Category: uncategorized

the solution for a claustrophobic astronaut is to give him more space

Alien: Romulus is the ninth film in the Alien series, and it’s a mixed bag. The plot lacks depth, but David Jonsson’s performance as Andy the Android was a highlight. Rain, the main character, and her gang get into trouble with aliens while trying to escape their grim mining colony. Overall, I give it a 7/10.

Review for Alien: Romulus (2024) – 7/10 – SPOILERS AHEAD!

Alien: Romulus is the ninth movie in the Alien franchise, set right between Alien and Aliens. If you need the lore, I’d recommend checking out Alien and Prometheus before seeing this movie, solely because those are my favorites.

I have to give this movie a solid 7/10, and it would be a 6/10 except for the performance of David Jonsson, who plays Andy the Android. In general, the plot was lacking substance, but I was excited to see a sci-fi with body horror and suspense elements. I think the ending could’ve been taken even further, and I’ll explain what I wish happened.

The main character is Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a girl who lives with her “brother” Andy, an android (aka synthetic human) in a sad mining colony on an unhealthy planet. Her friends, who all seem like kind of awful people with big problems due to the living situation sucking so much, convince her to break into a ship that is floating around their planet’s rings to steal cryostasis pods that they can use to ship themselves to a better planet. Plot twist, aliens are on the ship and want to kill them, and do. That’s pretty much the whole plot.

The cast of characters includes:

  • Tyler, the only semi-rational character other than Rain, played by Archie Renaux. I really loved him in Shadow and Bone so was excited to see him in this film. I love him as a love interest, though I thought his character was a little boring.
  • Tyler’s sister Kay is a mostly ineffective character who reveals she is pregnant and that the father is “some jerk.” Her actress is Isabela Merced, who was also Dora the Explorer (iconic!!!) in the live-action films. Though she’s very popular online (she has 4M Instagram followers), I’ve never seen her act before. I kind of hated this character because pregnant Hispanic woman in space was meh. As a Hispanic woman myself, I wish she was just mentally a stronger character or more capable generally.
  • Bjorn, aka “some jerk”. He’s British, unintelligible, has anger issues, and hates Andy because his parents were killed in one of the mines when an android made the decision to sacrifice some people to let more live. I wish there were subtitles when he spoke because I did not pick up on all the lines he delivered. The actor, Spike Fearn, was great at portraying the angry guy who makes poor decisions. Side note, I think this guy should play Sid Vicious if they make another biopic.
  • Navarro is either also romantically linked to Bjorn or just a friend of the squad, and she had the earliest death and probably the least amount of screen time. For those reasons, I feel neutral about her actress, Aileen Wu. She dies a true facehugger-to-chestburster death, and that’s the last of her.
  • Rook is the last character, a synthetic human engineer who works for The Company. This character is kind of Andy’s spirit guide, while also leading to the subplot of the Black Goo of Life. Alien: Romulus used AI to bring back the late great Sir Ian Holm’s likeness for this android, and although I don’t think it was necessary, I didn’t find that it distracted me or hurt the film. It was more of a huh, okay, moment.
  • The Thing that Kay gave birth to was really creepy, and cool, and this is where I wish things had been taken so much further. It goes to its mother and I wish it had done something truly awful like breastfed or started crying for her to hold it. The best part of the movie was this sickening creature, and instead, we wasted time on things like introducing and killing Navarro for 0 reasons.

There were some great suspenseful moments in this film, like when Rain and Andy find themselves in a scary, aliens-are-all-around-us-and-could-come-kill-us-at-any-moment passage and Andy is having the equivalent of an android seizure. You want him to be okay, and you’re worried about the aliens who seem to be able to just fly down from these really tall corridors at any moment.

I didn’t find that I cared that much about any of the characters’ deaths because they chopped through them so quickly. The only character I was rooting for was Rain, because you kind of just knew everyone else was meant to die.

I give it a 7/10 because it was cool and thrilling and set in space, and for Andy.

dreams never made us kings and queens, our dragons did

House of the Dragon Season 2 thoughts

I just finished House of the Dragon season 2 and although I feel a little blah about the ending, I think it was really interesting and the characters developed well throughout the season. I have read the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I have not read Fire & Blood, so I am basing my opinions purely on the show. Spoilers below!

I love that Daemon Targaryen finally bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen. I really wanted them to be a power couple in this series – I imagined there would be a beautiful scene where Daemon and Rhaenyra would fly Caraxes and Syrax side by side, gazing across the sky at each other and sharing a look of trust before diving into battle. It was disappointing that he was off having bad, even gross dreams and wandering the spooky grounds of Harrenhall and lowkey (highkey?) attempting to take the crown for himself. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra had to prove she was worthy of the title to people who questioned her because she was a woman even though aside from rather recklessly tossing Targaryen bastards in front of dragons, she’s been fairly levelheaded.

If he had supported her sooner, I don’t think she would have kissed Mysaria aka the White Worm aka MISS DO NOT TRUST. I really hate that since Daemon was off on his vision quest, Rhaenyra put a lot of trust into this questionable whisperer. I don’t think she will end up being a good character but we’ll see. Her nickname worm is foreshadowing to me, no one good was ever called a worm. Also, she banged Daemon and Rhaenyra is just like let’s be besties hehe let’s kiss too?!? Are we just going to let that slide? You’re telling me no one in that whole castle doesn’t think this is weird? I just know looksmaxxed Prince Jacaerys Velaryon would have some things to say to his mom and jut that sharp little chin out while he says it. I can hear him saying, “My uncle Daemon’s dragon is called Blood Wyrm, then he bedded the White Worm, can’t we let worms/wyrms be his thing? Why must you, my Queen, also be into worms?”

I feel like we needed some more episodes to truly feel some of the more emotional parts of the season like the loss of Princess Rhaenys. She really is my Queen Who Never Was and she died fighting like a true dragonrider, but I didn’t feel the impact as much as I might have if we got to see her relationship with Rhaenyra develop more. I would have liked to have seen more screen time between the two (ideally less wormy, more Rhaenys). Only 8 episodes really didn’t feel like enough, I think it should have been 12 episodes and I hope they make future seasons longer.

I liked the way the golden dragons looked, especially Sunfyre (RIP?). When I watch fantasy shows or read fantasy books, I think this is how every dragon should look. Sunfyre is so beautiful and magnificent to watch. Syrax is a close second for me, her deeper gold scales and the intelligent look in her eyes complement Rhaenyra’s aesthetic well. This season, I particularly liked seeing how the dragons’ personalities mirror their riders’ personalities and I’m looking forward to seeing those interactions more in season 3.

I, like everyone else, am waiting patiently for Ser Criston Cole to be killed but I like that his character got quieter so he was less annoying the second half of the season. No new remarks from me that can’t be found in any other comment section.

I am ready for Queen Alicent Hightower to be punished for marrying Rhaenyra’s dad, having his kids, deciding last minute to develop a serious comprehension issue and not questioning that Viserys Targaryen would suddenly not want his beloved daughter to be queen, royally fucking over her childhood friend and starting this whole war. For being such a misogynist, I think she’s a bad mom, and really that should be the only thing going for her at this point. I didn’t like when she forced sweet, witchy weird Helaena Targaryen to march behind her dead son and get overstimulated and mobbed, especially after forcing her to marry her degenerate himbo brother Aegon Targaryen. I super didn’t like that Alicent neglected Aemond Targaryen for years and contributed to him becoming a rizzy asshole with mommy issues. She doesn’t really support Aegon, kind of leaving him on a deathbed after he was burned, so it just feels like I’m wondering who does she support, besides herself? I will caveat that even with all her faults, it’s creepy and wrong that she was abused by Larys Strong and that she has to live in the same castle with him hanging around. That probably means that she just never really feels safe anywhere, since she doesn’t really have anywhere else to go in the middle of the war and that is sad. I feel like the final scene in the season finale between her and Rhaenyra was a bit of a waste, since there wasn’t anything new or redeemable for Alicent. She isn’t good for her family, isn’t good for the realm, and everyone is rejecting her as her opinions hold little to no power now so let Syrax eat her, and let’s move on.

I like that Helaena seemingly has some supernatural or otherworldliness to her. I wasn’t sure where they were taking her character, though she did always seem dreamy and trancelike in a Luna Lovegood type of way. I hope she has some powers like Bran the Broken or the character Alys Rivers who helped Daemon see that he needed to chill out and take a knee. I loved seeing her speak up to Aemond and am excited to see more of her in season 3.

Let me know what you think! Maybe I’m wrong and some of these characters are totally redeemable.

sea monkeys and illegal tiny turtles

When I was a kid I had a very precise fascination with small animals. It all started with sea monkeys. I remember my dad going to Fry’s Electronics often, although I can’t remember what he ever needed to go for. My family would split up and while my dad looked for whatever it was we went to Fry’s for, my little brothers and I would go wreak havoc on the toy aisle. One of the toys was the Amazing Live Sea Monkeys: The World’s Only Instant Pets.

I cannot eloquently enough explain the grip that those brine shrimp had on me, but I wanted them with every fiber of my being. I had never had a pet, but I knew I would be an excellent raiser of sea monkeys. I would beg him to let me buy the box that came with a watch that you could put the sea monkeys in to bring them with you everywhere you went. I wanted to hatch them and show my friends at school that I had leveled up from Nintendogs and gotten real-life pets.

Eventually, he let me get them, and I did hatch them. They didn’t actually do anything but float around, and there weren’t as many of them as I thought there would be, but I was very proud that I followed the directions and got my very own pets. I did attempt to put some of them in the clear watch tank, but it had a leak and the poor shrimp were lost somewhere on my walk to elementary school. The rest of the sea monkeys died when I tried to clean their little tank and my dad poured the glass I put them in down the sink.

I ended up setting my sights on a pet that was not nearly invisible to the naked eye.

During the summer, my family would go to the swap meet most Sundays. We would browse the tents, listen to whatever live classic rock cover band was playing, and my mom would let us get Slurpees. I received an allowance of $5 a week for vacuuming the house and had saved enough allowances to buy a turtle from a vendor at the swap meet who also sold little bamboo plants. I named him Pistachio, although I never did learn the gender of the turtle. It was very little and ate pellets that fogged up the water in its tank very quickly, smelling up my room so badly that it became a large point of contention in my household. My pet was stinky, but I loved him.

I only learned later that the turtle was likely very illegal to sell/buy/own, and it turns out that the same type of tiny turtles resulted in kids getting salmonella. I never got salmonella from him or from eating raw cookie dough (which I did very often as a kid), and the next time we went to the swap meet, the turtle seller was no longer a vendor. Pistachio stopped eating after about a month, and one day he closed his little eyes forever.

I came home to find his little corpse and the agony and grief my little 11-year-old self felt wracked my body for weeks. Today, at 25, I don’t think I would ever get another small pet like a turtle or hamster, but I have found myself researching sea monkeys.

old man sickness voice

I have a love/hate relationship with my voice in the morning. I can’t tell if it’s a very hot and sexy phone sex haver voice or if it’s an old man with a chronic illness voice. Probably somewhere in between.

For the first hour after I wake up I am either a raspy goddess or an old man who isn’t exactly surprised he woke up to another day on the earth but not happy about it either.

I very seldom speak for that first hour to make sure no one tells me I am the latter. It’s my secret chameleon voice that only lasts 60 minutes before it disappears.

wind and roses

I love my old cardigan that’s too stretched out to fit my shoulders and that has the huge hole in the right pocket. It isn’t white any more, but has turned into this cream color.

I like that now the sky isn’t immediately dark, but stays light enough that you can see the clouds at 8 p.m.

I can see the velvety roses and watch the wind blow the flag across the street and listen to the quiet. I’m always surprised that my street is so quiet because it’s so close to such a loud scene.

I love when the sprinklers come on when I walk by, and it feels silly but I smile every time my heels just make it across before a puddle forms behind me. Like I am this untouchable thing, a mini sun that cannot be washed away by the sprinkling rain. Maybe since it’s at night I’m instead a mini moon and my phone is the glow.

I wonder if there are still rainbows forming in the moonlight but we just can’t see them. There are probably little rainbows all over but the cones and rods in our eyes are too dumb to see them.

I want to run through sprinklers holding sparklers and not get itchy from the grass at all.

I would walk very far without my phone if I wasn’t so bad with directions. I love to leave my phone behind places so I don’t have to talk to anyone but I would never find my way back to it.

genius only comes along in storms of fabled foreign tongues

It feels like taking melatonin and getting slowly sleepier and sleepier except I don’t feel like going to sleep I just feel comfort and like I am testing my own patience like a rubber band.

In my head I am sending you waves of pink and red and white and in person I am snapping the invisible rubber band against my wrist again to literally snap out of it.

Talking to you feels like lighting a candle and feeling the warmth and smelling something clean and strong like fresh laundry, but from someone else’s house so I can’t pinpoint the exact brand.

You are not soft but constant and bold. I have always hidden my softness and hidden my strength and I worry that you still can’t, will never see either.

creepy crawlies

They say there are eyelash mites found in bunches at the base of your eyelashes. They say that on average, 61.84 spiders can be found per home at any given time. They say 63% of homes in the U.S. contain cockroaches and their particles, including saliva, droppings, and decomposing body parts.

They say the average person creates 1/3 ounce of dead skin each week, which is about the weight of a car key. This dead skin combines with other particles to create household dust. While that 1/3 ounce doesn’t seem like much, the average home in the United States collects 40 pounds of dust each year. Many people claim to be allergic to dust, but in many cases they are actually having an allergic reaction to dust mites. These mites eat the dead skin and their dead bodies and fecal matter cause allergic reactions in people. Up to 500 dust mites can survive on just 1 gram of dust.

You can roll an entire strand of hair behind your eyeball and pull it out inch by inch, the pus in zits can pop out past three feet, and a blood clot from a nosebleed can reach eight inches (according to them).

You produce about 1.5 quarts of mucus a day, and swallow the vast majority. There is a lot to not need to know about mucus, snot, and boogers.

In conclusion: I have enough to worry about that is out of my control, so can you please brush your teeth so I do not need to smell your breath in public while my house is being secretly overrun by arachnids?

I know I’ll never really be alone because I’ll always have my snot to comfort me.

Can you PLEASE take a shower at reasonable intervals so I can focus on not breathing in the dead skin of myself, anyone who has ever entered my home, and the mites that have eaten and pooped it out?

the inaugural address of a girl who cannot cook (but is trying to learn)

Good morning my corn tortillas of ambition, waiting to be filled with the ground beef of knowledge, the spicy guacamole of wisdom, the shredded cheddar of good judgement, and the iceberg lettuce of compassion.

I have gathered ye all here today to hold me accountable. I am on the path to becoming America’s Next Top Above-Average Chef and although I will most likely never check in again on my cooking ability progress, I hope you will join me in sending the Good Vibes of Justice to whatever benevolent god grants cooking abilities to slightly lazy young women.

I have the Tools of Kitchen Utility: an instant pot, an oven, lots of mismatched utensils, measuring cups and spoons, a vegetable chopper that doth not fucking work and is on my laste nerve, and a magic bullet.

It is with these tools and the ingredients readily available at Trader Joe’s that I will craft the easiest and yet shockingly yummy meals that have graced this planet.

Haters, my good people, will say it’s fake but my cooking progress hit an upward spike this year starting at around summer. By summer 2021, I may be ready for one Michelin star. Only time will tell.

I am making the entire Thanksgiving meal this week and I can smell the fear on my family’s skin.

FEAR NOT, FAMILY. FOR I AM CONFIDENT IN A 70% EDIBLE MEAL.

We’ll see how it goes, xoxo gobble girl (yikes).

Clear-rimmed glasses

I don’t understand why in California, optometrists are not considered essential. I have really bad eyesight, and I ran out of contacts in March when the whole pandy really took off.

I found a pair of old clear-rimmed glasses and I like the look of them but I think they’re too strong of a prescription. The first time I wore them a couple years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and twisted both my ankles. I had to call my roommate to help me walk back up the stairs and I skipped my classes for that day, half out of embarrassment because I didn’t want anyone to see me attempt to go back down the stairs again.

I like the way these glasses look, and I do see everything in a crisper way, but I also get a little bit of a headache.

My current glasses are all scratched up and I think I stepped on them at one point or something because they also don’t sit flat on my nose. There’s a tilt to the upper left and that throws me off sometimes.

I ran out of contacts in March, right around when California went into a lockdown. I really wish optometrists were considered essential. I don’t see how getting a haircut is different from getting a prescription to see.

I can’t wait to hear “which one is better, one or two?” and not know!! I like being able to do my eye makeup and see, not choose one or the other.

centrality preference

Why don’t you just meet me in the middle? Or why I only go pee in the first bathroom stall.

I read an article a long time ago that has stuck with me for life. It said that the first stall in a public bathroom is always the cleanest, because people tend to skip it for one further back to have more privacy.

The middle ones have the most germs, because of a weird human trait called “centrality preference.” According to a study published in the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, it is an implicit rule that makes people prefer items located in the middle, but not those at the extreme ends.

Things in the middle are looked at longer, and remembered better than things on the extreme ends so it makes us feel more comfortable to choose middle things.

The study asks you to imagine a bowl of coffee beans and you have to sort out good ones from the bad ones. You would usually put the good ones in a pile right in front of you and leave the bad ones in the bowl or put them to either side. We put important things in the middle of the photograph when we take pictures, too.

I wonder if it’s more significant in other ways too. Does centrality preference dictate even more things in my life? Beyond where I pee?

I always sat in second row in class, towards the front but not the actual front. I never sat in the back or the middle. I think half of the reason is because of my shitty ass eyesight (I can never see the board) and the other half is because I like to know things. I like learning. I like class. I don’t want to slouch in the back or blend in with the middle kids, but at the same time I’m not a front rower.

Everyone knows if you don’t know the answer to a multiple choice question you pick ‘C.’ You just do it, and you feel like it was a wise guess.

Grocery stores stock their shelves with the least expensive items at the bottom because we’re least likely to buy them. We choose what’s in the middle of our line of sight, probably a more expensive name brand instead of the affordable generic brand.

I would never pick the first thing off the menu at a restaurant. I tend to scan through the rest of the page before ultimately deciding. The best thing is never the first thing.

I really wonder how far this thing goes. How many times have I picked something just because it’s in the middle? And was it really the best thing I could have picked?