Sails

2025-08-19

In which this gemlog writer shows disdain for casuals.

Disclosure (no, I did not mean to say disclaimer): halfway through a Vesper cocktail at the time of writing, which, if you know the recipe, is a little spicy.

Master and Commander

After marking Julian May's "The Nonborn King" as DNF in my pseudo-social literacy tracking portal, and having recently re-watched director Peter Weir's 2003 directorial effort (typing that is as masturbatory as I always imagined it would be) "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" after purchasing the recently released 4k steelbook like a good consoomer, I began reading liber primus (of 21) of the series it is based on. Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany's voices have been in my head all afternoon.

It's great so far. Haven't read this much boa- sorry, ship jargon since Moby Dick - which I understand just enough of to grasp the narrative, and wouldn't have it any other way. I'm not here to talk about the book, which I could see myself reading 20 more iterations of, because I only started today and that would be premature. Besides, I'm historically not one for book reviews. Get me a strong drink and a polite houseguest and they will have more book reviews than they ever wanted. On that note...

Reviews

Reviews are a thing I can no longer stomach much of. Radio, podcasts, articles, be they for books, movies, or video games. I've yet to read a true restaurant review in my life outside of whatever passers-through have said about some local spot via some website that calls itself an app. And I want to be up front here: this is a rant, but I'll try to be brief.

Movies

Professional TV/movie critics - why should I care what they say? I can't relate to them at all, and their lives are a smaller than average sized slice of the glorious pizza pie that is the human experience. No amount of movie watching or history-of-cinema knowledge is going to make me care. Movies and TV are too complicated, is what it comes down to. These are works that are any combination and ratio of

I cannot trust someone who simply watches movies and writes about them for a living to fully understand what they are seeing. The notion is absurd to me - movies are not made for those people, unless they are, in which case they are rarely good except on accident. I say this as someone who listened to multiple movie review podcasts for years just to keep up with new releases and hopefully evaluate whether they would be something I was interested in. I no longer care about this, I'm jaded in regard to cinema - at least enough to be content with circling back around whenever I please to pick up from the detritus what reflects such light as can pierce through the nuclear winter sky of late June 2036.

Music

Too personal. Too fluid. On a personal level, I fail to constructively link my own tastes and find a common through-line which can direct my curiousity in any way that vaguely approaches something informative. When I was learning guitar as a child, I asked my dad "Who's the best guitar player ever?" and he wisely offered Stevie Ray Vaughan, which I still think is a decent answer to please such a naive query. Seeing Gojira live was my top musical performance of all time. I do field recordings as a creative hobby. Music critics have nothing, and everything, which is nothing, to offer me. I can't blame them.

Finally, Books

Here, I simply don't know what to make of things. Professionals are telling me about renowned short story writer Steven Josephson (of "The Camels Were Laughing" fame) as I nod along, sure, sure. Goodreads users are explaining their 2-star review of "Heart of Darkness" which is five paragraphs long and begins something like "Three weeks, one day, and four point five hours after I masturbated for the first time, I sat, immobile (sitting), in class for a geography test I hadn't studied for. But I couldn't forget the Congo River."

Navigate your mouse cursor over the proper button on your computer screen and you can, in the very next moment, read a review of Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" where some weak-hearted cretin stopped reading a book in their native language because they couldn't understand enough of the words in there, which has caused some neurotic niche web protocol enjoyer to settle in for a lengthy typing session.

Oh, I Forgot Video Games

Who gives a shit. The best gaming experience I've had in the last 15 years was on a "Mount & Blade: Napoleonic Wars" server where we as players would face off against an impossible number of NPCs, and, in our death throes, would long to once again be with our tiny moustachioed wife (who we loved too little) waiting for us in the house of Nikolai Andreyevich, whose frigidness as a father could now only warm a body shot through with smoke and fire and the indiscriminate sabre of history. Git gud IGN.

Lagrange Point