emotional when I gave it to her) and also another guy that takes care of his petshop, the guy that fixes my computers and refuses to charge because we always talk a lot and laugh and we kinda help each other when it's needed - like, a few weeks ago I went to his house and he had a flat tire and no spare, so I put my spare on his car so he could at least drive to the tire shop later, but this friendship doesn't have anything to do with his work and I hate that he doesn't charge me when he fixes stuff for me (I went to his house that day because I needed to fix my mom's All-in-One PC screen), there is also this other veterinary that does house calls and I went to her clinic to give her one and one to her sister too, and they also got super happy. Well, one of the people that I gave a panettone to we do have a close relationship, it's my cousin and since we were little we have always been best friends, and then I had one last and decided to give it to this lady I know, she is a seamstress and several times made me cirurgical clothes for my pets, and she has about 60 rescued dogs on her property, whenever I get donations - because I'm kinda known in my neighborhood (I also have a lot of rescued pets) I take stuff to her, when I have spare medicine as well. She also seems to be very lonely, whenever I go there she gets very happy and we talk for hours, and she also fucking refuses to charge me when I ask for stuff, some years ago she gave me some knitted socks that are great and I would like to have more but I don't want to ask because I know she will refuse to charge me! Anyway, she also got very emotional when I gave her a panettone, she told me her mother died recently and she was very down and she doesn't have many people to talk to, so I'm glad I randomly showed up at her door.
Except for my cousin, all of those people I just see when it's related to their work, I don't even remember the last time I saw this seamstress lady, as I said we are not "close friends", but I do consider them all my friends, I just suck at keeping in touch, but I'm happy that I surprised them and made them happy :)
2025/12/10
I did close to nothing so far this month, hence the only other entry was the previous one about a gig.
I did, however, watch a few movies and try to play a few games. I watched One Battle After Another (2025), which everyone talked so highly about, but I read the synopsis and wasn't very impressed. I thought maybe it would be something like Scorsese or Guy Ritchie, since people mentioned black comedy. I wasn't expecting it to be so in-your-face political, and I can see how it resonates with Americans now more than ever, but the movie itself, I honestly didn't care much.
I also picked some of the movies that have been sitting on my HDD since August. Since I created my Letterboxd account and added tons of stuff, I created a method to go clearing that up, moving by decade with a mix of guilty-pleasure genre picks (which includes a lot of very bad movies), priority picks (highly recommended stuff or things I always wanted to watch), and random picks that come from random recommendations or directors I like or simply because I've watched other entries in the same series.
Pigsty (1969) by Pasolini... meh. I don't know if I'm in an awful mood or what, but Pasolini is hit or miss for me. Yeah, he often uses very witty and funny symbolism, Teorema (1968) is one of my favorite movies ever, but Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) is so thoroughly revolting that, despite how artsy and witty the whole thing actually is, it's not something I can put myself through again. Also, sometimes his dialogue gets pretty tiring, which is what I felt with Pigsty, even though literally half the movie doesn't even have dialogue, lol.
I did enjoy it more than One Battle After Another, but it's not a movie I'd recommend or rewatch.
I watched The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1984) and it's pure crap. I'm putting on my list a lot of movies I want to rewatch, and I had rewatched some time ago Cyborg (1989), a Van Damme crapfest that nails the post-apocalyptic visuals mixed with a cyberpunk story but is obviously still a crappy movie. I wanted to write a review for it, and I often use duck.ai to grammar-check me if I'm in doubt about the words I'm using. I wrote something like "Has Van Damme ever made a movie that isn't gay porn?" in the middle of the review, and instead of grammar checking the review the AI was like, "Hey, it's not nice to say those things about a public figure. Van Damme has never made porn and he is not gay, those are only rumors"... like, fucking robots, I just want you to check if I used the idioms correctly.
So, anyway, I had Cyborg 2 (1993) on my list, and somehow all those crappy '80s and '90s action movies have even crappier and cheaper sequels with a bunch of nobodies playing the roles, and the main nobody here was Angelina Jolie lol. It was her first main role in a movie. She plays a Fucknator, a Terminator rip-off that is actually a sex doll. They want to use her in a suicide orgasm bombing, but she escapes and has to navigate the corporate conspiracy before the timer for her explosive climax runs out... yeah, awful movie as well.
About gaming: I tried playing Red Faction II (2002), but it felt like a downgrade from the first game in every aspect. Next, I installed NecroVision (2009), but I played very little. The gameplay is fun and so far so good, but the dialogue and voice acting are quite weak, and you meet people wanting to talk to you in the middle of battle and they fucking talk so much. You either stand still or skip the whole dialogue. They could have really used a better writer.
2025/12/08
What's worse than stepping on a puddle on a bar toilet?
Stepping on a puddle on a bar toilet while wearing flip-flops.
I'm a flip-flop man. It's a tropical country, it's hot all the time, I'm not wearing socks. When I was a teenager I'd use uncomfortable second-hand combat boots because punk, but it's been a long long time since I lost the battle to comfortable clothing. I don't go to gigs with flip-flops on purpose, for me it's just so natural that I leave home and when I get there I'm like "Damn, I forgot to put on some shoes", so I throw my flip-flops at some corner and go barefoot to the moshpit. When gigs are chaotic my feet get stomped a lot, once I lost a huge chunk of a toenail, but you know, just pour some alcohol on it, for feeling it is a problem for tomorrow-you.
So this Sunday afternoon I went to this local antifascist gig. It was quite cool, a guy who had moved to this city recently went around finding people with bands and got a place for them to play. I met a lot of cool people and old friends, we are all living in hiding it seems. I saw this old friend, he was in one of the bands that was going to play and it was their first gig, but he had other bands in the past, so we were catching up and he was like "Man, I don't see you since we took that van to that gig in x city..." and I was like "No dude, last time we met was that party in that dude's house, what's his name, you were all sniffing glue... wait... isn't that him over there?" and I pointed at the guy and the guy saw me "Hey, I know you! You were in that party we were all sniffing glue!". And it turns out, he is the guitarist of the band. See, glue bonds people together as well - no one there is so junkie actually, it was more of a joke, they were talking about being teenage junkies, and they were all on the second day of an alcohol-cocaine fueled party celebrating the birthday of a friend who was living in Norway but came to visit, and the guy said "Hey, I have shoe glue from work in the basement. Let's go sniff it!"... it's not like they are hooked on glue, glue is for kids after all, and I didn't take part in it, while the whole group spent the whole night drinking in the streets and partying who knows where I had gone home to shower and sleep, and the next day in that guy's house I just slept on the floor somewhere in the living room while they were doing lines and blasting death metal at 6am. For me it was easy to sleep, for I was hammered, but the neighbors must have loved it haha - I got up, everyone was still drinking, and the party went on the next day as well.
So back to this Sunday, all the bands were local. It started with Transporte Público that played punk covers ranging from Dead Kennedys to The Hives and they had one song of their own that they played at the end. Next was No Safe Place, it was just covers, one Ramones, one Bad Religion, one The Distillers, one Nirvana, sadly tons of Green Day. Then Camellia Rose Tree, very trippy experimental rock, and it was great because it set the ambient right for the anti-music that was coming. The next was my friend's band, Sagawa, some heavily political grindcore that got everyone to the moshpit and the show was great, people really loved it, after the gig a lot of people went to talk to them because they had never seen anything like that. In this city all there is are cover bands of classic rock or of those pop early '00s new metal bands like Linkin Park and System of a Down. Last played the melodic hardcore/emocore band Fatigati, who organized the event, with covers from other Brazilian bands like Dance of Days, Hateen, Street Bulldogs, and a few songs of their own as well.
Fatigati and Transporte Público are playing next week in another bar, along with two other bands that look like grunge covers... eh, I have to go out more anyway. My friend singing in Sagawa said on the mic how hard it was for them to play, they have had this band in the garage since 2018 but never played, they don't have social media, never recorded anything, he talked about social phobia, depression, anxiety, and you know what, those are things we talked about in that aforementioned glue sniffing party as well. We go out, even get pumped to meet again, but soon we get burnt out and spend years recharging our social batteries... the guys thought that party was like 8 years ago, but I think it was only 5, right before the pandemic lockdown... anyway, as he talked about that on the mic, he also mentioned he was sure everyone there was also struggling with something, so I saw a lot of people going to talk to him about that after the show as well. After this gig the band was really pumped, especially because of how well they were received. I hope they play more, I want to get them in touch with the people I know from other places to see if they can get some touring. I feel like my current city is sitting in a cultural vacuum. Every other place I have been has such a huge exchange with other cities (more of my underground experience in my bio), everyone knows everyone, everywhere you go you find people with friends in common and you automatically bond, and here no one knows anything, they kinda know there are gigs in the capital and so, but that's it, the place kinda never developed an underground scene, and shows like Sagawa, with this pure underground energy, are so exotic that... well, I personally saw several people talking to the band and saying they loved it, they really needed it, there was this guy saying it was the first time he had seen a moshpit. It was a great fun time.
I always complain that there is nothing in this city. I failed my early attempts of getting a band together here and ended up playing in another city. I remember in 2014 the Newtown Neurotics, maybe the first anarcho-syndicalist punk band ever, formed in the UK in 1979 (for early anarchopunk bands were basically middle-class hippies showing contempt for working-class movements), were touring Brazil and we somehow got them to play here with Juventude Maldita (a great anarchist punk band from São Paulo that has been around since the '90s) as the supporting act, and we got like 20 paying entries, mostly it was some old biker couples sitting at tables. We were like 4 people standing to watch the bands, all because on the same day some System of a Down or Guns N' Roses cover band was playing for the millionth time in some other bar and everyone went to watch that crap instead. I kinda gave up the city that day... (in late 2019 a friend of mine made a cool party here just DJing 77 punk and early post-punk, and a lot of people showed up, so we were pumped and wanted to get some bands to play here, but then 2020 happened lol). I talked to Fatigati and they are great people, and even though musically it's not much my thing, I guess I'm going to try to follow them around just to be there, because they want to make something in this city. I was talking to Transporte Público as well and just a few months ago they made a punk gig with No Safe Place and a few other melodic bands, I missed it. All the guys from Transporte Público were waiters in this bar, they formed the band and checked with the owner if they could play there and they got the other bands to play too, and regardless if it's just covers or it's melodic, that's punk as fuck. He said they have played a few times alone with a 1h30 to 2h set, so that's a ton of covers with probably a lot of mainstream stuff, but for this gig Sunday they had a 30min punk set, and I encouraged them to write more songs like the one they played in the end. They seem to be up to doing something as well, and they are the ones organizing next week's show, with Fatigati and grunge covers, so I'm going to be there, but I hope one day we get fewer covers.
* Sagawa playing in the picture. I took only a handful of pictures with my shitty camera, and the only one that is not awfully blurred seems like it was taken right when some light was pointing at the lens, ouch.
2025/11/30
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) is cute in the expected French Canadian way. I liked it, but Martin (1977) is still my favorite vampire movie.
Today I watched two other movies I just downloaded. Don't Worry Darling (2022) is a good movie, but because I'm a huge sci-fi fan I've seen that theme being explored so many times already it's kinda old. The production and direction are quite good, however, there is a new angle to the story and when I went to log the movie on Letterboxd I understood better how it resonated with people. While it usually has a broader critique of capitalism or humanity, Don't Worry Darling is also about... well, watch it.
The Artificial Girl (2022), the other movie I watched today, on the other hand, is meh. I guess one could find it interesting if they haven't dived into better works about AI. You can really see it was written before 2022 because they get astonished the chatbot was making pictures and poetry. The big problem is that this classical "machines magically have feelings" trope has very little to do with the actual impacts of technology on society, and I hope this new pareidolia soon gets a real name and psychological treatment - doesn't need to be anything fancy, beating people with sticks the moment they start empathizing with computers should suffice.
2025/11/29
My father has just a cheap cellphone internet plan. I gave him my old laptop and every month I download tons of movies and series for him to watch (plugged on the TV). He does watch subs but he prefers dubs because then he can watch while eating with more ease. A few series we watch together new seasons came out long ago, but because I didn't find dubbed download links I always forget to download them (The Handmaid's Tale, Snowpiercer, Outlander, Kleo...) and we end up watching other stuff instead. So month is ending and I was downloading the stuff uploaded this month, I pick anything IMDB 6+ excluding horror movies (and Christmas movies, blargh!), I do however save some movies for me to watch too.
I had work this morning, but because my mother hasn't been well I decided to stay at home, which was good because she didn't wake up well, but today we were starting new medication and she seemed to get better through the day. While she slept I watched the new Frankenstein (2025). I have watched tons of Frankenstein movies, I quite like the novel, but movies are the vast majority pretty bad. So this one took a lot of liberty to change some stuff and make them flashier, and was somewhat close to that 90's version with Deniro, but unlike it, it wasn't boring. This might have been the first good Frankenstein movie that is actually based on the book. It did cut that convoluted part of their relationship going back and forth with the assassinations and the female creature, which I think was a good call, but when the credits rolled and I saw it was a Guillermo del Toro adaptation, I was kinda disappointed because despite being a good movie I wouldn't have guessed he was the director, it felt kinda "too safe".
While I didn't like previous adaptations, in Frankenstein-inspired movies, I liked Frankenstein (2015) by Bernard Rose - scientists are trying to develop a superior human, but after a failure in the cell replication process they decide to terminate the specimen, but did they? - and Depraved (2019) by Larry Fessenden - it's about a field surgeon with PTSD that is trying to develop a method to save soldiers, reattach limbs and so on, being sponsored by a rich friend in the pharmaceutical industry that wants to test a new drug. The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015-2017) was also quite nice, it's a British miniseries where Mary Shelley herself, and her book, are in the story. It's a kind of alternative meta narrative, a Victorian mystery murder thriller where even William Blake, Lord Byron and Ada Lovelace show up. And I can't ignore Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol. Shitty acting and production, but a very fun and bizarre trashy movie with a great ending.
At the moment I'm watching Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023), I just downloaded it because a dub was uploaded this month, but I'm watching it subbed. I'm about half-way through but I had to stop to do house-stuff and then decided to sit to write about the day. So far a very cute movie.
2025/11/28
I haven't installed any of those games yet, gonna need a breather before it. My mom had a rough week, I took her to a different doctor today, she is ok now, but anxiety makes it hard to focus, so besides watching Fallout (2024-) I didn't do much this week, all these gaming comments are from weeks ago already.
So just to finish that gaming series and try to catch up with the present, I'm going to talk about the last game, The Technomancer (2016).
Compared to Mars: War Logs (2013), this is a huge improvement. The combat, skills and other stats, and items are much more varied. Although an RPG, it's more of an action game. After I got a bit of the mechanics and how stuff worked, about halfway through the first act I decided to restart the game with a more focused build, and the first time I played the first boss I wasn't sure I beat it or not because my life was low and its arms were off the screen, I wasn't seeing if it was swinging at me most of the time, I just saw a cutscene of me being beaten and then saved by my master. But the second time I played, my life was almost full because now I knew combat better, and I saw the same cutscene and again wasn't sure if it hit me with something or what, so I went to check online if it's possible to beat the first boss or if it will always defeat you (it will), and I saw tons of comments complaining about this game's combat being too hard... what? You just hit hit dodge hit hit dodge and you beat the game!
The game is not very complex, but faction, characters, everything, is way better, it was cool enough to keep me entertained without having to stress out about "meta" gaming like some tough RPGs. And as I got engaged I did explore everything in the game, I spent 98% of the time overburdened and spinning-dodge through the city because I couldn't run for I was carrying too much weight - doing pirouettes while jumping is obviously way less tiring than just running.
Oh, one thing to complain though, default controls are pretty dumb, I hate when games try to reinvent the wheel by changing controls to weird stuff. Main attack is left click, cool, secondary attack is like space or ctrl, one of these is the special attack too, and right click is dodge... I configured it to work like the first game, which was good.
2025/11/27
Not feeling like writing today, but I did:
I have played Aliens vs Predator, Bioforge, Dredd vs Death and F.E.A.R. before though.
2025/11/26
Yep, the first season of Fallout (2024-) was quite nice.
Back to gaming, the next game I played was Mars: War Logs (2013), the name is kinda generic and unattractive, but the game has this mix of cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic atmosphere I like. Gameplay was quite fun, although I don't have much to say about the writing... at first I honestly thought there was a kinda homoerotic dom/sub fetish going on. First thing that happens, you save a little twink from being raped by the only fat and non-manly guy in the whole game, and as the twink comes to thank you, you can reply "How do you know I didn't do it just to keep you for myself?". Every time you can be pretty abusive towards your twink, but of course I never picked any of the rude lines, so I don't know how it plays out - I became more of father figure to him I guess, daddy kink much? Meanwhile, every woman you help is throwing herself at you because you are just so manly and have these manly man-jaws and sideburns, but you are so stoic and manly that you don't even react to the freebie prostitutes offer you after saving them - because, apparently, that's the first thing someone who has just been through such violence would do. However, not much later you save a very submissive loli who has been a victim of sexual violence her whole life, and she immediately wants to have sex with you too, and this time you can react to it. If you deny, she is often perplexed about why you aren't having sex with her, and wonders if you are instead fucking the twink, seems like some otaku wrote the character... the romance options are all with girls though.
The gameplay and combat are cool enough, my only complaint would be about the abundance of crafting materials but very very little to craft, there are very few items in the game. If this game had come out like 10 years earlier, I believe it would have been a cult classic, but for 2013, it's kinda inexpressive and so outmatched by other games.
The next game I played was The Technomancer (2016), a paraquel of War Logs, and such a huge improvement! I will talk about it some other day.
2025/11/25
Some other day I continue with the talk about games, only two left from my last GOG purchase, and I already beat both.
I watched the second season of The Last of Us (2023-), brutal! So far it's following the game very closely. I'm so angry this season was so short, I wanted to keep watching. My father has watched it too, I guess he empathized hard with Joel because his first comment was about how annoying Ellie is haha (me: But she is a teenager. him: She is already 19, fuck off.)
Right now I'm 6/8 episodes into Fallout (2024-) and also quite liking it. I absolutely love the classic Fallout games, and surely the TV series is not in the same tone as the first, very grim, game, but the second did lighten up the stuff and added a lot of black humor. I'm not a fan of the Bethesda games, I only played Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and I do think they are good games, but the narrative tone is so different from the classic... the humor also used to be more mature and fucked up than the Bethesda PG games. I mean, not many games let you be an underage gigolo drug-addicted porn-star child-killer grave-digger gay-married mobster who sold your partner to slavery and bet your butthole in arm-wrestling against a super mutant... oh yeah, also thanks to Fallout 2 I know what a fluffer is - it was a hard job, but someone had to do it. We need more educative games like that.
2025/11/23
The next game I installed was SiN (1998), which I knew because of an okayish but generic cyberpunk OVA. The game is ok, feels like something between Half-Life and Deus Ex with a faster, Quake-like gameplay - however, the story never gets as intriguing as Half-Life, nor does it have the RPG elements of Deus Ex. The game was ok, if you like old FPS that's a game to try once. My only highlight is the "hacking" part: when you navigate computers you actually have to use DOS commands, so it feels way more "hackish" than other cyberpunk games, even though you are literally just using regular DOS commands like cd and dir.
After SiN I tried to play Slave Zero (1999) but I couldn't get it to run with any compatibility patch, so I went to Red Faction (2001) and it was quite a nice surprise. The gameplay reminded me a lot of Half-Life, which is a big plus for me, the story is pretty fast-paced and okay enough, I mean, very generic with generic characters, but I really liked the destruction mechanics and how many paths you had... I used to be very completionist, I'd explore every path to the end to see what I could find, but not in my current mood. At the start of the game I started going around through the maze of tunnels and using explosives to open more ways, but I got tired and just progressed, and from there I'd just pick whatever path and go with it. However, it seemed like I was going very far from places that looked like I should be going, I don't know if the game has multiple paths that lead you to different objectives or just several ways to reach the same destination.
The part about the destruction mechanics: sometimes you see a ventilation shaft at the side of a mountain and you can go placing explosive charges or using rockets to destroy the mountain so you can climb there and get into the shaft - and yeah, it leads you somewhere. There was this place where they retracted a bridge, so I jumped in the icy water below and swam until I reached a station, I didn't see if there was a way out of the station, but there was a way further through the water so I jumped back. Unfortunately I took the wrong turn and ended up on the bridge again, so instead of going all the way back I just carved a path I could climb to the other side. Near the end of the game I was following this main character and we arrived at a hangar with a bigass ship and it felt like I should be going in there, but I saw a side door at the hangar and went there instead, and kept going and going and going, it had tons of those annoying gunships, and I thought maybe I was walking through another path to reach that hangar and I would have to walk all the way back later, but instead I ended up on a giant empty depot and I saw a ladder and climbed and moved jumping through the metal frames at the ceiling and then I saw two of those gunships just hovering there, like they were waiting for me to approach by the floor so it could trigger a cutscene. I literally dropped a bomb from above on them and the fight started, after that another gunship appeared, I destroyed it and from there the last boss showed up... it was kind of anti-climatic, and I kinda felt like there was supposed to be something on the bigass ship I ignored in the hangar... does this game have multiple paths to take? I don't plan on finding out anytime soon. But Red Faction was quite fun.
* random screenshot I picked from MobyGames.
2025/11/21
Continuing with my recent gaming... I didn't feel like finishing the TIM trilogy, though, and didn't install the last two games. My next one was Frostpunk (2018), a survival city-building game. I've been wanting to play this one for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to playing the second game when it's on my price range.
Because I like to city-build very tidy and organized, how uneven stuff worked kinda ruined replayability for me – I did beat all maps and played a bit of the Endless Mode though.
The game is great and can get very chaotic and drive up your anxiety. The first map on normal difficulty was driving me crazy already. All the weather fluctuations, barely being able to keep my city "chilly", too many people getting sick, then you reach the point you have to choose between Order and Faith to keep the city together, and like hell I'm going to start a religion, so I turned out to be a fucking fascist, but, gosh, people asked for it! Everyone fucking sick, not enough food, I barely being able to keep my generator going and the fuckers at the coal mine were like "wE DoN't WaNt tO WoRk TOdAy, wE WaNt To sPeND tHE dAY PrAYinG", fuck it, time to build the Execution Platform!
Not once I picked the Faith path, but considering how depressing the whole game is, if Faith doesn't turn your city into a caste society ruled by pedos I'm going to be very disappointed.
2025/11/20
This morning I was going to help my father at work but he didn't sleep well and decided to take a lazy day. We started watching the fourth season of The Witcher. Not nearly as bad as internet drama suggests, but it also doesn't mean it's good, it's just more entertainment for the forever-bored species.
I also watch series with my mother, I've been living with her since she got sick (more in my bio), but somehow it's harder for us to get together and sit to watch stuff. Recently we watched Daredevil: Born Again (we watched together all the Marvel Netflix series, and when the standard for superhero series was crap like Smallville, Daredevil was quite a breath of fresh air), finished the fourth season of The Umbrella Academy (I liked the first season, the second had its moment. The third and fourth bleh) and the second season of Poker Face (I also liked the first season, the second had way more lows than highs... barely any high...) and we started watching the second season of Gen V (2023-). Gen V is ok, but it's getting harder to care much about The Boys (2019-) (more of my thoughts on the comics and the series on this blog rant). After Gen V we gonna start the second season of Peacemaker (2022-). I found the first season pretty funny, my cousin already watched the second and said it isn't on par... let's wait.
I wasn't watching much stuff lately, if you read my other entries, I was more killing time with gaming, and probably tomorrow I will go back talking about gaming, but I decided to download some series I've been postponing for awhile, which includes all of these I watched/am watching/going to watch with my mother, but also others that I want to watch alone because I want to pay more attention and potentially take a lot of screenshots, it includes the second season of The Last of Us (2023-) (I really liked the first one), Alien: Earth, Fallout (I'm not highlighting these because I still don't know if they are worth it) and the second season of Andor (2022-2025).
I actually finished Andor already the other day, and man, what a fucking great series! Rogue One (2016) is the only Star Wars movie I really like, however, I don't think it would have the impact it has without the Original Trilogy. The Original Trilogy, eh, I think it's ok, I grew up with it having a legendary status but I was never a big fan. I guess they are worth watching at least once because of its cultural impact (the other trilogies, I only recommend if you really really liked the first), but for classic sci-fi blockbuster I'd take 2001: A Space Odyssey over Star Wars easily any day. Rogue One is not a big epic about legendary heroes whose names are going down in history, no, it's about the lives and sacrifices of those whose names aren't going down in history, but, well, without them, you wouldn't have an history. Andor is a prequel to Rogue One, diving deeper into the formative years of the Rebellion. Although the chronological order is Andor > Rogue One > Original Trilogy, for them to have the impact they should you must watch in the release order of Original Trilogy > Rogue One > Andor.
For those who are not completely alienated from history and current events, it's easy to see that everything in Andor has already happened and is happening right now right here.
Thinking about watching order, and Rogue One and Andor not being that great without the Original Trilogy. I mentioned liking Marvel Zombies (2025) in that other post, but I guess if one was to watch it without any previous Marvel knowledge they wouldn't enjoy it that much as well.
ps: I just noticed how much superhero crap I mentioned here. I swear superhero crap isn't the only thing I watch!
2025/11/18
I've been very distant from "the scene" for years, and a few months back, when I made the BR Punk Player, I decided to check my old Facebook and post to a few groups and share with people I knew, and then I discovered that just a few days prior to it a woman had been beaten to death in a punk gig in the capital over a petty internet discussion and it made me sick to my stomach, the kind of thing that automatically made me want to keep away from "the scene", and I even knew one of the murderers from years back...
This last Saturday I was watching that hardcore band and I talked to a friend I didn't see in a while, we ended up talking about that case and how senseless that shit is, a bunch of 40s and 50s year olds playing The Warriors saying they are a gang, kicking the head of someone on the ground... anyway, that same friend just messaged me that this Sunday in that same place there was a hardcore gig and a 13 year old girl was drugged and raped... what the fuck is happening!? I feel so sick.
2025/11/17
My desperation to fight the boredom brought me back to GOG. I decided to buy some new games following my rule of less than BRL$10 (USD$2) but also only buying what's at least 75% off. I bought 7 games, and at this moment I'm playing the last one - these diary entries will eventually catch up with the present.
The first time I saw a PC was my cousin's, it had Windows 95, and perhaps many of you youngsters don't know but Windows wouldn't launch when you started the PC, you had to start Windows on DOS by typing win, but my cousin had this DOS game, and if instead of typing win you typed tim it would start The Incredible Machine (1993), a very fun puzzle game. A pack with the trilogy and its expansions fit my criteria and it was the first game I installed - really like 30 years since I last played it.
2025/11/16
Another boring day trying to not get consumed by the void. Back to my recent gaming... I actually didn't finish Far Cry 2. As I said, the game gets exhausting, and I wanted to format my laptop, get a clean install, and start a more privacy-oriented setup.
After the new setup, I looked at my GOG again and didn't find anything I really wanted to play. I didn't want anything too complicated, I'm not really invested or excited, I'm basically gaming just to divert my attention from the void, so I looked at my mobile.
I never cared about cellphones. Up until 2019 I only had a dumbphone, then I bought a Samsung J2 Core, the cheapest non–second-hand phone I could find - it was about BRL$400 (around USD$75), and I'm still using it. Back then I tried several mobile games, some big-IP gacha crap, some random idlers and TCGs that were also gacha crap... it feels like everything on the Play Store is either an ad or a casino simulator. In the end the only games I kept were some Sudoku, Minesweeper, Dominoes, etc, that I could play offline.
I did, however, really like a couple of games and ended up buying their full versions - the first games I ever bought legally!
Solitairica (2016) is a very solid Solitaire-RPG game. Back then I couldn't for the life of me beat the game with the Rogue deck, so this time I left that deck for last, but after having some trouble with the Barbarian I decided to try the Rogue and beat both difficulties on the first try - I lucked out hard, I guess. So, for the first time, I actually completed the game.
The other game is Rebel Inc. (2018), a very intense strategy game, but since then they released tons of new content and aggressively try to sell it, which was a big letdown - the game is still very fun, just harder to recommend now. Another game I liked a lot was Night of the Full Moon (2017), and I wanted to buy the full version but at the time there was some bug in the payment system and I gave up. Very cool game though, I hope it didn't get shitfied with monetization.
2025/11/15
Since my father moved to my current city (more in my bio) we spend at least one day a week together binge-watching series. Today we watched the last episode of the second season of Silo, an okayish series but not really something I'd recommend. There are tons of series we're following where new seasons were released two years ago already and we still couldn't catch up. We decided to watch Marvel Zombies (2025) next because it was short and we try to keep up with the MCU crap (still need to watch Ironheart and Thunderbolts)... yeah, we keep up with the MCU crap. In fact, we've watched every single Marvel-related crap, including shit like Inhumans, Runaways, Helstrom, The Gifted... and like the MCU movies, they're great because you can have full conversations and cook while watching and you don't miss a thing. I prefer to watch serious stuff I actually want to pay attention to alone. Anyway, of course we watched What If...? before. The second and third seasons were absolute crap, but the first season had a few good episodes, and the zombies one was one of the coolest. Marvel Zombies continues from that, and this series was actually pretty cool and I do recommend it. From the whole MCU, this might be the only entry I actually liked — although I think they milked the ending for too long, a single flash at that part would have been more impactful (I also liked Hit-Monkey (2021-), but it's not really part of the MCU, and I still haven't watched the second season).
I came back home, took a nap, woke up around 17:00 (5pm), and saw a message from a friend that a local hardcore band would be playing in someone's yard. I took a quick shower and headed there. The flyer said the band would start at 17:00, but they never do, however, when I arrived around 17:30 they were already playing. Some melodic hardcore/emocore — not so bad, but too melodic for me. They played their own songs, but I recognized a few covers, like Dance of Days and Chuva Negra. The bad thing about having a car now is that I no longer drink, and the rain was getting heavier. The next band was going to be some hard rock covers and I wasn't up for that. A bunch of bikers standing around watching the emocore band was quite funny, but obviously they were waiting for the next one. I met this guy from a band called Camellia Rose Tree, experimental rock from what I understood, and we had some friends in common, it seems like a close friend of mine from my old state recently had them play there and he was super happy about it. On December 07 there's going to be an antifascist gig, the band we watched today, Fatigati, is organizing it, Camellia Rose Tree is going to play too, along with three other punk bands.
Some friends didn't show up. They don't feel like leaving their houses. It seems like nobody can anymore. Everyone is so fucking drained. When we rarely meet by chance we mostly talk about how we don't feel like doing shit or going shit nowhere...
Fuck going out. All my homies have social phobia.
* Picture by Daniel Souza Luz.
2025/11/14
As I was stopping doing anything and just idling, I decided to check my GOG account to see what I had in there. I've been a pirate all my life, but a few years back I decided to start buying games there because they don't rely on any third-party application to install or launch, and I can have a safe .exe to do whatever I want with it. I only buy games there when they're less than BRL$10 (about USD$2 at the moment), and I had bought Far Cry (2004) some time ago.
I was working in a Lan House when that game came out. I learned from an American friend that those places are very third-worldish and people don't really know what they are elsewhere, but in the 2000s not many people in third-world countries had a computer, and if they did, maybe it wasn't very good, and most people didn't have access to decent internet. So they would go to Lan Houses and pay to use computers. There were lots of people gaming, but also people using social media or just surfing. It was a very fun place to be and even better to work at. We'd often do this thing called "Corujão" (something like "night owling"), where, if enough people signed up, we'd open the place at 22:00 and stay until 06:00 (10PM to 6AM if you're American). So it was an all-night gaming session that I was literally paid to be at... and of course fuck school the next morning, I'd just sleep through the classes.
Anyway, I digress. I remember being very impressed by Far Cry's graphics at the time, but today not so much - and I'm still impressed by Need for Speed: Underground (2003) and Half-Life 2 (2004). Replaying today, I also don't think there's anything particularly engaging in Far Cry's gameplay, and its story... ouch, it's so painfully generic, like a bad '80s action movie that takes itself too seriously - unlike Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (2013), that one is great.
I beat the game, a bit annoyed by it. Time to play Far Cry 2 (2008), which I bought on GOG at the same time but never played before. Far Cry 2 is actually kinda great in a way. The graphics and gameplay are very good, the story and characters are somewhat interesting, and I found it way more engaging. The atmosphere is also great, and the jamming mechanics led to some very funny interactions and accidents too, but in another way, the game is not so great. It gets exhausting pretty quickly because the maps are too big, the fast-travel options are extremely limited, and the very places you accept missions are far apart - and then they send you even farther. There are enemies at every road intersection, and even if you're in a vehicle and try to just drive through, they'll jump in theirs and catch up. Even if you drive them off the road or make them hit a tree or something, they'll still catch up because the vehicles are faster when they're driving, so you're always forced to stop and kill them. The other problem is how fast they respawn. I was often going from the bar or the town to the nearest antenna to get missions, and I'd have to stop at a roadblock to kill enemies on the way, two minutes later, on the way back, they were already there again and I had to kill them again. Without an XP and skill system there's no real incentive for this pointless combat - yeah, I could sneak through the woods and avoid being spotted, but it takes longer than just killing them. Combat gets very, very repetitive.
With more fast-travel options and longer enemy respawn times, this game would have been top-notch.
Damn, my microblogging is really missing the micro part.
2025/11/13
For the last four years I've been consuming media very methodically to tackle my ever-growing Plan to Read/Watch/Play list, and for the past ten months I've been watching movies nonstop. Since I decided to stop my main blog and page, I gradually slowed my rhythm until it finally came to a halt. I currently have about 200 movies on my HDD waiting to be watched, but as I drift through daily life anxiety and frustration, which honestly makes me feel embarrassed when I read other people's blogs here, I decided to just "procrastinate" (on my entertainment consumption... somehow...) and kind of went back to mindless gaming. For now, I guess most of what I'll be posting here will be thoughts about the games I've been playing lately, or just use this as a diary - perhaps I should have left this entry for the end of the day instead of the middle of it.
Entry 02:
Sometimes I look at other sites I follow and find them criminally underappreciated. I mean, how the hell am I gaining on psychicnewborn in views? How the hell do I have almost double the views of Gold Hill Mall? KuroiOS is another fantastic site that barely gets any views. It's not just that they've been here way longer than I have, they're beautiful projects with tons of content that the owners put a lot of work into. One thing they have in common, though, is that they dwarf me in followers.
So I've developed a theory: what's getting me views is the fact that I have a real picture on my index page (did you know that if you click it, it changes?), and you're all damn curious to see what I look like... although I guess I'm not showing enough to get followers lol
Well, what did I do? I'm being a whore and putting those pictures on this page too since I'll be updating it way more often - and I'll show my hairy chest when I reach 100 followers \o/
... no... I won't... or will I?
... fear what hairy thing I might show if I reach a thousand...
2025/11/12
It's been weeks since I started thinking about making a microblog here, but I'm always too lazy to actually do it... obviously the motivation only hits when it's time to sleep, and I'm still deciding if I'm going to link it on my main page or not - but I'm liking the idea of people only being able to see it being updated on Neocities. Anyway, I'm only getting the page ready, and for now enjoy my selected screenshots :)
