Freaky Friday: The Dead Files

I never really thought of myself as a "medium" person.  I never watched Medium or the Ghost Whisperer or, um, other shows about psychic mediums.  I did, however, watch Crossing Over with John Edward.  Ok, it was the episode of South Park spoofing Crossing Over with John Edward.  It's basically the same thing, right?

Your dad died?  Your grandpa?  Your fifth grade class hamster?

Netflix suggested the show The Dead Files to me and I thought "What the hell?"
The show is formulaic:  the psychic (Amy Allan) "reads" the location while the burly former detective investigates the history of the location and the two compare notes at the end.  They have no contact before this point (so they say) and they sometimes employ sketch artists to show "who" Amy has been interacting with.  No spoilers here but, if you choose to watch, brace yourself for a lot of widened eyes and hand-to-chest gasping during the reveal.
The Dead Files mixes ghost whispering, good old fashioned detective work, and cheesy "dramatic" effects to create the television equivalent of a Kahlua mudslide.  Goes down smooth and, if you're not careful, you can consume half a dozen in one sitting.

I get the feeling someone has definitely lived in this 100 year old house before.

I consider myself to be pretty open to the idea of ghosts and other paranormal phenomena.  With that being said, I'm not entirely convinced the show is not as fake as a Rotex watch,  but I can usually keep the skeptical part of my brain quiet enough to watch an episode or five.

Life is just a fantasy

Can you live this Fantasy Life?

I had played Animal Crossing:  New Leaf for a solid year when I decided it was time for a change.  Luckily, I have a friend (that isn't just a website) in the know and she started sending me trailers for a game called Fantasy Life.

Her:  It's an RPG...  But I think you'll like it.
Me:  RPG?  Like do I have to battle stuff?
Her:  Yes.  But I still think you'll really like it.

I'm more of a lover than a fighter, but I decided to pre-order anyway because I  like to try new things.  And by "new things" I mean games that require nothing more than me sitting on my couch and pushing buttons.  I'm adventurous like that.
So Fantasy Life starts out with you picking a "life" which is your job.  I picked wizard because I like to get my Harry Potter on and, frankly, jobs like angler sound boring as hell.  Each life gets its own mentor that you have to check in with as your skills progress.  My mentor was... a cat.  Holy cliche, Batman!
The main storyline is the same no matter what life you pick:  The land you inhabit, Reveria,  is beginning to fall apart and you are the only one to save it!  Are you intrigued by the oh-so-original plot yet?  Also totally original elements of gameplay:  battling wild critters to level up, meeting people that you can later invite to your party, and finding special items in treasure chests throughout the game.  Groundbreaking!
Your mentor will give you quests that you complete for "bliss" points which allow you to level up but also move forward with the story line.  Bliss also helps you earn things like pets which you can take with you on your adventures.  (This was probably my favorite part of the game.)
Bliss is also earned by doing favors for the people you run into on your travels through Reveria.   At some point it becomes a necessity to visit the guild and change lives to do these favors for people.  And then, when you think you're off the hook, they turn around and ask you for yet another favor.  Talk about a pain in the ass.
I can say that based on time-sinkability (It's a word!) and its cuteness alone, I would definitely recommend Fantasy Life for beginners and seasoned gamers alike.  I found the game to be pretty challenging as it progressed.  If we're being completely honest here, I'm stuck in the last part of the game and I'm not actually sure if I need to change lives to progress or not.  Being the easily distracted and stubborn gamer I am, I have swapped out Fantasy Life for Story of Seasons (review to come) until I break down and get some walkthrough help.

Freaky Friday: The Loved Ones

Tale as old as time...
The setting?  Rural Australia.
Girl asks boy to prom.  Boy rejects girl.  Girl has dad kidnap boy so she can torture him.

She's not using that drill to assemble Ikea furniture, I can assure you.

In the various sub-genres of horror, torture films are my least favorite.  Why?  Because that shit can actually happen.  My chances of being revenge murdered by a resurrected camper are slim to none compared to being the victim of a real live psycho killer.  Qu'est-ce que c'est?   Also torture is usually long and drawn out and I watch way too many Forensic File type shows to know that the use of kitchen utensils and power tools by actual serial killers is not as farfetched as the movies would have you believe.
Jason Voorhees might chase your ass until you get a wicked charley horse, but at least he'll kill you quick.  Mentally unstable lovesick teenage girls?  Oh hell no!  You have to pay in blood for breaking those hearts.
No wonder Mr. Bowie stopped believing in modern love.

A good, solid horror film has to give me a nice unsettling feeling throughout and The Loved Ones definitely did that.  Bonus points for a plot twist that made sense of the seemingly disjointed opening scene and the subplot from the point of view of the victim's friends and family, and the stylish use of paper crowns.  I'd deduct points for animal cruelty (which, luckily, doesn't happen on-screen), the incest-y vibes between ol' crazy eyes and her dad, and the somewhat predictable ending. 

Damn Fine Vidya Games: Conker's Bad Fur Day

**Damn Fine Vidya Games is written by my other half, Mr. Coffee, about his love for retro video games.**

Hello nerd boys and girls,

This week I’m reviewing Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

Some history:  Conker made his debut in the 2001 N64 game: Conker’s Bad Fur Day.  I first experienced Conker that same year for approximately ten minutes.  I was at a friend’s house when he stuck a copy of his dad’s game into the console.  After a couple of long cut scenes and a little gameplay, his dad came in, saw what we were playing,  and took the game away. The few minutes of play left some indelible images (Berri the bunny doing some suggestive aerobics.  The tiny Grim Reaper.) on my teenaged brain.   Conker was originally developed as a kids game called Conker’s Quest.  Due to criticism of the game's "cutesy" theme, the team at Rare decided to take the game in a more mature sex, drugs, and booze direction.  I got to play the full game a few years later on an emulator and loved every second. 

The game centers itself around Conker, a drunken squirrel who just wants to get home to Berri (his hot bunny girlfriend) after a long night of drinking.  Too bad for Conker that the ruler of the land, King Panther, has decided he wants a red squirrel to replace one of the legs on his table.  Hilarity ensues as Conker evades King Panther’s minions, faces a pile of opera-singing poop, and tries to find his way to Berri.  Conker's journey is a miraculous piece of video gaming history that deserves to be replayed over and over.

This is not an easy game, and I don’t recommend it for beginners.  The control scheme mirrors Mario 64.  If you've practiced with the N64’s control stick in open world games, it should be fairly easy.  I invited a friend over to play and he spent a lot of time getting used to the controls and complained that they were too blocky compared to current consoles.  Rare planned a sequel to Bad Fur Day called Conker’s Other Bad Day, but, due to the commercial failure of the original game, it never happened.  Microsoft did pump out a quick remake called Conker: Live and Reloaded, but it didn’t play well because it failed to recreate the amount of exact detail Rare originally spent creating the original N64 game.

My old friend Conker was recently in the news because Microsoft decided to announce the cocktease that was a Conker reboot.  Unfortunately for those that love our little drunken squirrel friend, the company Microsoft approached with the idea turned it down.  Will Conker ever get to put his squirrel nuts in Berri’s carrot hole?  We may never know.  (Hopefully we’ll still get to see the Perfect Dark and Banjo reboot games we’ve been promised.)  In the meantime go find a way to play Conker’s Bad Fur Day!

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer

According to my good friend Wikipedia, lots of booksellers refused to stock The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer  due to its graphic content.  I've read dirtier things, but Laura's frank use of drugs and the detached way she describes her sexual encounters is definitely unsettling.  It's easier to stomach if you can forget the fact that this is NOT the diary of a teenaged girl.

Well, I was in my 20s when Twin Peaks was filmed.

Diary begins on the day of Laura's twelfth birthday.  Spoiler:  The diary is a birthday gift.  Laura describes her life as idyllic, only vaguely hinting at the malevolence that lies beneath the surface of her picture-perfect life. At first it's hard to feel pity for her.  I mean, damn, she gets a pony for her birthday.  A freaking pony!  Want to know what I got when I turned 12?  I can't remember because it wasn't a damn pony.
**If you've never seen Twin Peaks from beginning to end, stop reading NOW!**
It doesn't take long to get to the juicy bits of the diary when we are made privy to little Laura's *ahem* solo bedtime activities.  Laura also begins to admit that she has been visited by the mysterious killer BOB for several years and she is never sure whether he is real or simply a horrifying recurring nightmare.
Diary drags you through the muck and mire of Laura's double life.  Straight-A homecoming queen by day, cocaine-fueled sex toy by night.  The diary becomes harder to comprehend as cocaine and BOB's madness begin to saturate its pages.  Laura's frantic desperation is almost palpable as the book winds down to its ultimate conclusion... Laura's death.
If you're anything like me and need to read or watch anything Twin Peaks-related you can get your hands on, you should definitely find yourself a copy of The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.  The book is a sort of sequel to Twin Peaks and the later events coincide with those from the movie Fire Walk With Me. (It even notes where pages are missing, keeping in line with FWWM.) 

Here is a list of other Twin Peaks reading material to satisfy your curiosity.

Freaky Friday: Darknet

Starting this Friday I'd like to share some of the creepy or macabre stuff I like to watch or read, so I'd like to proudly present:  Freaky Friday.  And maybe your dark side can relate to my dark side. 

Darknet just showed up on my Netflix recs one day.   Not too surprising.  Netflix often recommends horror to me.  (Well, horror and something called Scrotal Recall.  What does Netflix know that I don't?) The description was a little offputting:  A macabre web site called Darknet links the tales in this chilling anthology series whose protagonists face a range of unnameable horrors.

Look, hon.  The interwebs has another one of them there killer websites.

 A macabre website?  *snore*  Unnameable horrors?  *bitch, please*
Then I noticed it was a show (the first/only?? season consists of six 25 minute episodes) and my curiosity was peaked.  Plus I was all out of Supernatural episodes so I thought "What the hell?"
Darknet is actually a Canadian adaptation of a Japanese series called Tori Hada.  If you've ever seen even a tame Japanese horror film (Japanese horror films scare the shiz out of me, on the real!), you'll be able to pick out the influences in the overtones of isolation and barely restrained psychosis happening throughout each episode.  Because it was made for TV, the gore factor is kept at a minimum and most of the violence is implied. 
Each episode is made up of several mini plot lines which intersect at the conclusion.  Some characters make appearances in later episodes, some aren't fortunate enough to make it past their debuts.  I guess that's the price you pay in the world of macabre TV.   
So what is this Darknet?  It's a fictional website for watching snuff films or having all your corpse disposal questions answered by like-minded creepers.  It can also help you with your home invasion problems, your cheating lover, or help you choose an acceptable iPod volume for wandering around town during a psychotic ax murdering spree.  You know...  Basic life shit.
The Darknet website itself plays various roles throughout the series.  Sometimes its role is more dynamic (Creepy anonymous message boards anyone?) and sometimes it seems as if it was tacked on as an afterthought.  Like when you find chocolate syrup in the cabinet and you vaguely remember buying it for ice cream but that was months ago and now you don't have any ice cream so you just stand in the kitchen and eat it with a spoon?
Ok.  Not like that.  Whatever.  Writing analogies is hard.
Well, writing analogies and trying not to binge watch all six episodes in one night.

Pop Cutie

I was hesitant to write gaming posts, but I do play games so I guess I could be considered a gamer.  A casual gamer?  A recreational use gamer?
Growing up with three brothers, I was constantly exposed to video games but I only got to play them when someone wanted to test out a new fatality code for Mortal Kombat.  When I finally did get a little gaming time in I would inevitably try to make Mario jump by yanking up on the controller and end up in a pit of lava.  One of the my brothers would sigh.  The other would laugh.  The other would take the controller and "teach me" how to play, which meant he was going to play for 3 hours straight and why didn't I go play with my Barbies or something?
Moving forward to a very boring trip to Pennsylvania where it rained the entire time and, perhaps sensing the impending outbreak of my cabin fever, one of the teenagers took pity on my and offered the use of a Nintendo DS and the game Animal Crossing.  And it was good.
You mean I'm not limited to the doing the same levels over and over again?  A spandex-clad ninja isn't going to rip my spine out through my throat?  I can befriend talking animals?  What sorcery is this?
As soon as I got home, I went out and procured my own DS and a copy of Animal Crossing and proceeded to sink hours of my life into the game.  And when life in my town got repetitive, I began to seek out similar games:  the cuter, the better.
Which lead me to Pop Cutie!  Street Fashion Simulation.  The game had a tiny blurb in a Game Informer (It's not Call of Duty.  I'm lucky GI gave it the time of day.)  and I immediately knew I had to have it.

Domestic help chic! Source

The gameplay is fairly simple:  You are given a stall at a sort of upscale flea market to run.  You are in charge of designing the clothes you need to sell, stocking the clothes, assisting customers, and hiring employees.  Your work day is spent walking along the street outside the market and talking to people who tell you what the latest trends are.  You want to stock up on trendy things so you can make those dolla dolla bills, y'all.

Pink kitties are a timeless classic.  Source

The fashion design aspect was somewhat laughable.  Clothing styles were presented based on chosen keywords and then you could choose the colors.  If you were worthy enough, you got called into a "Fashion Battle" where you dressed a model, based on a trend or theme and had to compete against some rather colorful characters, your rivals.  Battle wins and your shop sales helped you advance in the game and actually graduate from selling knockoff Louis Vuittons at the flea market to owning your own boutique.  Tres chic! 
True to my gaming roots, I never won the fashion battles.  I was too busy toiling away in my shop to care.  I was a designer for the people, dammit.  Ain't nobody got time for haute couture. 
Pop Cutie was definitely a time sink and, because it was originally released in Japan, it definitely did not disappoint in the cute department.  Your mailman is a robot, you are often helped by an alien frog (because alien frogs know everything about fashion), and a mentor dressed in kigurumi.  It's the perfect mix of playability, kawaii, and quirkiness.

Help for the Self

Last summer I got sucked into a vortex of self help books that spit me out sometime around October.  They mostly centered around positivity and affirmations and the oh so "secret"  law of attraction.  I read so many, in fact, I'm completely confident I could write my own.  Then I thought "You're much too lazy to write an entire book".  Then I thought maybe I could inspire others to write their own self help books.

I'll CliffsNotes my expert advice for you now:

First things first, are you a life coach?  I won't say it's a necessity but how can you expect to be taken seriously if you can't share anecdotes about your life coaching clients?  Life coach=life expert as far as I'm concerned.  If you have a couple hours and $100 bucks to spare, you could get our life coaching certification online right now.

If you don't have the word "positivity" in your book at least 2000 times, you're probably doing it wrong.

Other expressions you should overuse:
Being present
Limiting beliefs
Intention
Consciousness
Visualization
Grounding
Intentional grounding  (Oh, wait.  That's football.)

Leave lots of blank pages after asking open-ended questions.  You shouldn't have to do all the writing work, amirite?

Be vague.  Write about a point in your life when you felt down, low, and miserable but never share the details.  You wouldn't want to connect to your readers on a human level would you?  You should leave them wanting more so they subscribe to your blog, your Instagram, your Facebook, and follow you on Twitter.  (PS-  You should have all those accounts anyway.   How else are people going to find out about your life coaching services?)

You could actually use the opposite approach and be very specific about a sad time in your life but make sure it makes you appear over-privileged or completely out of touch with reality.  That time the Corvette dealership was out of black cars and you were completely devastated for that month it took to have one special ordered?  You should totally share that.  People going through a divorce or the death of a loved one that have picked up your book for comfort are sure to relate to your struggles.

Have you thought about a cover for your book?  How about a flower?  Or your face?  Or your face superimposed on a flower?  Or you on a beach.  Dangle a crystal between your eyes.  Hold a yoga pose.  While balancing on a dolphin.  A dolphin that is riding on a rainbow wave of cosmic energy.  I mean synergy.

Batman:  Self help guru  **source**

And, finally, talk about yoga. If everyone did yoga they wouldn't need self help books.  Because yoga.

Sailor Moon Crystal

Lately it seems that Hollywood has been wiling about in the season of the reboot.  Reboot is just a fancy name for remake and a nicer way of saying "we've run out of ideas".  I was, however, pretty stoked to learn that they were rebooting Sailor Moon.
My first exposure to Sailor Moon was the horribly dubbed version that would play on the USA Network after thousands of Moonies petitioned to have the cancelled series re-run.

I was cancelled???

Despite the horrible voice acting (Looking at you Molly's Jersey accent) the show quickly became one of my favorites and ushered me into the world of anime.
So, how do I feel about Sailor Moon Crystal?  Had I never watched Sailor Moon, I'd probably have thought it was the best thing ever but my stuck-in-1997 brain couldn't stop making comparisons between the two.  Although Crystal is a very faithful adaptation of the manga, the overall tone seems to be darker, almost sad.  And Crystal's Usagi is no longer the overdramatic crybaby I've come to know and love.  I do miss Usagi's constant emotional breakdowns and the exasperation of the other Scouts.  There was a dynamic there that Crystal definitely missed.

Is Usagi crying yet?  No.  We're filming Crystal, remember?

The other thing that sticks out in Crystal is the thinly veiled sexual tension between Usagi and Mamoru.  In the original anime, the relationship between Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask is much the same as her relationship with the other Scouts:  one of exasperation.  Tuxedo Mask dutifully saves her, Sailor Swoon gets goosebumps, then goes to bed at night wondering "Who was that masked man?"  During the day, Usagi has to deal with the merciless teasing of the gorgeous, yet douchey, Mamoru. 

The tension between Usagi and Mamoru, whether costumed or not, is almost palpable.  Usagi's crush is pretty obvious, from the beginning, and their interactions during battles are downright steamy.  The romantic undercurrent paired with the dark overtones makes for a pretty grownup version of Sailor Moon.
The good parts?
The animation is beautiful.  Yes, even those CGI transformations.
And I like the little details they put in to update the show and drag it out of the early 90s.
I just wasn't emotionally prepared for Sailor Noir.

Where to watch Sailor Moon Crystal:
Hulu
Crunchyroll (My personal preference.)
Watch Sailor Moon.com

Entering the Town of Twin Peaks

I've never seen so many trees in my life.
If you've never seen Twin Peaks, you probably think the name of this blog is completely ridiculous because it has nothing to do with coffee.  (Besides the fact that my body runs on it which, in turn, runs this blog.  But I digress.)

Because you can't say "fucking delicious" on TV.

I won't give you the entire plot rundown because other sites out there have done it better than I ever could.  Considering I was only 10 when it first aired, I only got to watch in snippets with one ear turned to the door so I could quickly change the channel if my parents happened to walk in.  The world of Twin Peaks all seemed so strange and exciting and... confusing as hell.  It is not a show to be watched in bits and pieces or to think you can catch up in the newest episode if you've skipped one or two.  It also is definitely not a show to be watched at the ripe old age of 10.
In fact, it wasn't until my late 20s that I decided that I had to watch it again.  I forced my husband to watch it without the slightest hope that he would actually enjoy it, but every night when I'd ask what we should watch, the answer was "Twin Peaks".  Twin Peaks, as is the case with most of David Lynch's work, combines the right amount of beauty, quirkiness,  and what-the-fuckery to keep you riveted.
Lately Showtime has Twin Peaks fans all hyped up about its big twenty-five year anniversary comeback.  Twin Peaks 2016 is supposed to tie up the loose ends  that had left viewers perplexed and dissatisfied after the show's untimely demise in 1991.  Unfortunately, due to failed financial negotiations (Shocking, righ?), David Lynch vacated his director's seat.  Rumors abound that co-director Mark Frost will step up to direct and that actors have threatened to pull out if David Lynch isn't going to direct and that the show might not even happen at all.
In the meantime, if you've never seen Twin Peaks, do yourself a favor and watch it.
For those longtime fans, here are some links to hopefully tide you over until Twin Peaks 2016 is a reality:
Retro gaming fans will appreciate this 8-bit map of Twin Peaks

This article about the eerie connections between Twin Peaks and Alice in Wonderland

These gorgeous Twin Peaks' character portraits


 

First Post Jitters

Even though I've written blog posts before, I still had some misgivings when I sat down to write this post.  Should I write an introduction post? Should I just write like this isn't my blog's first post ever?  Should I just open up Tumblr and look at Supernatural gifs for an hour?
Obviously, I decided to go with the introduction post.  After that hour of fangirling, of course.  If there's one thing I'm good at, it's procrastination.
Truth be told, I've had this blog sitting here ready to be written on for months now.  I had the design, the header, the widgets linking to a blank Twitter account but I didn't have anything to write about.  I would look at that little cursor blinking away and think "Holy hell my life is soooo boring.  No one wants to read this junk!"  To an extent my life is a bit boring.  I live in a small town with limited entertainment and social opportunities.  I don't DIY or create recipes or run a photography business.
Dammit!  Why can't my life be as cool as everyone makes theirs out to be on their blogs?

When you right, you right, Teddy.  

So maybe my days aren't exactly Instagram worthy.   I watch a lot of Netflix, I haunt the book aisle at Goodwill, I'm always on the hunt for The Zombies on vinyl...
"Watched 40 episodes of Friends today and may have forgotten to shower" probably isn't the most riveting of blog content.
Then I had an "ah ha" moment.

Lightning has just struck my brain.

 It hit me when someone asked for documentary recommendations on Facebook and I gave him a list of ten, and that little voice in my brain that gets excited about things began yelling at me:
"Holy crap!  Maybe other people want your recommendations?!?!?!"
"Instead of boring people on your Facebook feed, you can broadcast your opinions upon the unsuspecting masses via that poor neglected blog you started!" 
"Hey!  You can talk about video games, too!  You play those."
"And, hey, you can tell everyone about all that Charmed you watch!"
**On second thought, maybe keep all the Charmed watching to yourself.**
"And books, yo!  You read a lot of those!"

So if you need a brutally honest book review or find yourself unsure of which show to binge watch next weekend, you've come to the right place.