Categories
Opinion

Unpleasantness

I know that this blog has had a kind of whiplash between wrestling posts and sad posts lately. I feel like I should apologize although I don’t want to. I like joy but I’m not a happy person. Rather than feeling as though I’m inflicting this on you, though, I hope you’ll see yourselves as taking part in an exorcism. I’ve got to get things out and for whatever reason it doesn’t work for me to put them in a diary for no one to read.

Part of it is that I’ve always looked to see myself in advice and posting online and I never did. I didn’t want to hold everything in and then be like why are people in my situation never represented well. I don’t think I have any answers for people like me, but I didn’t want this kind of perspective to be lost forever. If it’s just me, it’s an exhibit. If it’s more than just me, maybe it’ll help you to understand this type of person.

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Opinion

Review: AEW Dynamite 12/18/24 – Darby Allin is Not Serious

Screenshot from AEW Dynamite 12/18/2024 featuring Darby Allin and Will Ospreay ahead of their match
Darby Allin and Will Ospreay ahead of their match

I caught the latest AEW Dynamite and I have to say… it was okay. I don’t really have any particular overall thoughts, though the reprise does have a discussion on what “a champion” is via talking about Darby Allin’s seemingly inevitable title win. Everything was built solidly but unspectacularly. No bad matches here, though I could have honestly done with a couple of squashes to cleanse the palate, and some of the promos were a bit of wasted space.

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Opinion

Commentary: Fri Thurs Dynamite Review (12/13/24) – Hate and Heat is Overrated

Tony Storm on AEW Dynamite 12/11/24
Tony Storm on AEW Dynamite 12/11/24

Lanza uploaded his review late so I uploaded my commentary late. Don’t come at me with “his was done three days ago” either. I’m taking off my shoe and I will throw it. Do you want the commentary or not?

This will be a bit more thorough than the review I did for this episode. I did watch the show, even though that review doesn’t really show it. There is also a fairly in-depth reprise focusing on the idea of “hate and heat”.

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Categories
Opinion

Review: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Cover of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The word I would use to describe Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is “mirage”. I’m not going to lie: I wanted to hate this book. I did not like the book, I wouldn’t go that far, but my thoughts on it are more complicated than I originally thought they’d be. One of the issues with New Thought work is that it’s not always easy to say it’s capital-W Wrong. There are things wrong about what Tolle says, absolutely, but it’s not wrong in a way that responds well to a clear takedown. Tolle references people who call what he’s written gobbledygook. In my opinion, it’s not so much that it’s uninteligible as that it prescribes a philosophy of ignorance.

Getting this isn’t straightforward, and I am not going to do an exhaustive breakdown with citations here, so if you haven’t read the book you will have to trust me. Overall, the problem is that though Tolle’s descriptions of why things go wrong can be compelling, there is no insight offered into these events. The response is always to simply be unaffected by it, something that is completely impossible in a lot of situations.

There’s also something to be said for Tolle’s style, which is structured to lull you into certain patterns of thought. But we’ll get to that.

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Opinion

The Problem with Anti-Napsterism

Napster logo
Napster logo

I recently saw a series of posts by Daniel Kibblesmith on bluesky about a kind of Luddite-ism where Napster has caused a bad shift in consumption habits that have made it harder for artists to make a living: the expectation of free, etc. I also recently ran into an article I wanted to read which was successfully paywalled (i.e. sites are getting wiser to archives). These two things made me want to work out my thoughts on free culture and artists making money.

I am a writer with zero success. I have published things but nowhere near enough, or high profile enough, to ever rest laurels on. I say that to make the point that my perspective on this is going to be different than someone who is paying their bills with art, and I get that. I also want to be in a position where I’m doing that, though, so it’s not as though I’m insensitive to the idea that free work can be bad.

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Opinion

Review: AEW Dynamite 12/11/24

Another so-so episode of Dynamite last night. Nothing really grabbed me on it. Next week I’ll try to lock in a little bit more, but I still haven’t really even found an act to latch onto. Even guys I like are involved in a lot of nonsense. And yeah, I know I’m being a downer right now. I’ll talk about it after the review.

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Opinion

Commentary: Thursday Dynamite Review 12/5/24

Screenshot from MJF Promo on 12/4/24 Dynamite
Max, not at the show

Here is my commentary on the Voices of Wrestling Thursday Dynamite Review posted today, December 5, 2024. If you’re not aware, you can listen to this by checking out the VoW Patreon, which I’m going to trust you to be able to find. I’m not gonna shill every week but I figured I should at least point out exactly what I’m reacting to once. The host is the inimitable Joe Lanza; I’d have a specific nickname for him but they stopped doing that bit like a year ago.

Anyway, I have done a review of this event on my own where I give thoughts on suspension of belief, and I refer to some of these thoughts in the commentary so it’s worth checking out first.

Spoiler ahead for something that happened after the broadcast ended.

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Opinion

Review: AEW Dynamite 12/4/24 – Disbelief

Match graphic for Swerve Strickland vs. Max Caster, AEW Dynamite 12/4/2024
Match graphic for Swerve Strickland vs. Max Caster, AEW Dynamite 12/4/2024

This episode of Dynamite is a great example of why I don’t like AEW. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the show and I still thought it was godawful. Now look, I admit that I’m in a bad mood for other reasons today, but usually, good wrestling can brighten my mood. I didn’t feel like we got a lot of it here, and it’s for one main reason: suspension of disbelief.

To be specific, I was not suspending my disbelief for any of this shit.

Why not? Well, let’s go through the show and I’ll point it out to you.

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Categories
Lit

Voices

If you have to tell me about how you’re
above all this
are you crouching down to say that
or are you just fucking lying?

Categories
Lit

Only

The only thing I’ve really committed to
Is showing less of myself