Superman

I watched James Gunn’s "Superman," and I really enjoyed it. I like the more hopeful Superman, that’s my kind of Superman.

I’m just not into the grimdark Superman. Sorry not sorry. We already had Hyperion from the Supreme Power comics to give us a taste of Bad!Superman. We did not need to screw around with the canon.

To be honest, when I watched "Man of Steel" and then later they announced they were going to make the "Justice League" movie, I was honestly hoping it was going to be the Justice Lords universe. That would have been very interesting.

So I’m glad we’ve got a reboot and that we’ve returned to the more hopeful "I love humanity, I really want to be a part of humanity" Superman.

Like, "Superman Returns" was a continuation of the Christopher Reeves Superman. Lois Lane having Superman’s baby makes sense from what we saw in the Christopher Reeves movies, though I kind of wish they would have mentioned how fucked up it was that he wiped her memory and then she found out she was pregnant. Because wow. FUCKED UP is a mild interpretation of what she probably went through when she realized that she was pregnant and had no memory how it happened.

But yeah, Henry Cavill is a good actor, but the Superman variant he was playing left me cold. Like, the minute I saw Clark ruining all those cars in that parking lot, I knew I wasn’t going to be happy with what I was watching. And I wasn’t.

And the new Superman? I am very pleased. I enjoyed watching the movie. I didn’t fast-forward through any of it. I wish there were some dog training courses we could send Krypto to. But in all, it was a fun movie.

I can’t wait to watch "Supergirl." I’m excited.

Shell

Okay, this was a really dumb movie. It’s like "The Substance" but dumbed down to the point of "What the fuck am I watching?" levels.

You go for beauty treatments that somehow involve the telomers of crustaceans because they don’t age, and voila, the horror movie is about the treatment causing bodily transformations. And a woman becomes what looks like a lobster or something, and there’s murders and deaths and blah blah blah.

It was just an all-around stupid movie. Like, I’m willing to watch a fun stupid movie, but this was not that. I did not have a good time. I don’t want to watch it again.

It was a waste of what could have been a great cast. I’m just glad they all made some money. Keep getting that work, guys!

Strange Darling

I finally watched "Strange Darling," and I’m sorry to say–if you love it–that it was not for me.

It is a non-linear story with unlikeable characters doing unlikeable things in an unlikeable way. The music was good. The style of the visuals was good. But the movie itself was not something I enjoyed. I was not the intended audience, sorry about that.

They Will Kill You

I saw someone mention the movie "They Will Kill You," and they referenced "Ready or Not" and said that if you liked "Ready or Not" you would likely enjoy "They Will Kill You." But unfortunately, I did not.

I think "They Will Kill You" has some interesting ideas. There’s a lot of action and violence, so if you like that, you will see plenty. But there’s also that "samurai movie vibe" like Quentin Tarantino loves, which gives you a kind of choppy "Why are you talking like that?" dialogue style that I don’t really enjoy. And there’s a lot of "samurai movie"-style to the visuals and the outfits–the pants she was wearing with the bare feet–and the sword stuff.

It definitely seems like the kind of movie I would love, but I was just not into it. I love Zazie Beetz–she was great in Deadpool and in Bullet Train–and she wasn’t bad in this movie. I just didn’t really enjoy the movie as a whole. It seemed very jerky? Like maybe there’s a thousand cuts in every scene and that made it hard for me to watch? I don’t know.

You may enjoy "They Will Kill You." The idea was entertaining. The eyeball zipping around on its own was an entertaining WTF. There’s lots of fight scenes. I don’t know, for whatever reason, I just wasn’t into it the way I probably should have been.

Project Hail Mary

I read the book "Project Hail Mary" a long while back, and I really did enjoy it. And now that I’ve watched the movie… I love the movie!

It was a very enjoyable watch. Ryan Gosling is incredibly charming. 10/10, would totally watch it again.

There was laughter. There was tears. There was great dialogue. I love the alien. Every part of the movie was fantastic. The graphics were beautiful. Just an all around wonderful movie.

I definitely recommend watching "Project Hail Mary."

~Harper Kingsley

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Rants. Short stories. Thoughts. Story notes.

A complete jumble of stuff I’ve been posting for both free and paying patrons and for the public at large. So if you want to check out my Patreon, even if you’re not a member there’s some new content appearing there.

~Harper Kingsley

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I’m not saying that he’s for sure a suspicious character… but he definitely gives off questionable vibes. Everyone is afraid for her life and her future finances. Like, I do not personally trust the dude.

She met him and they became engaged in like three months, and now they’re racing toward the wedding because it seems like he’s got some immigration/visa issues that can only be solved if he’s tied to an American citizen. And even the people from his own country are raising red flags about him.

I’m not 100%, but I think he might be a men’s rights activist? But either way, he’s glommed onto a richer woman and he’s talked her into rearranging her entire life and marrying him. And it’s all been very quick. Very abrupt. And very worrisome.

I recently watch a Rotten Mango video on YouTube and it was about a Chinese woman in I think Thailand that had started a very successful life and had made like over a million dollars. And her parents were asking when she was going to get married and have babies and all that stuff, so there was a bit of pressure on her to get into a relationship, so when a Chinese man popped into her life she hesitated only a little bit before marrying him after only knowing him for like three months.

And she thought everything was cool, until after the flash marriage, where it turned out that he was not a career driven, type A kind of person. He became very lazy and spent all his time playing online games on his phone, and displayed a complete lack of care toward her that included not even showing an ounce of concern when she fell down the stairs and had to go to the hospital. He was a complete turd sandwich, but she’d already married him!

Then stuff happened and she ended up having to bail him out of jail after he’d taken like $700,000 from her. And he got on his knees and was very apologetic as he admitted that everything he’d told her had been a lie. All that stuff about him spending time trying to start his own business… he’d actually been in prison for 8 years and had only recently been released when he’d met her.

And she accepted his apologies. And she got pregnant. Then he took her on a vacation and pushed her off a 100 foot tall cliff with the clear intention to kill her for the life insurance money.

She was three months pregnant WITH HIS BABY, and he pushed her off a cliff for the money.

So yeah. People have some concerns about that TikTok lady and the weird, highly questionable guy she’s trying to marry.

~Harper Kingsley

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Dwarf mistletoe, native to North America, is an invasive species. You can buy the seeds and grow viscum album, European mistletoe, as it’s not as damaging as dwarf mistletoe. Plus, it seems to get most of its nutrients from photosynthesis versus parasitizing its host. It’s still a hemiparasite though, and can damage other plants, though it mainly targets broad leafed trees.

I haven’t quite put the thoughts together in my head, but there’s gotta be some kind of tie-in between mistletoe, Christmas, capitalism, and the colonization of holidays.

I mean, people used to celebrate Christmas because it represents the birth of Christ. And the season chosen for Christmas was to piggyback on a pagan holiday season and make Christianity look more popular than it was at the time. And now people celebrate Christmas because it’s Santa’s birthday.

And due to capitalism, Christmas has pretty much become an orgy of consumerism. There are people that make whole videos showing off how thoroughly they spoil their children when it comes to gift giving.

Like, originally, Christmas was family and friends getting together to celebrate their love for each other. And the gifts were like an orange, some apples, a handful of nuts, a piece of candy, and maybe a small toy for each child. People would donate to charities and ensure that people weren’t starving in their homes or dying in the street ala The Little Matchstick Girl.

Then there was the popularization of Santa and the gifts he gives. So it’s no longer your family showing love and getting you something they can afford. It’s some mystical all-powerful father figure that can fulfill your every wish and desire because Santa is rolling in the money.

Like, you can’t ask for anything too big, because you don’t have to consider the financial state of your loved ones. Some magical being is going to fulfill your every ask, so why not ask for the biggest most expensive thing you can think of?

Once capitalism got a hold of Christmas, it ceased to be a Christian holiday and became the biggest shopping holiday of the year.

People go into debt to pay for Christmas.

And I have to wonder why.

There’s something so crazy about working hard for an entire year to pay off the credit card debt of the previous Christmas, just so you can use your credit again to pay for this year’s Christmas.

And that some people don’t even reuse their Christmas ornaments in the name of aesthetics. Like, when I was a kid, we would use the same ornaments year after year, adding new ones as we went along, so that we could carry forward our family memories as a kind of tradition. Now people are redecorating their entire houses for every holiday so they can impress people on social media and fulfill current trends.

It’s like, people are sacrificing real human connections in the hopes of impressing strangers on the Internet. And the key to that influence? Money. And money is capitalism, and capitalism is anti-Christ.

I mean, does anyone really think that the dude that believed that all debts should be dismissed after seven years is clapping and cheering over the idea of people going into ruinous amounts of debt ON HIS BIRTHDAY???

So in a way, modern Christmas is a bit of hemiparasite feeding on the original idea of Christmas. On one hand, it’s a celebration of Christ and community and family and loving the people around you, but mostly it’s a sacrifice of lifeblood–money–on the pagan altar of capitalism.

Because as long as we live in a capitalist society, money is needed to survive. The only people that don’t think money is necessary, are people that have some form of generational wealth. If things don’t work out for them, they can fallback on their inheritance or they can go knocking on their parents’ door. Meanwhile, the rest of us could get a little bit sick and have the long-term medicine be expensive and that will be the end of us.

When we live in a society where someone would prefer to immediately die in an accident rather than to be a slow financial drain on their family? I don’t think mistletoe or Christmas are the only hemiparasites around.

We could be photosynthesizing, but instead we’re cannibalizing. Socialism versus capitalism. It’s just that some people think mistletoe is super pretty. It has those cute little berries. (They’re toxic.)

~Harper Kingsley

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A woman that only just recently "started reading books" looks around, sees that book people spend a lot of money, and decided to start a book related business. She likely heard about booktok and thought that was her bag.

So she started a monthly subscription service.

She looked around, grabbed some popular ideas, and started producing bookmarks. Because she’s not a reader, so she doesn’t understand how readers work.

Seriously: Readers will buy a handful of good looking bookmarks with the intention of using them, but somehow they’ll end up using a folded post-it note as a bookmark. And they’ll use that same post-it note for the next 6 books, then not be able to find any of those fancy bookmarks they spent actual money on.

So, from my point of view, I think a monthly subscription box that delivers curated bookmarks to your home is a pretty dead end business long-term.

The fact that she was able to find a bit of a niche and that she was making enough money that she was able to turn it into her job, that was very lucky. She should have been grateful. She should have kept making her little bookmarks and taking pictures of them and posting positive content. She could have probably kept on keeping on for at least another year or two before she ran out of customers.

But instead she CHOSE to announce that she had trademarked a fairly popular hashtag and that everyone that had ever used it on any kind of merchandise had to stop immediately.

She basically destroyed her own little business. And I don’t feel bad about it, because that was a seriously dick move. And I have no sympathy for dicktims.

Same with the Australian couple and their now failing athletic wear company.

It’s not our fault they didn’t do any real marketing research before starting their business. If they had, they would have realized that athletic wear is a very saturated market. Their expensive yet cheaply manufactured gym clothes are not necessary to the public. So their bit of bad PR backlash destroyed their company. And crying about it on main is not going to turn things around for them.

I’m just tired of people that aren’t part of a community, seeing a community, and then trying to use that community for their own profit.

"I only started reading books last week, so now you should buy my products because I’m part of the book community."–My dude. And then they hold up some random ass book and we’re all supposed to be like, "Wow, one of us! One of us!" and hug them into our hearts.

There are so many different book genres!

You can’t just be like "I like book. We friends now."

Is it a horror book? A romance book? A fantasy book? A science fiction book? A murder mystery book? A philosophy book? A comic book? Naw. It’s just some random ass book she "just started reading," so now she gets to be President of Books.

Fuck off with that.

It’s the same deal with the non-authors/non-readers suddenly realizing that they can produce 300 books a day with the use of AI. They’re just so into the cash grab that they never pause to consider whether what they’re doing is ruining society.

Assholes gonna asshole.

~Harper Kingsley

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