Star Wars: The Force Awakens Review

Posted on January 28, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

There’s spoilers in this, so if you haven’t seen the film and don’t want it spoiled, don’t read.

I enjoyed the film.

However, I found it to be average at best.

This might have something to do with my desire to not spend extended periods of my time being nostalgic for the past, which is how the film mostly felt.

Han Solo dies.

The whole planet being a base with a super weapon built directly into it is stupid.

I know that one is required to stretch the imagination every now and then, but I can’t stress the stupidity of its existence.
It uses the power of the sun by literally harvesting it and has its core exposed, yet somehow nothing on the planet itself is getting screwed up by this.

COME ON!

I think that The Force Awakens could have been improved with (at most) an additional forty-five minutes. As it stood, it felt rushed and patchy in parts.

The dialogue is serviceable for the most part and the actors do a decent job.
The soundtrack is appropriate.

I need to interrupt for a moment and state that I wrote most of this in December 2015. I can’t remember why I stopped, but since seeing Rogue One I felt that it was appropriate to finish the review as, whilst I didn’t find it to be anywhere near as good as people made it out to be, The Force Awakens is a better film.

It’s much more together than Rogue One. The characters are better developed and less forced (albeit only by a small amount), the plot flows much better and whilst there are some incredibly stupid moments, there are less stupid decisions made.

Despite feeling rushed, The Force Awakens has a smoother flow than Rogue One.
Whilst there are a few head-scratching moments, it ebbs and flows quite well in comparison.

It’s also significantly more memorable. I walked out of Rogue One wondering if I had somehow missed any scenes. At this point I’m finding myself having to think to remember most of what happened. I haven’t seen The Force Awakens since December 2015, but I can still remember most of it with little difficulty.

It does lean a little too much on playing it safe instead of being more of its own thing. However, despite finding it to be average at best, I also found it to be a fun space adventure film that worked as a set-up for two more films that hopefully branch out and take more risks with the franchise.

However, I hope that Disney cancels their ongoing plans and ends the films with this last trilogy.

The Force Awakens is worth seeing as a bit of entertainment, but don’t go in expecting more and don’t bow down to any pandering. Too many people have.

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Rock Forest

Posted on January 28, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

I was in the Chinese Garden of Friendship at one point on Wednesday.

As it was my first time I took a few photos.

Here’s one of them.

I like that few of the buildings surrounding the garden are visible as it makes the scene feel further away from the city than it happens to be.

I also like how the shade of the trees makes the area cooler than other places in the garden.

I also like how the rocks have been “Repurposed” to form the shapes seen in the photo.
They look like sculptures with wonderfully abstract shapes.

To me, they add more to this particular area, making the atmosphere slightly more mysterious and relaxed.

This is my submission for The Daily Post‘s photo challenge for this week.

I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 173: Yelling at Doors

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

It’s a long night, in that it’s not actually a long night, but saying so makes things seem much more interesting than they really are, so I’m choosing to start this post by writing “It’s a long night”.

It’s a long night that stretched out beyond the road that needed to be walked before a bed could be reached in which I could rest my weary head as it needed a pillow underneath for support and but due to the decisions I had made, it was a distance greater than I could possibly walk in any reasonable amount of time.

Yes, that works.

In actuality, I am at work, near the end of my shift and it is a little quieter than I would hope for it to be right now. I do know that I need to leave when my shift finishes so I can go and review a gig before getting home to rest my little head as embrace a slumber so great that it would make bears in winter look like they don’t have much of an idea as to what they’re doing.

Such is the way of things and they are the things that are currently happening in some order that I cannot possibly comprehend, so all I can really do is go and hide behind a rock for a while and hope that things begin to make sense.

I can also hope that my spelling and grammar improves as for some reason it has taken a slight dip in recent times. Perhaps it’s because I’m not paying enough attention to my typing when I type which is kind of a silly thing to do.

Anyway, back to whatever this post is leading to:

When I head behind this rock and wait for things to make sense, I hope to bury my head so far beneath the sand that no one will be able to see anything of my body other than my feet sticking out. That way I don’t have to listen to anyone or anything whilst I pointlessly yell at a door to a place with no people inside.

I’d be yelling about things that don’t matter as that’s something that needs to be done more often, I think.

If we spent more time yelling at irrelevant things and less time working on the betterment of the world and its environment, then things would almost certainly function far better than they currently do.

A lot of people have been trying this tactic recently, but there aren’t enough trying and that’s the real problem. More people doing this leads to better results so there need to be more campaigns that focus on this yelling of at the doors.

As added benefits of making things better by default, it would also make people look younger and more powerful and almost certainly sensible. So sensible it would command great respect and you’d suddenly become a person of status.

That’s all I have. I’ve run out of steam.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:40:12

A better time.

That is all.

Written at work.

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Sandstone Blocks

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

I had the day off work on Wednesday, so I did a bit of walking around.

I ended up in Barangaroo for a while. Whilst I was there I took a few… actually, I didn’t take many photos.

This is one of the photos that I took.

I like the geometry of the layout, as well as the earthy colours.
I also like how the trees and lights have been lined.

For the first photo, I aimed more for trying to show the contrast between tone and detail.
I think it’s a bit subtle which I don’t mind.

I included the second copy as it’s a more realistic processing result.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

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On Triple J

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

I was going to write the following earlier today, but I think I found myself second-guessing myself on if I thought it would be worth writing.

I guess that that’s irrelevant.

Yesterday whilst Je and I were at the pub having dinner (our local does specials on pizzas on Thursdays), Triple J were close to finishing the Hottest 100,  countdown of the most popular songs played on Triple J based on listener voting.

At number six was a cover of “Believe” by Cher. It was a soulless, vapid acoustic-driven cover that had so much misplaced reverb throughout that it, combined with the overwrought singing failed as an intimate or meaningful cover.

I recognised what the song was within two seconds of it beginning.

I need to state that I am not a fan of Triple J. Whilst I have enjoyed a few songs that they’ve played, I’ve never been able to be as fanatically drawn to them as many people I’ve known (and not known) seem to have been and be. It seems that it is almost impossible to lobby any sort of criticism toward the radio station until people get older than the demographic that they are targeting, because they suddenly somehow suck because the music has gotten bad.

The first thing to remember is that Triple J have always been bad because of the demographic that they target.

Sure, they’re good until you outgrow them, but there has always been a demographic that hasn’t liked them so they’re bad.

Personally, I think that Triple J have almost always been inadequate in some form. I don’t think they’ve ever been as good as people have suggested. I do think that sometimes they are a good springboard for finding some forms of music you wouldn’t normally listen to and I do like that they support youth culture, but ultimately I don’t think they play music as varied or good as people suggest.

The second thing to remember is that whilst they are government funded, Triple J is ultimately a business that is trying to appeal to a demographic and that demographic is happy to support Triple J as a business. They’ve always included homogenised crap as that’s what draws in more listeners of any given period of time.

When Double J was launched (or relaunched) I was mildly interested for a brief period before I didn’t care. Ultimately it appeals to a demographic that remembers the “good old days” when Triple J was still good, so in actuality it’s a secondary radio station that appeals to people who have difficulty getting past nostalgia but still criticise stations such as Triple M and 2Day F.M. because they play a lot of stuff considered classics or a lot of samey popular songs, so they listen to something that validates some of their taste in music from a period in which they were growing up and developing instead.

I don’t want to listen to radio to try and validate my taste in music and pretend that that’s not what I’m looking for.

Quite frankly, I don’t mind if there’s radio stations that play music from my past, but I’m not going to pretend that that’s something I care about as I can easily listen to music from my past as I most likely have it in some format.

I’m aware that I could discover music that I was not aware of before, but I’m also willing to acknowledge that the chances of that occurring are quite low.

As said before, I’m not a fan of Triple J.
I don’t like it, but I do understand that there are a lot of people out there that have a fond connection with the radio station.
Admittedly, it does a fair number of things well (far more than I can be bothered to talk about at the moment), but overall I don’t think that it’s good.

With that being said, people need to remember that as a business, Triple J has no obligation to appeal to their tastes if they’re willing to let some of that they listen to stagnate.

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View from a Train at Central

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

Here’s a shot that I took in December.
I can’t remember as to what I was trying to capture, but I do like how there’s a bit of detail and patterns to be seen in the shot.

I like how processing this as a monochrome shot gives it a kind of quiet atmosphere.

This is my photo for Leanne Cole‘s Monochrome Madness for this week.

If you enjoy photography, you should check it out (as well as Leanne’s other work) and consider participating.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 172: Unusual Summer

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

There was something that I was going to write about this morning. However, I’m unsure of what to write about, so once again I’ll be making it all up as I go along in the hopes that something of worth will appear before your eyes.

This heatwave stuff is really starting to grate on me. I know that I live in Australia and I know that it’s summer, but the way that the temperature is fluctuation is starting to concern me a bit more than I had in previous times.

Sometimes summer is a bit erratic, but I don’t quite remember it ever being this erratic when it came to temperature changes. It’s quite possible that it has happened before, but I can’t recall a time when the temperature dropped by about sixteen degrees over a few hours during a summer in Sydney.

I could try and write it off as an unusual summer, but something tells me that that might not be the case.

Then again, I’m not a climate scientist so I can’t say that with any sense of authority.

Oh well.

Now, for other things!

Actually, I don’t really have anything else to say other than the weather is bothering me and it’s not just because I’m feeling like being some sort of crotchety, grumpy adult and want to whinge about what is going on without quite knowing what’s going on. I do know that I want to understand what is happening but it’s not something I am going to be able to completely understand right now.

Oh well.

There is a positive in that I can go out and take photos without sweating profusely whilst feeling tired and worn down whilst trying to move quickly through areas to get to somewhere that I want to get before I start getting snap happy.
It also makes the weight of what I’m carrying feel far less weighty, which is a significant bonus for me as right now my bad arm is quite sore and I’d rather not have to deal with making it feel worse for no real reason, despite my being able to have the camera bag rest on the other shoulder, therefore alleviating the problem by removing it completely, thus not having any real problem to deal with, but that’s beside the point because right now I know that the slightly cooler weather is going to work to my benefit so long as I remember to take advantage of the situation whilst I can.

However, whilst that is beneficial to me, I don’t imagine that it’s beneficial to many others and it certainly isn’t a boon to have during summer as the temperature is moving around far more than it probably should, leaving people probably feeling somewhat uncomfortable because the consistency is less than it what had previously been witnessed.

I could be remembering summer quite incorrectly. I have to admit that.

It could be worse, but I’d rather not see if it ends up worse.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 10:27:82

I’d been doing so well for some period of time.

Oh well.

Written at home.

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The Rocks

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

Here is a shot of one of the streets in The Rocks.

I like how well the detail of the buildings turned out, as well as how it feels like the area is more quiet than it usually is.

I also like how the buildings look different from each other, and how the sky seems to have a bunch of clouds coming from a single point.

I hope you enjoy.

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Statues of Religious People Outside of St. Mary’s Cathedral

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

These are statues outside of the entrance into the cathedral.

I took these pictures with the intention of having a lot of empty space.
I thought it made the statues more interesting.

I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 171: A story about being in a void

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Stupidity Hole

It had been a long, hard, almost unbearably hot day that day when everything seemed to change ever so slightly for no real reason other than some sort of contrived plot demanding it.

Our protagonist was walking along, minding their own business when it all began to begin happening.

They noticed that the footpath was a little firmer and sturdier than usual, although this was something that they chalked up to recent reconstruction work to make the path as described.

They noticed that there were clouds were there were meant to be sky and trees had turned to face a different direction than usual.

Then everything collapsed upon itself and the person who just so happens to be the protagonist of this story was left there wondering what had just happened.

They felt like they were still able to walk, yet there was no path ahead of them and they seemed to have ended up in some sort of bizarre, featureless void that left only them.

They were able to see almost beyond the horizon that seemed to stretch out in front of them and yet there was nothing to see as there was nothing to suggest that there was indeed a horizon in front of their viewing direction.

Trying to feel their way through the featureless void in the hopes that they would find something, the protagonist spent an inordinate amount of time trying and trying with no success to be grasped. At this point in time, success is what they desperately craved as it would mean that they would be able to make some sort of sense of what was happening to them. It continued to elude their attempt and they continued to try without realising that there was no chance of there being any success, as it is a fickle beast with a mind of its own and only comes to those when it feels like doing so.

Eventually the protagonist gave up for they had no choice. They did not want to, but they had no idea for how long they would need to rely on what little energy they had left, so rather than expend what remained, they decided that the best course of action would be to try and find a way to relax to give them more time to wait and see.

Somehow they managed to last for a very long time before going back to searching. However, by this time time had no real meaning anymore, leaving no way to tell how much time had actually passed.

Whilst the second attempt at searching was being conducted, everything began to unfold from itself, allowing the world and its surrounding to appear back in view. Feeling somewhat relieved, the protagonist remembered that they needed to get to the post office before closing. Settling on a fast pace, they hurriedly made their way to where they needed to be in order to accomplish what they had set out to do.

Luckily, it was not far.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:10:75
Not bad for the amount of stopping and starting that I had done with this one.

Written at home.

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