Sandman on Netflix is not bad.

 Mister sandman, bring me a dream, and Netflix actually did just that. Morpheus of the endless have finally hit the silver screen and it is not a bad show. Which comes as a surprise in this day and age, when you consider how boring Hollywood is. Like all adaptations minor changes had to be made, but sandman is a fairly melodramatic down to earth story. As grounded to earth an anthromophication of dreams can be, he does visit hell after all and his sister is Death. What I am getting at is that pretty much all the action on the screen is character interaction driven and over the top action scenes are few and far between. If you look away from people turning into pulp. A change however that some people will be all up in the gills about is how many characters have been switched around. Constantine as an example is now a woman, instead of a chain-smoking Irish bloke. Does not bother me one bit though. For one simple reason really, I was entertained and some scenes really tugged on the heart strings. I now know for a fact that I am not a heartless robot.

Now there are some negatives, there always is. One is the outfit on Lucifer, combined with the filter and some game looking wings, just looks bad aesthetically. Though that is my inner designer and cosplay enthusiast speaking. Instead of making the devil look impressive and otherworldly, they make Satan look like a power ranger villain.

Consider this part spoiler filled.

Sandman seems to really be about an immortal being removed from reality, trying to figure out feelings and what to do with his infinite existence. His existential crisis and story starts with him being captured by occult fascinated British nobles looking to bring the dead back, by summoning death. They do not succeed and Dreams tools get taken anyway, along with his freedom. Which leads into many small stories about the people possessing his tools and reality becoming just a bit more miserable because he is not doing his duty. That is the essential flow of the series, we follow Morpheus through many small stories that have him interact with all manner of beings, various times, not to mention places. Needless to say, it is a story that takes its time and is not for the impatient people out there. Which surprised me to be honest, because in recent years I have gotten less patient with time wasting media and bad adaptations.

Hollywood be boring

 Opinion Hollywood is boring

Hello you wonderful people, my name is njål and I like some good entertainment. Now that is one thing the American entertainment industry is failing at these days. Yes, I dare say that Hollywood is boring, bland and a bit like eating oats without any added flavor. Sure I can eat it, but it has no tangible taste worth mentioning. The lack of color alone make the very products that are produced unappealing. Would it hurt them to be a bit more vibrant and actually use the while palette? Somehow even a vibrant green jungle is brown and bland. The lack of saturation itself is bad enough, but something that I can tolerate. However, when they start adapting various franchises and do it badly, that is where I drop out, or use the content to make cheap entertainment, while complaining about the quality. Either way, it will work out in my favor in the end. Anyhow, let's dig up some examples.

 HALO the horrible show about master cheeks, that annoying teenager and the macguffin. Springs to mind, not only does it ignore the games, not only does it look like dirt on a canvas, it fails to entertain me. Just like that piss poor excuse for a zombie survival horror know as resident evil. A show that is grudgingly dull to watch, even at an increased speed. Sure the actors does a serviceable job, the story itself does neither enthral, not entice me. Unlike the first movie, despite being a bit wonky.

The list of bad adaptations made in the land of the spread eagle is impressively disappointing. No wonder I enjoy anime and flicks like RRR, Bollywood is just more entertaining.

That is all Really, until next time, be seeing you.

Blueberry season

 I'm in Norway and there is a saying here. Are you completely on a beerytrip?

A hard to translate phrase that means you are lost. Which is not always a bad thing mind you. I do believe the expression comes from  the idea that when you are in the middle of nowhere, you are lost, and you know this because delicious berries grow in the wild.

In Scandinavia there are several kinds to be found throughout the summer and in the autumn. 

My favorite of the wild ones are blueberries, these delicious blue spheres are abundant where it is wet and sparsely populated with trees. 

Then there is the lovely mulberries, these black made from tiny balls stuck together grows from some long reaching thorny plants very late autumn.

Red Raspberries are fairly similar to the entry above, only red and a bit more sour. These can be cultivated and grow wild and free. The plants are more than a meter tall and will most likely continue to expand every year. There are at least three kinds. Some long ones that climb a lot, yellow ones and the more spherical ones. Which all taste different.

Wild strawberries are very tasty as well. Even if they are incredibly tiny compared to cultivated ones bought in stores.

I quite enjoy strawberries though, and the plant itself spreads like weed if given the chance. As long as bees, and bumblebees work on those flowers all spring and early summer, the harvest will be fairly bountiful.

These all organic and natural goodies can be turned into a lot of delicious food and be stored in the fridge.

Jam is a true and tested recipe. Same van be said for lemonade, pie, or in a bowl with vanilla sauce.

Many options, all of them tasty, unless you pick salt instead of sugar. Something I will not do again.

Njål #Zaceron signing out

Evil architecture

 My name is njål and welcome one and all.

Evil architecture has a long and sordid past and place in my heart, for both good and bad. Be it the original prince of Persia, Tomb raider, Resident Evil, or any other video game setting. I will not talk about anti homeless this d time around so worry not about having to Ollie that magic bum.

The noble adventurer caught by the evil vizier and dumped into the dungeons below the palace, now has to escape an absolutely insane labyrinth. One filled with ancient deadly death traps, creepy spooky skeletons, and a couple of clearly lost palace guards out for blood. 

Lara Croft is also living in a completely bonkers world that might just be caught up in the same sinister machinations. Though she is deliberately seeking out these elaborate death traps, they are not simply relegated to odd relics of the past. Even modern architecture suffers from other cruel machinations of a sinister shadow cabal.

Anyone familiar with the demented locations every Resident Evil protagonist have to slog through. Will know that there is something in the drinking water and I am not talking about a zombie virus. Because all of these worlds could be one and the same and are all made by someone absolutely insane. Not Spain in the fourth game took the architecture up to eleven and broke the knob clean off.

 I do believe that in this case the freemasons actually exist as an ever present secret society of cruel architects. People that have from time immemorial shaped the land around us. Who else would spend so much time making the Spencer mansion such a hellhole to travel though, designing traps that never stop, and crazy puzzles. The kind that takes strength and insane acrobatics to traverse. 

That a secret society is behind the scenes and shaping the land around us is indeed nothing but a silly conspiracy, that one fool with a phone can actually ruin. To me the very idea had some merits and is the perfect antagonist, or plot for any kind of setting. Picture this if you will. The hero has gone off the deep end, because the jewel key to the bathroom was hidden behind a one eyed tiger statue. Said figurine can only be accessed through an air duct that must be broken open with a rusty spork. Due to several such series of events the protagonist is now seeking out the source of his misery. The rabbit hole leads to a series of escalating events and some quirky characters scheming against the brick and mortar council. Just something to think about and consider.

Njål signing out #zaceron

Halo episode one rambling review.

 A gaggle of ratty teenagers goes into the dark dreary desert they live in, to get high, despite being told not to do such a thing. Then they spot evil religious alien. Signal flaring the camp of useless ragtag freedom fighters, only to watch the elites kill them all. Then to have the Spartans come to clean up the alien invaders. Who's more concerned with killing useless humans, despite being madsacred by the demon. Who uses about the same kind of caliber rounds the poorly disguised aka 47 uses. Needless to say, normal squishy human guns does no damage to shields, but master chef bullets do. Why he doesn't grab the plasma guns and deplete enemy shields is anyone's guess. The silver lining is that this sequence looks like Halo, complete with shield recharge sounds, first person moments and the elite laugh. With reckless disregard for anyone but his orders, the chief walks away with his squad, leaving the girl and several hundred dead behind. Because chasing down the enemy ship is more important. This is where things go downhill faster than a chipmunk on speed in a gerbil ball. The dark dry cave the junkies found contains a mysterious prothean beacon that undo decades of brainwashing. An alien is watching, ready to sucker punch the government tool. Instead it runs away and survives the squad of three highly trained super soldiers, turns invisible, and knocks over the bloody survivor who followed after them. Then proceed to flee away in a flying craft. We then switch to exposition, a lot of pointless prattling. One with some sketchy scientist that records everything and the evil maniacal government stooges planning to murder the girl with the bad haircut. The also drain the air out of the skip they conveniently control. The magic alien mcguffin have him humanity back and now he wants to help the teenager instead. Oh and a long necked covenant leader has adapted a human female only to give her a horrible collar costume and chastise her for reading human smut.

For some odd reason the two other people in master chumps party made it back before him on a separate ship, this makes no sense logistically at all. He refuse to murder the civilian, takes off his helmet and then proceed to get shot out of the air onece the auto pilot is shot to hell. But before several hundred maybes can breach the door. Matter mcguffin activates the artifact which restores the ship and disables everything else in the base. Nothing screams bad writing like a good old deus ex machina.

This all screams of paint by numbers, Chekhov's checklist and a reckless disregard for the source material. Hollywood is incapable of adapting it seems.

Njål signing out

Spillhuset i Bergen

I en smal Bergensgate kalt Veiten 3, i nærheten av den Nasjonale Scene. Et meget stort teater i sentrum, Der ligger det gamle Gestapo huset. Man går inn en fin tredør med noen markante lamper, og opp et par trapper til tredje etasje, og der finner man en inngang til et lokale med liv, litt leven og lys. 

Dette er Spillhuset, et nyåpnet hus dedikert til mange typer underholdning, alt fra tradisjonelle brettspill, til konsoll, samt en mengde LAN tilgjengelig datamaskiner. 

Lokalet er delt opp i mange tematisk rom. Et er dedikert til fortid, et skal bli utsmykket til nåtid, og et blir tildelt fremtid, så mer tematisk utsmykking er forventet. 

I hoved salen er en rustikk bar installert, en som kommer komplett med kafe, te, og en catmaid, samt en ganske okei scene. Så det er kanskje muligheter for at cosplay interesserte tenåringer slår seg ned i et rom også. 

Dagen da jeg var innom, ble jeg vel mottatt i døren, og fikk en omvisnings runde.

I alle rom var det liv. Spesielt i rommet med datamaskiner. Plassen tildelt konsoller kommer med en masse saccosekker og et teppe der man må gå uten sko. Stedet er yndig til å spille Super Smash Bros. Noen satt også å puslet med fargerike perler. Skulle man holde på med miniatyr modeller er det nok av bordplass til det, kom over noen som ble introdusert til et nytt spill på vegne av en organisasjon kalt Bubba. Ellers er jo mulig å bare henge på stedet og snakke med forskjellige folk.

Sånn ellers er det en stor haug med brettspill som jeg har, og har ikke hørt om. Lokale er oppe fra 16 til 20 bortimot hver dag, faktiske pånings tider finner man på hjemmesiden dies uanset. Stedet er godt tilgjengelig for rullestolbrukere og har en heis hele veien opp de tre etasjene det er snakk om, og det er nok også mulig å leie stedet for å arrangere et passende arrangement. Til slutt må jeg jo nevene at steded har gratis inngang.

Hilsen Njål

https://goo.gl/maps/UdLnDps49oCkkc8R8

https://www.spillhus.no

Naruto took spirals too far

Puns and wordplays are fun and I dare say so. A memorable character name with some sort of theme is that as well. However it is possible to take it a tad too far. One series that goes absolutely overboard with the meaning convention is Naruto, the titular main character of the series. He sports an orange jumpsuit and bright blonde hair, yet he is supposed to be a sneaky ninja. However this is not an anime review, just a rant. His full name is Naruto Uzumaki. The first name is taken from a spiral shaped ramen topping called narutomaki. This noodle broth is also his favorite food. The last name means spiral, which could also be a vortex, or a maelstrom. On his forehead he wears a protector with an iron plate, engraved with a stylized leaf with a spiral in it. There is more to the thematic madness though, because he eventually learns a technique that revolves around using energy to make a spiraling ball. Which leaves a similar shaped indentation in his victims. The rasengan roughly translates into strong whirlwind, naturally his main element is wind. 

Spin me around like a record baby, the very concept of the character spiraled out of control, see you next rant

Njål signing out