Movies and Books

I had to spend almost the entirety of the work week out of town for work last week. Flight home was delayed, so I didn't get home until late Friday evening; bedtime really. I was supposed to intercept my wife on her way out of town and take her to the airport, but because of my delay, she had to go on her own. Now, her flight is delayed and I'll be in bed when she gets home, because otherwise I'll start the week off already short on sleep. Not a good plan; I've been pretty tired all weekend because of the travel. Sigh.

So, when I have a week in a hotel (in the evenings, anyway) and a weekend at home by myself, what do I do?

In my case, I:

• Reread the original 3e version of Privateer Press's Monsternomicon vol. 1. Still one of my favorite game books. It's just a joy to read. Even the boring monsters, like the moon moths and stuff give you a reason to potentially care about them.
• Started reading The Game Master's Book of Instant Towns and Cities. I think this one may take me a little while to read. It's a little cringy. It's very 5e cozy weird high fantasy in feel, with a kind of "ambient wokeness" that you can kind of feel intuitively moreso than point to anything super substantial (other than all of the girlboss "mayors" and whatnot). It's got lots of pop culture cringy in-jokes too; a seaside town called Inz which is kind of a silly joke version of Innsmouth, for instance, or the place that literally has a talk like a pirate day. Nothing's actively offensive or too ridiculous much, at least not so far, but I'm glad I got it for half price. Even so, I imagine I'll feel ripped off when I'm done.
• Pondered that with the "vibe shift" that lots of people are talking about since the election, that kind of stuff has become very low status. I mean, people like me always felt at least a kind of quiet contempt for wokeness, but because woke was in the halls of power, they could delude themselves about their status and popularity. Now, it seems not only like super loser and beta, but also cringy and legitimately creepy. People who haven't caught on and are still talking about woke topics like everyone else takes them seriously, or even pretends to, are outing themselves as really low status. It's hard not to look at people like that and wonder where they went really, really wrong and how they lost their complete and total sense of situational awareness. That was probably overthinking a book that's only "ambiently" rather than overtly woke, at least so far. But I saw a stream that mentioned the whole "low status" label of wokeness, and that probably primed the pump as soon as I picked up a D&D book that has even hints of wokeness.
• Read about half of a pdf copy of Exemplars of Evil, which I'd heard really good things about. Had a crazy sense of deja vu after a while. At one point halfway through, was convinced I'd read it already. Looked at my reading log, which I started keeping in 2023, and saw that I'd already read it back then. Sigh. I guess the book wasn't all that, since I had to read it again halfway through to remember that I even had read it at all. Gave up and took if off my Sumatra pdf reader history.
• Was about to read Paizo's Villain Codex. Just a few pages in, thought it looked really familiar too. I read it before I kept a log, but I did find an old blog post or two where I referenced having just read it, from about six years ago. Actually, some of the basic framework of the SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT campaign, or at least the eponymous column, were clearly built on ideas that I was inspired by from here. Stopped reading that one too. I do actually plan on re-reading two books that I read in 2023 though; The Pirate's Guide to Freeport and Five Fingers: Port of Deceit. But I have way more gaming books on my docket than actual fiction books, so I need to read some novels here too. Many of mine are still in boxes in the garage from my move, though.
• I had not read Paizo's Horror Realms before, but I have a pdf copy of that too, so I started that. Already have a couple of ideas of things to use, although they're just minor little details. Signal to noise ratio with a lot of modern RPG products isn't super great, but there are good ideas in them. Sometimes you just have to pan for them for quite a while before you get enough flakes of good ideas to get something really useable.
• Read Arthur Machen's novella "The Great God Pan" as part of a gigantic ebook collection of all his work (it's all public domain.) Pretty sure I've read this before a while ago, but it's still interesting. Apparently, in 1894 when it was first published, it was considered pretty racy, and wasn't a great start to his reputation as a writer, which is kinda funny given that anything that may have happened in the plot was innuendo-ized so strongly that you almost aren't even sure what you're supposed to infer happened (I suppose the late Victorian and Edwardian era Brits who read it might have had more context to see it than I do). Also, of course, in the 130 or so years since then, we've become so decadent that it seems tame anyway, even if it had been spelled out literally and explicitly. But it's since become a real classic of horror, and many horror writers consider it one of the best early horror stories, before the genre had really crystalized. Stephen King certainly said so specifically, and Lovecraft's own "The Dunwich Horror" borrows so much from it in some ways that it's almost a pastiche.
• Watched Predator and Predator 2, which I have owned for many years. But I hadn't watched either of them in some time, so it was nice to put them back in and go through them. For various reasons, I've had Predator themed stuff pop up at me off and on repeatedly over the last few weeks, including the soundtrack of the second one on YouTube, some reaction videos (again on YouTube) of people watching the whole Dillon/Dutch arm thing, etc. Even Black Lodge Games talked about Schwarzenegger movies in a recent stream, and of course they mentioned that Predator is probably his best movie (although they were particularly fond of Commando and Total Recall. Poor Running Man gets no love. It's a good one too, though). Predator 2 is one I remember quite liking when it came out (I saw it in theaters) but apparently it took some time to find its audience. Too different from the first one, and no Arnie, I guess. But it's since become a well-regarded "cult classic", so quality always outs eventually. Predator 2 also seems to accidentally—in retrospect—look like a cautionary tale against mass immigration of third world savages.
• Listened to some hardtrance, early hardstyle and even a bit of hardcore and gabber, which I don't normally listen to.
• Listened to some Darkest Dungeon and Graham Plowman Lovecraftian soundtracks, as well as some classical music.
• Took a nap on Saturday. Tried to take one on Sunday, but didn't actually do more than doze for a few minutes. Ultimately, that was probably for the best. 
• Was supposed to have a D&D session. Our DM was burned out after only a few sessions, really (perils of DMing 5e. But I don't know that he knows any better; apparently, he's only ever played 4e and 5e.) His wife was going to take over on the same campaign, and he'd either play his wife's character, or make his own replacement to take her character's place. But she got kinda sick or something, and they canceled kinda last minute. Honestly, after a week out of town, having an excuse to just stay at home wasn't so bad, so I wasn't too broken up about the cancelation. The only time I left the house all weekend was 1) walk to the mailbox and get the mail, 2) take a couple of trash bags out to the trash, 3) go to church on Sunday. I'm not really read to go in to work tomorrow. Especially since my wife probably won't be awake yet. I will have just missed her several times over the weekend, and will finally be able to see here again on Monday after work. Sigh.