Author: Mark Alexander

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Another Excellent Pressing

Based on previous items I’ve purchased through Instagram ads, I have to admit when I first ordered one of these “Women of Song” recordings, I wasn’t expecting much, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Colored vinyl always catches my eye, and while the color of my initial purchase (Nina Simone) didn’t match the ad, the sound of the recording offset that enough that I tried another (Ella Fitzgerald, who—let’s face it—I’m an absolute sucker for). That vinyl matched what was advertised, and the sonic clarity and absolutely silent background sold me on this series.

The Billie Holiday recording is no exception, and I will be exploring further Verve releases in this series. If you like classic jazz and buy vinyl, check these out.

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There Are Far Too Many Chads In This World

There are too many Chads in this world, and they all deserve to get face-fucked with a cactus. “Let it happen Chad, it’s what the Lord wants or you wouldn’t be here right now, sharing this special moment with me.”
Fucking imbeciles.

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3 Body Problem

I know some of you have been waiting to hear my opinion of the new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, based upon the book series by author Liu Cixin, so here goes.  I guess the best way to illustrate how I feel about it is to say I binged the entire series in one day. I couldn’t stop watching. It was totally engaging and kept me on the edge of my seat.

I was not familiar with the source material, although I had heard of it. I’m not going to offer up any spoilers other than to say the San-Ti, the story’s antagonists, are truly are evil—but at the same time I can’t help but think that if humanity was faced with the same impossible fate the Sai-Ti were, we’d be just as coldheartedly ruthless. Hell—we’re coldheartedly ruthless to our fellow humans now when not faced with complete societal destruction.

The first season ends on a cliffhanger…of course. This led me to researching the story further, and if I thought the alien invaders were ruthless before, all I can say is you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The story is intriguing, and initially a bit of a puzzle if you’re not familiar with the source material, but it soon becomes clear exactly what is going on. It basically highlights the dark forest theory, one of many hypotheses used to explain the apparent lack of other civilizations in the universe. The acting was uniformly good. The special effects—while somewhat cheesy when the characters were in “the game”—were still quite good otherwise.

In short, recommended.