Alright gents, we’re back at it again: famous number 23! The number 23 normally evokes images of American greatness such as King James or Dr. Pepper. But today isn’t about greatness; instead, it is about mediocrity. Specifically, it’s about my mediocre writing ability regarding filling out topics. With that said, sharpen your pitchforks and feel free to call me an idiot White supremacist in the comments section!
In Critique of Men’s Gifts
First, we need to get one thing straight; men don’t celebrate birthdays. Yes, you read that correctly and yes, I’m serious. It’s honestly something that is meant for women and children. To any man over the age of 21 that is not celebrating a milestone (say 60th, for example), there is no reason to treat this as more than any other day. Hell, in my own experience, it was even younger than that. In the last twenty years, I’ve only celebrated five birthdays, and three were sprung on me by others.
So, when a woman sighs and complains “You’re so difficult to shop for” thank her for the compliment. Men shouldn’t be shallow consumerists. While we may have normalized this behavior in women (given that they control most of the discretionary spending), we need to just drop the charade regarding this practice in men. Chances are that your Dad on Father’s Day/Christmas doesn’t want whatever sporting goods/power tools/other doo-dad that the Marketing Machine is trying to peddle.
Not to sound like Andrew Tate or anything, but as a man, what are you doing expecting others to give you gifts for simply fucking existing? If you absolutely must have some non-essential materialistic thing, then you should devise a plan and go after it on your own.
And while I’ve been taunted about being a minimalist in the past, despite never referring to myself as one, there is some value there. After all, there’s a reason that the phrase the content man’s riches dwarf the kings has endured for centuries. I’m not saying that nobody should want something specific or have hobbies. But I am steadfastly saying that men should culturally reject lifestyle creep. Pick areas that matter to you and then economize on damn near everything else. For example; I don’t actually care about watches, thus my beat-up $30 Timex serves its intended function just fine.
But let’s appease the feminists for a minute (who am I kidding? They’re never happy!) and discuss economies of gender. I earn more than most (if not all) of the women in my life. I would find it utterly shameful if I expected them to give me something expensive. It’s truthfully a bad look if someone of lesser means gives something valuable to someone who could’ve afforded it themselves. So yeah, unless a female is earning substantially more than me, don’t spend money on me. Ladies, for Allah’s sake; just drop it into the S&P 500 already.
Men aren’t supposed to be possessed by possessions…
Deltarune Chapter 5’s Biggest Flaw
I admit, I’m a bit behind schedule with this one, but it still needs to be said. It’ll come as no surprise that YAH BOI loves the absolute hell out of Toby Fox. Thus, when the e-mail hit my inbox that Chapter 5 of Deltarune was looming, my ears perked up considerably. I was practically carving tally marks into the concrete wall counting off the days until I could play it. And like so many times before, Mr. Fox didn’t disappoint. He hit all of his usual notes; endearing maternal moments with Toriel, a soundtrack that passes the total-vibe check, heartfelt character development for Susie, a villain that one could partially empathize with, and slapstick goofy humor. Seriously, Mr. Fox pulls a goddamn rabbit out of the hat every time…
With that said, there was an uncomfortable elephant in the room. I was absolutely not prepared for the presence of an openly suicidal cowboy in this game. Don’t get me wrong, Toby Fox is no stranger to dark topics. After all, the game that made him famous has a literal Genocide path. But here’s the difference between the Genocide path from Undertale and the character named Yellow from Chapter 5; the set-up. In Undertale, the game gives you plenty of runway; the player is conditioned for the heavy subject matter. Chapter 5 of Deltarune, on the other hand, foists the openly suicidal cowboy onto the player out of nowhere. Yellow, who spends much of his character arc being crushed by a feeling of guilt, stands out in a game that had a gooberish soundtrack and vibe up until that point. It was a tonal whiplash that I personally found jarring.
Contrast that with damn near anyone else in Chapter 5. Nobody else is wrestling with anything that negative. Blue is a maternally-loving woman, Aqua is a happily playful (even if mischievous) child, Green is a silent-though-benevolent fellow, and so on. Early in the chapter the player gets to help Susie decide her outfit for the big festival in the Lightworld. Even Flowery is a charmingly handsome and less outwardly dastardly nemesis than other Toby Fox creations. Thus, Yellow’s self-cruelty was clearly out of place, strikingly so. A softer man would have complained about the lack of trigger warnings…
The player then has to pursue Yellow because he keeps threatening to kill himself right before disappearing. Add in a gory crime scene with his chalk outline three-quarters through the chapter and it totaled to being a bit much. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Fox; I’m not saying don’t do it. But what I am saying is that some auditory cues that some real shit is coming would’ve been nice.
But hey, looking forward to Chapter 6!
Anthony Fauci’s Biggest Diary Mistake
For those not in the know, let me red-pill you. Rand Paul got his hands on Anthony Fauci’s personal diary that he kept as the ChinaVirus was spreading across the world. Many podcasters such as Dave Smith and Tucker Carlson have been utterly roasting Fauci for his lack-of-testimony to Congress. Of course, those two podcasts being right-of-center politically meant that there was no shortage of leering into Fauci’s soul. Smith called the seized diary a written record of his crimes.
Unlike the canaries, I’m not going to take the road of radicalization. Instead, I’ll talk about Fauci’s grave mistake when it came to his diary. It’s not about what he wrote, it’s about where he wrote it that was his biggest mistake.
Essentially, I’ve been keeping a semi-daily diary for the last several years. So, I definitely get the habit and I’m the last person to knock Fauci for that. There is, after all, a certain reflective growth that happens with reading an old entry and realizing wow, THAT’s what I was concerned with? The act of writing a new entry also has a weirdly satisfying effect of sweeping out mental clutter. Since I grew up with a controller in my hand, I often call it saving my game in a throwback to many old JRPG’s of the mid-to-late 90’s. Having said that, there is one crucial mistake he made.
To long-time readers of the blog, this won’t be a shock but I’ll say it again for the freshman class; it’s okay to be analog. Fauci’s biggest downfall was that he kept his diary digital instead of analog. Analog diaries are the arch-nemesis of scheming rivals and foreign bots alike. For an analog diary to fall into the hands of truth-seekers evil-doers, they need to have the object in their flesh-and-blood hands. In an increasingly digital world, bypassing physical security to obtain atoms instead of bits is becoming a lost art.
And make no mistake, Fauci had physical security in droves, which makes this miscalculation of his even worse. Fauci had/still has round-the-clock Secret Service protection. While I’ll concede that layer of security is hardly foolproof, it does feature a distinctively hard barrier. A stealthy infiltrator would have to sneak into the Fauci estate, grab physical notebooks, and escape undetected. If caught, said burglar is in store for a firefight that likely won’t end well for him. There is a vanishingly small overlap of stealthy infiltrator and can outshoot federal agents under duress on the dark-political/criminal Venn diagram. In fact, it’s so rare that the GOAT has made millions of dollars portraying this tiny population.
But setting that aside, Fauci keeping a hidden physical notebook would’ve gone a long way in preventing his current predicament. Bonus points if he kept it in a locked drawer of a desk. Hell, if he was even too lazy to do that, there’s always the hide in plain sight method via keeping it among dirty laundry or in another overlooked spot in the home. Literally any analog strategy would’ve been a better choice than what he did.
But Fauci opted to not use the pen-and-paper method that mankind has used for centuries. He chose to keep his unflattering thoughts on a computer that was connected to the internet. It isn’t exactly a secret that what the internet provides in convenience and speed, it does so at the cost of security and privacy. While this might be an acceptable trade-off many would be willing to make regarding cat memes, one’s innermost secrets are a different ballgame.
The analog Millennial versus a tech-heavy Boomer: crazy world we live in, huh?
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