Category Archives: Reviews

A Land Without Power

Posted by BlackWidower on

All modern technology is dependant on electricity. Without power, we’d have nothing.

Computers, cell phones, television, radio, all other forms of communication; lights, heating systems, stoves, water heaters, refrigerators, the municipal water service, local sanitation systems, cars, busses, traffic lights, and many more things I forgot to mention.

So much is dependant on the simple concept of electricity. What would happen if it all went away?

I know, it’s a silly question to ask. How could all electrical devices just stop working?

Well, the power could always go out. Ten years ago, that’s exactly what happened to me and millions of others living on the east coast of North America. Due to something as simple as a computer bug in the control room of a Ohioan power company. For many, it took days for the power to come back on. I didn’t mind too much. For starters, I had my laptop. But even after the battery died, I still wasn’t that bothered. I went outside and was able to experience a true rarity: Being able to see the stars late at night.

Often, when an area does lose power, likely because it was hit by a major disaster, restoring it tends to be the top priority for responders. Seems to me that food and water would be slightly higher than electricity. But what do I know? They bring guys in to fix fallen wires; repair substations and transformers; and sometimes, bring in localized generators that can power a neighbourhood, assuming they’re just cut off from the rest of the grid.

But is it really necessarily? Are we dependant on electricity? Yes. If we lost it, would people start panicking, and looting? Well, no. They didn’t during the last blackout, and I doubt they would if it happened again. Even New York was looter-free!

But let’s up the stakes. What if we didn’t just lose power from the grid? What if all electronic devices stopped working? What if even battery-powered devices failed? Cell Phones, laptops, cars, even flashlights! And what if they would never, ever, turn back on? Would our society collapse into barbarism? Hell no! Such a suggestion is ridiculous. But that’s not the suggestion made by the creators of the relatively new NBC series, Revolution. Continue reading →

Party in the LPS: “What’s in the Batter?” review

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Some people are bothered by how materialistic our society is.

I can kinda understand. Being obsessed as some people are with acquiring more items and objects, it seem frivolous. But the way I see it, the things people buy are not simply objects, they’re something more.

Depending on the specific item, they represent joy, safety, security, self-reliance, or intellectualism. For instance, owning tools means you have the ability to fix something at a moment’s notice, on your own. It can help you become independent and reliable.

Toys can have the same impact. For me, my toy collection brings me happiness. Just looking at it, for some reason, can wipe my blues away… sometimes.

Then there are gifts. Which can represent the love one has for another. The more effort the individual puts into acquiring the gift, only to give it to someone else. It shows how much they care. The price tag is just a representation of the amount of labour one must put in to acquire it. It’s not shallow to want someone to spend a lot of money on you (okay, maybe it is a little). It’s representative of the effort they put in.

Then there are the custom-made gifts, which takes more thought and effort than anything one can pull off a shelf. And something nice, and personal, from someone who cares, can mean more to you than anything else in the world.

So what if you lost it. What if you lost something that meant a lot to you? A custom-made gift from someone you loved. How far would you go to get it back?

Well, this week on Littlest Pet Shop, we see just how far Blythe is willing to go for the same thing, when she loses a valuable necklace in some cake batter. Yes, she does work in a pet shop, and I will get to that. Continue reading →

Anti-Socialization: “Helicopter Dad” review

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Sometimes, people just want to be alone. Is that so hard to understand?

I know some people are under the impression that a preference for solitude must mean there’s something wrong with you. Bullshit I say! I typically like being alone because it allows me to focus on the task at hand, whether it be writing, or reading, or watching a television program.

You gotta focus, it’s the only way to get things done.

But there are other reasons to crave solitude. For instance, you may find most people irritating. That’s a very good reason. I wish I could relate, but most of the people I know I don’t find irritating. Well, some people I do find irritating, my family for instance. Which is why the latest episode of Littlest Pet Shop hit especially close to home. Continue reading →

Smallest Animal Supply Boutique: “Littlest Pet Shop” (first 16 episodes) review

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So, just last week, we saw the season finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. A show that has had more ups and downs than a possessed elevator.

The show shocked me to no end when I first saw it. It’s a program about magical technicolour horses, and is directed and marketed toward eight year old girls. Yet, even a grown man as cynical as myself can enjoy it. The well-developed characters and compelling plot lines had me coming back every week.

Of course people can argue why the show has such a following. But in the end it’s very difficult to come up with a singular reason. I just love the show, I can’t really explain why. There are times I love it because of the visual gags that remind me of the classic Looney Tunes I used to watch as a kid. There are times I love it because a character manages to prove exactly how awesome she is, sometimes at the eleventh hour, when it matters the most. There are the intense and dramatic plot lines. There are the compelling characters. There is the clean visual style. To pick just one reason would be next to impossible, and in the end it doesn’t matter. The show’s entertaining, and that’s all there is to it.

I got into the series in spite of my preconceived notions, and I’m glad I did. But of course the question remains: Can I bypass my preconceived notions again? Can I allow myself the opportunity to enjoy another show that I otherwise would not have given the time of day? Can I enjoy another thinly veiled toy-marketing program directed at eight-year-old girls? Or is this something that I’ll only allow from My Little Pony?

Well, the answer to that is, ‘yes,’ ‘yes,’ ‘yes,’ and ‘no.’ I can bypass my preconceived notions, and earlier this week, I did. For you see there’s another Hasbro property that’s been recently rebooted in cartoon form. Not about magical ponies, but a random assortment of animals. Allow me to tell you about the new series of Littlest Pet Shop.

Littlest Pet Shop

Oh, and just a quick preview: It’s good. Continue reading →

Unicorn’s End: “Magical Mystery Cure” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

…I am not happy.

I am not thrilled, or amused in the slightest.

I think the only word I could use to describe my current outlook is: disappointment.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Today was the day the bronies have been waiting for. For something I already commented on a few weeks ago. Today was the third season finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, where Twilight Sparkle evolves into Princess Twilight Sparkle, after her friends use the Harmony Stone on her.

Honestly, I was kinda looking forward to this, because given the summary we were treated to, it seemed interesting. The whole ‘switching cutie mark’ thing felt like it would go in an interesting direction. And… well… It did, but in a way that made me very angry.

This is gonna take a while to explain. Continue reading →

Olympic-Sized Fuck-up: “Games Ponies Play” review

Posted by BlackWidower on

One of the things I love about My Little Pony is the world building. There’s a lot to the land of Equestria. The locations, the mythology, and the political systems feel quite fleshed out and developed. So much so that Hasbro actually released a full map of Equestria. A map that’s full of inconsistencies.

Map of Equestria

I bring this up because the fact that it can be full of inconsistencies just proves my point. Equestria has been so fleshed out that we all have a pretty common and complete vision of how the land of Equestria is structured, headcanon notwithstanding. And almost every episode has only made it fuller.

…at least, it did in the first two seasons.

For season three, the world building simply hasn’t been as interesting or well done. It’s still there, but it feels half-assed. For starters, there was The Crystal Empire, which was probably the most boring episode, featuring the most boring villain in the entire series: Sombra. It just felt like it’s been done before, especially the ending, where the big challenge for Twilight was: walk down a bunch of stairs, then walk up even more stairs. That’s right, when I think pulse-pumping action, I think stairs. No deceptive puzzles, no complex moral tests, just stairs.

For the rest of the series, we got no major extension to the land of Equestria. Or at least none that were interesting.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. We learned that Princess Luna is Dom Cobb, and that there’s a nation called Saddle Arabia, which is cool, I guess.

But at least none of the world building has been bad this season, just boring. If nothing else, boring is better than bad or contradictory or completely ridiculous, which they’ve thankfully avoided this season… UNTIL NOW!!! Continue reading →

Which Reality is Real

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A while back I wrote about Inception, a film that featured Leonardo DiCaprio as a thief who specialized in stealing secrets directly from someone’s mind using shared dreaming technology. It still remains one of my favourite movies of all time. But one thing I only briefly mentioned was the idea proposed in the film that it’s easy to lose your sense of reality in the dream world.

It’s an interesting and scary idea. What if you’re dreaming and don’t know it? What if I’m dreaming and don’t know it? Am I really typing away on a keyboard communicating with the world or am I sleeping, in my bed, maybe hooked up to some machine that stimulates a part of my brain, generating hyper-realistic dreams? Well, if that’s true, you’d think I’d dream up a better house.

How do we know we’re awake? I hear one way to tell is to try to keep an eye on space, because dreaming bypasses spacial awareness. But that might not be 100% reliable. I’ve also noticed that, whenever I dream, the colour schemes are simple and bright. An entire room of bright red, or bright blue, which is something you never really see in real life. But that might not be the same for everyone.

So I guess the real answer is: we don’t. We don’t know if we’re awake or asleep. But let’s try to make the best of what we have regardless, because the idea that we live in a simulation is highly unlikely, and honestly, not worth losing sleep over.

Oh, wait… I just made a joke and didn’t notice.

Anyway, nonetheless, some people have lost sleep over it, and Higgs bless ’em, because as a result, we’ve gotten some great works of fiction out of it. There was The Invisables, The Matrix, Vanilla Sky, The Truman Show (in a way), and Total Recall. Even an episode of Stargate SG-1, and two episodes of Doctor Who have dealt with this theme. Is the world we live in real?

The most interesting one is the Doctor Who episode where Amy, Rory, and Eleven are all trapped in the TARDIS, as it hurtles toward a ‘cold star’, while falling asleep at random intervals, dreaming they are back on earth, being chased by aliens…or they are back on earth, being chased by aliens, while falling asleep at random intervals, dreaming they are trapped in the TARDIS, as it hurtles toward a ‘cold star’.

The question they have to answer is simple: Which dream is just a dream, and which one is reality? It forms the basis for the entire episode, as the Doctor argues for the TARDIS reality, and Rory argues for the Leadworth reality, and Amy has to make the tie-breaking decision. Great episode. But what if this same idea wasn’t restricted to a single, 45 minute episode of Doctor Who? What if someone managed to create an entire series based around this simple idea: the idea of not being able to tell the difference between a dream, and reality. Well…someone has. Continue reading →

Royal Pains: “Magical Mystery Cure” preview

Posted by BlackWidower on

I am a skeptic in every sense of the word. Not just in the traditional sense, scientific skepticism, but in the sense of simply not trusting people at their word, no matter what the context.

Of course that kind of worldview is not easy to maintain. After all, it takes a lot of work to fact check every word said by every politician and public figure. So often, you might not have a choice. You might not have time to run detailed research into, for example, the Bengazi incident, when several american diplomats were killed. You might not have time to look into the death of Aaron Swartz, and find out if the Justice Department pushed him to suicide. So it’s easier to take people at their word.

But sometimes, finding the truth is not that hard. All it requires is two minutes of thinking to get to something close to the truth.

For instance, take the statements made by Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, just last year. Anyone with half a brain knows what he was saying makes absolutely no sense. How could the human body identify the type of situation it finds itself in? And even if it could, why would the human race evolve a method to stop the passing on of our genes? It would be a good thing for the woman, but not humanity at large, and that’s what evolution prefers to benefit.

Then we have another issue: Women in the military. Specifically, front-line combat positions. The counter argument to this is that it damages unit cohesion, or that woman cannot possibly carry their comrades off the battlefield like men can. Think about this for ten seconds and you’ll see how ridiculous this is. First of all, damages unit cohesion? That men and women cannot get along and be just friends? At some point they’re going to have sex? That’s asinine. I’ll tell you this much, some of my best friends have vaginas, and I never banged any of them. It never seemed needed. And as for physical strength, I can tell you from personal experience that’s bullshit. My prom date back in high school was a giant. She would have no problem carrying her comrades off the battlefield, let me tell you.

See, with a bit of thinking, you can arrive at the truth pretty quickly. And it’s this technique that got me to an unsettling realization when the latest news on My Little Pony dropped earlier this week.

Um... what!?

You see, it appears that in this season’s final episode Twilight Sparkle will grow wings get coronated as a Princess. And it didn’t take me long to realize that this could be very… very… very racist. Continue reading →