So I’ve been up to stuff.

Not the things I should be doing, of course. That’s too hard. I have been feeling very weak lately and that means my ability to resist and overcome my encyclopedia of issues is at an all time low.

Bottom five at best.

But I have at least done some things that added some novelty to my life, and by doing so, took a tiny little baby step towards my own recovery and added at least a few drops of vitality to my washed out and wimpy condition.

All I can do is wait for my next “good period”.

Man, that sucks.

Anyhow, the new thing I did most recently – as in less than five minutes ago – was watch the first episode of the new Ducktales series on Netflix.

Now as alert readers knows, I am extremely unfond of this modern trend of rebooting shit. I now accpet as an article of faith that the entire phenomenon of rebooting is doomed to emotionally savage those whom it should benefit the most, namely the long time fans who never stopped loving the rebooted thing and who have held a torch for it all the lonely years when it was obsolete and neglected.

The problem is that a love that strong tends to get very specific. Over the years, one’s appreciation for the beloved franchise deepens, and in the process, the fan in question homes in on what, exactly, it is that the makes them love their fave thing(s).

It’s the exactly same thing that happens with romantic love and deep friendship.

However, this means that any attempt to create more of the franchise would have to match an extremely detailed pattern in our putative fan’s mind and at least some of that pattern will be made of the fan’s memories of the franchise. and those memories were undoubtedly formed by a much younger version of the fan back when they were kids and hence a lot less critical of the world.

That’s why even the original product often disappoints us when we are adults. My go-to example of this is Spider Man And His Amazing Friends. When I was a kid, that was hands down my favorite show in the entire universe. Spidey is my guy and seeing him every Saturday morning made me deliriously happy.

I watch it now, and it’s quite cheesy. lame, and cheap.

So it goes.

Anyhow,. even if some creator somehow made a new product that completely matched a fan’s particular franchise DNA fingerprint, it still might lose out because it is now competing with those sacred memories and is therefore met with a hostility the fan often doesn’t even understand themselves.

And I very much include myself in this group of impossible to please fans. And I haven’t even gotten into how what matches one fan’s franchise specification no doubt physically violates the sacred memories of every other long term fans.

That said, the new Ducktales is pretty darn good.

I can say that because I was never into the original. As a kid, my only exposure to the comics on which the series is based was from when I was waiting for a haircut as a kid and the only thing to read was ancient kiddie comics from the days of Little LuLu.

To my fussy little self, those comics were hopelessly lame and pathetically dull and made me feel like the kids of the past must have been frigging brain damaged to have enjoyed those comics.

Ergo, not going to tune in to an after-school Disney show based on them.

The new show, however, is great. It’s action packed, unpredictable. colorfully animated, has superb voice acting (including Davis Tennant as Scroogle McDuck himself), and best of all, the writing is surprisingly witty even by adult standards.

I also approve of the addition of an enthusiastic (if somewhat squirrely) female duckling to the gang, mostly because she reminds me of my favorite part of Darkwing Duck, namely his daughter Goslyn Mallard.

So color me a fan of the new show! Tons o’ fun.

The other new thing is that I signed up for a service called Utomik.It bills itself as Netflix for games, and that is more or less what it is.

The idea is that for a monthly fee ($10 per month, quite reasonable) you get access to their entire collection of almost 800 games. I can download and play any of their games for as long as I want.

And the first 14 days are free. So, no real risk.

Now obviously, these are not going to be the latest hottest games. Most of them, in fact, are old and/or lame. So it’s hardly the great gamer’s smorgasbord they make it out to be. You can forget that notion right away. \

However, the fact that the games are old does not mean they all suck. So this could work well for me for when I am between AAA current titles and need something to play.

The other caveat is that, of course, you still need to download the thing in order to play it. It’s possible that the download is smaller than if you bought the thing on Steam, but it is still a long way from instant access.

No big deal, really. It still might be worth it to me. Time will tell. It’s a very reasonable monthly fee and the bottom line is that I can amass a game collection that would cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars if I bought the games individually for just 10 bucks a monthm and that’s potentuially very cool.

Although ironically, right now the game I am played via Utomik is Darksiders, a game I actually own and have played through twice before.

I played it ages ago and it’s an awesome game, but still. it seems ironic that after trying several other games via them, I ended up on the tried n’ true.

So those are the new-ish things in my life.

Kind of pathetic, aren’t they?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.