Wheels of Diarrhea - R30 Issue #15
Apologies for not writing a newsletter last week, but I came down with a severe case of food poisoning. I was eating a donut which I presumed had a tart apple filling, but afterwards I was told it was actually peach. Peach?
I should have been smarter. What ensued was fever dreams and sitting on the shitter until my legs fell asleep. Then I lay down on the bathroom floor until my legs were usable again. Fun times!
The fever dreams were cool, though. Well, not really. The first night I dreamt I was Russia, and had to negotiate a peace treaty with Ukraine. Very tricky. Also, why am I the bad guys? The following night I had a voice talking to me about my blanket, arguing that I should use a different brand, and adjust its position. The whole night I was switching brands (like in a video game where you switch the skin of a gun) and adjusting its position on my body. Absolutely annoying, obsessive-compulsive shit. Incredible.
Then came Saturday. My mind and body were still weak, so I didn’t feel like reading a Russian novel or studying maths. Things I normally do. So I decided to watch something stupid, something I don’t really care about. Something to binge while getting better. And so the almighty Algo recommended a show to me. And it was called: The Wheel of Time. Rosamund Pike as a sexy, powerful witch fighting demons or something. I was in!
It was pretty OK. Well, it had to be, because I binged the entire first two seasons in two days. That’s like 8 hours each. Not that I had anything better to do. Even if I wanted to. It’s standard fantasy fare, but the cast is very diverse. Probably the most diverse of any fantasy show I’ve ever seen. But - and that’s a big but - the main superhero is, of course, the whitest of the white guys, Mr Whitey White-White. He is the Dragon Reborn (oops, spoilers). Part of me thinks you have to feature a white guy as the main force of good, or the fantasy crowd will revolt. I don’t know too much about that demographic, but every time someone dares to feature a person of color in a fantasy-adjacent work of fiction, people revolt. Maybe it’s just a small and loud subset.
Another thing worth noting is the gender politics in Wheel of Time. There’s this special magic power, and only women get to practice it. Because if men do it, they go insane. So you have this Inquisition that scours the lands for male casters, killing them. You also have another faction that kills every magic user, but that’s another story. The female casters are part of a special org that has its seat in the White Tower. Pretty phallic but ok, it was written by a guy after all. Each woman is assigned a special Warder to protect her. This is pretty funny, basically a fuccboi with a sword that never leaves her side. Think romance novels about butch pirates, instead here the woman is the figure of authority with arguably more power. At one point, one of the women dies in battle, and her Warder gets so depressed, he kills himself. Yes, it is very corny. But I loved it. Perfect for recovery from food poisoning.
But links! I guess you want links. Well, there are some things to write about. A new trailer for Death Stranding 2 released. It’s the sequel to the Hiking Simulator by Hideo Kojima. Never played it, but basically you have to carry packages over mountains, and there’s also black goo monsters, and babies, and the actress that played Wonder Woman. It’s all very Kojima, and wonderful. Here’s a Youtube video explaining the lore of the first part. There’s also the reveal trailer for DS2 that released a couple years back.
In car related news, someone took the Jaguar Type 00 to the Paris Fashion Week. That is a big plonker. I still remember when concept cars weren’t the size of vans. But technically the Jag isn’t concept any longer. Neither is the Renault 5 Turbo, but it very well looks like it. Phwoah! No, but it looks really cool. So does the Bugatti Bolide. What never looked cool, and might go the way of the dodo, is a VW with no physical buttons. Yes, they are coming back! Can you believe it. Things you can press and turn and stuff. In sad news, the Volvo station wagon might become a thing of the past. All those Swedish memories, lost in time.
K-Pop. Dreamcatcher is no longer. The Metal-Rock-Pop ensemble behind Scream, the most on-point K-Pop track for the covid pandemic, got disbanded. Have an acapella version while you scream goodbye.
You scream, I scream, we all want Bible cream. Boy, this is a long newsletter. Gonna finish it with this week’s holy quote, courtesy of the Book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon’s mid-life crisis blog.
Better to hear the quiet words of a wise person than the shouts of a foolish king.
References:
https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time
https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon
https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Jordan
https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Warder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdzIwQhYABQ
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1850570/DEATH_STRANDING_DIRECTORS_CUT/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtYXoOowKQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jB6pb_8E5E
https://www.motor1.com/news/753044/jaguar-00-concept-weirder-road/
https://carstyling.ru/en/car/1993_nissan_ap_x/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvIeTDrEXo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlbJHZnK5gE
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/volkswagen-reintroducing-physical-controls-vital-functions
https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/volvo-doesnt-need-wagons-anymore-says-suvs-are-the-future/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKlGHHhTOsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLqs3_gCvIQ
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%209&version=NLT
Transmission electron micrograph of multiple rotavirus particles by Dr Graham Beards
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