Pretty Non-Productive
Issue #124: "I Pledge Allegiance But Not To This....."
Greetings readers. Welcome to the first issue of The Otter Limits for 2025!
I gotta say that this past week felt very non-productive (hence the title of this issue). I barely read anything, barely watched anything. I’m still doing that project management certification course. I talked about that in The Philly Beef Algorithm. I did some work on that this week. I only have a few weeks left in that class. I also started another certification course online a few weeks ago. It’s a Google certification course in Digital Marketing and E-Commerce. That one is a self paced course so I’m not very far along in that one. Mostly because I have very little motivation in general right now but also because, so far, the lessons have been a little boring because it’s not stuff that I don’t already know. I will, of course, finish it eventually.
It’s been really hard to feel motivated lately. I’m still out of work. I’ve been looking for jobs and have had a couple of interviews here and there but nothing has panned out. I’ve gotten quite a few, for lack of a better term, rejection emails. I gotta say that is has been really frustrating. I know a lot of people are out of work. I just didn’t think I would be one of those people. I have now been out of work for 2 months. This is the longest I have been out of work since I started working in my mid-teens. Again. Really frustrating.
Well, since I don’t want this issue to be one giant bummer, I will end that talk here and move on to the normal stuff. Enjoy.
Only a couple of new releases caught my ear on Friday.
Quiet Houses - Carried Away
Tidewinder - Null Gaze
Also, I thought I’d show you my top 10 most listened to albums of the year.
Heart Beats Pacific - Banner Pilot
You Can’t Stay Here - Iron Chic
Blow It - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
Same Places - New Junk City
Metropole - The Lawrence Arms
Oh! Calcutta! - The Lawrence Arms
Regenerate - Crooked Little Suns
No Control - Bad Religion
VOWS - Hot Water Music
Hoss - Lagwagon
Since I haven’t found a job yet and haven’t got my comic book pull list back up to “normal,” there were only 2 comic books on my pull list last week.
Absolute Superman #3
Batman #156.
Other than that, the only thing I read last week was a re-read some of the Zeb Well’s run of Amazing Spider-Man:
Sometime during the week, I wound up going to the theater in the middle of the day and watching Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It was weird to go watch this one alone because I saw 1 and 2 with my son. It was kind of a thing and with him not being around I didn’t get to watch it with him.
As far as streaming goes, I watched a couple of movies yesterday:
Injustice - 2021 animated film based on the 2013 video game Injustice: Gods Among Us. It wasn’t bad. Not completely faithful to the source material but pretty close.
Lady Bird - This is a 2017 film that I never watched when it came out. I guess I wasn’t really all that interested in it but it popped up while I was searching for movies to watch so I figured why not. It’s okay. Nothing that blew my non-existent hair back though.
A while back, I don’t remember how long ago, I bought a Playstation 5. I still have my Xbox and that is my main console for gaming but I bought the PS5 so that I could play a game that was only available on that console. That game was Spider-Man 2. I had played the first Spider-Man game when I had my PS4 and really enjoyed it. When I got the PS5, I wound up playing the Miles Morales Spider-Man game and really enjoyed that one too but, at the time, the Spider-Man 2 video game had not been released. Well, the game release came and went and I never got around to buying it. The version of the PS5 that I bought was the digital version so I had to wait until the price of the game came down. So anyway…..a long time later….I received a Playstation gift card for Xmas so I used it to buy the game. Interestingly enough, the game was on sale when I bought it. I started playing that and so far I’m really enjoying that.
Also in video gaming, I got a wild hair to start a new playthrough of Mass Effect. The legendary edition was available for free on Game Pass so I downloaded that and started playing that too.
So playing video games took up quite a bit of my time last week. I wouldn’t really call that productive but it’s something.
I’m not sure how many of my readers actually care about sports but from time to time I do include a bit. Do you care about this stuff? Should I bother to keep including this segment? Lemme know in the comments.
I don’t follow American football very heavily but I do tend to keep my eye on what is going on with the Seahawks and the Bears.
It is the last week of the regular season in the NFL. The Bears won their game yesterday (Sunday Jan 5) against the Green Bay Packers. However, they are in last place so the win didn’t really help their playoff chances. The Seahawks won their game yesterday against the Rams. Their season has been better than the Bears. As of this writing, they are in 2nd place in their division (ironically, behind the Rams). I imagine that their win will put them in the playoff picture but I don’t know enough about how all that works and don’t care enough to find out.
My biggest preference in regards to sports is hockey. I follow the Blackhawks and the Stars mostly but I will keep an eye on the new Seattle team (the Kraken) from time to time. The Blackhawks (Chicago) and the Stars (Dallas) are both in the same division. Chicago has not had a great season. As of today’s writing they are in last place. Dallas is doing better than Chicago and they are currently in 3rd place. There is still a ways to go in the season though. The regular season doesn’t end until April.
The other sport I follow a bit is soccer (futbol). I used to be a season ticket holder for a couple of teams here in the OKC metro area but they don’t play anymore so I pretty much only follow the Premier League. And more specifically, I follow Liverpool FC.
Liverpool is currently in 1st place in the EPL standings. They have had a pretty good season, having only lost one game. They are 6 points ahead of the 2nd place team (Arsenal).
There was no Rebel Rock Radio live stream last week because we were still on our holiday break.
Punk Lotto Pod dropped their Top 25 Albums of 2024 episode.
I am going to try and get a little bit more consistent with recording episodes of Radio Unfriendly this year. No promises though. I have a couple of interviews lined up for episodes so there’s that.
This week’s track is a brand new single from Chicago’s Smoking Popes. This single was just released today (January 6). Based on an article about it for Brooklyn Vegan, it is a protest song against a certain recent election.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and come back next time!