My favorite word in the English language: Arse

Well, that's how it happened, on Kali's memorial day, internet problems hit and I couldn't play or stream the game Cats and the Other Lives. I took it as a personal insult because the internet started working better the second I would have stopped playing. The internet only worked while I was cooking and eating. When I started playing, it stopped working again. Well, in the end, I managed to get it working for a while in the evening, but I had to stop playing when ER started on TV.

And finally, late in the evening, it turned out that the internet not working was not even due to DNA, but to us. Since I wanted to stream the game, I was afraid that the wifi wouldn't work well enough through the door, and so I wanted a LAN cable for the PS5 just in case. That's why the internet went haywire! So the wifi would have worked normally all day, but the wired internet wouldn't. Resetting the router helped. 

That's never happened before. However, I always had a habit of changing PS5's internet to wired when playing Friday, as wifi is not necessarily enough for online games.

And again I was disappointed because the episodes of ER are censored and cut. The last episode of the 12th season 21 Guns had been cut from everywhere. From the beginning, from the shooting and from the end. Because of the latter also the song, Snow Patrol's "Open your eyes", (beware of shameless promotion of my own video) ended in the middle... It's been a while since I've had any of my favorite episodes on my computer, they were lost when I replaced my computer because there was supposedly no space on the hard drive. I used to watch these episodes often, but now it's not possible.

 

 

It really scared me how much of the next day's episode, the first episode of the 13th season, Bloodline, had been cut. There's a lovely song, David Gray's "Slow Motion", during which some gory things happen. I found on Youtube German dub version of that scene. It was a big surprise then that Bloodline wasn't censored at all. I guess it would have been too difficult, just because of that song.

Another pair of leggings fell apart from the arse in the wash. Will this buying of clothes never end?

When I realized that my newest socks, Happy socks, were broken, I realized that they probably aren't a very durable brand. Luckily, Facebook was able to immediately advertise to me what I need, namely customizable cat socks. They are expensive though and of course plastic, so I won't buy them.

 

 

Now you can have it, fill your pots with porridge! I was so happy when Forsman's Christmas tea went on sale at Prisma. I calculated that I would need more than 24 packages to last me the whole year.

 

 

I guess I shouldn't buy a tea advent calendar, because those teas are always crap.

I went to Lidl mainly for the sugar-free chocolate. I was afraid it would be out of stock, and there seemed to be only dark chocolate on the shelf. Luckily, I realized that behind all that red there seemed to be a hint of blue. The sugar-free milk chocolates were hidden behind the sugar-free dark chocolates.

Chocolate is still amazingly cheap at Lidl, only 2.49. I think it's very similar to Lindt chocolate, which costs over 6 euros at Siilinjärvi's supermarket, for example. In that same store, Stephen King's The Long Walk costs 19.90, while everywhere else it costs no more than 13.90. I feel like saying that some people are fucking greedy bastards. 

 

A year without cats

My last cat, Kali, died exactly one year ago at the age of 19. My other two cats died in August 2024.

 

 

I guess I should be ashamed to admit that out of my three cats, Kali is the only one whose death date I couldn't remember by heart, I had to check it.

 

 

Kali was always the third cat I got when she was already 4 years old. Tabitha was my firstborn, and Olivia was my youngest and my lap cat. What was Kali?

Personally, I think Kali's heart broke when the other cats mysteriously disappeared, and her body just gave up. Without the urinary tract infection she had a month before her death, we would not have known anything about the tumor.

 

 

And again I thought I'd play some cat game to honor the day. 

Stray I meant to play already on the anniversary of Olivia's death, but Cat and Ghostly Road's white cat suited better for that. 

And now I've been saving up the game Cats and the Other Lives I bought on sale for this purpose, let's see if it is any good.

 

 

The worst thing is that all three cats died in such a short time. After 17 years of daily care, life fell apart.

 

 

Some might think it's crazy that the cat scratching posts, beds and toys are still in their original places here.

 

Movie review: The Long Walk

Damn, this is bullshit.

That was my first reaction when the changed ending of The Long Walk (affiliate link) movie started to be revealed.

This article contains some plot spoilers.

50 young men participate in a walking race. Only one makes it to the finish line alive.

I had worked hard and painfully to protect myself from spoilers. I knew that the ending had been changed, and that people thought the new ending is crap. But I didn't know what the changed ending would be.

At some point, I first hoped and then feared that the ending would be a dream or hallucination of a character, but no. Fortunately, the very last seconds were faithful to the book, meaning the character's final fate was left open.

Making a character evil (and stupid!) who only thirsts for revenge and corrupts his friend into the same thing is not good. Making everything and everyone's deaths pointless in the end, even the father's. Of course, it was all pointless from the start. The point is that no one ever really wins the Long Walk.

And one character has been made into a saint, representing all that is good in the world. Well, he certainly wasn't like that in the book. On the contrary, he got his scar from trying to rape his girlfriend.

And I didn't think it was believable that the main character would suddenly just give up and betray his mother, especially after he had just realized that she was right. Mothers are always right about everything.

And then there's the fact that an alternate ending has been filmed, because an upcoming home release 4K will have it. 

 

 

Of course, I understand that the book's ending had to be changed. The ending of the book would have been too bland, more drama was needed, and that's certainly what's at the end of the movie.

Besides the ending there are of course a lot of other differences between the book and the movie.  

I'm not a fan of blood, gore, and guts, not to mention (diarrhea) crap. I knew in advance that the movie was going to be incredibly violent, and I kept my eyes closed at many points. There was also a lot of swearing, even the f-word was only used a few hundred times.

I liked it when the major said "Good luck, son" to one of the characters right at the beginning. 

But the true star of the movie was of course the eyeless cat, which I wondered already in the trailer.

 

  

 

The Long Walk is one of my favorite works by Stephen King, and I had been waiting for decades for it to be made into a film. Still, it was hard to find time in my busy schedule to go see it, and it was almost a month after the premiere. There were a total of 8 people in the audience at a Tuesday night screening. 

 

Ps. One of the trailers shown was for The Running Man, which will premiere in November. That's also one of my favorites from King's books, but I don't like the fact that this film has gone in a more comedic direction. And the ending has been changed from the book, apparently because of WTC...