Extra Evil - Lifting With Sisyphus

Today's Fortune: Pain often comes without gain.

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Newsreel

We closed the assassin gap.

Assad toured Moscow apartments.

Yoon stole a week of free air.

Stale scams tested reader empathy.

Each appointee is different, yet the same.

VPN developers prayed for a Tiktok ban.

Today's Mood

Preorder it and I’ll be your best friend.

War Journal

In Galway, two deeply drunk crowds made a game of asking for “Zombie,” a la “Freebird.” I have no idea if that’s a trend or coincidence, but it’s a peak travel memory. Trolling unites us.

Before deadlines blocked the sun, I kept joke notebooks religiously. A habit that quickly drags one away from the Moleskines of the world, towards office notepads and Staples dumpsters. Even if you have the money for notebooks with a Nike swish (I don’t), spending it feels off.

I thumbed through some older ones this week. Much of it’s forgettable, which is the nature of writing everything down. But there’s some worthwhile thoughts. If my next column has even more immature fixations, or blasts the War on Terror, then I’ve decided to rob myself and sleep in. The rest is overt madness. In 2017, I should’ve been interred for the safety of the general public. Thankfully, in America it’s difficult to find a weapon and a cause.

Then there’s the overlap. They’ll never see daylight, but they’re my pride. There’s crazy good, then there’s crazy/good.

I drafted a whole wanky hiatus announcement. Time for me, centering myself, growing into a beanstalk, becoming a Buddha, etcetera. It’s trashed. There’s nothing afoot that adult organization and Shaolin drive can’t fix. Besides, every job’s tough, and I begged for this one for decades.

To be clear: rain, sleet, snow, landlord, earthquake, meteor, heart attack, sequel divorce, democratic collapse, oppositional purge, or rapture: Extra Evil.

Something that might flatline for a minute: my social media efforts. Not for standard Luddite reasons. While run exclusively by daemons, there’s nothing inherently pointless, stupid, or venial about playing that game.

But it takes luck, time, or tactics.

Luck’s out. You know that if you read closely, or loosely, or not at all. If I were lucky, the comments here would be an unreadable. And while I might be above a memecoin, you can bet I’d trade DDTs with Jake Paul.

Time’s endangered. I’m working to bring it up to grey wolf levels, so that the bloodletting can continue anew. Hopefully by January, maybe by Christmas.

Tactics…are stewing. Gestating in a pod, in the first act of a sci-fi novel. I have an idea for changing how the whole operation looks. The ad beheadings here are a training montage, but not the way you might expect.

We’ll see how it goes. If I were two points higher, I’d just make one of those shirtless cosplay accounts.

Alright, every talking head has one topic this week: Nine Sols, and how long they took to beat it. Eigong kicked my ass for a solid week. I’ll see Wuxia cats in my nightmares for years.

The Present

• Preordering How to Dodge a Cannonball tames the tides. [My Next Book]

• The dog jokebook had to pay. [1900HOTDOG]

• Weeaboo Hell is getting a running exclusive of me talking to myself. First of the month’s free. [Weeaboo Hell]

• Somehow, I made The Stunt List. [The Stunt List]

• Samurai are in my DNA at this point. [Weeaboo Hell]

• Make sure to say “I am not a cult leader” with the proudest stutter you can muster. [1900HOTDOG]

• I channeled some imageboard madness. [Exclusive Evil]

• I’m not immune to dating jokes. [Exclusive Evil]

• Everything Abridged is real neat. [My Previous Book]

The Past

As a neutral party: this deserves more love.

The Future

Pitched some shorts. Poking at an overdue 1900HOTDOG column. If you’re that far into my cult, you have a 50% chance of guessing the topic.

Not Brought to You By

I could riff on game console ads forever. I might. Per Nintendo, we breached 32 bits last week. The GBA only displayed 16, but the others are on faith. You feel them in your heart. Let’s celebrate double digits with some Sega Saturn ads.

Headline: “Head For Saturn.” Subhead: “Sega Saturn - It’s out there.”

Art’s wonderful. You can bore people decades after you’re gone.

Creativity: F | Persuasion: F | Sanity: C+

Can we spice this one up?

Ignore everything on the right. Well don’t, because it’s hilarious. But the left weaves between an Ice Cube motivational speech and Sega Saturn tech specs. I wish upon God and all his elves that they’d played that for comedy. It’d be perfect. A generational triumph. As things stand, it colorfully sucks.

Creativity: D+ | Persuasion: D- | Sanity: D

Come on, Sega. These are game ads. The most overstimulated audience this side of Ultimate Fighting. Crash a car. Burn a flag. Jangle keys. Do something.

That’s something, if you have the factory-setting blonde kink. It won’t overshadow the ninja stripper on the next page.

Serious gripe: this is a stock gag. “If you think she’s hot, wait ‘til you see our insurance rates” is older than games. It might be older than print or sex. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, except in advertising. Interruptive wheels besiege us every day, in every format. To care, we need a new wheel.

I see why some of you dug the GBA bedroom ad: it did something in context with this impulse.

Creativity: F+ | Persuasion: D | Sanity: C

One Sentence Reviews

Interior Chinatown: Better on the reread, go figure. (3.5/5)

Baby Assassins — Nice Days: This entire series is a violent miracle. (5/5)

Castlevania — Order of Ecclesia: Spam lightning or suffer. (4/5)

Eigong: Easy, once you transcend flesh. (God/Damnit)

Dogs’ Letters to Santa: Fails to meet no potential. (0/5)

City Girl - Asleep in Soft Ether: Same as it ever was. (3/5)

Easy Question

Harder Question

Signing off

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