Red Skull Real Identity: Johann Schmidt Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Characteristics and Powers: Johann Schmidt is basically Hitler in everything but serial number. But given that he doesn’t have to stay in Berlin and manage a country, he’s allowed to be more mobile and active. He’s always had an interest in trinkets and artifacts that could advance the Third Reich. To that end, he took an injection of Super Soldier Serum developed by Dr. Erskine. It enhanced all his physical traits, but mutated his face into a hideous, gaunt crimson skull. One of the artifacts he found was the Tesseract (a.k.a. the cosmic cube, Space Stone), long buried…
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Weight Part 2 — Homeward Zepbound: The Incredible Journey
I didn’t expect to give an update on this, but here’s one. I’ve been having some trouble with doctors retiring or moving on me. The one before my current one just seemed… frantic? Like I came in to get a physical and she pointed out all these other things wrong with me. I had a weird mole. I was making noise when I breathed through my nose (which is apparently not supposed to happen). I had pre-diabetes, liver problems, high blood pressure. None of this stuff did my previous doctor talk to me about (or notice? or care about?). I went from being a fit forty to a middle-aged corpse.…
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New Short Story: Window
One of my new flash fictions, “Window“, is available on Burial Books. Go read!
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The Books I Read: May – June 2025
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay Paul Tremblay wrote The Cabin at the End of the World (Movie: Knock at the Cabin), which I liked and this kept popping up on my Amazon feed, and it seemed like it would hit all my buttons. I’m impressed with his style. He doesn’t use any metaphors or similes like I do. The result of that, though, is that the book comes off as pretentious. It feels like a book the author wanted to be IMPORTANT. Like he wanted it to be taught in schools and have study guides written about it. And that means reading this is like deciphering a puzzle. There are…
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Analyzing the Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains: Sebastian Shaw (X-Men: First Class)
Sebastian Shaw X-Men: First Class (2011) Characteristics and Powers: Sebastian Shaw has a mutant power that lets him absorb energy (mostly explosives and such). This keeps him young and expands his lifespan. I don’t know how old he is, but he can speak several languages and gained influence to get meetings with top-tier politicians and military officers. Reminds me of a Bond villain, especially with a submarine and ship. Usually you don’t see masterminds last this long, but I attribute it to having good henchmen (his “Hellfire Club”). He’s got one person who’s both telepathic and invulnerable, another who can teleport, and another who… blows really hard. Well, they can’t…
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Things I Think About
According to the game Lordle, the word “boner” is somewhere in the Lord of the Rings books. Could Taylor Swift be a real-life Dazzler from X-Men? My wife told me, compared to Our Flag Means Death, I look masculine. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. No one believes they are evil because every side thinks they are the good guy. That’s fine. But a plan to help people shouldn’t mean having to hurt others. A plan like that is not a good plan. That’s how you tell if you’re evil or not. Wicked is a movie based on a musical based on a book based on…
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More Thoughts About AI (and Its Inevitability)
Been thinking more about AI. There was an incident a few weeks ago about a video game “caught” using AI. The developers left some placeholder text and translations in, consisting of 0.3% of the game’s content. And everyone lost their freakin’ monkey minds. Which left me wondering, “does it really matter”? The editorialist thought it did, because A) AI is built on theft B) there were easy substitutes like lorem ipsum. Translations may take time and money, but it’s the right professional thing to do. But when has a company ever been concerned about “the right thing”? They are always going to pick the thing that costs the least time…
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Men’s Issues: What Are They?
I can’t remember what triggered this issue, so I’m just going to get into it. I watched a documentary called The Red Pill. The documentary was not good. It was propaganda, which is why I don’t like documentaries. They only give one side of the issue–the one the producer wants to promote. A filmmaker can manipulate a film so much to give you what they want you to see and feel (e.g. Super Size Me, White Wilderness, Tiger King, Dinesh D’Souza stuff, Bill Maher stuff, Michael Moore stuff, anything involving haunted places). They’re entirely biased and often lie. And if they’re not lying, they’re omitting or misrepresenting. They ignore questions…
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Analyzing the Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains: Loki (Thor)
Loki Thor (2011) Characteristics and Powers: These people are legendary and mythical gods, so the things they can do tend to be ambiguous. It also means their weaknesses are ambiguous (like when Odin has to fall into the Odinsleep, then wakes up with no apparent reason for either). All I can go on is what is demonstrated in the movies, and their limitations seem to be absent. We know Loki was born as a Jotun a.k.a. frost giant. But Odin can and has disguised him as an Asgardian. We know he can make illusions/doppelgangers of himself. How tangible they are, I don’t know, but I figure it’s related to how…
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Where Are the Romances for Men?
So I was going through some favorites I marked on Imgur that I’d forgotten about. Recipes, useful information, quotes. One of them was this sequence of posts. To sum up, someone asks the question “Why aren’t there romance stories for men? Why is the romance genre is exclusively targeted at women?” And the provided answer (short version) is that, for women, love is something that “happens” to them. But men are the ones who have to work to make that happen. And this rings true to me. Here are some most loved romances by women to prove it. In Pride & Prejudice, Darcy pursues Lizzy. Lizzy just kinda sits back…
