Like Ray Stevens, I Have Returned
“I Have Returned” was Ray Stevens’ 1985 album that included hits “The Haircut Song,” “Hugo (The Human Cannonball)” and “Santa Clause Is Watching You.” Seemed like a good subject line since I’ve been MIA for a solid two months. Part of it was because I was busy, the rest was because I hit a burnout wall right after all the busy ended.
Other than this newsletter, I’m taking a break for a few weeks. I’ve spent the past week not doing much except watching TV and playing Cyberpunk 2077, and I intend to do the same next week. I have the week after that off at my day job and will transition back into being useful by the end of my time off.
Deal of the Month
My latest (and probably final) Zine Quest project, My Name Is Hood, is now available in both PDF and print format. As a subscriber to this newsletter, you can get the print version for half price—just ten bucks—by using this link. The discount expires 11/05/2025.
Stuff I’ve Been Working On
In addition to My Name Is Hood, the Q3E SRD is now available for download. These are the rules I’ll be using for any future games I write, and you get to pick your price when you download them.
In game-related projects, I’m also about halfway done with Wet Hot American Monsters, a game about a summer camp for monsters. The original plan was to do a Kickstarter and try to release the PDF in time for Halloween, but then I remembered that there’s a multi-week wait between the end of the Kickstarter and getting the payments confirmed, and the time just wasn’t there. The new plan is to run the Kickstarter in later October so it ends on Halloween and release the book by Christmas (this also puts less rush on the artist(s) if we hit the stretch goals).
I’ve also put some new T-shirts up at the Etsy shop, which you should buy.
Media Roundup
Books
Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading by Nadia Asparouhova is a book that asks a question in the title but only answers that question, in the broadest, most theoretical way possible. I think it’s aimed at a more academic audience or something, because most of it landed in the “kind of interesting but not really useful.”
Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani is about the coming AI apocalypse, and the basic idea is the same one I’ve voiced, which is the effects of AI are going to depend on how we implement it. Like me, Bastani believes that AI can lead to great things if we can keep neoliberalism from ruining it. Bastani seems to lean more toward technocratic solutions than I’d like, but overall it’s a good read.
Movies
Eenie Meanie: A Baby Driver variant starring Samara Weaving.
Foolproof: This is an old heist movie starring Ryan Reynolds that I’ve been meaning to watch forever. It’s pretty good.
Night Teeth: Forgettable vampire flick.
Thunderbolts: I enjoyed the movie right up until they saved New York with a group hug. I’m starting to miss sky lasers.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey: Pretty much what you’d expect.
Freaky Tales: This is the good kind of weird.
Wolf Man: Was fine.
Escape Room: Decent horror flick with a Saw vibe.
Brick: This isn’t terrible, but there’s definitely a “if we make it weird enough nobody will see the plot holes” vibe.
Zeroville: Is kind of like a bad version of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Ballerina: Maybe it’s just because I’ve been playing Cyberpunk, but this one seemed like it was structured even more like a video game than the other John Wick movies.
TV Shows
Twisted Metal is way better than it has any right to be.
Wednesday season 2 was more of the same, which is fine with me. I like the Thing origin and Christopher Lloyd as a head in a jar.
I couldn’t remember if I’d seen all of Mr. Robot the first time around, but watching it again I can say for sure that I never saw the final season. I want a spin-off where Irving and Leon do crime together.
Currently watching Peacemaker, but I think I only have 1 episode left. It continues to be a ridiculously fun show, and this season Michael Rooker showed up to make it an official James Gunn production.
Games
When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, I didn’t have a computer that could run it, so I bought it on Google Stadia. I kind of played straight through and finished the game, but Stadia got cancelled before I got a chance to do a lot of exploring and sidequests. When I got the new computer, I figured I’d eventually try the game again. Last week I got an offer to get the game and expansion for under $40, so I bought it while it was on sale. I wasn’t intending to play it immediately, but I did and that’s pretty much where my last week has gone.
That’s it for this time. I’ll try to avoid long gaps between newsletters for a while now.
TYTYVM,
Steve
©2024, Steve Johnson