Jenn Boo-lari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

"You have not heard the Little Mermaid musical until you've heard it in the original Klingon."

::looks worryingly towards Canada::

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyUzlMyV_Hc

You heathens may keep your so called candy corn. I for one am a person of impeccable taste.

I find it super sad that I may be losing the apartment, and I got my yearly rent increase...and it's STILL just $50. $1675 a month is STILL an absolute steal.

So plants go through puberty? Cause...my guy got BUFF.

This is so fucking amazing. Yeah it has its silly moments being a Try Guys video, and this episode focuses on male fashion when you're a transitioning trans man (and it's GOOD to see the trans-man experience). But that last five minutes. I cried so hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7X0rzEmgA8

My Little Town as seen through Google Earth VR.

Godzilla's Eye View

There is one thing I'll criticise the new Ranma series for: it's exactly the same story. Sped up a little, and more of a focus on the martial arts, but it's the same story.

When I got word I'd made the final pass of scripts for the Trans Comedy Award, I seriously sat down and began thinking of how I wanted to do what would be "Closetspace UK." Closetspace is a very specific story I'd created in 1992, and the (what would have been 2015) UK adaption would be that same story with some changes to match a UK setting (Setting the story in London's Shepherd's Bush instead of Austin's Hyde Park, making Allison Pakistani instead of Mexican).

But the main change I wanted to do involved the episodic stories. Each episode of Closetspace UK would toughly match up with the webcomic. So if you read the comic, you'd be spoiled for the story. Or if you wanted to know Allison's secret before it was revealed on TV, you could just read the comic.

The solution? Change the endings.

The stories would be roughly the same, with cultural changes, but the endings would be readapted. I'd likely have revealed Allison was trans much earlier to the audience and made her secret her video game addiction. Victoria would have been trans and not a drag queen (I've already adapted that in the comic she's a trans drag-queen), and likely not die (her death from AIDS being on of the big markers that I wrote this in the early 90s).

The idea would be, you get the same story, but new things to see and experience. Something I wish the new Ranma series had done. I've seen quite a bit of the series somehow, and there's no surprises or changes (other than putting the ice-skating episodes back where they were supposed to be in the first run) from the original series.

"Ballots are arriving for the 2024 presidential election, and this may be my last chance before you fill in that circle or punch out that chad that I can talk to you about your choice."

https://www.ebar.com/story.php?ch=news&sc=news_columns&id=335921&title=transmissions:_closing_argument

Watching a TV Show on Hulu, and something just felt off about it. I realized it's playing too fast, for some reason. Turns out, Hulu is playing the European PAL version of the show (which are sped up by 4%) for some reason.

I wonder why they do that in the digital years, when all players can play all formats. Especially when it's not in the original broadcast format. (Maybe it doesn't exist anymore?)

"You see, writing isn't just explaining the pretty pictures in your head to someone. It's an art form, and you're painting a story out, letter by letter. You have scenes you intertwine like poetry. Metaphors and similies to bring how the power and feel of actions and environments. You have scenes that reflect where the character is at the beginning, and how they have grown at the end. And that, sir, is why I began and ended this script with a masturbation joke."

Actual thing I wrote today. The quote that is. The other thing? Did that a year or two ago. The writing that is.

Silly Jenn Fact: I may be all grunge and 60s and new wave, yeah, but I do love, like, REALLY old regional country.

"Republicans tried anti-trans campaigns in 2022 and they were unsuccessful. So why are they doing them again? Is it possibly because it's easier than actually solving problems that exist?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZLofYpKdqI

You know...I think things are worse now than the dot-com crash back in 2001.

Back in 1997, I was laid off from work (the first of MANY layoffs) I spent two years unemployed. When I found myself out of work in 2001, I didn't find stead work until 2003. So two years has always been my "benchmark" for unemployment.

'97 wasn't because of an economic downturn, but because my job moved out of state, and I coudln't afford a move to Massachusettes less than a year after moving to Pennsylvania.

The 2001 Dot-Com bust, that destroyed the tech sector for two years. It was a massive gut-punch that happened over the course of a few months. The layoffs ended quickly, but it took years to recover. heavily changed (and now extremely exploited).

The 2008 Depression wasn't too bad. My layoff there ended with me back at work in less than three months, at the job I'd stay at for ten years.

This one, though. It's two years since the layoffs started...but they havent' stopped. There's been almost no recovery in the tech sector I've seen at ALL. I'm two years in, probaby at LEAST a thousand resumes put in, no work, and more and more of my friends are now job hunting as well.

I honestly don't think there's going to be a recovery from this. As companies move to AI cause it's cheap and continuing to be sent offshore, I think this is about as good as it's going to get in tech, and it's not good.

Even if it does recover, given how long the layoffs have been, I'm expecting it to take JUST as long, so we're not looking at a decent recovery until 2026. If at all.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic. But at nearing two years unemployed, losing the apartment at the end of the year, and burning money that would have been for my surgery...well...it's pretty pessimistic around here.

And why I'm probably going to have to restart my employment life from the bottom up.

Have you tried the Shrimp?

"Okay, brain. I don't like you and you don't like me--"
"I like you!"
"No, you don't. Now you're going to shut up and give me seven and half hours of sleep, right?"
"......Oh? Sorry. Wasn't listening."