Lightyear - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about our main man known as Buzz Lightyear. The 2022 film, known simply as ‘Lightyear’, seemingly throws everything else that we knew about BL out of the window… only it does not. In the cartoon series ‘Buzz Lightyear of the Star Command’ (or something along those lines), there were a couple of episodes with an evil, Zurg-like Buzz… who came from an alternate universe. He appeared on the show irregularly, but was still defeated, but he was still Buzz. Therefore, what is the point?

The point is that ‘Lightyear’ is set in an alternate universe, that is what! Until now, the ‘Toy Story’ franchise’s installments, (a heterogeneous bunch in their own right), were set in one universe – let us call it ‘Universe A’. But ‘Lightyear’ and all of its’ associations, are taking place in a different universe – ‘Universe B’, one where sexual minorities and important characters, played by POCs appeared in the early 1990s, unlike, say, our universe, where they, (and especially the former), didn’t. Therefore, all that we knew about BL from the previous ‘Toy Story’ installments is not really relevant anymore – it is a different Buzz, with a different crew, in a different world. ‘To infinity and beyond’, indeed – to infinite multiverses! Anything else?

Aye, I met an opossum earlier this week. Real life might suck, but sometimes it does deliver. Pause.

Let us try again. Until I met it, I thought that an opossum was just a variant rat, especially since I have seen the latter, both in pet shops and in the wild. Same for mice. However…

Let us start with mice. They are the smallest out of this bunch – I could easily hold a mouse on one finger. The rats I saw were two or three times bigger than a mouse – the size of my head, (the males were usually bigger than the females), and I would need one, or both, of my hands, to hold one, (we are talking about pet rats here – wild rats, especially Norway rats, should be avoided). And the opossum was two or three times bigger than a Norway rat – it was the size of an average house cat or a small dog, and the one I met was distinctly unfriendly, so no physical contact with this one either.

The second point are the teeth. Mice and rats are rodents; you put a mouse and a rat alongside a squirrel, a chipmunk, a marmot, and, say, a beaver, and they will all have baseline similarities to each other, especially in the teeth: huge incisors, no canines, and some premolar and molar teeth. The ‘professional’ carnivores and herbivores have different dental formulas, but you still can, usually, figure out which tooth is which. The opossum doesn’t really have this differentiation; from what I could see: all of the teeth in its’ jaws looked mostly the same, not unlike the teeth on a saw, (sorry for the lame pun). Obviously, an opossum is a competent biter and chewer in its’ own right, and I had no intention of having it bite me – it looked quite formidable for a creature the size of a small dog – but I’m guessing that it was a very different biter and chewer from a rodent. Then again, the opossum is no rodent, but a marsupial – it is proportionally closer to the kangaroo and the koala than to rodents or to us. Though keep it mind that among the marsupials, the opossum family – most of which live in the American tropics, and only one species – the common opossum – lives in North America instead; the point is that the American opossums are treated separately from the rest of the (Australian) marsupials, but let us move on…

The final topic is the tail – in the earlier days people assumed that the common opossum’s tail was prehensile, like a spider monkey’s but to me, it certainly didn’t look like it; it did look a bit like a rat’s, or a mouse’s, tail – long and hairless, but it also looked fairly thick: maybe the opossum uses it to store fat for the winter or something, The point is that the opossum has authentically surprised me, and I have certainly enjoyed observing it. Real life does suck, but sometimes – not so much.

This is it for now, see you all soon!

Forged in Fire - Sep 8

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Especially if you are that person who had died from vaping recently – then you have proved to be the equal to the opossum that I have talked about last time, as it is also dead. Ouch. Real life sucks, and then there is TV. Yes, it cannot compare to real life tragedies, such as the ones experienced in the Atlantic, but regardless…

So, let us talk about ‘Forged in Fire’. A friend of mine recommended it to me, seeing how it gone down for a while now and I have never watched it; they claimed that ‘it was as the Deadliest Warrior had been’, (DW). I liked DW back then, and so I watched the sword of Attila episode. And?

And yes, ‘Forged’ is reminiscent of DW, sort of. It is also reminiscent (in my personal opinion) of AFO (‘Animal Face-Off’) and ‘Chopped’, of all things, (namely a cooking show). Where to start?

Like the cooking shows that I have watched, on and off, over the years, FIF has four contestants, three judges, and a host. Except that instead of chefs, cooks, or what else have you, you got bladesmiths, competing in the quality of their blades and bladed weapons. Details? Well, yes, just as the fact that to make the titular weapon – the sword of Attila in this case – they get not several hours, but several days: four on today’s episode. They are secondary, and do not diminish from the show’s enjoyment – or the lack of it.

Where does AFO come in? Like FIF, it had included making models and replicas, though in AFO’s case it was more of casts of skulls and paws and claws of big cats, bears, and so on. Then those models would be tested as well, though not on human replicas. Then again, today’s episode of FIF has also featured horse skulls, and one of the final contestants’ swords failed, it fell out of the handle or was broken, so that is it, game over. He went home and his rival got the 10 000-dollar prize. Yay!

…And yes, those replicas – horse skulls, armor suits (cuirasses, I think), and what else have you is what reminded me of DW, fair enough. It just… it is not my show. The cooking shows… yes, I do not watch them regularly either, not like AoS, or AC, for comparison, and FIF is a variant of them. Yes, the details are different… no, the premise is different, and the details are largely the same, so that may be it. I do not know; maybe FIF is actually a great show, and I just find it boring; I certainly did not find FTB show boring, and it was on the same channel – the Canadian History channel – as FIF is. Therefore, maybe the issue is with me instead. Does anyone has any opinion on this, then? I am ready to listen.

…This is it for now; see you all soon!

Face the Beast - Sep 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the dead opossum I came across the other day – it clearly wasn’t dead via road kill, but died after tangling with some bigger animal, and it was a fairly large opossum – about the size of an average house cat or bigger. I do not know just what would have attacked such an animal – probably a red fox or even a coyote, but regardless, the opossum is dead. The world won’t be quite the same after its’ passing. Now, onto the TV land.

Well, speaking of animals, I watched ‘Face the Beast’ miniseries today, and I must admit, it was good. It involved a couple of scientists/investigators… well, investigating various infamous animal attacks in human history: First, the saltwater crocodile attack on the Ramree islands, and then the sharks on the Hispaniola shipwreck. And you know what? It was good.

It has been a while since we’ve talked about AFO and its’ episodes, which had featured CGI versions as well as robot replicas of crocodiles and sharks, (as well as various other animals), and for a certain reason, ‘Face the Beast’ brought it back: sure, there was plenty of excitement and entertainment, but there was data collecting and at least some educational factors as well. Unlike whatever is going down on Animal Planet these days, the History channel in Canada tries to be educational too; whether it really succeeds is another story entirely, but it tries. In the first part, the FTB team actually ended up capturing a saltwater crocodile to rescue a village on the Ramree island, (it’s located in the Indian ocean, if anyone cares); in the second, they did a series of experiments, and proved that, you know, sharks are smarter than how they are credited to be, plus they can communicate with each other via their bioelectricity, I say. Go team FTB! …Pity that it is only a two-parter, but it works.

What it works about? In both parts, the FTB crew proved, that under a right combination, normally shy animals – yes, crocodiles and sharks are shy, especially if they have plenty of space to maneuver around humans – can become man-eaters and as such deadly dangerous, pun intended. Yes, it is not quite clear if FTB research will help avoid such scenarios in the future, but it is not the show’s concern, so there. The show’s primary role is to entertain us, its’ audience, and it quite succeeds here. Anything else?

BA has defeated SW in tennis. It is real life, not TV, so go team Canada! Not every Canadian’s life sucks, as it did for the opossum that I have come across, (remember that guy?). Life sucks, but you can feel proud for your country, this is what I am saying here.

…This is it for now, see you all soon!