derfunkatron
@derfunkatron@lemmy.world
- Comment on Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit 2 weeks ago:
Ha, fair. I was concerned you were about to drop some non-Euclidean Cthulhu deep-magic on us.
- Comment on Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit 2 weeks ago:
How? Doesn’t this run afoul of the inequality theorem?
- Comment on The Faculty, any day 2 weeks ago:
I’m just going to drop selections from the Troma catalog in here:
- The Toxic Avenger
- Surf Nazis Must Die
- Class of Nuke ‘em High
- Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD
- Tromeo and Juliet
These are objectively shitty movies. Most of these movies are irredeemable; hell, some of them are down right an exercise in poor taste. A lot of it hasn’t aged well, and I’m not talking about the cinematography. I haven’t kept up with Troma in the 21st century, though, so maybe Troma has gotten worse-better or better-worse?
However, I find joy in these movies because they are like a time warp back to New Jersey and New York in the 80s and 90s. They were so low budget and always filmed around New York (except for Toxic Avenger II which somehow was filmed in Japan), that they used a lot of family members of the cast and crew or random locals as extras. It is obvious that a lot of people on screen probably didn’t know they were being filmed (or if they did, didn’t realize what type of movie they were in). There’s bad hair and makeup (but not from the effects department), and thick accents and regionalisms that have faded. There are mainstreets and skylines that don’t exist anymore, or if they do, are wildly different. It is amazing to catch a glimpse of an era that doesn’t exist anymore. This exists in all old movies, but the low-budget realness hits differently.
Most of these movies are trash, but they’re my trash. Apologies to Mr. Kaufman.
- Comment on The Faculty, any day 2 weeks ago:
Haven’t you noticed how shiny and flake free our hair is?
- Comment on The Faculty, any day 2 weeks ago:
I’m dying on a lot of hills when it comes to 90s action/sci-fi. Sci-fi movies from 1990 to 1997 or so have a very specific vibe that I can’t articulate well but I know it when I see it; the Stallone Judge Dredd is a shining example.
Judge Dredd, Demolition Man, Total Recall, Fifth Element, Mario Brothers, Tank Girl, Starship Toopers all have this campy retro-future theme-park vibe that is just fun.
I don’t care too much about Judge Dredd the movie(s) lining up with Judge Dredd the comic; they’re both fine to me. The Karl Urban one is a better movie, but it is missing the “eat recycled food” aspect.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Senators in the US senate serve 6 year terms and there are only 2 per state. This means that there is always an even number of senators and they have a lot of time in office before needing to focus on campaigning for re-election. Compare this to the House of Representatives where the terms are 2 years and states get allocated different amounts of representatives based on population.
Other things to note about senators is that there are certain procedural elements in government that only originate or happen in the senate: approving presidential appointees, judges, generals and admirals, authorizing treaties. The senate also has various committees that advise or manage various aspects of governance. Bills, including the budget, must pass both houses of Congress; in the case of the budget, it originates in the House of Representatives but must be approved by the Senate. The Senate has a lot of power to kill/block legislation because legislation requires both houses of Congress to pass it.
Historically, the Senate was the states’ representative in the federal government and, in fact, state legislatures used to select senators. Although senators are now voted for by the populations of each state, they still have a legacy of being “more prestigious” than the House of Representatives and often vote more conservatively (read as deliberate or less reactively).
Candidly speaking, senators are known to become legacies often staying in office for more than 20 years and it is not uncommon frontje children of senators to also become senators. I mention this, because socially senators are often perceived as being part of a supposedly “non-existent” US aristocracy.
- Comment on Bobby won’t live long. 2 months ago:
Amazing! Thanks for taking the time to share. I figured there was an aesthetic interest in addition to the morbid curiosity.
I went through a phase where I wanted to build a library of weird, bizarre, cult, occult, and outlandish books (which I why I had a copy of Dianetics among other religious texts). I abandoned the idea mostly because I didn’t want to dedicate space to books that I never wanted to read or felt repulsed by reading.
If you like kitschy and bizarre books, I recommend checking out the following (if you haven’t already encountered them before):
- Telecult Power by R. Durbin
- Apocalypse Culture by A. Parfrey
Telecult Power makes me laugh since it’s a how-to for developing telepathy and telekinesis. Apocalypse Culture creeps me out and reading parts of that book is like dropping into a conversation midway while no one cares to explain what’s going on.
- Comment on Bobby won’t live long. 2 months ago:
Bibleman and A History of Christian Hymnody are wildly different theological materials; what’s the criteria for your collection?
Do you study religions or is the there something else, like an aesthetic thing, that drives your collection?
Also, how much of this have you read and is there any of it that you believe?
Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I find the notion of collecting cult and religious media to be fascinating, especially if it’s for reasons other than faith.
- Comment on Bobby won’t live long. 2 months ago:
Wow, you’ might be serious.
I used to keep tabs on the weird religious stuff for fun, but most of it turns my stomach these days to the point that I can’t even laugh at it.
Definitely got super drunk and riffed on Kirk Cameron videos back when he had that Way of the Master series (e.g. the banana video).
I used to have a copy of Dianetics that you would have thoroughly enjoyed.
You should try to acquire a copy of a Mormon seminary textbooks. There should be a series of four of them: Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants/Church History (this is one is a gold mine). The Mormons apparently make them available as PDFs for the current versions, but the older ones are sure to be better.
I’ve got you tagged now as “collects weird religious stuff”. Congrats.
- Comment on Bobby won’t live long. 2 months ago:
You want me to send you free copies of the Book of Mormon and the Watchtower, too?
- Comment on Bobby won’t live long. 2 months ago:
I consider it a civic duty to collect these whenever I find them and throw them in the trash.
- Comment on Tigers 🐅 🐯 2 months ago:
You just need an algal symbiote.
- Comment on Velvet Spider 2 months ago:
It’s like a fuchikoma/tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell.
- Comment on Minecraft movie spawns ‘annoying’ cinema trend that viewers claim ‘ruins’ the film 2 months ago:
How did TRHPS experience become what we know it as today?
Imagine hearing about TRHPS in 1976 or 1977 and going to see it and experiencing it especially without knowing fully what you were walking into?
What is different about the emergence of a participatory memes for Minecraft vs. the established memes for TRHPS? The quickness of the behavior? The documentation of it? The fact that it’s new for us now and not something we inherited?
Quite Frankenfurtively, I’d rather be in theater with a bunch of people enjoying it as opposed to people sitting there rigidly watching what amounts to be a very silly movie.
And besides, if people are so upset, ask for a refund or comp ticket and leave the theater. The same raucous behavior happened every Friday night when a horror film was screening back in my day.
- Comment on 90s band alignment chart 2 months ago:
Weezer is a tough call because most of the time they’re sad because they’re horny.
- Comment on Anon questions the KKK 4 months ago:
but surely him rising again is more important than his death?
Depends on how fixated a faith is on the “sacrifice of the Lamb.” There’s one interpretation that Jesus’ suffering and death is what appeased God and fulfilled the prophecy and ended the law of Moses. If you’re the kind of person that buys into God being the sort of deity that wants to kill himself in order to satisfy his own bloodlust, then yeah, I could see Christ’s death being the more important part.
Surely the resurrection should be emphasized as the result, but the death is what God demanded to atone for the sins of the world. The resurrection was just proof that he held up his end of the bargain.
I think that the Christ story suffers from the audience knowing details about the story that the characters don’t to the point that the big miracle at the end falls flat. Everyone just ends up focusing on the mechanics of Christs death rather than its purpose.
- Comment on Anon questions the KKK 4 months ago:
I like your perspective and wish Christianity aligned more with your post than whatever it’s doing now.
I’m not Christian, but I have observed that the worship of the cross and Christ’s death is directly tied to the theological idea of salvation, especially with evangelicals. If his death is the single most important part of your faith, then the cross becomes a symbol and reminder that you’re saved and not going to hell. It was primed to become a symbol and eventually an idol.
I also think historically the cross as a symbol for Christianity comes from the Greek letter chi (x) in the spelling of Christ. “X-tians” was a shorthand form way before the “taking Christ out of Christmas” nonsense.
But to the original point of the Klan burning the cross: I’ve read that they argue that cross burning is a medieval European affirmation of faith, something that is doing double duty of arguing that it’s an expression of their faith and connecting them to their “racial” roots.
- Comment on What are your favorite games for killing nazis? 4 months ago:
The New Colossus was released during Trump’s first term and it was really cathartic to play during the shit storm. The game even pissed off the “alt-right.” The New Order and The Old Blood are much better at “endless destruction of Nazis” though.
Might be time to reinstall and play through them again.
- Comment on I don't know where I'm going to keep them all 5 months ago:
Frazetta art on a book is almost false advertising at this point. But, hear me out, Frazetta-style buff Jesus with a Valkyrie Mary Magdalene riding the seven-headed beast of the apocalypse…. Slap that cover on the Bible and we’ll be making money in no time!
- Comment on The Divine Dick 7 months ago:
Yeah, it’s more of an act of reverence or deference. However, it is a pronoun (cis-gendered, and preferred) which some people believe never occurs in the Bible.
- Comment on Borderlands' theatrical run grinds to a halt with just $31 million worldwide, which is barely enough to cover the marketing costs 9 months ago:
This has to have been some form of egregious waste.
I can’t recall seeing any promotional material for this besides the trailer being reposted to talk shit about the movie.
- Comment on Anon makes up a word 11 months ago:
Frank Lloyd Wright (1701-1959). Frank Lloyd Wright was an omniscient demimortal techno mage who took up architecture in the late 19th-century at the age of 186 after discovering the eldritch art of soul drafting. He began designing and building structures across the United States with the intention of harnessing the psycho-emotional energy of the US population. Many of his architectural plans plainly display the geometrical interplanar-harvester elements, in comparison to architects such as Ivo Shandor (cult of Gozer) who felt the need to obfuscate the intent of their structures.^[citation needed]^ Wright’s final design was commissioned from archmage Norman Lykes, who trapped Wright’s life force in a soul stone embedded in a Mission-style rocking chair. Wright’s legacy was commemorated by logistical clerics in a postage stamp in 1966 and in 1970 by Bardic duo Simon & Garfunkel.
- Comment on Anon makes up a word 11 months ago:
My experience with this just taught me that eventually most teachers will just default to authority. They will tell you to stop questioning or stop being difficult in order to prevent the class from getting off-track. Instead they miss a teachable moment both about academic integrity and being a decent person.
- Comment on I'm locked out of my 6 year old Chipotle account because they now say my email address is invalid when I login. Here is me asking for their help: 1 year ago:
Yeah, I’ve noticed that a lot of sites are starting to disallow aliasing with email addresses. So annoying.
