BOOK: How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety (2016)

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How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun SafetyYear: 2016Author: Zachary AuburnLength: 144 pages I had seen this book cover on the internet a few years ago and found it to be an amusing concept. When I ran across the paperback version of this book at a thrift store, I bought it and gave it a read. Presented by the fictional "American Association of Patriots," How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety is a satire parody of right-wing and evangelical pamphlets that seek to inform readers of the "right" way to do something. In this case, talk to your cat about gun safety. This book is actually a collection of a few different pamphlets that cover a variety of topics, including safety for guns, sex, online, and the apocalypse. To its credit, if you didn't realize this was satire, you'd think this book was being serious. Perhaps this is more an indictment of how crazy some people have become since...
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MOVIE: Eternals (2021)

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Eternals Year: 2021 Rating: PG-13 Length: 156 minutes / 2.60 hours With two competing comic book companies making movies, it's interesting to see how a movie like The Avengers (2012) works, but Justice League (2017) doesn't. You would think that Marvel would have the wisdom to learn from DC's mistakes, but instead, we see many of these same errors cropping up in Eternals (2021). Perhaps this is a side-effect of an extremely intertwined cinematic universe that requires each player in a larger multi-movie arc to receive an "origin story" movie before being brought into a larger cast of characters (much like Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)). Part of what made Justice League fail was how it introduced too many characters at once. In Eternals, there's a group of superheroes whose numbers rival later Avengers casts, but with no time to get to know any of them significantly well in an already long runtime. That the Snyder cut of Justice League spent...
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VIDEO GAME: Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (2014)

by benmweilert1 Comment
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS Year: 2014 Rating: E10+ Time Played: 1,288 minutes / 21.47 hours Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS was the system seller for me. I held out and didn't buy any version of the Nintendo DS or 3DS until this game (and the New Nintendo 3DS XL) came out. I bought the bundle that included this game and couldn't have picked a better one to start my experience on the 3DS. Since the start of this fighting game series, I've enjoyed playing each iteration of Super Smash Bros. and now I could play on the go. This was a fun game to play by myself, but this was also one of its weaknesses. I'm the type of gamer who likes to play through the different individual characters in story mode and unlock all the little trophies and trinkets. Unfortunately, I also like the couch multiplayer that previous iterations of this series thrived on. The concept of online play never appealed...
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MOVIE: King Richard (2021)

by benmweilertNo Comments
King Richard Year: 2021 Rating: PG-13 Length: 144 minutes / 2.40 hours It's a little surprising to see two critically acclaimed movies about talented children released in the same year. While CODA (2021) shows us what it's like to have a family who doesn't initially support a child's talents, King Richard (2021) highlights the amount of effort and sacrifice that dedicated parents give to their children when they recognize their talent early on. Granted, not every talented child with parental backing grows up to be extremely successful, let alone having this happen twice. And yet, Venus and Serena Williams are proof that it can happen. I found it odd how a movie that follows the early success of the Williams sisters focused so much on their father, Richard Williams (Will Smith), who made it happen by sheer determination and will. It makes sense considering how young these two prodigies were, but there's still a little sour taste to it, considering how their success was always...
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BOOK: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

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Thinking, Fast and Slow Year: 2011 Author: Daniel Kahneman Length: 1,202 minutes / 20.03 hours We all make choices. Every day, from the banal to the life-altering, we can break these choices down into two different ways of thinking. It's amazing to me how this psychological subject presented in Thinking, Fast and Slow is so intuitive, but so difficult to control. Daniel Kahneman does a superb job bringing this topic down to the layperson level with plenty of examples and quizzes to show the reader how we can literally change an impulsive decision into a logical one. Thinking, Fast and Slow opened my eyes to the two systems that influence every decision I make. The quick-thinking "System One" runs on emotions, whereas the slower "System Two" takes time to examine a situation thoroughly before deciding. The amazing thing about these systems is that sometimes the intuitive System One is correct—meaning that it can sometimes be easy to overthink a problem. What's even more fascinating is...
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MOVIE: Ron’s Gone Wrong (2021)

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Ron's Gone Wrong Year: 2021 Rating: PG Length: 107 minutes / 1.78 hours Let's face it: social media is a challenge for parents trying to raise kids in an increasingly tech-savvy world. Adults all know the dangers of it because we were the test subjects. Now it's exposing our children to the addicting and potentially dangerous concept of trying to "go viral" by any means possible. While documentaries like The Social Dilemma (2020) reveal how these dark systems work, there aren't many movies directed toward kids that show these dangers in a way they can understand. Ron's Gone Wrong (2021) attempts to fill this gap. The problem with how this movie goes about teaching its lesson is that the premise requires a large amount of suspension of disbelief. In this universe, parents are completely oblivious to the dangers of giving their children AI robots who act as their gateway into social media via pranking videos or TicTok beauty clips that get tons of likes. Sure, there...
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VIDEO GAME: BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! (2019)

by benmweilertNo Comments
BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! Year: 2019 Rating: E Time Played: 511 minutes / 8.52 hours While I was aware of the BoxBoy! series of games on the Nintendo 3DS, I didn't try any of them until BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! released on the Switch. As a puzzle platformer, this game uses the most simple of mechanics in a variety of interesting ways. The cute little box characters were fun to control and none of the puzzles were ultimately impossible. The challenges definitely kept me playing all the way until the end, providing just enough mental stimulation to re-play levels immediately after clearing them. I rarely finish games completely anymore, but BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! had just enough in-game motivation for me to reach 100% in a mere 8.5 hours. It might lean heavier on the "puzzle" side of "puzzle platformer" but this just meant I had to think outside the box (ha ha) if I wanted to solve each level with the minimum number of blocks. I was...
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MOVIE: Belfast (2021)

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Belfast Year: 2021 Rating: PG-13 Length: 98 minutes / 1.63 hours It seems a little odd to me that there are so many films that focus on historic events, but this is the first one I've seen about "The Troubles" in Ireland. I was loosely aware of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in late-1960s Ireland, but Belfast (2021) felt like the first time anyone brought this topic to the big screen. It's clearly a personal story for director Kenneth Branagh, which is likely how it gained its notoriety in the lead-up to awards season. The problem with Belfast, though, lies in some of its inconsistencies. I understand that Schindler's List (1993) can get away with incorporating moments of color in an otherwise black-and-white film. However, when it happened in Belfast, it completely pulled me out of the story. It would have been much better to just keep the monochromatic aesthetic throughout instead of trying to be artistically edgy. I don't consider 1969 as a...
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BOOK: Abaddon’s Gate (2013)

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Abaddon's GateYear: 2013Author: James S. A. CoreyLength: 1,182 minutes / 19.7 hours I'll admit that watching the Expanse television show spoiled this book for me. I already knew what was going to happen, so there weren't too many surprises in this book because the show kept close to the source material. Even with this a priori knowledge going in, I found Abaddon's Gate to be my favorite book of the series so far. The plot felt like it was actually getting somewhere instead of just dancing on the edges of the important series arc that finally solidified in this book. Some of my favorite moments of the series were retained in the written form of this book, including the description of the first "sudden stop" when someone tried entering the alien portal. The human drama was also interesting because it wasn't entirely geopolitical but wove in elements of religious beliefs as well. It helped that the crew members of the Rocinante are...
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