Chapter 235

I woke up late and relaxed in the crib during the daytime hours, to escape the heat. Looking for stuff to watch on YouTube, I stumbled upon a channel called Analysis Of Evil, based on the antagonist or anti-hero of popular movies. It’s really great, and I watched a few of them, about the bad guy in Training Day, No Country For Old Men, Taxi Driver and Breaking Bad. The latter was particularly long and in-depth, going at length about what makes Walter White such an interesting character. It made me want to revisit the show in the intended format, so I watched a full episode, one from Season 4 that was particularly acclaimed. There are aspects of the show that grate me a bit (the absolutely retarded storyline with the twin bald Mexican hitmen, and the whole arc with the plane crash) but there’s no denying it’s one of the best TV series of all time. The acting, the cinematography, the pacing, the build-up and denouement, it’s so on point. I’ll do a full rewatch one day, for sure.

I sat down writing my diary, and looked for music. I put on EPs and tracks by Agalloch, some kind of atmospheric post-metal, beautiful music that your grandma would find cool if you removed the harsh vocals. Then in the evening I went to the gym, the BJJ guys were resting but the big Kazakh and the eccentric Ukrainian came and we practiced wrestling together. They were speaking in their weird communist language, and I was a bit surprised, I could understand more than I thought I would. I should get back to studying Russian, I have books at home and went over the basics (that I polished during my travels to Soviet countries) but when you start clawing your way towards a lower intermediate level, you get a serious kick in the nuts, their grammar rules seem to have been written by Satan himself.

I sprained my thumb during a grappling exchange, being a useless noob who doesn’t have the muscle memory and reflexes of sticking all the fingers together like a big claw. At first I thought I could just shake it off and work around it, but the more we went, the more painful it got. Ah well. What’s a boy to do?

I rode to a small park to meet the girlfriend and the dog and we went home. Dinner was a bunch of leftovers while we watched The Office, and then I watched two episodes of Bad Blood. I’m torn, it’s a really good mafia story with unexpected twists but the fact that it’s set in Montreal and everybody just speaks English seriously fucken grates me. Isn’t Narcos super popular, and nearly all in Spanish with subtitles? I’m sure the average moron could handle having actual Quebecers on screen. It’s particularly infuriating since the chucklefuck producer, in an interview, said that the series (inspired by the true story of the Risotto family) had to “be developed in Canada by Canadians”. Which means completely erasing French speakers, I guess. Doubly ironic in the age of “inclusivity” and “representation” and “shoving gay black characters in every possible slot because it’s 2021”.