function growth pattern names for operations at the power-tier and beyond

The following chart shows names for patterns of growth exhibited by functions that are characterized by operations at the power-tier and beyond:

𝑓𝑘(𝑥)	↑	↑↑	↑↑↑
𝑥 _ 𝑘	power	tetrapower	pentapower
𝑘 _ 𝑥	exponential	tetrational	pentational
𝑥 _ 𝑥	metapower	metatetrapower	metapentapower

The names in yellow cells are already established, and the names in magenta cells are my proposals. Outside of my proposals, the typical way to refer to any of these types of growth is “super-exponential”.

The ↑ symbol is Knuth’s up-arrow notation. So a single ↑ represents exponentiation. I could have used the more familiar caret symbol ^ for this, but I decided to optimize for consistency with the higher-level operations.

To be clear, in 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥), 𝑘 is a constant and 𝑥 is the variable.

So, for a couple examples, the top-left data cell is showing how 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑ 𝑘 exhibits power growth, and the bottom-right data cell is showing how 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑↑↑ 𝑥 could be said to exhibit metapentapower growth.

For context, some well-known function growth pattern names include:

• constant for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑘,
• linear for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥,
• quadratic for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑ 2,
• cubic for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑ 3,
• quartic for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑ 4,
• factorial for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥! , and
• logarithmic for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = log₂𝑥 (or in my proposed reformed notation, ₂√𝑥).

I initially thought that a simpler and thus better name for the function growth pattern exhibited by 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑ 𝑥 would be “double-exponential growth”, however, that is already established as the name for a different function growth pattern, one that does not appear in this table: 𝑓_{(𝑘₁,𝑘₂)}(𝑥) = 𝑘₁ ↑ (𝑘₂ ↑ 𝑥).

Another name I considered for 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 ↑ 𝑥 was “power-exponential”, but that name has the problem that it does not follow the same pattern as “logarithmic-linear”, 𝑓_𝑘(𝑥) = 𝑥 log 𝑥 = _𝑥√𝑥, because 𝑥 ↑ 𝑥 does not have an equivalent growth pattern to (𝑥 ↑ 𝑘)(𝑘 ↑ 𝑥).

So the idea is that we copy the hyperoperation numeric prefix and apply it to “power” for the names of growth patterns for functions characterized by higher-order operations following the same variable and constant scheme as that of power growth, so that these fucntion growth pattern names correspond by numeric prefix to the analogous functions following the variable and constant scheme of exponential growth.

And then we need a brand new name for the row where the variable occurs as both the base and the exponent of the power; I’ve proposed “metapower” for the simplest example of this, where the “meta-” prefix captures the self-reference here, i.e. a variable operated on by itself. I chose this prefix as opposed to “auto-” because “autopower” appears to be somewhat popular in the automobile industry, while “metapower” has only rare usage in social and political science.

Note that since 𝑥 ↑ 2 is quadratic growth, 𝑥 ↑ 3 is cubic growth, and 𝑥 ↑ 4 is quartic growth, and these are all specific types of power growth, we could also propose the names “tetraquadratic’, “tetracubic”, and “tetraquartic” growth for 𝑥 ↑↑ 2, 𝑥 ↑↑ 3, and 𝑥 ↑↑ 4, respectively. However, there’s a ton about this that bothers me:

• the mixing of Greek and Latin prefixes,
• having more than one numeric prefix at a time, and
• this is aggravated by the messiness of the quadratic, cubic, quartic progression, where quadratic refers to 2 despite evoking 4 which is due to historical reasons because quadratum is the Latin word for square, cubic successfully refers to 3 via the dimensionality of a cube, but then quartic refers to 4 directly. (Maybe it’d be better if we had square, cubic, and hypercubic growth.)

Tetraquadratic growth is of the most interest here, because 𝑥 ↑↑ 2 = 𝑥 ↑ 𝑥, and so we have tetraquadratic as another name for metapower growth. Similarly, since 𝑥 ↑↑↑ 2 =  𝑥 ↑↑ 𝑥, we have pentaquadratic growth as another name for metatetrapower, and we’d have hexaquadratic growth for metapentapower, and so on. But I recommend the meta- style names, which are simpler, more evocative of what they are, and correspond directly numerically with their analogous power and exponential growths.

Here is a more complete table, that will be of use or interest to far fewer people:

2023 projects

Certainly, the big achievement for me in 2023 was wrapping up 2 years worth of full-time work by publishing Dave Keenan & Douglas Blumeyer’s guide to RTT. That was in February. I spent the rest of the year mostly job-hunting, but in-between cycles on that front, I did a bunch of fun side projects in further collaboration with Dave, which all materialized as posts to the Sagittal forum:

1. Aperiodic monotiles. We give a presentation about aperiodicity and chirality to help folks understand what went down with the two separate papers. We also propose terminological refinements. Finally, we demonstrate a way of understanding transformations between polykite shapes along the aperiodic monotile continuum.
2. Edge-orthogonal. The monotile discussions created a spin-off conversion, leading to Dave and I finding what we felt was the ideal term meaning the opposite of diagonal, or in other words, a term generic for vertical, horizontal, lateral, and longitudinal.
3. The edge-orthogonal discussions in turn led to a trio of related posts:
   • Terminological and notational reform proposals for logarithms, powers, and roots. Dave and I eventually decided we couldn’t agree on some key stuff, so I took things off in one direction.
   • James algebra provides a clever notation for elementary functions. And he took things off in another direction.
   • Terminology for power equivalents of common additive concepts. This stuff, well, Dave and I both agree is a bit crankish, but I couldn’t help myself.

 

Film Micrœview #543: The Ceremony

Rating: Good.

This movie was sick, in every sense of the word.

10th Anniversary Post

Some unknown amount of time ago I left a note in my Google calendar to remind my future self on this day that I would have had this blog for 10 years. I have no particular feelings about this matter today.

ハイチュウログ / Hi-Chew Log

in which I document every variety of ハイチュウ I encounter.

Standard

ジューシーな果汁感 / juicy grape / 2017-03-29

丸しぼり果汁入り / squeezed juicy grape / 2018-03-24

ダブル果汁・巨峰＆コンコード / double fruit juices: kyohou + concord grape / 2017-03-13

丸しぼり果汁入り / squeezed juicy apple / 2018-03-24

ダブル果汁・王林＆グラニースミス / double fruit juices: Ourin and Granny Smith apple / 2017-04-15

すりおろしりんご果汁・グリーンアップル / ground down green apple juice / 2017-03-26

もぎたて青梅・24時間以内搾汁 / freshly-picked green plum, juiced w/in 24 hours of harvest / 2018-01-20

丸しぼり果汁入り / squeezed juicy strawberry / 2018-03-24

ジューシーな果汁感 / juicy strawberry / 2017-03-29

ダブル果汁・とちおとめ＆カマロッサ / double fruit juices: tochiotome & kamarossa varieties of strawberry / 2017-03-13

もぎたてマスカット・24時間以内搾汁 / freshly-picked muscat grape, juiced w/in 24 hours of harvest / 2017-06-24

期間限定・サンキストパイナップル / for a limited time only, Sunkist pineapple / 2017-11-09

pineapple / 2017-04-15

すッパイチュウ / crispy sour lemon / 2017-03-19

レモンスカッシュ / lemon squash (carbonated lemonade) / 2017-04-15

ホウィトソーダ / white soda / 2017-04-11

期間限定・オトナ2つのベリーの果汁入りクランベリー＆ブルーベリー / for a limited time only, adult style, 2 berry juices added: blueberry & cranberry / 2017-04-15

みかん / mikan  / 2017-04-15

青切りシークワサー / unripe shikuwasa / 2018-06-20

早生つがるりんご / early ripening Tsugaru apple / 2018-10-14

 

期間限定・サンキストネクターピーチ / for a limited time only, Sunkist peach nectar / 2018-10-17

Made with fruit puree – sweet & sour kiwi / 2019-03-31

Made with fruit puree – grape / 2020-01-29

double flavor, sweet big strawberry & white strawberry / 2020-01-29

Seasonal

旬を味わう・静岡クラウンメロン / taste of the season, spring 2017: Shizuoka crown melon / 2017-05-22

旬を味わう・山形県産・ラ・フランス/ taste of the season, winter 2017: Yamagata prefecture product: Claude Blanchet pear / 2017-11-19

 

旬を味わう・愛媛県産・せとか / taste of the season, spring 2018: Ehime prefecture product: setoka (a kind of Japanese citrus) / 2018-03-10

旬を味わう・岡山県産・清水白桃 / taste of the season, summer 2018: Okayama prefecture product: Shimizu white peach / 2017-08-19

旬を味わう・国産すいか / taste of the season, fall 2018: domestic watermelon / 2018-10-13

Regional

Yamanachi peach and Shizuoka mikan / 2017-03-16

Yamanachi peach and Shizuoka mikan (other packaging) / 2017-05-05

Yubari – melon / 2017-03-08

Yubari – melon (other packaging) / 2018-10-19

Aomori – apple / 2018-10-20

Kyushu – dekopon / 2017-05-03

あまおう苺 / Kyushu – Amaou strawberry / 2017-05-03

 

Okinawa – mango / 2017-05-06

Okinawa – shikuwasa / 2017-05-06

Okinawa – pineapple / 2017-05-06

Ishigaki – pineapple / 2017-05-22

Yamagata – persimmon  / 2019-03-31

Variety Bags

the standards (grape, strawberry, and green apple) plus both yellow and white peach / 2017-04-15

the standards (grape, strawberry, and green apple) plus Acerola cherry / 2018-10-24

the standards (grape, strawberry, and green apple) plus Muscat of Alexandria / 2018-04-21

world fruits: Costa Rican pineapple, Italian Chardonnay grapes, Italian blood orange, New Zealand kiwi / 2017-04-15

完熟果実 / completely ripe fruits: Kiyomi orange, Amaou strawberry, Okinawa mango, Kanjuku banana / 2017-11-11

red and white fruits: Kogyoku apple, Benihoppe strawberry, Shirokaga plum, Hakuhou peach / 2017-04-15

すッパイチュウ / sour flavors: pink grapefruit, ume, pineapple, lemon / 2017-08-19

amber luxury: Okinawa mango, passion fruit, Maruma mikan, Furano melon / 2018-05-22

世界のとっておきフルーツ / very big fruits of the world: New Zealand gold kiwi, Polish strawberry, Spanish donut peach, Israeli sweetie / 2018-03-13

お取りよせ / “in stock”: Aomori Fuji apple, Nagano Niagara grape, Iwate blueberry, Tosa buntan (pomelo) / 2017-11-27

Ramune and cola / 2017-04-15

Ramune and cola – new packaging / 2018-10-15

Savor the Heisei period / 2019-03-31

yuzu & golden peach / 2020-01-29

mixes of salted fruit pairs, from Taiwan / 2021-12-01

Premium and Mini, etc.

premium yogurt – springy/fluffy texture / 2017-04-15

premium yogurt – springy texture / 2018-10-17

期間限定・濃厚ぶどう / for a limited time only, rich in flavor 100% grape / 2017-04-15

premium concord grape – springy/fluffy texture / 2017-04-15

premium Cabernet grape – springy/fluffy texture / 2017-12-01

premium Chardonnay grape – springy/fluffy texture/ 2017-04-15

premium Chardonnay grape – springy/fluffy texture (new packaging) / 2017-12-21

premium Chardonnay grape – springy texture / 2018-03-14

期間限定・濃厚みかん / for a limited time only, rich in flavor 100% mikan / 2017-03-15

premium melon – springy texture / 2018-10-14

濃厚 / rich in flavor, grape and peach / 2018-10-17

ことこと煮込んだりんご / simmered apple with apple jelly and caramel chips inside / 2018-02-21

Ice Box (another Morinaga product which is little chunks of flavored ice) rich fruit ice style: kyohou grape / 2017-08-26

祭・ブルーハワイーこうり氷 / festival: blue Hawaii shaved ice / 2017-08-23

mini – new flavors: peace, grape, green apple, soda  (recommends you to eat one of each at once) / 2017-04-15

mini – new flavors: peach, grape, lemon, soda (recommends you to eat one of each at once) / 2018-06-23

lemon-lime premium,  springy/fluffy texture / 2019-03-31

gold kiwi / 2022-12-01

Other Forms

“lacto ice” (like ice cream, but insufficient dairy product proportion to qualify to be marketed as ice cream) grape / 2017-04-15

ice bar (in popsicle form: “Hi-Chew became ice!”) grape and strawberry / 2018-05-10

チョコ玉 / choco-ball (chocolate candy shells) – melon, strawberry, and banana flavors / 2017-11-11

Outside of Japan

Hawaii – lilikoi (passion fruit) / 2018-08-23

Hawaii – açai / 2018-08-23

USA – kiwi / 2017-12-28

USA – variety pack (standards: strawberry, green apple, grape) / 2017-03-16

USA – caramel apple / 2018-11-23

USA – sweet & sour variety pack / 2019-10-30

Taiwan – mango / 2018-01-07

Taiwan – strawberry, juicy up / 2018-01-07

Taiwan (found in NYC) – strawberry, juicy up (new packaging) / 2019-11-10

Taiwan (found in NYC) – strawberry / 2019-11-10

Taiwan – grape, juicy up / 2018-01-07

Taiwan (found in NYC) – grape, juicy up (new packaging) / 2019-11-10

 

Taiwan – peach / 2018-01-07

Taiwan (found in NYC) – peach (new packaging) / 2019-11-10

Taiwan – lemon / 2018-01-07

Taiwan (found in NYC) – lemon lime, juicy up / 2019-11-10

Taiwan – mango + pineapple / 2018-01-07

Taiwan – grape + cranberry / 2018-01-07

 

Taiwan – chewy spheres with candy shells – grape / 2018-01-07

Taiwan – chewy spheres with candy shells – sour apple / 2018-01-07

Taiwan – lychee* / 2018-01-07

Taiwan – variety pack / 2018-01-12

(detail on Taiwan’s unusually blocky proportions)

 

Hong Kong – sour lime / 2017-08-05

Hong Kong – sour grapefruit / 2017-08-05

Hong Kong – mango / 2017-09-27

Hong Kong – peach / 2017-09-27

South Korea – grapefruit sour / 2019-01-15

* best flavor ever (so far)

Taiwan (though bought in NYC) – passion fruit / 2021-12.01

 

Super Mario Wars

If the characters in the original Star Wars trilogy were played by characters of the Super Mario franchise, who would play who? Here’s what I think:

PROTAGONISTS

Luke Skywalker : Mario

With little doubt I match the primary protagonists of each canon.

Princess Leia: Peach

With only one major female character in either canon, this decision was also a no-brainer. Peach’s primary purpose in life seems to be getting captured, which also happens to Leia in every one of the original films. While I have no reason to believe that Mario and Peach are siblings, the fact that no romance exists between them feels like extra evidence toward this pairing.

Han Solo: Luigi

While Luke and Han are not brothers as Mario and Luigi are, they are flipsides of the hero coin, and I don’t know who else could possibly fit the role Han. I considered swapping these matchings, that is, Luigi for Luke (both start with ‘Lu-‘) and Mario for Han, but I imagine a cocky Mario would be much more repellent than a cocky Luigi. Let’s give this guy a moment to shine, am I right? I see this as Luigi with firepower to replicate Han’s blaster, putting him in the white overalls like Han’s clunky white belt from Episode IV.

Chewbacca: Donkey Kong

Self-explanatory.

Yoda : Yoshi

Green and start with ‘Yo-‘. Best characters in respective franchises. Hilarious to imagine Yoshi riding Mario instead of other way around. Hilarious to imagine Yoshi spouting zen. Maybe he starts out as Baby Yoshi to appear unimposing, and quests for food, and it’s not until making it back to Yoshi’s house and eating enough stuff that Yoshi reveals his true power and thenceforth appears as grown Yoshi.

Obi-Wan Kenobi : Toad

I feel like Toad’s role in Mario games is often to provide helpful tools and advice. Like lightsabers and Force training.

Lando Calrissian : Lakitu

Live in clouds and start with ‘La-‘. Both occasionally good, occasionally bad.

ANTAGONISTS

Darth Vader : King Bowser

While I contemplated casting Wario here, as would make more sense for another human to be Luke’s father, I decided in the end that such impossibility was humorous. Anyway, I had to place Bowser on some kind of classic SMB3 airship to equate with the Executor. And who else could Bowser really play?

Emperor Palpatine : Kamek

Physically unimposing magic user in a robe? Check.

Stormtroopers : Koopa Troopas

Just as koopa shells are the lite version of Bowser and his family’s anthropomorpho-turtlocious shells, stormtrooper armor seems the lite version of Vader’s armor. Plus they’re both troop(a/er)s.

Imperial Officers : Goombas

The less armored of the generic bad guy pair up. Plus it’s funny to imagine them wearing little hats.

Boba Fett : Tatanga

Fett is the too-cool wild card. Tatanga is also the hipster’s choice of villain. They both have their own unusually shaped star ships. Done.

Grand Moff Tarkin : Waluigi

Gaunt and evil.

SUPPORTING CAST

C3PO : Bomb-omb Buddy

Talkative and non-organic.

R2D2 : Baby Luma

High-pitched and glassolaliac.

Admiral Ackbar : Blooper

Squid.

Jawas : Shy Guys

Look exactly the same. Are the same.

Greedo : Birdo

Egg-shaped heads. Names end in ‘-0’.

Jabba the Hutt : Nep-Enut

Fat and names end in ‘-ut(t)’.

Exogorth : Piranha Plant

Obviously the moment when the exogorth lurches from its nest on the asteroid is best imagined as a piranha plant coming out of a pipe going “chomp chomp chomp”.

Ewoks : Monty Moles

Monty Moles are bad guys, but little furries scurrying about is too good a match. Besides the Ewoks aren’t friendly straight away.

MSE-6 : Buzzy Beetle

Short and black.

AT-ATs, AT-STs : Thwomps, Thwimps

Grey. Two sizes.

Death Star : Koopa Clown Car

Hilarious to imagine a moon-sized clown face.

Speeders : Mario Karts

D’uh (pod racers might have been better, but I’m not going to the prequels).

Imperial Probes : Boo Buddies

No real resemblance, but they do float around and look at things.

Rancor : Chain Chomp

Unbridled violence on chains.

Cornelius Evazan : Wario

Because I just couldn’t have Waluigi matched and not Wario. Similar voices.

TIE Pilots : Hammer Brothers

Too good to imagine Bowser flanked by two of these when gunning down Rebel fighters.

 

MUSIC

Star Wars Main Titles Theme / Luke’s Theme : Super Mario Bros. 1 Main Theme / Overworld

They’re both the ultimate classic tune for the respective canon, as well as “where it all begins”. I hear things opening with the Star Wars fanfare for the first few bars, but then replacing the triplet introduction to the main theme at that point with the opening “doot doot doot, doo-doot doot… doot” of the SMB1 theme.

Rebel Fanfare : Super Mario Bros. 1 Underworld

While not immediately obvious in terms of mood, what with the fanfare being epic and heroic and the Mario underworld being dark and funky, the structural similarities are remarkable. The Rebel Fanfare goes like “da-DAAANH-duh” twice before then going “da-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANH… daa, dada-DAHN-duh.” The Mario underworld theme goes like “doo-dee-doo-dee-doot-doot” frice before then going “do-do-do-doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, do-do-de-do-do-de-doot–doot–doot–doot–doot–doot.” So if you just imagine the 4x of underworld reduced to 2x and map that to the 2x of the fanfare, then suspend the big DAAAAAAAANH of the fanfare over the spastic last section of the underworld, then matching up their wrap-up spots, it fits pretty well.

Cantina Band : Super Mario Bros. 2. Overworld

Totally the correct loungy vibe.

Death Star Theme : Super Mario Bros. 1 Castle

The Death Star theme is super short – just four chords. The castle theme is a pretty tight loop too. Both songs carry that imposing power of evil feel, and the Death Star basically is a futuristic castle, is it not?

The Force / Obi-Wan’s Theme : Super Mario Bros. 1 Level Complete

I’m sure there’s some way you could subtly redo the famous level complete music to twinge it with the beauty and striving it needs to fill this role.

Tie Fighter Battle : Starman

Starman is the name for the music that plays when you touch a power star and become temporarily invincible. Matches the staccato energy of this battle well.

Jawa Theme : Super Mario Bros. 3 Toad’s House

Playful and weird.

Imperial March :  Super Mario Bros. 3 Airship

I think few would argue with me here.

Cloud City theme : Super Mario Bros. 3 World 5, The Sky

Apparently both Williams and Kondo had similar feelings about cumulus civilization.

Yoda’s Theme : Super Mario World Theme

This Kondo theme takes on a great many forms, so just take its notes and map them to the style of Yoda’s theme and you’re set.

The Emperor’s Theme – Super Mario World Bowser’s Theme

Even Bowser’s theme is yet another variation of the single melody Kondo used for SMW, and while The Imperial March is more clearly a mirror of Yoda’s theme, we know the Emperor is more clearly a mirror for Yoda. Though I did make Bowser Vader, and Bowser’s theme gets way more energetic than the Emperor’s ever does.

 

FAILURES

On the Star Wars side, I wish I had found matches for Tusken Raiders & Banthas, and Tauntauns & Wampas. Of course Tauntauns are shaped like Yoshis, but Yoshi is too good of a character to waste on them.

On the Mario side, I wish I had found matches for Pokeys, Wigglers, Spinies, and Bullet Bills – all classic baddies but which I don’t feel align with the missing creatures from the Star Wars universe.

Pairing music was much tougher because Kondo, genius though he is, does not need to paint with as broad a tonal brush as Williams does. I am missing matches for anything feminine connected to Leia, the more emotional Han and the Princess, Leia’s Theme, and Luke and Leia’s Theme. I suppose if I tried harder I could find matches for Boba Fett’s theme and Vader’s Theme (the one from IV, before the Imperial March was composed). There’s a ton of good Mario music that I couldn’t find silly enough matches in SW for, such as the Hammer Bros theme, Super Mario Bros. 1’s Underwater theme, or Super Mario Bros. 3’s Grasslands, Overworld 1, and Overworld 2 themes.

My 2^10th Post

Hello, readers!

Today I am celebrating my 2¹⁰th (1024th) post (this is it, this post itself) with some numbers and charts.

Posts

My first post was on September 8th, 2007, just over 8 years (or 2925 days) ago. That’s ~0.35 posts a day, or just over one every three days on average.

2³ years, 2¹⁰ posts. That’s approximately 2⁷ (128) posts a year. My most active year was last year with 298 posts. I doubt I’ll beat that number this year.

Posts by category

If you total these columns you’ll come up with a number > 1024 since some of my posts are cross-category. But this’ll still give you a good sense of what this blog consists of:

I have 263 more drafts of posts already in the works!

(The reason why I’m past Dream #400 but have less than 400 represented here is that I chose not to share some of them…)

I have decided to cease work on the Dougtionary, however. I do not feel like I can keep up with the pace of coining a new word each week, at least not without the quality going down. I am considering packaging the Dougtionary as it stands now, with 227 words, in some form of some kind.

My main short term focus from here is going to be on explaining my thought leadership in the virtual reality cinema community.

Views

I’m averaging 20 views per day in 2015 at this point, which is up from 18 last year, so I’ll probably hit a new yearly record!

That’s 21288 total views, for an overall average of 7.28 a day since the beginning.

Most Popular Posts

The most popular place on my blog, by far, of course, is the landing page. More people visit there than my top two posts otherwise, combined:

I’m frustrated with the popularity of my “pages” (as opposed to posts), which I left off this list. These are the tabs on the left side of the home page under the site title that give overall info on my various interests. I don’t find them particularly useful and wish more people would go for the analogous links in my Archives to the right, so that if they were interested in what I had to say on Music, for example, they’d be taken directly to recent posts themselves.

I think it’s interesting to see that nearly every category on my blog has some representation in this top 10. Only my category with the most posts, Dreams, and the category with the least, Virtual Reality, are absent. You don’t have to look too much further down the rankings, though, to find representation there, though: my post about Opture which I would really like to see circulated more, and a dream I titled Darth Vader Porn which I imagine causes the most disappointment in visitors who stumble across my site through search engine results.

Films

I’m particular interested in stats on the films I’ve been watching and reviewing.

I began sharing film reviews on September 8th, 2013, on the 6th anniversary of starting my blog. Since then, I have reviewed a total of 245 films. That’s ~0.32 film reviews a day, just under the rate of posts in general since the very beginning. A real film critic would shoot for at least 3 films a day, not one every 3 days (yes, I review every single film I watch, however short the review comes out [I do call them micrœviews!]).

I’m not surprised to see that nearly half of the films I’ve watched I’ve given a Good rating. Obviously, I prefer to watch good movies and feel like I’m pretty good at determining which are likely to be worth my time. That said, I’m also a pretty understanding Film & Media Studies graduate and give a wider range of films credit where others might not? Also, I rewatch a lot of movies that I know I like; of the 245 above, 37 were rewatches, which incidentally is exactly the number of both Dr. Pepper and Bad ratings I gave out.

I’m pretty sure that this trend toward more recent movies getting rated worse is less a “they don’t make ’em like they used to” effect and more that I only choose to watch films that stand the test of time, so naturally the older a movie is the more time that has tested it.

I admit I was surprised to see that over half of the films I watched in the last 2+ years were American. I think back in my student days I was little more international. I still feel like I’m catching up on world historical & art cinema, but I have started leaning back towards modern contemporary movies I suppose. That said, of the 11 movies I rated Evil, 10 of those were American…

Some other fun facts:

• I didn’t like a single one of the eight American movies I saw in 2010 and 2011: 6 Bads and 2 Evils!
• The country other than the U.S.A. whose films I watch the most is Japan, which is also the country which views my blog the most after the U.S.A. I haven’t rated a single Japanese movie worse than Shrug. Maybe I’m biased?
• Hungary, Thailand, Cambodia, Sweden, Russia, Japan, and France are the countries with my best success rates. Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, Iran, Greece, the UK and the US have my worst.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for now. Be seeing you!

Deep Dream Bandwagon

Hopping on.

Taco Bell

I finally realized why it bothers me so much when people pronounce “Taco Bell” with the stress on the word ‘Taco’ rather than ‘Bell.’

And a ton of people do this! I haven’t determined whether it’s a regional thing or what.

So consider “beef jerky.” Which word do you stress: ‘beef’, or ‘jerky’? If you’re like me, it’s ‘jerky’. And I believe it is for a similar reason to the one for which I find it intuitive to stress ‘Bell’ in “Taco Bell”.

Here’s that reason: you should stress the word which more uniquely defines what you’re referring to.

Suppose you ask someone, “Would you like some beef jerky?” If you were forced to choose one word or the other, I expect you’d choose ‘jerky’ over ‘beef’ to better get your meaning across. Only one popular form of jerky exists, and that is the beef kind, so there’s a much lower likelihood of intent mismatching than if you asked if the person wanted beef. So if you stress BEEF, you imply the question, “What other kinds of jerky do you have?” whereas if you stress JERKY all you’re doing is choosing to preserve the conventional yet granted adjective.

Now if you say “Let’s go to TACO Bell,” you’re essentially saying, “Let’s go to the bell — in particular, the taco one.” This is less accurate than saying, “Let’s go to Taco BELL,” in which case you’re essentially saying, “Let’s go for tacos — in particular, the ones at the bell.” One could argue that the former might be accurate, however, you could only get away with that in a world where bells where generally places to get things, i.e. there would also be a Burger Bell, Pizza Bell, and bells for non-comestibles as well such as Game Bell, Radio Bell, or Sunglass Bell.

merwolves

How has this not been made as one of those stupid sexy-violence-magical-period-intrigue television shows yet?

Pirates sail into a vampire cave. Pirate legends and vampire legends intermingle. Both sides get flamboyant androgynous vintage clothes.

You could even have merwolves: amalgams of these two groups’ typical animal-aspect companions… though it’s not immediately clear whether they would be fish or wolves half of the time or halfway physically.