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the safest safe
is a safe
inside a safe
safeception

you’re a criminal, criming
you break into a safe
and staring right back at you
is another, smaller safe

how demoralizing
put a note on it, like “surprise, dipshit”

2024mar18.

Trash Theory: The Critical Kicking of Slowdive (“When The Sun Hits”) / New British Canon.

The industry was brutal back then (still is, always is). I listened to shoegaze but not devotedly ... Slowdive was barely on my radar. I didn’t pay any attention to the UK music press for the most part. “Uhhhh this album SUCKS [20 years later] 95 out of 100” Christ what a bunch of wankers.

2024mar17.

Rick Beato: George Benson ‒ The Greatest Guitarist/Singer of All Time. I’m only ten minutes in, Benson has a great memory of his beginnings learning to play at the age of seven.

2024mar16.

Paolo from Tokyo: Day in the Life of a Japanese All-Night Izakaya Restaurant Worker.

2024mar15.

Piet Schreuders: The Paris locations of Le Ballon Rouge.

2024mar11.

Animal cracker sheep with “666” curlicues. It was as delicious as all the other non-satan animal crackers.

am i going to hell oh jeez

2024mar11.

HELICOPTER FLYING APPARATUS Charles H. Zimmerman, Nichols, Conn. Application August 10, 1943, Serial No. 498,075

2024mar10.

Rough on Rats advertisement, Chemist and Druggist June 15 1882. Dwelling House Size, 25c. POISON! The thing desired found at last! SOMETHING RATS WILL EAT. Rats are smart but Rough on Rats beats them. Clears out a building in one application. SURE DEATH to RATS, MICE, FLIES, Vermin, Ants, Insects, Roaches, Water Bugs, Bed Bugs, &c. Made only by EPHRAIM S. WELLS, Chemist, JERSEY CITY, N.J. For sale by Druggists and Storekeepers in 15 & 25c. boxes. LABEL REGISTERED. [etc] See also The Human Harms and Many Meanings of “Rough on Rats” and Rough on Rats (and biles, and piles, and corns ...)

2024mar09.

Unintentional graphical madness created by overscanning, St. Louis Dispatch November 21, 1924.

2024mar08.

“Bullet time” sequence from The Matrix (1999).

2024mar02.

The Billboard, October 28 1922. “HIBRU” World’s Champion Rough Rider and ACrobatic Cowboy. DEFIES ALL THE LAWS OF GRAVITATION! / THE SENSATION OF THE AGE! / A spirited horse and a hard-bioled rider. Cowboy makes enormous LEAP THRU SPACE to back of rearing, charging Bronco! AND HE NEVER MISSES! [...] A RIOT! A KNOCKOUT! Will be the fastest selling novelty for DEMONSTRATORS, WINDOW WORKERS and STREETMEN that was ever created! [...] PRICE, $4.80 PER DOZEN

2024feb25.

The Vault (2010). Episode 0 of 17.

2024feb23.

Programmes for theatrical performances at the Grand Opera House and the London Opera House, London, Ont., 1897-1902 (week of April 14th, 1901): THE GREAT RAYMOND COMPANY / Now touring the world under direction of MAURICE F. RAYMOND. / Two-page pamphlet featuring a few paragraphs of a “Special Explanation to the Public” RE Mr. Raymond’s entertainment, “[...] presented to the public as an example of and practical duplication (but without any claim to spiritual, occult or supernatural agencies of any sort) of the deceptions of the World’s greatest mystery workers, the fabrications and inventions of seers and soothsayers of the past ages; and the delusions and trickery often practiced by modern Media [...] the people who do not care for the entertainment as a totality, but come thinking to have the future foretold, or the past revealed, or to see an exhibition of super-human knowledge, are requested-not to attend.”

2024feb22.

People from all around the archipelago ask me what my favorite brand of canned spaghetti is and I have to say there’s no contest. It is TOPMOST brand.

2024feb21.

[cardhouse] It is time to talk about these two posters.

2024feb13.

Cinemadelicatessen: Alreadymade [NL Trailer]. See also A Dutch Artist Is Delving Into the Murky Attribution of Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ per Greg.org.

2024feb12.

CAN’T GET AWAY FROM IT ‒ EVERYBODY WANTS A PHONOGRAPH / Advertisement for highly-desired phonographs, Standard Talking Machine Co. Chicago (1906) Trade Magazine

is he suckin’ her hair
what is going on
Shreds HARD

RE: The free phonographs for your entire fuggin’ city. People could get “free” phonographs if they bought enough “not free” records, see explanation here. They also made the spindle larger to “lock in” sales. Whatever, capitalism [SFX: drill noise].

2024feb09.

Far Cry 5 is a problem (I’ve lengthened/updated this ridiculous review; some of this is repetitive just like the game because I’m too lazy to edit it down (as opposed to being intentionally annoying), got a lot on my plate after bugout #4 bone appetite). It’s another Ubisoft open world game with some sort of malevolent society/organization mucking about and you alone must stop thems. This time, a family cult of four members: father, two sons, one fake daughter who is running her own sub-fiefdom/killing people just like the boys, apparently against her will. Their old-timey religious core is “scary thing coming, get in our tiny sadistic killing machine club/bunker or die.” I have no interest in religous nutcase ramblings, so much so that I ended up just skipping all the cut scenes after it was clear that it was just the family pushing the same “join our ‘faith’ or die” button over and over and over. Additionally they’ll just contact you on your walkie-talkie and spout that olde-time family religious nonsense so the only way to kill that is to mute the damn game. Don’t care. Take back land, remove culty nut bags. Check. I don’t believe “actual” dieties are mentioned at all, but again, skipped the cut scenes.

The family has taken over the whole place, using farms etc to manufacture their potent mind-altering/controlling drug, “bliss,” that they are generously distributing everywhere w/o consent like the U2/Apple thing, including the water supply. They have songs. “Religious” songs. That they blast from speaker trucks, buildings, radios, etc.

I started an annoyance list for Far Cry 4 and it’s mostly the same thing for Far Cry 5.

[x] you are strong as an ox; non-combat npcs get tapped by a car/attacked by a bird/etc and die
[x] follow mission
[x] follow mission: “you’re too close” (two seconds later) “you’re too far, you’re losing them here comes mission fail you shit”
[x] EXTREMELY tiny/fiddly activate-switch area [DEFUSE BOMB (click/hold one button) “you’re too close” “you’re too far” oh no the bomb exploded]
[ ] enemy shoots you in full cover (hey they fixed a thing)
[x] can accidentally injure friendlies when attempting other operation
[x] no devoted map icon for personal vehicle (bonus: icons for random vehicles)
[x] bizarrely easy to trade your kitted-out weapon for random dead npc floor garbage
[x] no place to sit other than vehicles
[x] saving npcs next to impossible
[ ] npcs panhandle ‒ no facility to give money/food/etc
[x] random attacks w/no agency (instant animated cut scene + health reduction/death)
[x] blinking item to attend to, but functionality for action is off (loot blinks, your inventory is full)

Trading floor weapons drove me nuts. Happened all the time. [FX: goes into intense firefight] I have a pistol? YES OF COURSE I WANTED TO TRADE MY UPGRADED M60 FOR A PISTOL OR MAYBE YOU MADE THE “TRADE WEAPONS WITH DEAD GUY” KEY THE SAME AS THE “LOOT DEAD GUY” KEY yes I could re-map the key thank you (UPDATE: You cannot re-map the key; the “pick up loot” key will always be the “trade good gun for shit-gun-that-is-right-next-to-the-loot” key). I can do a thousand things but they apparently can’t get people to play-test because it was the same damn thing for Far Cry 4.

The busyness of the game was another strange decision. There are main missions, side missions, collectibles, and random missions that occur in specific spots. Many, many spots, all over the map. So many random missions they sort of bleed over each other. You can be saving a kidnapee in one random mission and then npcs from another nearby random mission go “hey, we’re joining your fun.” Which was actually sort of enjoyable. The odd decision is that these “spots” are never “cleared,” just like Control. You can save someone, turn around 180, then turn back, and there will be another kidnapee there with some baddies or whatever random scenario barfs up. Infinitely. Until you kill the major baddie controlling the area, it’s just endless random missions like this.

Additionally, when one of these “good” npcs get knocked and you’re not right next to them, forget it, they will die just before you’re able to save them. Over and over. So the missions keep respawning, and you can’t save knocked people ... it sours you on dealing with these missions at all. I happily drove by tons of these events, honking my horn. “Good luck being a hostage!” Some good npcs will barf out locations of loot stashes which are nice mini-missions, so I started half-ass saving a few of them.

Another odd decision: you pay for everything. The people that you’re constantly saving, they make you pay for the bullets. “Aren’t we under siege here? Can we just not do a capitalism right now?” And you level up your firepower pretty quickly, the endless garbage guns scattered around don’t make any sense. Game is sort of imbalanced in this manner with all consumables etc. The UI for weapon loadout etc is atrocious, I don’t understand this industry-wide obsession with burying everything under sub-sub-menus.

To make the game 7.2% more palatable, I tasked myself with taking photos of tranquil scenes between firefights.

(love that little eagle tchotchke)

I like the open world part of it. Everything else, the plot, the “ideas,” it can all go pack sand. There has been plenty written about the “politics” and how they neatly avoided taking a stand on anything. But what made me quit the game was the loss of agency, and the endings (I read ahead). You can be in any setting, doing anything, and you will randomly be kidnapped/drugged/transported. You can be hiding in a small room behind a filing cabinet in a building (I literally did this) and somehow they’ll get a shot of “bliss” on you, you pass out, and now you’re a prisoner. It’s ... kind of sad, that this was sort of rammed through. “Well they -have- to do this.” The game will literally force you to participate in one of three different types of ridiculous scenarios that you cannot skip/avoid. One of them is timed, my favorite. As far as I can tell, if you can’t finish in time, you never get out of the loop. Each of the three children of the main baddie “captures” you three, four times. So that’s ... nine-twelve times during the game you have to deal with this shit. “You know, I was running around in a field with my companion bear and dog a minute ago. Now I’m failing a speedrun and being chewed out by a religious psychopath.” The third time I did the timed speedrun, I had to run it over twenty times before I finished it. Have I mentioned how much I hate timed garbage. The fourth time the initial speedrun room fucking came up, I quit the game and uninstalled it.

Not bothering talking about all the twisted-ass shit in it ... we get it, you’re edgy because edgy gets the column inches or whatever platitudes your beancounters barfed out between coke sessions. The endlessly repeating Xtian-like songs that are part of the plot, the endless cut scenes of mass-murdering religious knobs explaining their philosophies ... ugh. Had to turn the sound off so much. Easily the worst gaming experience ever. Apparently one of the endings (spoiler alert here) is also you losing control of your actual game character! What FUN. Your character just goes off and finishes the game for you. Heck, why even allow input at all? Turn the game into a movie.

After I uninstalled it, I started reading around to see what people had thought of it. Three things: one, some people really hated it in the same fashion. I feel validated. Anyway. Second, some people liked it and spouted off about how the main characters were right or had a point. Uh. I stopped counting the number of people strung up on billboards or tortured to death, or slaughtered in their own houses, after about 100. I’d say I probably saw 200+ mangled bodies, tons of cages, implements, troughs of blood, etc. Just wondering what was “right” about that, that’s all. What I’m saying is that I use games as an escape from people exactly like this both in and out of the game. So really what I’m saying is that if you have an open-world game in which you want to use “real life” and really get in there and dig deep, maybe make an option to turn all of that off. I’m full, all full up, mmmm that was yummy! No thank you! Beancounter: “But ... the gritty ... so controversial ...” Me: [FX: asleep because huge meal of real-world horrible] “mimimi ... zzzz ... mimimimi”

The third thing was my realization: “oh right, there are probably mods to help me with my inadequacies as an elite gamer of gaming.” Don’t believe any of the AI websites that all repeatedly crow “you just have to add this parameter to Steam and that enables mods etc,” none of that works. There’s a whole working Far Cry modding system for all the Far Crys. Cries. Anyway. Very convenient, nicely put together, solves a lot of the most annoying problems like the “arcade guy” npc who plays a video game in a lot of the establishments spouting off banal platitudes about the arcade version of the game. “This is the best game ever!” Over and over while you’re on the roof trying to have a nice snipe. You can click a checkbox: “remove annoying arcade guy.” Done. They didn’t have god mode in the mod menu, but there were enough other options like doubling your speed, infinite ammo, etc, that combined was more than enough to get me over the hump of the annoying-can’t-skip/quit repetitive mission which got me into an annoying-can’t-skip/quit constantly-spawning npcs boss fight but mods again saved the day.

PS: The sheer fucking gall of using a commercial song for the bullshit Manchurian Candidate trigger is ... amazing. The religious nutcake opens a simple windup music box and then the song plays. It should have been a novel music box melody you utter drips. Thank you for using one song, over and over, for your fake psyop horseshit? For making me hate an actual extant song? Is that something everyone talked about at the game design meetings? “You know, it would be like the game is infecting their brain in real life ooooh.” I tried muting music specifically during the awful timed mission and the awful endless-spawning npcs mission after that, and wouldn’t you know it, it doesn’t mute the commercial song at all. Huh. Later, after you finally manage to get back to the open world, you will encounter radios “randomly” playing this song. Mod menu to the rescue again. You can kill just the religious songs, or all the songs coming from radios etc. Thank you modders.

PPS: There’s a mission called “Special Delivery” (I think) and you drive a couple to a midwife for an emergency npc baby delivery. Some people are having problems with a bug, but I’ve not seen this particular variant/solution mentioned online. The pre-planned route you need to take w/a truck runs through a second mission’s designated area, pigs juiced on the cult’s drugs or some such. The program errantly flips the current mission to this pig mission. Since you’re driving a truck full speed to get that damn baby babied, you almost immediately drive out of the mission zone and fail, and it sends you right back to the beginning of the emergency childbirth mission. Endless loop. You can’t exit the driver seat, you’re on rails. You can’t quit the mission (not sure why). If you stop and try to clear the pig mission, the childbirth mission is still on a timer and you fail that. Back to start of loop. The way to handle this is (1) do the pig mission first ... or, if you’re already locked in the Special Delivery mission loop ... (2) stop in the pig mission area when it switches, then (surprisingly) you can open the map and fast travel to the farm with the pig mission (it’s probably the closest fast travel point on the map), thus escaping the pregnants couple and putting that mission on hold w/o failure. Finish the pig mission, then maybe ignore the childbirth mission forever. The child will have a great story about a driver disappearing just before they were born in an idling truck. Since I’m not going to finish the game (awful endings #1 #2 #3 avoided; there are no “good” endings, just endings that make you chuck your pc out a window), I am not bothering to get yelled at by an expectant couple for the nth time. Wait, are there any cliffs near that mission? (Uncharted 4 actually has a “hidden” achievement for something similar ... just saying, Ubisoft, embrace the random stupid) Additionally I suppose you could ignore the wayfinding and veer around the pig mission, but that would entail trial-and-error or looking up locations etc and a lot more of the soon-to-be parents yelling at you to correct course, assuming it doesn’t fail you for creative detours. It’s a very Grand Theft Auto type of mission.

PPPS: There’s a bug with (at least) the bear companion, “Cheeseburger,” when he is knocked. Sometimes, he can’t get back up, you can’t revive him, he’s just sort of stuck in that state. You can pet him, but you end up in an animated sequence petting the air, because he’s sort of knocked/not knocked simultaneously. One time a truck came barreling at him because he was frozen-knocked in the middle of the road. BOOM. Cheeseburger gets up. It’s my favorite bug fix ever. “Hold on Cheese, I gotta find a truck.”

PPPPS: There’s an arcade section in which randos can edit maps and offer them up for inspection. The maps themselves are amazing, the variety and amount of raw material offered up is done quite well ... I saw a satellite dish from the Watchdogs series (maybe they carried that forward and I just didn’t notice until now ... wait no “Alongside the almost 5000 Assets from Far Cry 5, map creators have access to multiple different assets from other Ubisoft Games like previous Far Cry titles, Assassins Creed games, and Watch Dogs”).

There are problems with this arcade map-creating version. No milestones ‒ you die, you start over. Some maps are very linear, and 90% of the time I am not up for the re-do. Also the enemy AI is very basic (moreso than the game, it felt like), and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change that. “One of our teammates was one-shotted a half-mile from here! Everyone converge on position immediately!” Or an NPC will be screaming that they’re coming to get you, and you come upon them and they’re facing the wrong way, toward a dead-end or some such. They have three modes that they all do simultaneously as a group (for the most part). Sitting around, converging, or “spreading out” when they can’t find you. Fucking PAC-MAN had more strategy and personality. Reddy was aggro, Pinky was into tunnels, Bluey was sort of abstract/random and Burnt Siennay (or, if you grew up playing a certain Pac-Man machine in a certain pizzeria literally next to an arcade in Metro Detroit in the mid-80s, HANGLY DON), I don’t know what that cat’s deal was but that’s FOUR DIFFERENT MODES.

The enemies all act the same way ... and they spout off the same (christo-fascist culto bullshit) lines from the game, repeatedly. In the past when this happened with other games (including Ubisoft titles) there were multiple languages to switch to before it drove me crazy. Yell at me in French that you’re going to kill me twice. Ooh so pretty! Not this game. No other spoken languages are available. No option to mute spoken lines. It wears at one. Update: You can change the entire game to another language in the Steam menu. But that’s not just vocals, it’s the UI as well. Easy to jump through the same broken UI as before, it worked a treat. About the only thing that I had to figure out ... there was an “O” on the compass. Nord Sud Est Ouest.

There’s a rating system for the maps, and some highly-rated maps compensate for stupid AI in different ways ... there was one map in which you were on a skyscraper, fighting enemies on the skyscraper across the street. Another one peppered the map with enemies that had you pinned down immediately “we’re in a tight spot,” and so on. Doesn’t seem to be any interactions with the maps beyond opening doors/hatches (I ran into only two maps that used keys). It doesn’t mark the ones you’ve tried (update: this has become #1 annoying aspect with a bullet) ‒ the UI/UX is garbage. Map maker names are given one screen that appears once; the only other way you’re going to get that name is if you mark it as a favorite (but you have to bounce back to the pause menu to do so; there’s a key that pulls up the map creator information but you’re never told what that key is, it’s just ... sitting in the keybinding sub-menu). Conversely, enemy counts and generic messages like “GET TO THE EXIT,” those have to appear on the game screen all the time. You can’t search for the Ubisoft-created maps with the term/author name “Ubisoft.” You can report a map for several reasons including getting stuck, but ... they’re toggles. “I got stuck.” Fookin’ WHERE AND HOW, mate.

It’s just a bunch of weird decisions that are combined into a potent slurry of wrong. Game UI in general is really starting to roil me. “Here’s another premiere AAA game design crewe with their hot-shit UI” [FX: wait staff lifts silver lid to reveal: yet another steaming pile]

Seriously. Here’s your first lesson in UI 101: Screens you use constantly shouldn’t change. Far Cry 5: Naw, when you click on this big box here before you start a map, it will get you to the solo menu, but if you click after backing out of a map, it will immediately start up another random map that you didn’t select at all! Isn’t that fun?

Additionally, they left “money” on the table wrt search. There should have been a “loadout” parameter wherein you could search for maps that started w/o guns or didn’t have any guns at all, so you knew it was fists only/didn’t have gunplay etc. Not a novel idea back then.

That said, here are some maps I enjoyed. You don’t need to type the entire name in most cases (typing just “escape,” for example, will get you plenty of escape-the-x type games). You can also search for “top rated” etc to weed out the weeds. I didn’t list any of the maps that were just ... nice environments. You definitely want to stick with the “journey” theme as well, there are way too many outposts/assaults/etc that are just “here are 40+ enemies gathered together.” Most outposts start w/~20 enemies that are tending the alarms; if you flub that (and you most likely will, the average map provides very little space to stealthily shut them off), boom, reinforcements. Now you’re shooting 40+ enemies in a small area. Same thing, over and over. I tried one map for laughs that post-alarm had 188 enemies; the problem was that the map was 90% inside a large building, and spawn points were inside the building as well. You’d be sitting somewhere “safe” and suddenly an npc or two would pop up right behind you, shooting.

Additionally I recommend turning off the red enemy markers.

• Difficult Choices. A bounty hunt. Unfortunately there’s some sort of bug, either with the map or the game in general, such that second/nth time around you are shown the little red markers for every person you “interacted” with the last time. It’s better without. Additionally, at the end, when you’re supposed to go to the exit ... don’t try to go directly to the yellow dot exit (it’s out-of-bounds), there’s a different route you take. It’s not obvious, but it’s a fun little map hunt. I found it accidentally, I was trying to revive a jetski on land after I gave up on finding the exit (the jetski worked and then it didn’t work. I have a brain the size of one-half of a hamster, and it’s not the half with a brain) I kept dying in different ways, I kept coming back. I was rewarded with a very weird (but short) endgame.

• Puzzled Escape. Another one that has a “secret” “exit” though this one is marked really well. Once you do that, it’s ... endless enemies, close quarters, and you and your infinite supply of prox mines. There’s one part in which you grapple up a shaft and there are four+ frenz waiting for you that I’m calling dirty pool. Then another giant heaping of enemies.

• MJ4 ‒ Last Day on Earth (Puzzle Parkour). This is a “figure out how to advance” sort of puzzle. Unfortunately I couldn’t get past the bridge with the railroad cars, couldn’t get the next grappling hook.

• The Underground. Another way to beef up the challenge ‒ tank the enemies. Like some other maps that have done this, there was also a helicopter w/weapons sitting around. “Huh, bullet sponge ... time to ramp up the firepower.”

• Escape the Volcano. Nice pathing. One guy got stuck in the crags.

• Skyscraper whatever: most of the ones with “Skyscraper” in their name are ok. One has you pinned down at the start (Skyscraper v9).

• Far Cry Classic Fort. “Journey” themed. Red markers are turned off, and health kits are rare. Ammo for the most part is plentiful (same as ~95% of the maps). But at one point I was pinned down by two helis (I’ve only seen three maps with more than one heli) and ran out of all my ammo other than a little plinkin’ 45. Health was 1%. It was very dramatic, had to sneak back to the other side of the island where I started. But was manageable. That’s a hard balance, map designers usually err on the side of “fuck it, put another cache of ammo here.”

• Castle Keep Part 3. “Journey” themed. Nice olde-tyme weapons built-up town. Ran out of ammo for my favorite gun. There is no more pick-up ammo after the initial ammo, I believe. Just what you can scrounge from all the sleeping enemies.

• Montor Landing. This is a well-done small map with some surprises. I tend to play open maps very slowly, and because of that, I think I got the best possible playthrough.

• Most anything by user Thane111. They have a “knack” for making enjoyable maps. There is a search by user function (it’s the bottom line, if you’ve already switched to another language).

• Black + Shadows ‒ Mission 1. This one also had a surprise, in that you start with two shooty companions who follow your lead. Just like the main campaign. On top of that, more surprises. I’ve not seen any of this in any other map ... there’s a youtube video of it as well, in case you get stuck. Search on “Map.Editor.Man” for other maps. I thought the companions were invicible but unfortunately one went MIA and I’m going to assume was killed by one of those goddamned missiles. RIP Sargeant-Comptroller Joseph “Joey” D. Bugnuts, Jr. (XXX put a good memorial quote here for joey like “all we are is dust in the wind” or some bullshit XXX)

• Surface tension. I like the maps that try to break away from most of the other entries. This one is sparse and has you scrambling on mountain ridge lines. Took me four tries to get it. You have plenty of time to consider the errors you make as you look up at the rapidly receding ridge line. “Yeah, that was my thing.”

• Crater Climbing. This has been the longest climbing-centric map I’ve seen. Really nice way finding markers. Mixes it up ‒ tunnels, jumping, climbing, combat. Combat is light/sporadic, never dicey. It’s oddly not rated that highly, ymmv. Took me about an hour.

2024feb05.

Voice of a Star Wars Fan (with English subtitles) Reduced version (20min).

See this post at Daring Fireball after you watch the film (thanks to jon).

2024jan21.

Horse racing to end in Macau. “Wonder if they shut down the dog racing place I shot in 2004 ...”

South China Morning Post August 14 2022 [CW: animal cruelty]: How one dog helped end greyhound racing in Macau, and how he lived out his life free from the cruel sport

2024jan16.