exurb1r
patreon
Dropping in to confirm I am unfortunately still alive
🕑 Added 2023-07-25 14:43:39 +0000 UTCHello there cephalopods—what's new with you?
As you may've heard, Europe is enjoying seventh-circle-of-hell levels of heat at the moment, so I thought I'd write to you one last time before we're all turned into barbecued brisket. (I assume Mark Zuckerberg would approve of this happening.)
To get the boring part out of the way first then:
So, I have a few ideas for future projects with my fantastic illustrator Valeia (if you saw Big Oxygen, she was the genius behind the visuals) and if you'd like to help with those, I would be extremely grateful. As always, I can hardly just spring this on you without warning, so maybe let's say a week from now that I'll send out the post to deprive you of your hard-earned currency. If you'd like to opt out in the meantime, that's completely understood—thank you ever so much for sticking around this far. As a mental trailer for how much you're going to be disappointed, I've had a script sitting on my desktop for a few years now about a...planet where metaphors bend reality, and since I've finally found the right music it might be the right time to make it. In a few weeks there should be a new video out about AI and consciousness that I hope you enjoy also. And I'd quite like to finish up a project about a small talking elephant who gets quite seriously depressed for a while. That's the vague plan anyway. Again, if you're not down for any of that or have just forgotten to cancel your Patreon subscription, please feel free to sit this one out.
I will admit to being a bit of a stuck panda of late. I've yelled at the internet so many times about not freaking out during the stuckness periods that you'd think I'd be at least okay at this by now, but it's just so much easier to give advice than actually follow your own. There's a new book in the works that I probably shouldn't volunteer too much about—The Fifth Science was a whole bunch of fun to write because if an era got boring to think about, you could just jump a thousand years ahead and see what happened. I grew quite obsessed last year with the idea of stories jumping in consciousness rather than time, into digital and alien minds, and that seems to have been where the thing led. When there's anything more to show you, of course I will.
Anyway, sitting around a bit bored and stuck does lead to some fun discoveries. On quite a few more nights than I should have, I may've accidentally stayed up until the sun rose playing Satisfactory. As with other game recommendations, this isn't really a recommendation but a warning. It's so well-made it will force you to forget about your earthly existence for 12-hour periods at a time, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. If you like factory building games, Factorio etc, then I would confidently guess Satisfactory is also for you. I take no responsibility for time lost or spouses neglected.
Another one I only discovered recently, the US version of The Office. I've been avoiding it for years, convinced the British version had the only formula that could've worked. Wowza was I wrong. I know I'm late to the party with this one, but the romance between Pam and Jim, Micheal's neuroses, the whole Robert California thing, it's reduced me to tears a bunch of times. There's a weird split between US and British comedy that I'm not the first to notice—the heroes in British comedies aren't heroes at all. They're selfish, bitter, and there's no possibility for sympathy towards them, that's sort of the point. (Peep Show is the greatest comedy ever produced in my humble opinion for this very reason.) US comedy still gives us unlikable heroes, but there's something redeeming there about their character, something to understand about their condition, and in the end we're actually sympathetic. Doesn't that feel more human, really? I think I'm coming around to the thing anyway. I wonder if there's something deeper going on there, if the British just can't accept the idea of likable fools. (Ahh but there's Mr. Bean isn't there. I guess that theory doesn't work at all.)
Ooo, another masterpiece if you're curious. A friend recommended Empire of Pain a few months ago and I quickly became addicted. Which is a little ironic considering it's a deep-dive into how the opioid epidemic got started in the US, particularly Oxycontin. It is a story so evil and anti-human it genuinely inspires awe. (I'd strongly recommend the audiobook, nothing better than losing faith in humanity and being able to tidy the apartment at the same time.)
Ahh. And Oppenheimer, which I'm sure most of you have seen by now. It was beautifully shot, no? I mean it's Nolan and his amazing cinematographer, so of course it was. I will admit the pacing threw me a bit, the political section towards the end was a little tricky to follow emotionally, but maybe I'm just slow with all this. Would be rather curious to hear what you thought anyway.
Anyway, sending hellos and warm wishes. Hope you're not caught in a heatwave and have animals nearby to fuss (mine has just experimentally crawled into a plastic bag and there's no way I'm not attaching photos. She passes her time recently watching a pigeon who visits the balcony for muesli and making that terrifying I want to eat you immediately noise. Murder TV, essentially.) I've spent the last few days replying to messages on here and gmail; a massive apology for being so late with them, that's something I really should take more seriously. If I've left you hanging, I'm ever so sorry, a reply is inbound shortly.
In any case, massive love as always, hope you're doing well,
Ex
Comments
LeahElizabeth89
I'm a new patreon, and was completely derailed by the kitty pictures. She looks like you worship her like the princess she is. She is beautiful.
HjalteDK
Wow thanks a lot for the reply, thats much appreciated. I love Mr. Bean's physical humor his expressions, and the way anyone can watch it, he is almost universal, and I've watched him since childhood. If you ever do get to Denmark again, then I can only recommend trying Givskud Zoo, I might have a slight bias as I live next to it, but it is truly a really well-made zoo, with the animals first in mind. While you then would be in the area, try Legoland and or perhaps Legohouse. If you go forward with supernatural, I only want to wish you good luck, as It's long, like over 3 times GOT long. But if you just wish to watch my favorite episode, it would be Season 4 ep 6 "Yellow Fever", and eehm yeah, that's how far my humor has evolved. Oh and give my best thanks to Valeia for her work :) Best regards, Hjalte.
Ahry Siss
Hi Thanks for the Update and sign of life. It was the pure horror here in Sofia over the last few weeks as you mentioned. Hope its soon over. Looking forward to the new stuff coming, the script about that planet sounds lovely and like the door to lots of possible fun and craziness. If you liked Satisfactory you should love The Dyson Sphere Project... at least for me that is the king on the hill of such types of games. Oppenheimer is still outstanding but planned, should be good. Give yourself and your projects the time needed. Enjoy life and wish you all the best. Regards ;)
exurb1a
Hello my robot friend, the pleasure is all mine of course, Totally and entirely agreed, The US Office works because the characters are so well fleshed out -- I feel like they took it to a whole new level over the British version in terms of writing, no idea how they accomplished that wizardry. So, a cultural question I've been wondering about for ages: what was it that inspired everyone so much about the Hunger Games at the time? Post-apocalypse had been done before, wealth disparity had been done before, I really wonder what caught the spark there. (Can't pretend I didn't see all the movies and rather enjoy them.) Ey, a 50+ person party, what titanium are you made of, friend. Sometimes I get socially conscious hanging out with my cat. You're a god from this side anyway -- HOW. HOW. That is very ambitious indeed, and I'm in awe, and I'd gladly try and petition you for an invitation if I wasn't a few thousand miles from the UK. I'm sure it'll go fantastically anyway. Ahhhh I'm ever so glad the Finland trip went well, what a strange and beautiful country -- as much as I've heard anyway, If you met your friend through the server, that only adds to the wonder on this side, marvellous news. Again, a pleasure to hear from you as always my (cybernetic) man, hope all's going well.
exurb1a
THERE'S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM. (Thanks Mattt! - the feline sends her love)
exurb1a
Bonsoir, Maximilian -- 1am and je suis presque ivre on this side I must admit. As I remember, you're literally the first French person I've interacted with on Patreon and that's fairly exciting. Cheers for the support, and massive love your way. À votre santé!
exurb1a
Hola! - my Danish is terrible, I wouldn't even pretend to try at your beautiful language. I visited Copenhagen just before the pandemic got started, and my god -- from a foreigner's perspective, you've built a utopia. And some excellent cocktail bars as I remember. (I do not remember. The cocktails were quite something.) I confess to not finding Mr. Bean terribly likable. It's a bit of a weird one for British watchers -- Rowan Atkinson, the guy who played him, got famous playing Blackadder, a wisecracking historical figure on British TV. Most of the world seems to know him as Mr. Bean instead, falling over rakes and screaming at wasps etc. It's a strange one. Oh god damn, I adored Barbie, I must say. The cinematography was gorgeous, no? The fight on the beach, the colour palette, I was blown away. Completely agreed that it was darker than expected. 24 year old me would never have believed that 34 year old me would've walked out of a cinema speechless at a Barbie movie, but these are strange times we're living in. Anyway, mange tak for the support, I'm ever so grateful -- I'll be sure to check out Supernatural, and my best wishes right back to rainy Denmark, looking forward to visiting again.
exurb1a
A massive thank you, Logan - huge love to you.
exurb1a
It really is better. Took me years to admit, but I think I'm there. And you should see her on the ceilings. (Cheers for the support, Keith. Massive love.)
exurb1a
A very belated happy birthday to you, Dennis. Thank you massively for the support and may I take this opportunity to tell you how much I hate you for enjoying a mild summer.
exurb1a
Hola Siân, Firstly the Celtic Myths and Legends Podcast was a wonderful way to spend an insomniacal Thursday early morning -- I now know more about talking mongeese (??) than I ever expected to, and still less than I hope to in the future. Amazing stuff. I'll also politely add that Muttley laughs are a boon to a podcast, always. Please definitely include all of them. Eyyy, I'm so glad to hear Bulgarian folk music is making its way into your life, totally agreed that humans are generally on the same page with their motivations. (The Bulgarian trick with humanitarianism is to always add more grape brandy.) If you don't know it already, you might enjoy this doozy -- it's a Bulgarian folk song copied onto the golden Voyager record, currently speeding out of the solar system at the moment. https://youtu.be/ZP29VyGOLnw Thank you ever, ever so much for the kind words there. Long covid is such a strange one, seems to be affecting people in such different ways, and I hope you're feeling better soon. Again, cheers for being lovely, will be looking forward to the next Celtic installment.
Mattt
Thank you for the cat pictures this time :)
Maximilian Ervais
Bien le bonjour de France!! Cheers for the reminder that we're all in the same boat regardless, have a good one (It's 3am here, am drunk as... idk... A bat sipping fermented fruits?) And thanks for all the hard work :)
HjalteDK
In Denmark, we have some quite wired weather, with rain of rain on, its not optimal for hicking, which I just so happened to be doing with me mom. It's been a bit difficult, but no pain last forever, hopefully. I've binged a large portion of the office (us) but I tend to die out somewhere in longer series but really a great show, and i hope to finish it one day. As for mr bean. Do we really find him likeable, I mean don't give me wrong I love everything Rowan Atkinson but Mr bean should really be put in jail for his crimes. Note : some miner spoilers ahead for Oppenheimer and Barbie ! My girlfriend and I took the barbenheimer marathon thing last Saturday, and boy was Oppenheimer a spectucal, but honestly barbie wasn't bad either even for me. Its worth a watch and it's much darker then expected, and Will Farrell, awesome as always. The messag I feel was actually really relevant for our society, not only did it show the troubles for women and how men oriented a lot of management is, it also incapitulated how barbieland work the exact same just opposite gender. Ken really felt like he found out that he could be more then just babies "girlfriend". This led him to rise up and take over barbieland, making it the same just swapped sexes again. This was of cause in Hollywood fashion hidden away a bit, and is kinda played for laugh later. And I am not sure why, but I feel like Jensen Ackles would have been the obvious Ken, might do a dubbing and face swap some day. I agree that Oppenheimer was at times confusing, to little was done to really show when we where, and it jumped quite a bit. But 3 hours of film... Some was definitely cut out. As always, love what you do and everything you have done, I'm currently trying to get through the fifth science but quite hard. Note I'm native danish so English is a bit harder, that is probably the reason for any spelling error, and I don't have grammerly on my phone😅 Last thing, If you haven't wach supernatural, it gets hard to complete by season 7-9 but keep going, it gets much more fun and in general better. Best of wishes from rainy Denmark, and awaits new stof every day. Mvh Hjalte, and no you didn't pronounce it correctly ;)
Logan Eads
I’m still here, and still thoroughly appreciate your work. 🙂
RobotWobot
¡Hola Monsieur Tortuga, me encantaria escribirle! (Spanish learned back at secondary school) Big Oxygen... Such a wonderful concept and I thoroughly enjoyed it. When you mentioned you were working on "A comedy on a spaceship", I always assumed it was about someone doing standup on a spaceship hahaha. But anywho, am v excited as always to see what you're going to put out next! ^_^ US Office & Peep Show... You've discovered the US Office? I'm so happy for you. 😊 Absolutely amazing - especially that one cold opening where they do the lip sync song. It gets to a point where you're enjoying it because you know the characters so well. It's like, "This is funny because it's exactly what this person would do." And my God, Peep Show is amazing too. It makes you feel like a perfect human being; thinking there are people who are really shit. I remember seeing inspiration in some of your videos too. i.e. peeing around the toilet and vaccum cleaner POV. Top notch comedy right there. 😁👌 Empire of Pain & Hunger Games... The description you’ve given me reminds me of my current read: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It is a prequel to The Hunger Games, about President Snow looong before he became president. At first, I was very excited to read more Hunger Games (loved the movies and books as well as Battle Royale in general - btw the book/movie literally called “Battle Royale” are excellent too)… but as I got further in, I realised how horrible it all was. As my colleague would say, “Misery porn”. It takes place just after a war. Everyone is in poverty and dying. It’s really quite grim… oh, and did I mention they do another Hunger Games? Y’know, when a bunch of people go into an arena and fight to the death? I don’t remember it being this horrible before. : / Having said that, I will add “Empire of Pain” to my list! Y’know, in case I do want to go into worst-of-humanity stuff. Oppenheimer... I will be watching it this Saturday (29 Jul 23) with some friends. Or should I say “Barbenheimer”? Because we will be watching both Oppenheimer and Barbie on the same day. I must admit I’m not excited to see Barbie because I'm fairly certain I'll hate it. But I guess time will tell! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Current burdens... And meanwhile, me? Idk man it feels like I constantly have an invisible burden on my shoulders, as if I’m taking The Ring to Mordor. Then again, there are a bunch of probable causes, such as: - In therapy at the moment for a phobia from just over 10 years ago. It’s like a visual allergic reaction. The plan is to lessen the hold it has over me. - New phone - but I’m removing the Google from it and replacing the OS with “LineageOS”. Please don’t ask questions tho because a couple friends are doing it for me and idk what's going on anymore. 😅 - Been having some sad periods recently. Mixture of exhaustion and sadness. The only talkative and happy colleague I have went on holiday and that didn’t help either. I feel like I’m getting kinda burned out from my job too (library assistant). A lot of people are unintelligent and it becomes mentally exhaustive to explain basic instructions over and over to different people. - Planning an irl party for 50 friends. I've never done this before (not to mention I only met 95% of these people within the last two years). - Also holy shit, so much is happening that I almost forgot about my trip to Michigan in two weeks for my other cousin’s wedding. Yeah, so… that’s happening too. 😆 Requested updates... In the meanwhile, updates as per requesto from the last post… Kurzory Quest: Not much progress tbh. But I did want to clarify: Kurzgesagt themselves know nothing of this, and the aforementioned website was made by a friend of mine. But yeah, we’re still working on getting all the links. Just very slowly… Finland trip: It was about as lovely as I expected it would be. It was a trip to see my best friend. It’s the sort of person who you’re scared of losing because you wonder how you could possibly find someone to replace them. And just to hit you right in the feels Exurb1a, I wouldn’t have known them without you - because I met them in your Discord server. I’m also planning on meeting them again in October. Waitwaitwai before I go, I wanna recommend some songs... - Will Wood's "BlackBoxWarrior": https://open.spotify.com/track/1WeNLbQCDJ1JnF5LjReC8t?si=84373025a055476d None of the lyrics make sense but it's spellbinding poetry. - Battle Tapes' "In Too Deep": https://open.spotify.com/track/5xQWrIjPIHHkPZBThm99j6?si=a503f1d2a18c499f Something about their music just really hits me in the "Wow, this music is good" spot. - The Lorax's "Biggering": https://open.spotify.com/track/67JBPpeMNvJTY1rw9FxZlM?si=8bc4a4ebb04d43f1 I wouldn't have expected I'd be listening to music from "The Lorax", but here I am. It turns out the movie was originally a lot darker than it ended up and they made this BANGER that didn't make it in the final movie. It makes you feel like a megalomaniac. I recommend taking a look at some of the video essays on YouTube. I think it'll scratch that storytelling itch you have (because it certainly scratched mine). Much love from my exhausted widdle Robot head, Robot 💛
Keith Merrington
I think the US version of The Office is the better version too - although there are moments where Michael does something so cringeworthy that I just can't keep watching and have to switch it off for a bit. Nice cat by the way. Seems to enjoy being upside down.
Clouthe
No better birthday present than a post from you (thats a lie a video would top it). Anyways I continue to throw my money at you so that I can keep hear about the process of future books and videos. Much greetings from a Germany with a mild summer
Siân Powell
The US office took me awhile to get to as well but it really is so funny and enjoyable. We British can be pretty mean spirited with our comedy and I’m not going to lie and say I don’t find Nighty Nighty side splittingly funny but I do enjoy American comedies as well for the warm fuzzies. You don’t really get warm fuzzies with British comedy quite as much. Not unless they’re also accompanied by lots of itching and fleas. I’ve been inspired by one of your videos recently and have been getting obsessed with Bulgarian folk music, festivals and costumes. SO. COOL. Thank you!! Love comparing folk cultures around the world and finding the beautiful differences and unique elements and also the wonderful similarities between different people of the world - at the end of the day we all have the same motivations and desires. Mostly! I developed pretty nasty post viral fatigue (long covid) over the last few months and discovering your videos has been a real gift and has, strangely and I’m not sure what this says about me, really cheered me up on a number of occasions. So I’m going to stay and just continue to vibe with whatever you put out into the world! :)
