Tag: little things | A Banana Peeled

Being pecked to death

Posted on January 20, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I am still annoyed by life. The start to 2024 has not been the best, but it hasn’t been the worst, either. I wrote yesterday about how the small things seem much worse because I can’t actually talk to a human being. Let me talk to a real human, and I’m much more patient–even if things go south.

For example. My phone. My annoyance that it wasn’t working was outsized because I couldn’t actually talk to someone. I talked to an AI and did the best I could with the limited choices I was given. They gave me an appointment for between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Which, I mean, that’s not really an appointment time, is it?

The day they were supposed to come, I got up at 7:30 a.m. Not two minutes later, I get a message from CenturyLink that my appointment will be between 1:40 p.m. and 5:40 p.m. I could have slept an extra two hours if I had known this the night before! But, no. They set the schedule in the morning, so I had to wake up at an ungodly hour for me just in case I was the first appointment.

Side note: Can we please put to rest for good the notion that people who are night owls are lazy? I have tried to adjust my sleep schedule, and I cannot go to bed before one or two in the morning for the life of me*.

I have tried. And I have tried. I have told myself sternly to go to bed earlier. I have pushed it back in increments. I was going to wake up an hour earlier every day until the appointment day. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I just set the alarm for 7:30 a.m. and went to bed at 1 a.m. I did not fall asleep until after 1:30 a.m., and I did not sleep well.

That’s the other issue when I have to get up at any given time. I just can’t sleep well. I wake up every few hours or don’t really sleep. I nearly slept through my alarm. I woke up to NPR talking about whatever, and that was really bizarre. Not that th e person from NPR was talking–that’s what NPR does. They talk. But because I was only half awake and thought it was something happening in real life. I mean, in my actual home and not just the radio. Yes, I still use a radio alarm. I’m old school like that. It’s worked for over three decades, and I’m using it until it actually breaks.

Elden Ring: the little things

Posted on April 25, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

If I wanted to, I could write a paean to Elden Ring that makes a solid case for how it’s a game changer. Literally. They took the tired old open world formula and made it exciting again. It’s funny because there were a few people at Ubisoft and Guerrilla Games who griped about Elden Ring invalidating their jobs such as UX developer. And saying that the protag needed to talk and other things. Though I’m not sure the latter wasn’t a really dark joke. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they meant it, too, because Aloy narrates EVERYTHING. It’s one of the complaints I’ve seen consistently about Horizon Forbidden West–that Aloy ruins the experience by narrating all the time. One YouTuber said he would race to figure out puzzles before Aloy would reveal the solution because it was so irritating to him. So, yeah, the tweet about the protag of Elden Ring needing to say things like, “I think I should go to that cave over there” doesn’t read like snark. It sounds like my idea of hell, by the way.

I’ve written before about how I don’t really like open world games, and much of what these developers said in distaste about Elden Ring are reasons I don’t like standard open world games. Things like a cluttered map, which I’ve seen several YouTubers mention as well (that they hate or that makes them anxious)–a map crammed with things to do. I’ve felt the same way with other open world games. Opening a map and seeing a zillion things to do is not a plus for me–it just makes me anxious and unhappy.

I cannot overstate how much I love the map in this game. And it’s actually the reason I thought up this post. There are many big things this game does that are amazing and jaw-dropping. There are, however, also many little things, little tweaks and adjustments they’ve made that have infinitely improved the quality of life while playing the game. To me, the map fits in both these categories. It’s a big change because they’ve never had a real map in one of their games. They had a joke overworld map in Sekiro that is hidden somewhere in the options menu. I maintain that they put it in because Activision (boooooo) made them do it. “You want a map? Fine. We’ll give you a map!” Fun fact. ‘Shadows died twice’ was a placeholder name they used internally. Activision made them use it as the subtitle for the game. Jokes on them–no one ever says it when talking about the game. It’s simply Sekiro. Anyway, fuck Activision!

The quiet place of me

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have talked at length about how I’m different than most people. I’m talking in big ways–Asian, bi, not married, no children, agnostic, food issues, etc.–and small–liking winter, preferring night to day, etc. When it comes to pop culture, it’s pretty much a guarantee that if something is popular, I will hate it. Movies I hate: Star Wars, Titanic, Amelie, Se7en, and Pulp Fiction. Music groups: The Who, Led Zepplin, and The Beatles. Books turned into movies I tried to read and couldn’t: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I read the first chapter of the first one three times before finally giving up because it was such bad prose. As for the latter, I instantly haaaaaaaaated the narrator and couldn’t get past it. Oh, one more. The first Game of Thrones book by George R. R. Martin. The prose was so purple and turgid, I had a hard time not laughing out loud. A few more: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin.

Let’s move onto TV. It’s the area in which I am the weirdest. It’s also something I don’t talk about hardly at all because I’m so squarely on the side of weird. Popular TV shows I absolutely hate: Seinfeld; It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; Game of Thrones*; Breaking Bad; House of Cards; Arrested Development. I will add that I’ve only seen one episode of GoT and BB so there’s that. The GoT one was the Red Wedding and the BB one was the penultimate episode. I absolutely LOATHE Seinfeld. All the characters are narcissistic, smug, entitled, whiny, and overwhelmingly white.

Speaking of, the most recent movie I watched was Knives Out. I was really looking forward to it because it had gotten such great acclaim and I loved Agatha Christie, especially Poirot; it was clear the movie was an homage of sorts to Christie. The cast was stellar, ranging from Jamie Lee Curtis to Toni Colette to Don Johnson. Oh, and Daniel Craig as the detective. I wasn’t impressed by the frenetic cut-editing of the trailer, but I figured it was just a way to get people to see the movie.

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