Mike O

My friend approached me today, apparently one of his friends committed suicide. Needless to say, I am sad, sympathetic to him, and very, very worried about him.

Elsewhere, in my own life, the whole theology crisis I was going through has triggered some obsessive behavior and depression of my own for the past several months which have been horrible, and I’m sick and tired of it. I want to return to the intellectual equilibrium I had before this nonsense started, I have enough nuts and bolts real life problems, I don’t need this horseshot. I’m so sick of it. My friend has an actual issue in his life that’s beyond my imagining, and this OCD loop in my head and inexplicable obsession with repeatedly looking at things and returning to threads which I know will only have seriously upsetting effects on me is worsening when it shouldn’t even be an issue at all. I feel like shithead of the year while my friend has real problems, and I’m so sick of this crap. So sick of it. I want it fucking stop. I want my mind back to normal. I have to work tomorrow again. I want to be a normal, functional adult again before my parents start catching onto this. I have real-life problems with an unhappy job, wasted life, and actual problems in my real-world life. If I were stressing about those, maybe this might be more tolerable. I want to cry. I want my head to stop buzzing like a goddamn beehive. No long clicking threads and links I know will bother me would be a good start, but like a relapsing junkie who keeps licking at a scab, I keep going back it. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I go to my audiobooks and video games to distract myself like I used to. The last bout of anxiety eventually stopped, why won’t this one? Why have I been typing this crap until my thumbs get tired on an anonymous message board? Jesus Christ.

Sorry. I do feel slightly better. I’d just like to focus on actual problems like my friend’s instead of this pointless crap in my life. I’m so worried about him.

I’m having a nasty crisis of faith, so I suppose this is oddly appropriate.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I learned to avoid most on-line religious debates a long time ago. Sometimes you get respectful dialogues between the different parties, but most of the time it’s just a bunch of uncouth jackasses tossing insults and strawman arguments back-and-forth.

Well, fucking special. I just went and Googled a whole bunch of stuff about various legal entanglements and lawsuits related to the issue, read a whole bunch of stuff about a lot arguments, and now the buzzing anxiety has returned. Fuck. I feel like a junkie who’s relapsed. God, what’s wrong with me.

Lil Brutto said:

01 Distribution in Italy released Once Upon a Time in the West on BD back in December. I have a copy but haven’t viewed it yet. Not sure if/how it differs from the Paramount BD in terms of PQ. I’ll update this thread once I get a chance to check it out.

Which version of the film does it have? Does it contain the uncut version and the correct end credits music? Does it have lossless English mono?

Running it in compatibility mode for XP or 95\98 has so far made the machine believe that the disc isn’t even in the drive. Odd.

suntech said:

I have searched High and Low but I do not find it. any clue to where it is?

It’s not on Amazon.it or Amazon.fr. If we knew the UPC, we could check eBay. It seems to be the same 01 Distribution who did the Italian release of Duck You Sucker, but damned I can find it. What music is supposed to be in the end credits?

What’s a good UPC-scanning app for cataloging DVDs? Is there one for CDs and audiobooks as well?

JayArgonaut said:

Mike O said:

Well, off the top of my head… the teal-washed version of Aliens.

You mean the non teal-washed version, right? 😃

Despite the horrific teal vandalism visited upon the Blu-Ray and HDTV broadcasts, the original isn’t lost though. I own the 1999 NTSC SE DVD and there are tons of copies available to purchase brand new.

According to this blog, the original theatrical versions of the first two Godfather films are lost, due to irresponsible behaviour during the first 80s home video transfers, colour correction “guidance” imposed by Gordon Willis upon Robert Harris’s team during the “Coppola Restoration” and then Paramount’s destruction of the original negatives once the project was completed.

Makes for depressing reading.

http://www.godfathermuseum.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_09_archive.html

http://godfathermuseum.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/screen-shots-and-technical-errata.html

Yeah, but only as an SD master. Every HD version has been teal-ified.

I fear Fox and Disney’s lawyers will come down on these like a ton of brick. I’m always afraid of fan-edit downloads of films I’m interested in because of legal repercussions. Which is a damn shame, since I am intrigued by a lot of the ones out there.

So for the 50th anniversary, we aren’t getting the much sought remasters? I fear this was our last chance…

I’m genuinely perplexed by this orange wash. It’s not subtle either, I notice it constantly. In ever scene. Was the master print worn or something?

Bewy said:

Still available, got mine from amazon.fr :3

Thank you. Shame about the money I wasted on the other release, but hey, that’s what I get for not doing my research.

I think Superman Returns is an interesting attempt to do something somewhat different. It has one foot in the past and one in the present in the worst way, however, and can never get over its identity crisis. That said, I think Bryan Singer is one of the best action filmmakers working today, and it has a couple of very impressive set pieces; the plane rescue in particular is genuinely exciting.

Man of Steel has the opposite problem: it wanted to do something other than “Lex Luthor tries to kill Superman with Kryptonite” and went so far in the other direction that I feels like an Outer Limits episode abut a guy who discovers he has alien origins.

I tried to order Duck, you Sucker from Amazon.it, but the disc was a Spanish version with 198 Kpbs audio instead of the HD 2.0 track it was supposed to have. Is that release now OOP? Since it’s open, I bet I wasted $50 without doing my research and Amazon won’t take a return 😦.

NeverarGreat said:

Mike O said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I learned to avoid most on-line religious debates a long time ago. Sometimes you get respectful dialogues between the different parties, but most of the time it’s just a bunch of uncouth jackasses tossing insults and strawman arguments back-and-forth.

I learned this a long, long, long time ago. I stuck to it for many years (though it was largely pre YouTube, which has made even more chaos). For some fucking reason, I broke my own rule and now I’m in this mess. I wish I knew why this shit was lingering and bothering me so much. I hear these kinds of things (frequently more well-written) on House, True Detective, and Bones, among countless others, literally hundreds of times. I wish I could figure it why this was happening to my brain. The SSRIs worked for 15+ years. I keep thinking that I’ve chosen an impossible question related to the meaning of life and impossible questions precisely because my demented OCD brain knows that’s a perfect way to trap itself.

If I may be so bold, what is the impossible question you have chosen?

I ask because I grappled with depression and the impossible question: ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ for years before understanding that the question was wrong. The question should be ‘IS there something rather than nothing’, and this can be meaningfully answered. The ramifications of this answer now form the basis of my life philosophy.

I’m sorry that you’re dealing with this right now. PM if you’d like to talk about it.

Short version: I was brought up Catholic. Certainly not extremist, but 16 years of Catholic school. I got a top-quality education, a good sense of community, a solid moral grounding, and a lot of good things from it. My parents weren’t progressive, but they never said “Don’t watch a movie because it’s evil” or any such nonsense, and were always willing to take me to therapists and doctors, and did frequently. Were very pro-science, and weren’t Carrie’s mom by any means. Got a lot of it, but wasn’t rammed too far down my throat. Overall, I drifted from some of it, but liked it. Definitely came to disagree with a lot of the politics, but had pretty positive experiences overall. I’ve read some things here and there on the various atheist debates, etc, and basically came to make up my mind that I was sticking with a lot of it culturally because I’d had good experiences, and had a very live-and-let-live policy as regarded people’s religious beliefs. I have friends with a variety of them, and we’ve never had problems. One told me he was an agnostic, we shrugged and haven’t ever needed to discuss the topic again. It’s a non-issue. I never have or will forced any of my beliefs on anyone, and stopped being judgmental long ago. My faith is shaken, but largely still there. It’s not a huge part of my life. But I was comfortable with my live-and-let policy, and still am, and live in a culture where it isn’t super theocratic. Everything I’ve read in the thread which bothered me so much is same arguments that have been made hundreds of times in various places, and the same kind of stuff I heard on Bones, House, True Detective, and countless other places. Everything should’ve been totally fine. I don’t know why I was so bothered by it, much less obsessively keep returning to it. It’s frustrating given that I had other problems and didn’t really need this stupid OCD loop about something I made my mind up about long ago.

Sorry that was so long.

I think for many people with depression, the question is more “Is something enough?” In my case, I have a lot to be grateful for, for which I am very thankful. My life is good, and I shouldn’t be as obsessive as I am about things.

Thank you for the kindness.

Neglify said:

¿¿¿¿¿

How did you do that?

Is it on the Italian BD, or is that lossless too?

As I mentioned over in another thread, in spite of having no personal participation and being fairly secure in my own beliefs (Short version: raised Catholic, gave me a good education a lot of moral values, wasn’t a literalist basically kept what I liked [respect for others, forgiveness, kindness, and some humility], chucked out most of the right-wing political attitudes, mostly felt like overall, it made me a good person and felt pretty satisfied with it it, always had a live-and-let policy as regarded religion, never forced anything I thought on others and never had anything forced on me, overall was pretty satisfied and comfortable.), I stumbled into a blazing theological row over at DVD Talk (Complete with videos!), and wound up in a weird panic attack. This is fine, they’ve happens before, but this one seems to be going on for days. I have Aspergers, depression, some panic attacks, and I’ve long suspected some mild OCD. All of a sudden all of this worry about about something I had not only made my own decisions about long ago, but have heard at least 1,000 times before on Bones, House, True Detective, and countless other things, keeps running in OCD loops in my head. It’s like a buzzing in my brain, it’s driving me insane! I’m fucking sick of this shit! I was finally past all of this. My life was messed up enough-living with my parents working a dead-end job in spite of having a college degree, being almost 29, and needing therapy for a long time-I didn’t need this madness returning to me. Do I seriously think I can solve the meaning of life in an Internet debate or on a cycle in my head! I haven’t had my anxiety go on this long for a long time, and I know that I’m being entirely silly! Why won’t this shit stop?!

Sorry. Just wanted to get that off of my chest. This is incredibly stupid. My DVR is accumulating things because I haven’t been watching them. I can function at work, but I don’t understand why I can just relax and take my mind off of things, especially since, and I cannot stress this enough, I’ve been through all of this many times before. I’ve my usual sensory overload: playing some video games while listening to aduiobooks and DVD commentaries (side note: Christopher Frayling’s stuff on Sergio Leome discs is gold), but it doesn’t seem to have stopped the endless static my brain seems to be offering up. It’s maddening. I just want to be relaxed again, so I can worry about my actual problems and go to work and work and not have to fight this at the same time.

According to what I’ve been reading, “stuck thoughts” are an actual concept in psychology. This sounds like what I’m reading about. I try to shift my thoughts towards countless other things, but my head feels so scrambled and keeps retuning me to stupid stuff. It’s driving me nuts.

Apologies to everybody for the babbling, just wanted to get that off my chest.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I learned to avoid most on-line religious debates a long time ago. Sometimes you get respectful dialogues between the different parties, but most of the time it’s just a bunch of uncouth jackasses tossing insults and strawman arguments back-and-forth.

I learned this a long, long, long time ago. I stuck to it for many years (though it was largely pre YouTube, which has made even more chaos). For some fucking reason, I broke my own rule and now I’m in this mess. I wish I knew why this shit was lingering and bothering me so much. I hear these kinds of things (frequently more well-written) on House, True Detective, and Bones, among countless others, literally hundreds of times. I wish I could figure it why this was happening to my brain. The SSRIs worked for 15+ years. I keep thinking that I’ve chosen an impossible question related to the meaning of life and impossible questions precisely because my demented OCD brain knows that’s a perfect way to trap itself.

I just don’t understand why I keep going back to something which I know will upset me and keep getting upset about things which I’ve heard hundreds of times already. It doesn’t fucking make an sense to me. Then the depression worsens. It’s a stupid cycle.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=624553

Made the fatal mistake of clicking on off topic forum over at DVD Talk, wandered into a blazing theological discussion. Didn’t participate personally, but it was ugly. And some of the stuff in it really kicked a comorbidity between my OCD, Aspergers, anxiety, and depression, causing me to have 72 hour+ panic attack off and on, repeating things I read over and over and over in my head in some kind of nightmarish OCD loop. Can’t get my head to stop buzzing, it’s driving me nuts, like some sort of OCD loop. So yeah, apparently with the depression’s return, the anxiety has made a rather unwelcome return with it. I’ve heard everything everyone has said there at least a dozen times, there and elsewhere, so I cannot for the life of me figure out what set me off. Fuck this shit. I have to work in 5 minutes. It’s hard to function with it. Why did I keep going back to it when I knew it would upset me, and why did it upset my when I’ve heard everything everyone has said 1,000 times before? I don’t need this shit, I have to work 8 hours. I want my fucking buzzing head to stop.

The prints didn’t hit my neck of the woods and the Henry Ford closed down to install the laser system. Woe is me 😄.

Worth a shot. It worked for a while, then I just stopped.