Homecoming was pretty bad. I showed up all by myself and strutted in with zero swagger. A lot of faces I didn’t recognize, the music was too loud, I stood around awkwardly with nothing to do. I didn’t want to look at my phone too much because that would be uncool, so I walked from the gym to the hallway, waited, walked back, so on and so forth. I felt dumb and probably looked dumb too. And there was a rage brewing inside me and my anger towards that snake was renewed.

After about ten minutes of shame, I found some of my classmates. I was not particularly close with them, but I still pathetically asked if I could tag around them for the rest of the night, and they allowed me to. So it was them walking around and me awkwardly following them, not really a part of the group. I made some small talk and joked around with them throughout the night, but I always felt like an outsider, except for one kid who knew me from last year and thus was a lot friendlier.

For most of the night we all walked from place to place, occasionally
“dancing,” or we just stood around and shouted at each other just to be heard. It was very thrilling. At one point we waited in line to get our photo taken, which took a very long time. And a lot of girls had their shoes off for some reason. My legs hurt from standing so much. And my ears were numb. Some party it was, just a mosh pit in the center of the gym, and groups of people standing around it talking to each other, and further away from the center of the circle were the people who were alone or too cool to do anything. I prowled the premises for vulnerable young women, which I did find, but they looked depressed and I did not want to be creepy. The girls who were not depressed were in groups and were good dancers and I knew then that it was a lost cause.

I was moping in the gymnasium, hovering the small group of people I knew when a girl came up to me. Then she asked if I had Snapchat. I said I didn’t, then she said that her friend would like to know my number. I said okay. Then she went back to her friend and showed me her number and I realized I did not know how to add a number without texting someone and the girl watched as I traversed my phone’s menus like an old man and she was probably going to report my ineptitude to her friend. And so the only thing I could think to do was just text the number, but I did not know what to write.

I texted, “Hi.” And I am ashamed and I am embarrassed.

But I didn’t feel ashamed immediately because after the girl left a sense of euphoria filled my soul and the guys around me started hyping me up and I sent a smug text message to that snake.

Then reality dawned on me and I realized how stupid I sounded. I mean, “Hi.” Really? And the girl probably reported to her friend how awkward I was being.

And the girl didn’t even approach me the whole night, so I got to the point where I assumed I had been pranked. She never responded to the hi either. This sucks. I hope she never responds because I don’t want to deal with it. How shameful my behavior today was, but I can only use this moment to grow and learn. I walked around for another hour or so and a pit began to grow in my stomach and I felt terrible and so exhausted. As I waited for my grandmother to pick me up, I listened to a No Buses album and that made me feel like the main character for a bit, and that this depressing scene was being displayed to a sympathetic audience. Two people were sitting under a streetlight as my grandmother drove me home. It was ten and few cars were out. I want to forget tonight, I hope that girl will forget my awkwardness, I hope her friend never texts me, I hope her friend forgets me too. It is better to not worry and only deal with it when the problem punches me in the face. I have school on Monday, and everything sucks.

I’m going to homecoming by myself. What I’m hoping will happen is that there will be some poor girl there also by her lonesome, and that is when I will strike. Or I am hoping that there will be a group of sympathetic senior girls that will take me in out of pity. Or maybe I will just hang out with the teachers.

I think I would feel comfortable dancing if there were a lot of people. If it’s just a handful, I’d feel pretty embarrassed. The strategy I’m employing is to try to ignore everyone and dance so confidently that the girls will notice. I also prepared a dance playlist on my phone in case the music sucks, which it probably will. I guess that would look pretty dumb, because I’d be dancing to a different beat than the song actually playing. But who cares.

I’m mainly going because I already bought a ticket, and also to stick it to my snake rat bastard “friend.” And I will make fun of him for being a basement-dwelling Osu playing weeaboo that never goes outside for any social events due to his poor self-esteem. And maybe I will even get a picture of myself with a girl and send him it and call him a turbovirgin. At first I thought I would make him feel bad for making me go alone, but I realized he’s not emotionally mature enough to feel that he was even in the wrong at all. In fact, I was telling my friends in the group chat that I would have to go alone after what he did, and he texted “glhf.” He must think he is very funny, and he must really think he did nothing wrong at all. The next time I see him, I will sock him the face, and he’ll be prying teeth out the back of his throat.

Even if I do not have any fun, I will take a lot of pictures of myself smiling and dancing and make him feel jealous. That is my intention with going today.

Anyhow. I went bowling with my friend and the rat bastard yesterday. I mainly went so I could continue cussing out that little turd, but my friend was there and I didn’t want to sour the mood. So I just told him off a bit, without the swearing or yelling. And this little worm kept on making excuses. He finally did apologize, but his apology started with, “Like, I’m sorry, but…” And that’s when I knew he had no intention of making a sincere apology, and that he was so stupid that he was doing the craziest mental gymnastics ever to justify himself.

It came to a point where even my friend, who was always impartial to the many spats I had with the incel Osu nerd, called him out for his lack of accountability, to which he continued saying dumb crap he probably didn’t even believe himself, and playing dumb whenever his previous statements were brought up.

So I spent the rest of the day sulking, and I kept conversation with the rat bastard to a minimum. Mostly, I just talked to my friend, who is far more agreeable and reasonable.

Here is another cringe thing that happened. As we were walking around town, my friend started talking about his girlfriend back in middle school who had cheated on him. And he mentioned that prior to them getting together, she had already done the deed with a sixteen-year-old back when she was twelve. I was initially very shocked and disgusted. Then I understood that usually when something like that happens, it’s a sign of childhood trauma. Maybe a creepy family member, or maybe some older teenagers did sometime messed up to her. So you really have to feel bad for the girl.

But what does the little snake take away from this sad story? He says “wow,” and calls the girl a “used rag.”

Maybe he was just making a terrible joke.  If that is the case, it annoys me, but whatever.

But here is what is more likely. This kid is a braindead incel. He is ignorant and does not understand that twelve year olds are not doing these things because they have no morals or standards, but because they are being exploited by people older than them.

Honestly, that makes me really mad. I didn’t say anything much then, it was just my friend muttering “What the hell?” and me going “Hey, you can’t talk about women like that.” It didn’t really sink in how messed up his statement was until I got home and started reflecting over the day’s events. I guess when someone says something so awful, you can’t really believe they would say that, and so it doesn’t really register.

I’m planning to get on his case about this on Monday. I would text him but I know this pussy would be too afraid to reply, or say something like, “I was just joking.”

Anyhow. I hope homecoming will be fun.

I am pissed. I am so pissed off right now. I will not write any swear words because this is a family friendly website but I wish I could. About an hour ago I was cussing out my friend in the school hallway very loudly. Here is why.

Two of my friends had said that they might go to homecoming. It turns out today that they can’t. But that’s okay, I still have another friend who is going.

Just kidding, he is a liar. I asked him on Wednesday if he filled out the Homecoming form which you need to buy a ticket, to which he said he did. Then comes Friday and he says that he did not buy a ticket, which annoys me a little bit that he is waiting for last minute. I tell him to buy one at lunch. In eighth period he comes and says they are not selling tickets anymore. I am a little stunned by this and I spend the period staring stupefied at nothing and figuring to myself. And so I tell him to seek out the history teacher to ask for a ticket after school, because she is the one in charge of all this stuff.

So after the pep rally, I follow him to the history classroom. There is a small line of girls who were also waiting last minute for a ticket. And there is a limited amount of tickets left, but it is fine because we got there before most people, so all my friend has to do is turn in his Homecoming form and claim his ticket.

But no. Because this rat bastard lied to me. He didn’t fill out the form. He never even picked one up. So he has to leave the line and fill out the form and then the tickets are sold out and I am pissed. Because now I am going to go by myself, and the one person who had assured me that he was going lied to my goddamn face, and had the audacity to try to gaslight me into thinking he had never promised any such thing.

This is the last straw. I guess maybe this insult sounds minor to you, but I’m so mad. You don’t know this kid like I do, and he’s always been doing things that minorly tick me off. He chucks a ball at my genitals and refuses to say sorry, even though it’s a known fact amongst men that any injury to that area is dishonorable and very frowned down upon. I text him a question and he doesn’t answer until the next day, and says the next day that he “fell asleep” and tries to brush it off when I call him out on his behavior. And you know what? This stuff might make it seem like he’s a punk rebel kid who doesn’t play by anyone’s rules. But no, he’s a little insecure Genshin Impact weeaboo that is afraid of social confrontation and taking accountability for being a poor friend.

Again, it probably seems like nothing to you. I’d go elaborate but I have to be somewhere in a few minutes, namely the bowling alley, so I can continue cussing out my friend there. I was swearing pretty loudly in the halls and I hope none of my teachers heard. What pisses me off is that he didn’t even say, “Sorry I lied.” No, he just tries to brush me off and downplay everything, because he is not the one who has to show up to homecoming by himself. Like I said before, it’s not just this, it’s a series of things that get me pissed off.

So I’m going by myself. I feel like Napoleon, after his country turned back on him, after all of Europe has exiled him. He’s literally me.

I am a contrarian so I reject what is cool and trendy and one of those things is homecoming. I would like to say that I am writing off homecoming because it will be filled with normie socialites and I will be sticking the finger to the man but I am attending this year. This is because my dad wants me to wear my suit a few more times because of the sunk cost fallacy, and he wants me to go to prom too probably. So I will have to be pretending that I am going to homecoming ironically because I’m just that much of a rebel.

I did not ask a girl to go with me because I am afraid of women and because the other guys are going all out with posters and showing up to their house like its promposal. I can assure you that there is no girl at my school that is worth that effort. Anyhow, if I did get a date I’d inevitably have to slink away into the crowd when they ask me to dance because I do not know how to dance. And then maybe she’d laugh at me with her friends.

I’m not quite sure what they want us to be doing at homecoming anyway. I think you are supposed to dance, but the school banned break dancing and moshpits, which I thought were the whole point. So I imagine they want us to be slow dancing or doing something dumb as hell like the twist. Moshpitting I could definitely participate in, but I don’t really want to be looking like a goober when they force us to actually dance. What will probably happen is that I will be standing in the corner looking like an outcast rather than a really cool and mysterious rebel boy with an attitude. And I will be drinking a lot of punch.

The dress code said to be semi-formal. I don’t know what that means but it makes me worry that my suit will be overkill and people will be asking what the hell I’m wearing a full on suit for and it will really kill the rebel persona I am building if it seems like I’m trying too hard for homecoming. In today’s age seeming like you are trying means you suck and are uncool. I guess nobody else will be dancing either because they are too insecure. So everyone will be standing in the corner, drinking punch.

I tried to practice dancing in my room so I could show up at homecoming and break it down and totally shock everyone. But I feel kind of stupid even dancing when no one is around, so I gave up. It’s just moving with the beat anyway. I can figure it out when I get there, and I am hoping everyone else is as inexperienced. I’ve never attended any of those silly winter formals they held in middle school. I never attended any dances in eighth grade because it was Covid year and I was a borderline lunatic sociopath, I didn’t attend in ninth grade because I had no friends, and I didn’t attend in tenth grade because I didn’t. My high school career is really something. Eighth grade sucked.

After much pestering, I manipulated one of my socially reclusive friends to attend with me. This is partly because if I have to suffer, all of my friends should too. It is also because the only other person I had to go with at that point was my bisexual friend who looks like Jeffery Dahmer. And I didn’t think anything of it but one of my other friends said that if I went alone with him then he’d try to hit on me. That perturbed me enough to start bothering my other friends to go, so he would hit on them instead. So it will be me and three other people probably. What we will probably spend our time doing is daring each other to ask a girl to dance and calling each other pussies for not doing it even though none of us have the balls to. Except for one of my friends, who has a girlfriend, so he’s immune to that talk. It makes me wonder if he will ditch us for his girlfriend when the dance starts, in which case us three miserable bachelors will jeer at him while being secretly jealous.

What I want to do is to show up on stage at homecoming and start shredding the guitar and playing some sick moshpit-starting song. I told my friend that we should start a punk-rock band, and this moron said that punk-rock sucks because it’s just being loud and screaming. He has not heard a punk-rock song in his life, but he was acting like he knew all about it, which pissed me off (. And this guy had the audacity to say he listens to Beethoven. Like hell he does. Anyone who says they enjoy classical music regularly is a liar and they only want to seem culture. People who say they listen to classical music just don’t listen to music. I hold grudges, and I will not allow that friend into my punk-rock band, which will have a really sick indie name like One-Eyed Raven and we will be cooler and superior to everyone else in the school.

Anyhow. Homecoming sucks. If you enjoy it, you are a phony, and fake as hell.

When I saw the first trailer for Oppenheimer I thought it was about a man in a suit killing zombies or something in a fiery post-apocalyptic hellscape. Unfortunately, it is about Robert Oppenheimer, father of the nuclear bomb. I also recall hearing that Christopher Nolan was going to drop a real nuke for the movie, but that was sadly just a joke. People were really losing their minds over the fact that the movie uses mostly practical effects. I think that’s not so crazy though because it’s a movie about a real person that spends most of his time thinking. I’m not sure why that would call for any crazy CGI except for the nuke part.

I haven’t seen most of Nolan’s movies, but I do think this movie is most similar to Dunkirk, which is also based on a real event and keeps a nonstop pace. For a movie about all this boring science stuff, it goes very fast and never lingers on a single scene for more than a few minutes. In a way, it’s like watching a collage of memories from Oppenheimer’s life. I guess it would be pretty boring if it did slow down since the topic isn’t exactly action-packed, but I’d still like a chance for the viewer to breathe every once in a while. Even Dunkirk had its rare moments of calm where the viewer can fully digest everything that was happening. However, Oppenheimer is still three hours long despite its rapid-fire pacing, so I imagine any slowed down sections would increase the movie’s length to an unwatchable amount.

Oppenheimer does assume that the viewer already has at least a vague idea of the atomic bomb and everything that happened in the mid twentieth century. Of course, some things are just common knowledge, like World War 2 and the anti-communist sentiment in the United States, so the film doesn’t even bother spelling these things out. But there are things I think could have been elaborated on a bit more. For example, I knew there was a civil war in Spain, though couldn’t remember over what, and I was especially unsure of how the war in Spain tied into Oppenheimer potentially being a communist. Another thing I wasn’t aware of was Strauss’ confirmation hearing over his nomination as Secretary of Commerce, and so I ended up mistaking those scenes as part of Oppenheimer’s trial until near the end. But it’s entirely possible that the film straight up said “This is Strauss’ confirmation hearing,” and I just missed it, so I won’t say too much on that. On the flip side, the movie’s biggest plot twist is spoiled if you know too much about history. So, there’s that.

Regardless, it’s a pretty good movie. Nolan does a good job of putting the audience in Oppenheimer’s shoes, giving insight into how a genius understands the world through a completely different lens than everyone else. The awe and horror of the nuke is captured through these silent close up shots, one of the few times the movie is ever quiet. Then it blasts your eardrums as the explosion gets to the amazed spectators, as if the astonishment is fading away and the harsh reality sets in that humanity as just harnessed the power of a god. For a biographical film, it is very interesting. I give it a 2/10.

I saw the Barbie movie with my droogs the other day. Naturally, I had assumed the movie was a PG family fun adventure, so I was pretty shocked when all these jokes about genitalia happened. Turns out, the movie is rated PG-13. It’s not that I wasn’t expecting any adult humor, but I figured it would be more subtle so the kids wouldn’t know. But Barbie straight up says “penis” and “vagina” in the movie. I was pretty shocked when I heard that. For the most part I found the movie pretty dang funny, especially the scenes with Ken in them. It’s like Marvel humor, but actually funny. There are jokes that I think are too on the nose, like the part where all the Kens are saying that they’ll “beach” each other off, but for the most part, the jokes land. As a comedy movie, I highly recommend it.

As for the plot. The plot sure is something. Basically, after Barbie slowly gains humanlike symptoms, she has to leave Barbieland for the real world to find her owner, cheer her up, and become a normal toy again. So, Barbie and Ken head to LA where Barbie is immediately sexually harassed by every man in the city and Ken becomes enamored with the patriarchal society of LA, which is vastly different from the matriarchal Barbieland he is used to. Yes, this is real, this is in fact the Barbie movie. Hijinks ensue, Ken goes back to Barbieland to establish the patriarchy there. Meanwhile, Barbie finds her owner, a secretary at the Mattel, as well as her annoying as hell bratty teen daughter. There’s this really dumb scene where Barbie tries to talk to the little brat and the teen calls Barbie a fascist and an enemy of feminism. Yes, this is real, this is in fact, still the Barbie movie I am discussing. Anyhow, Barbie and her two new pals head back to Barbieland. Except, it has been turned into Kenland, because Ken has turned all of the Barbies into brainwashed slaves and now Kens rule the whole town. This makes Barbie very depressed and she falls into a catatonic state. Then, Barbie’s owner and the annoying little brat are leaving Barbieland when Michael Cera pops up into the back of their car because he wants to flee Barbieland as well, HOWEVER, the Kens are building a wall to stop them from leaving, HOWEVER, the Kens don’t know how to build sideways and can only build their wall straight up, HOWEVER, the Kens stop building the wall to stop the trio from leaving, HOWEVER, MICHAEL CERA KNOWS MARTIAL ARTS AND BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF THE KENS SINGLEHANDEDLY AND THIS INSPIRES BARBIE’S OWNER AND HER LITTLE TURD TO HEAD BACK TO BARBIELAND AND STOP THE PATRIARCHY. YES, THIS IS REAL, THIS IS IN FACT THE BARBIE MOVIE PRESENTED TO YOU BY MATTEL.

Anyway. Barbie’s owner meets up with the resistance group of discontinued Barbies who are trying to find a way to rebel against the Kens. Then, Barbie’s owner goes on an unhinged rant about society’s expectations of women and how she feels oppressed, and it turns out that this can cure brainwashed Barbies. So Barbie is shaken out of her coma and the resistance group starts kidnapping all of the other Barbies to cure them of their brainwashing, which basically is just them shoving them in a van and subjecting them to feminist propaganda. They have to be fast however, because an election is coming up where all the Kens are going to vote to change the constitution to officially turn Barbieland into a patriarchal society. The resistance group’s solution to this is to of course, take away the Kens’ ability to vote. So all the Barbies are cured, they nudge the Kens into waging a civil war against each other, and while the Kens are distracted the Barbies vote to not be a patriarchy. Thus, the Kens become the second-class citizens once more, Barbieland is restored, Barbie becomes a human, all is well. It sure is something. I liked the part where all the Kens were dancing.

Honestly, I thought the ending was going to be the Barbies and Kens learning that not one gender should have power over the other, but it just ends with the Barbies regaining total control of the government. They do sort of imply that things might eventually change, but they don’t show anything actually changing. It’s feels very off-kilter and hypocritical to the movie’s central theme to have it end in such a way. But I’m not going to go on a Ben Shapiro rant about it because I’m not unhinged. So that’s really all I have to say.

School is starting up again soon which sucks because I really hate school. I also have to take AP Psychology because I didn’t have enough room to fit Debate and Creative Writing into my schedule, so it was either Psych or something dumb like Ceramics or Art. I’m taking four AP classes this year which is pretty daunting, because I got burnt out from taking just AP World last year. And AP Physics is supposed to be the hardest exam, so that’s not very comforting. To my surprise, there seems to be a whole culture of AP students who have their own online community dedicating to studying the AP material and ranking the AP exams by difficulty. I’m not a nerd so I don’t really want to join up with those sorts, but I’ve been checking out their up on their difficulty tier list, and the results are not looking good. And according to a lot of people, junior year is the toughest year grades-wise. So I’ll have to deal with four AP exams as well as the SAT or ACT or whatever it is I’m supposed to be taking. School sucks balls. I’d rather be working the fields as an uneducated son of a farmer back in the 1800s. Send me to the coal mines or something.

AP exams are hell. If they were purely multiple choice and a few short response questions, I wouldn’t really care. But timed essays. I really hate timed essays. I remember my hand being sore as hell, the clock was ticking and every second spent thinking of what to write was time not well spent. I’m the kind of guy who likes to think thoroughly about what I’m writing before I actually put pen to paper, not just diving straight in with no idea. But this isn’t encouraged in the AP exam because they give you hardly any time to write anything at all, so I spent the first few minutes thinking by the final minute I was on fire trying to cram stuff down. You have an hour to read several documents and write an essay about them. I was making a lot of stuff up in my essay, I will say that much. There was a question about how Chinese culture had affected Asian societies other than Korea, and there was probably something about Confucianism or something, but I blanked and just said that the architecture in Japan’s capital was very reminiscent of Chinese architecture. I knew it was flimsy, but time was running out and I couldn’t think of anything else. Now that I’ve searched it up, this is sort of correct, but I wasn’t really specific on how Japan and China had similar architecture. One thing the AP scorers really like is when you’re specific, because it makes it look like you know a lot. My best work revolved around France because I take French, and I was really hamming it up and quoting stuff in French instead of English because that probably made it look more professional. “Liberte, egalite, et fraternite, which translates into Liberty, equality, and brotherhood,” I wrote, which must have really impressed the scorers.

Aside from the a few panic attacks, I did pretty well on the exam. Funny thing is, if I take it again now, I would definitely fail. I can’t recall anything I did last year. Just looking at the released AP questions now has me scratching my head, making me wonder how I even answered these questions in May. I am fully convinced that school only tests memorization, and does not actually teach anything.

In seventh grade I had to write a personal essay on what my room looked like. I couldn’t really say much except “This is where I sleep and change my clothes.” You know, all of my classmates had wild stuff in their room, beanbags, whole desks to study on, Lego X-Wings displayed on shelves, a giant bed, some even had a TV. And I don’t have crap, save for a drawer with half of the compartments nonfunctional. I’ve been thinking about it, how could I ever invite a girl into my room? “Make yourself comfortable,” I’d say, and gesture towards the sports themed walls and the toy cars glued to my bed and the Snoopy bedsheets and the illustrations of footballs on my blanket.

If I had it my way, I would have a whole desk and bookshelf in my room, maybe a beanbag too. You know, bookshelves with stuff like The Grapes of Wrath on it scream “I’m an intellectual,” which is definitely the vibe I’d like to give off. Funny story, I actually have two copies of The Grapes of Wrath. Well, not very funny, and not really a story either, so never mind. Anyhow, I’d display all of my video game cases and books the same way people display their sports trophies or their Lego sculptures. It’d really showcase my very quirky and intellectual persona. Maybe I’d even hang a Green Day poster up or something to make it seem like I actually care that much about music. “What band is that?” my visitors would ask, and I’d respond pompously, “Why, my unlearned friend, that is the much renowned pop punk band, Green Day. Yes, my taste is much more exquisite than yours.” And then I’d whip out my American Idiot record and start blasting it on a gramophone. And then I’d go, “Say, have you fellas ever heard of Weezer?” And then we’d start imitating the lick from Buddy Holly.

My fingertips are tough and raisinlike from playing the guitar. And I didn’t even know this, but turns out that I’d been playing a classical guitar at Cape Coral, not an acoustic guitar. I didn’t even know that there was such thing as a classical guitar. Here in Ohio, there’s also only a classical, no acoustic. Still, I can’t really hear the difference between classical and acoustic. So really the only difference is that using a pick on a classical kind of sucks, and now I just use my hand. And barre chords are a lot easier on classical, which makes me wonder how bad my barre chords are going to be when I play an acoustic after being used to classical. Still, it feels sort of a waste to get an acoustic when the classical is so similar. Still, I’ve been thinking about asking my mom for an electric for Christmas, purely because electric is cool as hell. I don’t know how much mileage I’d get out of an electric, if I’d prefer it to the more natural sound of the classical, or if I could even figure out all the technical stuff I’d have to do with it. And I still don’t know if playing guitar is something I’m dedicated to, or just a passing hobby I picked up so I can play Green Day songs. But electric guitar makes me look cool. I’d have it set up in the corner of my room and people would say, “Wow, you play guitar? Can you play the Weezer lick?” You know, it wouldn’t be like those pansy acoustic strumming country rednecks playing outside in the college campus singing Country Roads all the damn time.

I guess the main drawback of an electric compared to acoustic is that it doesn’t really sound great as a solo performance; I’d need a whole band to sound nice. And then I’d have to learn a bunch of music theory, which I don’t want to do. Also, I find musicians to be annoying. Those dang band kids, they act like a bunch of lunatics. I hate band kids.

I got a new phone, the iPhone 14. Up until then I’d been using the ancient 6S+, a hand-me-down from my mom. There isn’t much difference between the old phone and the new one, except one does not have a home button and has better camera quality. I was actually looking forward to the better camera since the 6S+ has an eighteenth-century quality to it. This is coming from a person who doesn’t even usually notice if a video is in 480p. The camera on the 6S+ is doo doo. The iPhone14 is noticeably better, but not exactly the seven years of technological advancement I had expected; it’s no replacement for any decent camera. And maybe I’m just old and can’t get with the times, but the removal of the home button was always odd to me. Apparently it was to make room for more screen. I guess that makes sense, but I usually prefer tactile feedback over tapping a glass screen. More unforgivable however is the removal of the headphone jack, presumably done to sell more of their dumb as hell Airpods, which are essentially ugly marshmallows that cost a hundred dollars, and anyone who buys them is an Apple apologist, a braindead shill, and also probably bought the $999 Apple Pro Stand.

Anyhow. I’ll have to dig around for some Bluetooth ear buds then. Some features of the iPhone 14 that I didn’t mention include Face ID. It’s decently useful. I was going to list some more features but I honestly can’t think of any. As an upgrade to an eight year old phone, it really falls flat. People like to clown on Apple for releasing the same phone every year. These people are mostly Samsung bootlickers, and their opinions are typically irrelevant. However, there is some truth to this sentiment. I do wish we would have the next big selling feature already, the way the jump from button phones to touch screen was. In other words, Steve Jobs, up your game!!!

I also have a new number. I notified only a few people that I was changing numbers. Some of my classmates I didn’t really feel like telling because we’re not that close and it’d be weird if I told them just for them to not really care. We don’t talk much anyway. I keep getting texts and calls from random people and they all think my name is Hector, and Hector if you are reading this you need to pay your bills NOW. In other words, Hector needs to get his act together and start paying his taxes, because I am sick of getting random calls so early in the morning!!!

I got logged out of Spotify when I switched phones. I couldn’t remember my password since I made the account six years ago when I first got my phone, so I decided to just make a new one. That means I’ve lost all of my old playlists, although I don’t really care about them at all. They all consist of Maroon 5 and One Republic, so nothing much is being lost. I’ve been on the fence on whether or not I should buy Spotify Premium.  Sometimes I think it’s worth it so I don’t have to hear “Want a break from the ads?” being blasted into my eardrums every minute. But of course, why pay for what is free? Most of the time I just use Youtube to listen to music because I can actually pick a song and listen to it, and if an ad shows up, it’s usually a five-second skippable one. The only time I ever use Spotify is if I want my phone to be off when I listen, which isn’t very often. And sometimes, Spotify doesn’t even have the music I want to listen to.

Some people treat music like it’s some sort of competition to see who has the most varied and unique taste. I guess it’s sort of the way how some people think they’re superior for reading old, obscure literature. Both are pretty snobby, but the thing with books is that it actually takes effort and thought to read through the whole thing. That at least provides grounds for the claim of cultural superiority. You have to put in the effort pretending to understand the book at all. For music, all you have to do is press play. This guy was showing me his playlist once. There were a lot of artists, maybe they were mainstream or maybe they were underground, I’m not sure since I don’t know many artists in general. And the whole time he was looking at me expecting me to piss my pants in excitement over how cool his playlist was, and how cool he was for listening to them. As for me, I listen to Weezer.

5. The Shining

Boo hoo, yes, The Shining is at the bottom of the list. I think I’ve already spoken about my grievances with the movie, so I’ll be brief. It’s based on a book that I only found to be alright. It’s not very scary at all, save for that two-second-long scene with the man dressed as a dog. The book I don’t find very scary either, but at least it made me feel something. Seeing Jack slowly succumb to the madness of the Overlook Hotel despite his best efforts in trying the rehabilitate and become a better husband is actually sort of tragic and depressing. In the movie it feels like Jack is just a complete wacko from the beginning, and there really isn’t the same feeling of a downward spiral into insanity. That could just be because Jack Nicholson is just a zany guy that plays zany characters, or it could be the script. The movie starts of pretty slow with not much going on, there’s a lot of strange sexual imagery I don’t recall being in the book (Kubrick is one perverted guy), and they kill off Dick Halloran for some reason even though he survives in the book, which is just another example of the black guy always dying first in every horror movie. It’s really lame: Dick spends the whole movie desperately trying to get back to the Overlook to save Danny and his mother, and he immediately gets axed. So much for that plotline.

Maybe I’m just not intelligent to understand the complexities of this movie. That’s fine. If people like the movie and how much they can analyze it, then that’s great. It’s not that I hated this movie. I just didn’t like it, and that is why it is at the bottom.

 

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Yes, I am putting A Space Odyssey near the bottom. Here is why: it can get very boring. I’m not sure if this is a Kubrick thing or just an old movie thing, but a lot of shots are just held there for so long, it gets tedious to watch. In most movies when someone is heading somewhere, you get a shot of them going, and then it cuts to them arriving. In this movie, when a character is walking somewhere, we get to see him walk all the way there. No cuts, no speeding it up, no dialogue over it. Just walking. In one part, a character has to leave his spaceship and maneuver a little space pod around. And we have to watch a minute of the space doors slowly opening, then a minute of the pod slowly detaching, the pod slowly turning, the pod slowly going up. Every single thing. If I wanted to see machinery operate in this fashion, I’d go to a nearby construction site and watch some guy swing around a wrecking ball, not just the part where he smashes stuff, but also the part where he slowly climbs into the vehicle, where the vehicle breaks down and they have to call in a repairman, where the repairman spends an hour fiddling around inside of it. Every single action just goes on way too long. A ship is docking on a planet? Watch about three minutes of it doing that. A group of apes are having tribal warfare? Two minutes of them just yelling at each other with everyone too scared to make the first move.

I imagine the reason why these shots go on for so long is because Kubrick really wanted to show off the stunning visual effects. I also imagine that sci-fi was a lot more alluring in the sixties, so it would be neat to see the innerworkings of how these futuristic machines operated, even if it meant going over all the mundane details of it. Honestly, I would sort of understand Kubrick if this was the case. This movie came out in 1968, the time when TVs looked like oversized radios, Stars Wars was yet to be released, and we hadn’t even landed on the moon yet. Even so, Kubrick was pumping out beautiful visuals that, and I’m really not exaggerating, wouldn’t look out of place in a modern movie. The imagery in the movie is extremely sleek and clean. I really am left scratching my head as to how the film looks so great despite coming out in 1968. There’s a part where a guy is jogging around in a donut shaped spaceship, and somehow, we see him looping around over and over. I have absolutely no idea how Kubrick achieved this effect. Here’s a few really beautiful shots in the movie that I like:

Overall, I respect this film. And if you shave off about half an hour of content, I would say that I like this film. The story isn’t too mind-blowing, but the ending definitely is. It’s a cool movie about human technology advancing to things we can’t even comprehend. Or something. I didn’t really understand too much of it.

 

3. Barry Lyndon

I’ll actually be going over the plot for this one unlike the last two. This is because by now everyone knows what The Shining is about, and because I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is pretty self-explanatory and nothing too insane (save for the ending). It also because I like the plot of Barry Lyndon.

This period drama set in the 18th century is based off the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. It is about an Irishman named Redmond Barry and how he starts from humble origins before climbing up the social ladder into aristocracy.  From that description, it probably sounds extremely stuff and boring, but it’s really not. Barry goes through a lot of crazy stuff over the course of his life. From being forced to leave his hometown after killing someone in a duel, losing all his mother’s savings to a robber, enlisting in the British army in the Seven Years’ War looking for glory, deserting after becoming disillusioned with war, and then being forced to switch sides once he is caught by the Prussian army, Barry’s life is extremely interesting to look at. And all of this takes place in the first third of the movie. I’m leaving out way more cool details in order to prevent spoilers. In a way, it’s like watching a documentary about the most interesting person ever recorded in history, even if his story isn’t true. It’s gratifying to see Barry start in such a bad way, yet still he slowly rises up the ranks in the Prussian army, gaining money and status along the way.

The music is great as well. A lot of classical pieces are used which I’ve never heard of, but they all sound good. Some of my favorite parts is just shots where nothing is happening, while a cold yet dramatic violin soars in the background.

Like A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon is also a very pretty film. Here’s some of my favorite shots from the movie. They straight up look like classical paintings, it’s great. In these cases, I don’t mind if Kubrick wants to linger on them for a minute or so. And accompanied by the orchestral soundtrack, it’s perfect.

If you like history, you should definitely watch this movie. It has the feel of a biographical film thanks to the calm voice of the narrator as he recounts the events Barry winds up in. It is probably one of the most beautiful movies ever made. I give it a 2 out of 5.

 

2. Full Metal Jacket

This one’s about a soldier called Private Joker as he goes through boot camp and then fights in Vietnam, all while he and his fellow men are slowly dehumanized and turned into killing machines. I always enjoy war movies, and this one is no exception. However, Full Metal Jacket doesn’t lean too hard into intense firefights and heroic military exploits. Instead, it’s more about the war machine and how war affects the soldiers’ psyche. The first act of the movie takes place entirely within the bootcamp, and it’s the best part. It’s very intense and suspenseful despite taking place far away from the fighting in Vietnam. While plenty of soldiers adjust decently enough to become the killing machine the army wants, some soldiers can’t take it. Constant screaming from the instructor and ostracization from the other soldiers build the pressure, the boot camp slowly drives them insane. This all leads up to an explosive climax at the end of the first act. In the end, the army gets its desire killing machines. But this is at the cost of the soldiers’ humanity.

The second act of the story isn’t nearly as exciting as the first, although now we do get a taste of some of the action. The fighting isn’t nearly as exciting as say, a movie like Saving Private Ryan, but it’s not really the point, and is more a means to an end of getting Kubrick’s anti-war message across. And I still found the action to be enjoyable anyway, so it’s more of a subjective thing. This part focuses more on the duality of man. Private Joker dons a helmet that has “Born to Kill” written on it, right next to a peace button. He jokes around: “I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.” But when the opportunity arrives, Joker’s conscience holds him back.

But who really cares about the philosophical discussions? I don’t. I wanted to see people get shot. Disregarding all the themes that I don’t really grasp, it’s still a fun movie about Private Joker’s experience in the Vietnam War. Events don’t really lead into one another; in fact, acts one and two could be entirely different stories aside from the few characters appear in both. Things just happen, and Private Joker reflects upon them. This sort of sounds negative, but I like the disjointedness of it all. It makes it feel like a war memoir. And I do think Joker’s commentary on the events are pretty nice. At one point, when Joker sees his first corpse, he remarks in his head, “The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.” I’m not so sure what the profoundness of the statement is, if it even is profound at all, but it’s always stuck with me. And speaking of quotes, the drill sergeant’s lines in the first act are very funny and quotable, which is part of why it’s so good. While Barry Lyndon I would only watch alone while in a serious mood, Full Metal Jacket is something that I’d watch when I don’t feel like trying to analyze Kubrick’s art (although you still certainly could with this movie). It’s one of the few Kubrick movies that I feel could be enjoyed by a general audience and not just film snobs. You may say that just means that Kubrick’s other movies have more artistic merit, and perhaps you’d be right. But I value the entertainment value more than the meaning behind it.  I give this movie a poontang out of five.

 

1. A Clockwork Orange

I loved the book, so it’s only natural I’d love the movie as well. I love this movie enough that I wrote a whole essay about it for school. Here is a shortened and edited version:

“A Clockwork Orange is a film directed by renowned director Stanley Kubrick and is one of, if not the greatest work of cinema ever produced. One of the crowning achievements of the 20th century, it can be considered Kubrick’s magnum opus. The film follows a teenager named Alex, a vile and reprehensible member of society, who, alongside his gang members, takes pleasure in terrorizing the streets and harming the innocent. When Alex is sent to jail following a robbery gone wrong, he signs up for the controversial Ludovico Technique in hopes of being released from prison sooner. The Ludovico Technique aims to make Alex become repulsed by violence, and he is forced to watch horrific acts for hours on end, often accompanied with music from his favorite composer, Beethoven. By the end of it, Alex is physically unable to commit any acts of violence. Now in a defenseless state, Alex is released back into the free world, where the people he has wronged in the past come back for revenge. Kubrick crafts a grotesque, yet mesmerizing experience that is and will remain a work of art to be preserved in cinema history.

One of Kubrick’s remarkable skills is the ability to provoke a million feelings using imagery alone. Through long shots of silence and bizarre set design, Kubrick masterfully keeps the viewer’s eyes glued to the screen, forcing them to absorb the surreal and uncanny world being displayed. Near the start of the film, there is a scene where Alex and his gang break into a couple’s home. The house’s interior is decorated in a strange, modern minimalist aesthetic. The place is decorated with strange, futuristic looking chairs, the hallways are for whatever reason made of mirrors, and the desks and walls adorned with odd light bulbs that feel entirely out of place. The house seems familiar, but so freakish and dreamlike that it simultaneously feels fake and uncomfortable to look at. The uncomfortableness is only multiplied by the unnerving silence present throughout the scene, and the viewer can’t help but start to feel anxious as the camera sweeps from room to room. When Alex and his gang burst in and mercilessly beat the two homeowners, the uncomfortableness reaches its peak and transforms into full on disgust. This is the point; Kubrick intends for this scene to show the viewer the vile and repugnant crimes in a way that makes them feel absolutely sick. Although the actions that take place are awful on its own, it’s the set design that really takes the surreal and sickening feeling to the next level.

On top of this, themes are also an important matter regarding the quality of a movie, as well as how a movie stands the test of time. A Clockwork Orange constructs an impactful message regarding morality and free will. In the story, Alex is forced against his will to become a “good” person, becoming unable to carry out any of the violent acts he imagines in his head. In the process, Alex begins to find the music of Ludwig Beethoven unbearable to hear, since the Ludovico Technique was performed while Beethoven played in the background. Alex’s love of Beethoven was one of his only “human” traits at the start of the film, and he wasn’t much more than a monster otherwise. However, the Ludovico Technique turned Alex into a law-abiding machine, eliminating all traces of his humanity. In the government’s pursuit of a cure for degeneracy, they turned Alex into a robot. And as one of the characters in the film explicitly points out, “When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” After all, is someone really good if they have no other option? Kubrick expresses the idea that goodness can’t be forced—goodness has to be chosen, it must come from within. Forcing goodness causes Alex to be dehumanized; his taste for music is stripped away, he is referred to not by his name but by a prison number, he is treated not much better than a stray dog by the entire world. Perhaps we could turn the world into a crimeless haven of peace through the brainwashing of the people. But it wouldn’t be true goodness, and they wouldn’t be human. They would be gears in a clockwork. 

Although Kubrick has a myriad of masterpieces under his belt such as Full Metal Jacket and The Shining, A Clockwork Orange stands as masterpiece among masterpieces and is arguably Kubrick’s most striking and artful film. The distinctive set pieces, memorable music, and excellent camerawork, work in tandem to make each and every shot a captivating memory. Every line of dialogue is a story, each scene and each second building towards the thought provoking messages Kubrick wants to express. There has never before been a film like A Clockwork Orange, it is likely we’ll never see another film that reaches the same level of artistry displayed here. It’s because of this that we can consider A Clockwork Orange the greatest movie of all time.“

It really is the greatest movie ever made. I think it strikes a good balance of general audience enjoyment, the kind of fun that Full Metal Jacket has, and the artistry of Kubrick’s other movies, like Barry Lyndon. If you don’t enjoy Kubrick’s themes on morality and human choice, then you can enjoy the plot, which is mostly faithful to Burgess’ novel. Dystopian plots such as the one featured in A Clockwork Orange are always very fun. Even though Alex is such a horrible person, I began to feel sorry for him in the latter half of the film, and I was rooting for him to escape the government’s evil system.

It’s a masterpiece. My rating of the movie is twenty milk-pluses out of ninth symphony.

On its release in 1996, Pinkerton was slammed for being an embarrassing mess of singer River Cuomo’s personal baggage masquerading as music. Nowadays, the album is seen a lot more favorably as a hard-hitting album that discusses the darker parts of Cuomo’s thoughts. Even so, remnants of that previous area remained in some places, and I was put under the impression that the album was a dumpster fire, laughably bad collection of garbled noise as several sources claimed. I recall that I tried to listen to Pinkerton a few years back purely in an ironic way, to laugh at it. I heard about a minute of the first song, didn’t like it, and decided it wasn’t worth my time. It wasn’t laughably bad or anything. I just didn’t like it.

Now, after listening to the whole thing, I can say that I still don’t really like the first track, titled Tired of Sex. I don’t like Cuomo’s dead voice (though I suppose that fits the title,) I don’t like his weird metal screeching during the chorus, I don’t like the corny lyrics. It just sounds sort of lame.

However, I have come around to the album as a whole. I sort of respect Cuomo for being entirely honest with himself and saying things in a super blunt way. There’s no point where he tries to soften his words or make himself seem sympathetic and redeemable. He just blurts out the nastiest crap about his weird Japanese fetish and how he likes to imagine girls sploinking it in their rooms, or how he licked and sniffed an envelope sent to him from a female fan. I simultaneously think more and less of him after hearing all of these things.

Apparently, the album is titled after the character Pinkerton from the opera Madama Butterfly, who in the story marries a geisha in Japan only to abandon her and leave for America to find a new wife. I don’t really know what that has to do with this album other than the fact that Cuomo has a kink for Japanese women. And I suppose Cuomo thought this kink was important enough to title the whole album after it, which is sort of odd and creepy. But again, I respect it.

The first half of the album I don’t care for much. Getchoo is a song that I dislike for the same reasons as Tired of Sex. It’s kind of a mess of sound with Cuomo yelling “Getchoo!” over it, which I still don’t know the meaning of.  The chorus is just repeating “Getchoo, uh-huh!” several times. It’s an angry sound, but not a very catchy one. It’s not something I would ever listen to if I’m not relistening to Pinkerton, and it’s not something I would sing along to. Just not very fun.

No Other One and Why Bother? are two I like a little bit more, though I don’t love them. It’s when the tracks start feeling like music. No Other One has these nice electric guitar riffs that give the song a flood of emotion and pairs nicely with Cuomo’s depressed voice (he’s stopped his angry voice now). It’s a song about Cuomo being afraid to break up with a terrible girlfriend because he thinks he can’t find anyone else. The topic is pretty cool and depressing. I give it a 6/10. Why Bother? is about not even wanting to bother pursuing women because he knows it will inevitably end in heartbreak. The chorus is catchy and this song is a lot more upbeat than the previous ones. Not much else to say though. 7/10.

Every song after these I view pretty positively. I don’t feel like going over them all in detail so here’s a quick list on what the song is about and how I feel about it:

Across the Sea – This one’s about a fanletter Cuomo got from a girl in Japan, and how he starts drooling and fantasizing about her. It’s by far the creepiest song in the album, and I’m legitimately shocked that Cuomo had the balls to sing about this crap when the girl was only 18 and Cuomo was 26 at the time. But it’s pretty catchy, and I like the guitar. 8/10.

The Good Life – To be honest I don’t know what this song is supposed to be about. I think it’s about Cuomo hitting the streets again after feeling like an old man. It’s also by far the nerdiest sounding song in the album. The chorus has the lyrics, “Shaking booty and making sweet love all the night.” Cuomo made this album mainly to shake off the nerdy perception the public had of them after their Blue album debut, and by God did he fail. This song is so corny and dorky. But the chorus is pretty damn catchy and like always the guitar is great. Another 8/10.

el Scorcho – Actually, this is the dorkiest song on the album. It opens up with the lyrics, “Goddamn, you half-Japanese girls do it to me every time.” But I think this time the dorkiness is on purpose. It’s about Cuomo begging a girl to go out with him from what I can tell. All the while, Matt Sharp is doing these high pitched yells which is pretty goddamn funny. And by far the funniest thing is the line “I’ll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon,” which is so terrible it’s hilarious. 8/10. Again.

Pink Triangle – By far my favorite song of the album. The verses are catchy, the chorus is catchy, it has a poppy feel to it that reminds me of Blue. The lyrics again are pretty corny, but I guess in real life you can’t always say things so eloquently. My favorite part is when he says, “If everyone’s a little queer, can’t she be a little straight?” It comes off as pathetic and entitled, but in moments of desperation, we’re not always thinking so kindly. Great song. 9/10.

Falling For You – It’s okay. Corny lyrics, but fun chorus, which could be said about most of the songs.  I can’t say I have too many feelings about this one. 7/10.

Butterfly – Probably the second best song on here; a slow, quiet acoustic guitar song matched by soft vocals. Essentially it’s Cuomo’s apology for being terrible and saying terrible stuff and doing terrible things. It’s pretty sad, I think. I like how the verses alternate between getting higher and lower every line. I don’t know anything about music theory so I can’t go in depth as to why I like it. But it’s good. Another 9/10.

All in all I think Pinkerton is a terrible album. Weezer should be ashamed of what they’ve done here, they are a God awful band, and this album gets my first ever 0/10 rating. I’m thoroughly shocked that real living people had the gall to gather this collection of banging pots and pans and release it for retail sale. Thankfully, Weezer would later come to their senses and release the greatest album of all time, Raditude. This is why Weezer is the greatest band of all time.

 

 

 

I read Junji Ito’s Uzumaki recently, a thick 600-page horror manga about a town that is “contaminated with spirals.” The story follows Kirie and her boyfriend Shuichi as they witness the town of Kurouzu-cho spiral into insanity, haunted by the mesmerizing yet ever mysterious shape.

It’s an interesting premise. The main antagonist is not a tangible person, nor a being like a ghost. It’s a shape. We encounter spiral formations everywhere in our day to day lives, not paying it much mind; Ito turns this seemingly innocuous shape into something ominous and much more threatening than your typical horror villain. The spiral antagonist plays surprisingly well into typical horror scenes of gore and violence while simultaneously invoking a dark, psychological element.

The body horror is excellent. It’s disgusting, horrific, and I couldn’t look away. I won’t say exactly what is depicted as I don’t think my words would do it justice and a level of surprise should be kept for the impact of the page turn. But let’s just say that you will see people twist and contort into inhuman forms, be mangled and disfigured, stitched clumsily back together, grow and protrude out of their bodies what shouldn’t be possible, and experience a degree of deformation so grotesque that it could only be conjured in a vicious fever dream, all of this depicted in an appalling amount of detail. At one point I couldn’t even bring myself to turn the page because the images were so revolting that I did not want to touch the paper. Perhaps it sounds impossible but when I laid my finger on the picture, I could feel all the unnatural bumps and sickly skin, which quickly caused me to snap my arm back. I’m sure there are psychotic killers out there jealous they hadn’t dreamt up the torture that Ito has. This is mainly due to Ito’s fantastic art style, which has a level of realism and detail to it not commonly seen in most Japanese art, all while remaining distinctly within the realms of anime, giving it a hauntingly beautiful appearance. Even the pages where not much is happening give off an uneasy feeling, be it the distorted background of Kurouzu-cho or the eerie, mannequin expressions the characters wear that without a single word of dialogue express a sense of brewing madness within.

However, the initial shock wears off around halfway through the book. It’s not that the art quality gets any worse. I just got sort of numb to all of it. That is to say that I just didn’t find the book very scary. Repulsive and disturbing, yes, but not scary. The fear feels very surface level after the hundredth instance of a human doing something a human probably can’t do while still being alive. And because most of the gore involves corpses and not monsters, it wasn’t something I would lie awake at night fearing. And while the designs and illustrations are impressive, the stories amount to little more than ghost stories that you would tell around a campfire. For example, one chapter is about a lighthouse that melts people, another is about hair growing out with a mind of its own, another is about a corpse coming to life when Shuichi and Kirie try to open up the casket. And as you might have noticed, these stories don’t seem to have much to do with spirals. In my opinion, the book doesn’t go all the way with the ominous spiral idea, only the beginning and end heavily involving spirals while the middle part only somewhat adheres to that theme in a way that could allow spirals to be removed with the story intact. Even in the latter half of the story some of the things Ito comes up with to inject the spiral theme is just so ridiculous that it comes across as a comedy, like the gang that uses spiraling whirlwinds to fly around. But I guess horror is more of a personal taste, as I’ve heard of many people being deeply traumatized by the book. Although I’m not sure I believe that those stories aren’t just exaggerations.

There is one chapter though, chapter two, that I think was the most successful at putting me on edge, albeit still not exactly scary. It’s about Shuichi’s mother who has been hospitalized due to an extreme phobia of spirals, which has led her to shave all her hair off to avoid seeing the whorls, and for her to cut off the skin on her fingers to avoid seeing the swirling fingerprints. The page that shows her doing this is really great and disgusting, and more importantly provides a fear of what horrifying thing she might do next in her frenzy to remove all the spirals on her body. This fear intensifies when Shuichi notices a doctor’s anatomical chart that shows a small spiraling cavity deep inside the human ear: the cochlea. If Shuichi’s mother is extreme enough to cut off the tips of her fingers to be rid of the spirals, what will she do if she finds out that there is a spiral inside of her? Well, you don’t even want to think about it, but the idea is implanted in your head. It’s this incredible suspense that hovers over this segment that makes it my favorite chapter in the book.

Despite not being all that scary I still enjoyed reading Uzumaki. If you approach it less as a horror story and more as a bizarre, Alice in Wonderland type of fairy tale then I think it works better. In typical cosmic horror fashion, the threat is mostly unexplained and the ending is very vague. You can try to make sense of the happenings in Kurouzu-cho, to figure out what exactly the spiral wants, or if it’s even an entity that has want at all. Or you can accept the strangeness and find pleasure in the fascinating abhorrence of it all. Either way, it’s a good read.