2024 on Jackson Taylor

December Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a great time with your families this year and have a safe New Year! This will probably be my last blog post for the year. I’m writing this the day before Christmas Eve which is when my family celebrates a lot of our festivities, so I won’t have much time tomorrow to write.

Charlotte Winter 2025

I’m excited to annouce that I will be going to the Charlotte Winter 2025 competition on January 25th! I’ve written elsewhere on my site about how I used to compete in Rubik’s Cube competitions, but it’s been over 5 years since I’ve competed. With covid, my back issues, and having a full time job I haven’t been able to go to one since 2019.

I’ll be competiting in 3x3, OH, 5x5 and Skewb. Which happen to be some of my favorite events. 5x5 being my absolute favorite event, and the one I’m best at. I don’t expect to break any state records, I think those days are for sure over at this point, but I hope to keep my PB streak of 15 going to 16. A sub 10 average for 3x3 may not be out of the question either. I’ll need to be in the zone though for all of the events if I want to get some PBs. I’m nervous for the actual competing part, but I’m confident I’ll do alright. I got over the nerves of competiting a long time ago, but this time is a little different, so I’ll have to try to calm down.

Since there’s only about a month until the competition, I won’t be learning any new algorithms probably. I’ve been looking for a competition for the past few months and practicing in the mean time, so I’m not really rusty anymore, but I don’t want to add too many new things in case I get tripped up. There’s a few COLLs I’ve learned that I could probably execute, but I might just skip them if I come across them since I’m not super comfortable with them still.

I use CFOP and I know full OLL and full PLL, I know a good portion of COLL, I do some edge manipulation and WV cases, and a handful of ZBLLs. I’ve thought about trying to learn ZBLL before, but I haven’t found a great way to practice a set and remember it for longer than a few days since they don’t show up that often. Depending on how I do and how much I enjoy this competition I might try to dedicate myself to learning 2GLL.

There’s a few of my old friends going too so it’ll be nice to catch up with them. If you are reading this and are planning on going, look for me and say hi!

Real Quick One Piece Recap

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ONE PIECE MANGA UNTIL CHAPTER 1134

Last month I did my blog post kind of early, before the unexpected break we got due to Oda’s health, so a few things have happened since. We did get the chapter on December 1st as expected and we haven’t heard much else out of Oda about the break. I’m hoping he’s doing much better. He had been going to South Africa to help with the live action filming and stuff, so that probably worsened some of his blood pressure issues. December has had a few other breaks for Oda as well as Shonen Jump the magazine. I’m still confused on a lot of the schedules and how that all works, but most of the time I just get a notification when a new chapter drops and then I read it. You’re never disappointed when a chapter doesn’t come out if you don’t know when it’s supposed to come out anyway ;)

Chapters 1133 and 1134 have caused a lot of discussion, like often times new chapters do.

After it was pretty much confirmed that Saul was sill alive during Egghead, we finally saw the reuninon between Saul and Robin in chapter 1133. Some people are unsure about Saul being “brought back to life”, arguing that it’s technically “bad writing”. I’m fine with it I think. I do understand the reasons for it being considered bad writing, but I’m not a stickler for that kind of stuff. As long as this is used very sparingly, and someone like Ace or Corazon doesn’t come back I’m fine with it. Morj compared “fake-out deaths” to “false deaths” in this video if you want to see more about the reasons it’s considered bad.

Chapter 1134 recently came out and adds more to the theory that Shanks has a twin brother who is a part of the Holy Knights. This stems mostly from the appearance of the person who we were lead to believe was Shanks in 907 and this new chapter, as well as a few feats that could possibly be attributed to this new character. In chapter 907 we see “Shanks” meeting with the Gorosei (Five Elders) about a specific pirate during the Reverie. This started many jokes and memes about how Shanks is a rat and has the “rat-rat no mi model: snitch”, because why would a pirate, let alone one of the Yonko (Four Emperors), be talking directly to the Gorosei? And about what pirate? Could it have been Luffy? A lot of people believed it was Shanks keeping the world in balance, which was my belief too at the time. However, many people noticed that Shanks’ scar was not visible in the panel even though we’ve seen his scar in very similar positions before. This was believed to be a mistake originally and that it actually was Shanks, because Oda has been known to miss small details like that (no hate, they really are small, I typically haven’t noticed them when I first read the chapters). But the anime also omitted the scar for that episode as well where it would most likely had fixed the issue if it was actually an issue.

As the story went on, we learned more about Shanks’ lineage and how he is almost definitely the son of Figarland Garling, the (now former) leader of the Holy Knights of Marijoa. We figured that the ability to get a meeting with the Gorosei was due to his connection to Garling. Which leads us to chapter 1134, and the appearance of “Shanks” in a summoning circle that the Gorosei used on Egghead. “Shanks” appears in Elbaf in a flash of lightning with an unidentified woman. However, the scar on “Shanks” face is again omitted in the same position that we saw in chapter 907! Which leads us to believe that there is a case of twins here and we the readers have been duped for YEARS. There’s plenty of videos on youtube to explain this more in depth than I can and that give more examples. I’m not totally convinced, but it’s looking more and more to be true. With the cloning processes we’ve seen in the story so far, it’s possible that this isn’t a twin at all, but a direct clone.

Anyway, that’s pretty much all I wanted to talk about this month. I’ll try to do a 2024 recap and yearly goals in January. See you then!

November Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0400

I’m gonna try to get this one out early this month. Thanksgiving and stuff going on, so I’ll probably be pretty busy at the end of the month to be able to get it done.

Fitness Updates

Sorta going along with my back updates, I figured I’d start talking about general fitness stuff that I’m doing. I recently started watching more of what I eat and going back to the gym to try to lose some weight and building back some of the (albeit little) muscle that I had before I hurt my back.

I’ve always been heavier, even when I was a kid I was heaver than people who were taller than me. When I was around 17 or 18 I think I was about the best shape I’ve ever been. I wasn’t skinny, but my belly was much less pronounced and I was a lot stronger. I think I was around 170lbs at 5’ 9", I was eating McDonald’s about every day working construction. When I stopped doing construction and started my current job as a developer, my activity went way down but my fast food eating stayed about the same. I got all the way up to about 210lbs which was my heaviest at the time. Then when I started going to the gym I got down to about 190 going like 3 times a week and I was happy with the progress I was making.

Then I hurt my back, and basically all activity stopped. I was literally on my back for about 11 months, from October 2022 to maybe August/September 2023 I could barely walk and doing anything was really challenging and painful. I’ve talked about it in other posts, so I won’t talk much about it here. A good thing about this was my fast food eating slowed down a lot too because I wouldn’t go out to eat as much or go to the drive thru. I still gained back all that I had lost, so I was around 210 again, but it wasn’t horrible. Now that I’m back to walking and doing things, I feel better, but the fast food intake went up again while the activity stayed non-existent to low. So I got all the way up to about 230lbs.

So, here we are now in November 2024, and I’m finally trying to get back to going to the gym at least twice a week. I’m down to about 224lbs in the mornings when I wake up, so I’m losing a little bit of weight. I’m currently doing a Push/Pull/Legs split (PPL) because that’s what I was doing before. My split probably doesn’t matter so much right now since I’m probably going to have those dormant muscle/noobie kinda gains where your muscles will come back easier after having been away, unless I’ve atrophied so much. But, I think I’m going to switch to doing a full body split 3x a week so I train every muscle more. I could try to do more days, but since I’m easing into it still I want to do 3 days for at least a few months consistently before I up it I think I’m going to try a full body split.

According to some TDEE calculators, my daily expenditure is somewhere between 2100-2700 calories depending on the activity level and the website I use. I am sorta counting calories and protein, I should be a lot more strict about it. I still make some

Unexpected One Piece Break

If you guys didn’t see online, One Piece might be going on an unexpected break for about 2 weeks. This originally spawned from Manga Plus having the next chapter dropping on December 1st, and not November 17th like it was meant to. User pewpiece on twitter (a user I usually have blocked due to twitter consistently showing me his spoilers summary in my notifications) first reported this change on Manga Plus. Many people were worried for Oda’s health as this is very unusual for Oda to not have his breaks planned, and with the rumors around his blood pressure issues. It was actually exactly a year to the date that Oda was unable to finish chapter 1098. I’m not sure if the reason for that was ever disclosed, I’ve heard that it was due to Oda just missing the deadline, I’ve heard health issues, and I’ve heard that he was crying so hard while drawing that chapter that he couldn’t finish it. In any case, I got pretty worried about the unexpected break too, I’m not going to lie. It kinda ruined my Tuesday afternoon.

Other users started to notice that on Manga Plus their dates still said November 17th as planned. Shonen Jump’s website also had not reflected the changes. I’m not sure about how all these sites play a role into the release schedule, and what should be considered official news, but it seemed to be isolated to just the English version of Manga Plus that the date was changed. Within about 12 hours of me first seeing the announcement of a potential break, I checked the English version of Manga Plus and their date had gone back to November 17th and none of the other sources I saw had changed. So, I thought it was a simple mistake and someone had not entered a date correctly or something. Which is reasonable to think, if I flipped the month and date and I entered 17 for the month maybe it would default back to December, and if I missed the 2nd 1 in 11 then I’d end up with December 1st as a date. So we’re all good right? New chapter this weekend? Maybe not

After Manga Plus had fixed their website and people believed it was a mistake, one of the official translators for One Piece has posted on Blue Sky that there is in NOT going to be a chapter this weekend. Stephen Paul is on the official translation team and posted that Shueisha is “fumbling” and that there will be no chapter this week. Unfortunately, this seems like the most official statement we’ve gotten so far. Unless he’s trolling, it’s probably that we won’t be getting a chapter this week. According to several tweets I’ve seen, we should get something official-official from Shonen Jump tomorrow (the 14th). I’m hopeful that it’s untrue, and this is simply just a data entry issue.

Although we’re at a really good place in the manga and I’m excited for each new release, I am totally fine with another break as long as Oda is healthy. I’m not trying to fuel any rumors, but there have been some people speculating around the reason that Oda could be taking the break. The reason for the 2 week break that we just got off of was due to Oda flying out to South Africa in order to help out with the filming of the live action. Some people believe he’s just especially tired from the traveling, some think he may have gotten sick. I’m personally hopeful that he just enjoyed the trip and hanging out with the crew so much that he decided to go back and do it again to ensure the next season is better than the first. But, we’ll see tomorrow I guess.

Reading Update

I finished “Tomie” by Junji Ito at the start of this month. The more I read from this story, the more I enjoyed it. I believe I read this was largely made during his time as a dental assistant. So, as the story went on you could tell he was getting better at drawing and writing plot lines and dialogue. I highly recommend picking it up, I think this one is one that’s on sale pretty frequently. I think it’d be a good starter for people who are looking to get into horror manga. It’s not my favorite manga I’ve read, but I enjoyed it a lot and will look out for more from him. I plan on reading Uzumaki from him next.

I don’t know if I mentioned reading “The Unfettered Mind” by Takuan Soho, but I finally finished that at the start of the month. That one had been on my list for a little while. Takuan Soho was this Japanese Buddhist priest in the 1500-1600s, and he would write letters back and forth to these different samurai. This book is basically excerpts from the letters about Zen Buddhism and how it relates to martial arts. I started reading it in early October when I went on a trip to the Outer Banks. The first part was really good, it was stuff that I could understand pretty well. It was talking about doing things mindlessly and how you shouldn’t keep your mind in one place. It was digestible and I understood most of what it was talking about. The other 2 thirds of the book just did NOT stick. I don’t think this was the best intro to Zen philosophy like I thought it was going to be. The 2nd part was talking about how you interact with your lord as a retainer, or how you interact with your retainers as a lord. It was kind of how you interact with those around you too. I can’t even begin to explain what was going on in the 3rd part. That was super in depth with some Japanese stories I’m not familiar with. One part actually said something like “you’re not gonna understand this unless you study for 30 years”. It was a short read, it wasn’t even a hundred pages I don’t think, but it was hard and took me like a month to get through.

That’s gonna be it for this month’s post. I want to get this out before tomorrow when we find out officially about the break and potentially a reason for why. I might do another post at the end of the month because I’m getting in to watching more anime movies and stuff so I want to give short reviews on them when I have more time.

October Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Happy Halloween! Bunch of news around One Piece, and I’ve got a tin-foil hat theory for you today regarding One Piece, and some small updates with things I’m doing.

Horror Books and Movies

Since it’s getting close to Halloween, I’ve been watching and reading a little bit of horror media. Right now I’m in the middle of “Tomie” by Junji Ito. I bought Uzumaki and Tomie a few months ago and I started Tomie pretty soon after buying it, but I wasn’t really enjoying it. The art was fine, it was really well drawn in some spots, but others it was really strange and almost bad looking. And the story was just kinda meh. Once I started re-reading it though I started to enjoy and appreciate it a lot more. It’s not something that gets me scared, like movies will, but it is a really cool series and I see why Junji Ito is known as one of the greats of horror manga. The artwork improved a lot as the story went on. There were just a few really rough panels to begin with.

I’ll read Uzumaki at some point soon probably. The anime for it came out recently, and the first episode was animated really well, but from what I’ve been seeing the rest of the show is really bad. It has something to do with the budget or the deadline. I’m not sure, I’ve heard it was a lot of management’s fault though and not the artists. Which is unfortunate because I was really hyped for it, and I wish they had at the very least kept the quality consistent (I think consistently bad is better than having a great first episode and a bad rest of the season). Junji Ito’s work is kind of hard to get the same feeling in an anime that you get from the manga. Which is true for a lot of artists, but I feel like Junji Ito is especially true.

I’m not the biggest horror movie enjoyer. I’ll find one every now and again that interests me, but I’m kind of a wimp so I avoid them a lot of the time lol. My older brother and sister love horror movies and are constantly looking for new ones to watch. They’ve actually gotten to meet a ton of actors from their favorite horror movies. I got to meet a few of the actors who played Jason Voorhees myself.

Anyway, I try to find something around Halloween to watch when it comes around. I watched “Longlegs” towards the start of the month because I thought it would be funny. Nicholas Cage dressed up as an androgynous person who sings? Sounds pretty silly to me. But this movie was actually super sinister, and way less funny than what I thought. It was good, but it was super evil and satanic. It was super suspenseful and not very jump-scary which stresses me out while I’m watching it lol. It was good though, I recommend watching it.

I also watched a Japanese horror movie called “House” from 1977. I hadn’t heard much about it, but I saw a few clips and it looked interesting. Japanese horror movies also kind of have a reputation for being pretty scary, so I was excited to watch it. I just didn’t enjoy it though. With 1970’s and 1980’s American horror/slasher type movies, you can tell at one point they might’ve been scary. With this, I don’t know if anyone would’ve ever found it scary. The visuals remind me of a really weird commercial. I guess that’s part of the appeal, but I just don’t get it. I was bored throughout a lot of it and was wanting it to be over. I think I’d still recommend you watching it, because maybe you’ll get it and enjoy it. It is silly, and I think it’s cool to watch older foreign movies because you get to see how the world was in that part of the world during that time.

One Piece Anime Hiatus

In case you guys haven’t seen, the One Piece anime is going on hiatus. The first video I saw almost gave me a heart attack by saying “ONE PIECE IS GOING ON HIATUS FOR 6 MONTHS!!!” and not mentioning that it was the anime and not the manga. I know it’s for clickbait, but it’s a little aggravating lol.

My understanding is that this is partly due to the upgrade in quality in more recent episodes. I don’t watch it weekly, but I will watch some scenes every now and again and the new animation style look fantastic, so I’m glad they’re gonna sacrifice the amount of time in between episodes in favor of quality. I believe this will also effect the pacing of the anime in a good way.

We’re also supposed to be getting a pseudo-remaster of the anime in the following months where they’re redoing a few arcs with better visuals, and removing some of the filler within the fights (making them faster and more concise). They’re going to be re-airing the Fishman Island arc soon in Japan with the new fixes. It’s going from like 57 episodes down to just 21, which is crazy. Fishman Island is an arc that a lot of people struggle to get through, so this should help with that immensely.

We’re still also going to be getting the new remake soon, so One Piece is literally getting so huge it’ll have 3 different versions of an anime all coming out at the same time.

One Piece Fan Letter

There was a new special episode released called “One Piece Fan Letter” that follows this girl who is trying to deliver a fan letter to Nami on the Straw Hat crews return to Sabaody after she figures out the meaning behind “3D2Y”. It also follows some other fans of the Straw Hat Pirates, including some people in the marines. It was directed by Megumi Ishitani and is about 30 minutes long.

This was such a warm and fuzzy kind of an episode. It was so much fun to watch, the animation was great, the story was simple but had some really impactful moments. It fits One Piece so well in that it expands the world and characters without having to change anything or do anything too crazy. I’m not sure if it’s canon or not, but it’s absolutely worth a watch. I’m going to rewatch it soon.

One Piece 1130

SPOILERS: This contains spoilers for Chapter 1130

This chapter was super good and gives me chills thinking about. This sets the stage for Elbaf and shows off how the Giants perceive Elbaf. The biggest thing to happen in this chapter is the reveal of Loki and his absolutely sinister character design. The other very small detail, but I believe important drop was Vivi potentially having left a sign for the Straw Hats.

On the ship with the rest of the Straw Hat crew and the giants, the newer giant pirates explain how Hajrudin is the king’s son and how he is the rightful heir to the throne of Elbaf. But there was another prince, Loki, who killed King Harald in order to obtain the devil fruit that was passed down through the royal line. It took all the giant warriors to subdue him and trap him, and how if he escaped it could mean the end of Elbaf.

Luffy separates from his group to go look for this power source he’d been sensing all the way inside of Rodo’s room. He knew it was absolutely massive. He comes across this giant with a devilish smile who is chained up and blindfolded. He claims he is the “Sun God” who will destroy the world.

There’s been a lot of discussion around what he means by him being the Sun god. There’s a few people who are called the Sun God, or call themselves the Sun God. Nika, Joy Boy, Luffy, the dragon in Skypeia, Rodo and now Loki all are called Sun God in different ways. People think that maybe his devil fruit is actually the Sun-Sun fruit and he can literally turn into a mini sun, which would be an insane power. Other people think maybe it has something to do with the sun, like radiation or maybe heat. My friend brought up the idea that maybe it’s the rubber-rubber fruit and they thought it was the gum-gum fruit. Like what if the giants have been passing down a fruit they think is the human-human fruit model Nika thinking it’s super hard to awaken, but they actually just have the wrong fruit. I’m not sure what I think yet. He is blindfolded, so I’m wondering if maybe this has something to do with his fruit at all. Like does he need to be able to see to use it? Or does he have some ability that requires sight, like maybe Saturn’s death stare.

Based on some certain dialogue from Rodo and Loki (separately, not together), it seems as though they both don’t hold Elbaf as highly as others might. Rodo is upset that the new giant pirates joined up with the Straw Hat Grand Fleet and are serving humans, and Loki says that Elbaf “once lived and breathed warfare”. So reading into that, my conclusion is that some giants probably do not think as highly of Elbaf as they once did. Especially now with King Harald having been killed, Elbaf is probably in a state of political disarray and a civil war may be brewing. Nothing new for the Straw Hats though, this is like the 10th war they’ve been a part of.

While on the ship, Robin points out that Luffy has an x on his arm that isn’t normally there. It’s also not as blurry as the rest of his body in the photo. She says it looks familiar but she can’t place it. The x is significant because this is part of the secret sign that the Straw Hats used in Alabasta to keep track of eachother. It’s also what the crew showed to Vivi as they were leaving to signal goodbye, but keep Vivi’s affiliation with the crew a secret. It makes sense why no one who is looking at the picture understands the meaning behind it, because none of them were on the crew during Alabasta. Robin joined right after the events of Alabasta and would probably recognize it, but not know the meaning or that it was tied to Vivi. Brook, Franky and Jimbei have never seen it before.

Since the sign is in the newspaper, it’s almost guaranteed to be a sign from Vivi and Big News Morgans. What this sign means is yet to be determined. I’m sure it’s probably her trying to let them know that she’s ok, and to potentially come help her out. Because as we know, the Nefeltari family is in hot water with the world government and Imu specifically. So is Wapol for that matter. We’ll just have to see when we cut back to her what is going on.

Tin-Foil Hat One Piece Theory on the Origin of Devil Fruits

SPOILERS: This includes spoilers up to the end of Egghead. I thought I could get away with chapter 1044 and episode 1071, but there’s some medium sized spoilers in Egghead that I have to mention.

This isn’t going to be a total shot in the dark, but it is really big stretch (lol, you’ll get that joke in a minute, that’s kind of a slow burn). I’ve never heard anyone mention a theory like this, and it has to be a newer one since we only learned about Nika around 3 years ago. I think it’s an interesting idea, even if it doesn’t turn out to be true.

We’re probably going to learn a lot more about Joyboy, Nika, and the ancient kingdom in Elbaf, considering they have most of the work that was written in Ohara and saved by Saul. They also seemingly worship Nika, so the lore behind him might be common knowledge on their island. What if we also learn the origin or cause of devil fruits?

There’s 3 important trees in the world (The Adam Tree, Sunlight Tree Eve, and Yggdrasil). Since we know that devil fruits grow like normal fruits on trees and bushes, could the trees be important to the origin? Some people believe that Yggdrasil could be a potential origin for them having been brought into the world. I think that’s a more likely answer than what I’m about to propose.

What if it wasn’t any of the trees? What if the fruits aren’t really fruits at all? What if all devil fruits are actually pieces of the original Nika’s body?

Don’t get the straight jacket yet, let me explain a little. It’s an insane theory and has a huge likelihood of being proven false, but it’s something I thought up the other day and have a few pieces of evidence that point towards it being possible. My general idea is that Nika’s body was split up and turned into these fruits with great power, be it to spite someone, because he was bored, or maybe he was forced to. The main points of evidence I’m going to bring up are the almost bookkeeping like nature of them, the taste of them, and then some of the folklore surrounding them being apart of imagination.

We learned a little bit about devil fruits and the ability to recreate their powers in Egghead from Vegapunk, we know that they change you at the DNA level to have these powers. So Vegapunk was able to recreate a fruit such that 2 nearly identical fruits existed at the same time (Kaido’s Fish-Fish model Azure Dragon). Why did it take this kind of science to achieve this effect? Why aren’t there huge fields of devil fruits that all have the same abilities? They have a sort of bookkeeping nature to them where 1 fruit can exist until the user dies. How can fruits keep up with this sort of thing? What if Nika decided his own rules for them and split himself up and keeps track of that himself. He realized that certain fruits could cause mass destruction, so he decided to keep it as a limit to 1 fruit each. This could also be some run of the mill limitation of the magic or system that was used to create devil fruits, but I have yet to hear a theory surrounding this particular aspect of the devil fruits.

All we know about the tastes of devil fruits are that they taste horrible. It’s never been really described what the taste is apart from bad, but could it be that they taste like rubber? Or a rubber/human mixture? Again, this is a reach, but what purpose is served by them tasting bad? Normally, plants or fruits will taste bitter to make animals avoid eating them. But devil fruits can only be eaten the 1 time, so the taste wouldn’t really make animals avoid eating them. They’re also super rare, so animals would probably rarely get the chance to eat them anyway.

Nika is a being that embodies imagination and freedom, as we’ve seen from Gear 5. Luffy is able to do most everything that Luffy wants. Partially (in my opinion) because Luffy has such a big imagination, he was able to awaken his fruit. What if Luffy’s imagination wasn’t as great? Well then he might not have been able to awaken it. What if what we know about devil fruits also follows the same rules? What if they work on a belief system. We’ve heard that if you were to eat 2 devil fruits you would explode, but what if that’s just what everyone believes? What if the key to having multiple fruits is simply believing that you can eat them. Blackbeard is a character that believes in dreams and may have just believed that he could eat multiple fruits. This is probably going to be disproved so hard when it comes out that Blackbeard is actually 3 people.

Most of this is sorta half finished, but I want to get this post out before the month is up. I haven’t thought through my theory in its entirety, but I think it’d be cool if I called the theory that turns out to be so vital to the story of One Piece. I hope you guys have a fun and safe evening trick-or-treating!

September Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:27:23 -0400

Happy September! I can sorta feel that this is gonna cut it close to the end of the month, even though I’m starting this on the 16th (I finished it on the 26th, so not too bad).

Back Update/Small lesson

Small lesson I got reminded of these past few weeks: If you know you should do something and it takes literally 20 minutes to do, go ahead and get it done.

I hadn’t done my MB3 exercises for a few weeks. I’ve been sort of busy and my friend has been really busy so we haven’t gotten together to do them. He goes to the gym pretty regularly, and he’ll do some sets of them between his other sets of exercises, so he’s a lot better about doing them than I am. I, on the other hand, am relatively lazy and don’t do much outside of what I have planned for a day, and that unfortunately includes my exercises (I’ve been trying to go back to the gym regularly though, but haven’t succeeded yet). I started feeling some sciatica pain this past weekend and was like “here we go”. Thank goodness it hasn’t progressed to anything major. I did a quick half workout on Sunday and probably will do another half today. There’s no good reason for me to skip them. They’re easy enough to do, you don’t need much space, you don’t need equipment (except for a pillow or a soft surface), and I feel great after doing them. Don’t be like me, just do the thing you know you should do.

Reading

I’ve been trying to read more this year, and I think I’ve honestly read more this year than the 6 years since I left high school. It’s fun, it’s a good hobby.

This month I finished “At the Mountains of Madness” by H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve had this books for years but have never read it or tried to read it. It’s tiny, my copy is only 84 pages long. But I’m pretty sure it’s his longest work, so that’s why it’s its own book (at least the copy I have is its own book). I read this so that way I could read the manga version by Gou Tanabe, since I bought the deluxe version. I really should’ve waited to buy the deluxe edition instead of pre-ordering it, because as soon as it came out it dropped like $10. I also realized I’m not the biggest fan of the story. I’m horrible with having scenes described to me, especially when they’re as intricate as some of Lovecraft’s. I wish I liked cosmic horror too, but I guess I just don’t get it. I’ll still read the manga version, but I may sell it or give it to my friend. It’s about as thick as a Berserk deluxe edition, so it might just be taking up space.

I’m also starting to read some Kafka, I bought a book of a compilation of his stories that I plan to read that include ones like “Description of a Struggle”, “The Metamorphosis” and “The Judgment”. I’ve only read the first 2 introductory parables in the book called “Before the Law” and “An Imperial Message”. Kafka is kind of known as a sad man, and a lot of absurdist/existentialist authors (Camus) have read and enjoyed. So I figured I’d pick it up and try it. I’d like to read “The Trial” as well, that one sounds very interesting and reminds me of “The Stranger” by Camus which is one of my favorite books. I’m kind of all over the place when I read though, I’m technically in the middle of like 5 books, but I don’t recommend that.

Grave of the Fireflies

I’ve been on a little bit of a Studio Ghibli kick the past few months. I’ve always heard they were super good, but until this year I had only seen “Spirited Away”, “Ponyo”, and “My Neighbor Totoro”. I’ve been really enjoying watching them all though, they’re so much fun. So far I’ve watched:

Spirited Away
Ponyo
My Neighbor Totoro
Howl’s Moving Castle
Princess Mononoke
The Boy and the Heron
Kiki’s Delivery Service

I’d heard that “Grave of the Fireflies” was really good, and really sad, so I’d been kinda pushing it off. I was actually planning on watching it towards the end of the list, but it recently came out on Netflix and I decided that it was time. I was going to watch it with someone, but Netflix didn’t have the English dubbing and they won’t watch stuff where they have to read subtitles so they didn’t watch it. I had already mentally committed, so I watched it by myself. Which I think was probably a good thing, I’m not normally picky about subbed vs dubbed except for a very few select movies/shows, but I don’t know if the English version would’ve hit as hard as the Japanese one did.

With a lot of confidence, I can say this is the saddest movie I’ve ever seen. It beats “Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, “The Cure”, “Christmas Shoes”, and “Marley and Me” in my opinion. From the start to the end I was on the edge of crying my eyes out. The story follows a boy named Seita and his little sister Setsuko in Japan in the 1940’s during WWII. Their home is bombed and they have to move around to be able to eat and survive. This movie shows off the effects of war in a way I’ve never really seen before in a movie (though I haven’t watched many war, or war-adjacent, movies). Please, set aside some time to watch this movie and some time afterwards to cry.

One Piece Chapters 1124-1127

Spoilers: This will have spoilers for chapters 1124-1127 of the One Piece manga

Some crazy stuff has happened the past few chapters. I’ve been incredibly slack with writing about the chapters coming out. I don’t necessarily want to write about every chapter that comes out, but this set has been insane and we’re on our way to the next island.

Chapter 1124

This chapter wasn’t too too crazy in terms of events, but it did give us a glimpse into the thoughts and emotions of Kizaru that we haven’t seen before. We knew that Vegapunk was a good friend of his, and he wasn’t super happy with having to kill him. Most of his time in the arc he seemed hesitant and less enthusiastic about his mission. In Sabaody for example, he was sorta making jokes when he was trying to capture/kill the Straw Hats, but in Egghead he was much more somber.

This chapter also shows some of the relation between Kizaru and Akainu. We don’t have a lot to go off of in terms of how the admirals get along. Akainu and Aokiji obviously went head to head during the time skip to decide who was going to be fleet admiral. But, in my opinion, we have no idea if they were enemies/rivals before that. Obviously they had differing ideas, otherwise there may not have been a need for the battle, but as for how they acted towards each other on a daily basis I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen that. In this chapter, Akainu being fleet admiral and very mission-oriented snapped at Kizaru telling him he better not have screwed up. Kizaru snapped back at him because he’s really hurting in this moment and couldn’t care less about Saturn or anyone else’s well being. And in maybe a moment of empathy or sympathy that I don’t think we’ve ever seen from him, Akainu apologizes. Being that this is in relation to Kizaru having killed a friend, this could be the start of the buildup for Akainu’s backstory. We know that he has a deep hatred for pirates and everyone who helps or sympathizes with them. Exciting little development.

A slightly unexpected bit of dialogue was Zoro complaining about Luffy crying over not having been able to save Vegapunk. He doesn’t think it’s very emperor like. At first, this seems sort of uncharacteristically heartless of Zoro. He has to know that Luffy is very sensitive, right? Yes, but Zoro has always been incredibly careful and aware about how a crew/captain should act. One of the best and most well known examples of this is when Usopp left the crew in Water 7. Zoro wasn’t going to let Usopp back on board if he didn’t apologize for going against what Luffy said. Zoro knows how a crew should act and how letting a crew mate disrespect the captain would look and what it could evolve into. This is just a similar situation. To be an emperor in the New World means that you have to be ruthless to an extent. If Luffy is going to be the Pirate King, he can’t care about “some old scientist”. I don’t think this is Zoro being totally heartless, but he realizes that it could make them look weak. Especially in front of the giants who are close with Shanks. Luffy’s despair doesn’t last for very long before Lilith explains that Vegapunk is actually still alive. At the time this was believed to be some technological trickery, where Vegapunk uploaded his consciousness to a computer or something. This is enough for Luffy to get out of his slump and start partying.

At the end of the chapter we get a small glimpse of a silhouette that’s caused some talk online about who it could be. One theory that I really like is that this silhouette is the same person that Crocus was talking to on the cover of chapter 631. All we know about this person is that they know Crocus, in a decently familiar/friendly way, they drink, and they would also have to have the ability to go up reverse mountain. This doesn’t narrow it down a lot, but it could potentially point to a former member of Roger’s crew. With the way the hair looks, it could be Scopper Gaban who was potentially the 2nd mate on Roger’s crew (given the order of the colors/metal theme that they had going on with Gold Roger, Silvers Rayleigh, Scopper Gaban). For a long time now it’s been theorized that Scopper would be either at the final island (very doubtful though), or Lodestar which was thought to be the final island before Roger found Laugh Tale. However, not knowing how much longer we have in the story, this could be Oda bringing Scopper in earlier than we thought and we just skip Lodestar all together.

Another theory is that this silhouette isn’t the same person from chapter 630 at all, and instead this is Loki the prince of Elbaf. We know that this silhouette is of someone on Elbaf, so it being Loki isn’t totally out of the question. The top of his head could be cut off to hide his crown, because that would definitely give it away. It would make sense if Loki was intentionally waiting for the Straw Hats to come and it’s more of an impatient “Come on”. I’m not totally sure. Hopefully we find out soon. I’d love for it to be Scopper.

Chapter 1125

This chapter had everyone going crazy. This one has one of the biggest events of Egghead for sure, and it’s one that the general world of One Piece don’t know of.

To start with, Lucci tells the government that he has killed Stussy. Whether or not this is true is to be determined. It could be that Kaku has lied to Lucci and said she succumbed to some injuries. Or that Lucci lied himself to protect Stussy. Or it could be that during some unseen scene, he actually did kill her. Everything is to be determined at this point. The Stussy stuff is something I haven’t paid enough attention to this arc. I have been needing to do a big re-read of Egghead because there’s a lot of details I personally missed because I was so concerned with trying to catch up. There isn’t much I can say on this point, but there’s a lot this could mean for Cipher Pol.

Here’s where stuff starts picking up a ton of speed very quickly. During a status check of what’s happened and how the navy is meant to proceed, in a flash back it’s confirmed that Saturn was alive 200 years ago and told the scientists then NOT to trash Emeth and to instead research him. This is a huge drop because we’ve been wondering about the life cycle of elders forever. Especially since the information regarding the God Valley incident was revealed during this arc. Saturn looked identical 38 years ago, so we assumed they had a longer life span. It wasn’t clear (and still isn’t 100% clear) if the elders were normal humans and would be replaced when they died, or if they were immortal or near-immortal beings who have been around since the void century, or maybe something in between. This at least confirms that Saturn had an extended life and was around since 200 years ago. It heavily leans into the idea that they’ve always been by Imu’s side.

Saturn tells the vice admirals not to chase the Straw Hats for now, and instead clean up the resulting chaos from Vegapunk’s message. After this status check, Doberman asks Saturn “Since this was considered a failure, does that mean Vegapunk was telling the truth?”. Saturn then uses his death ray vision (unknown ability) to incapacitate and maybe even kill Doberman.

The Vegapunk satellites who were killed during this arc are then shown to orchestrate an effort to move Vegapunk’s brain, aka Punk Records. Lilith was telling the truth and Vegapunk is still alive at least inside the computer systems in Punk Records, and they are able to then rebuild themselves into a frankensteined version of themselves using spare parts on the piece of Punk Records they stole. York will still have access, but not physical access. This is very vague in what it means, but I think this gives York a reason to at least stay alive for a while longer. Punk Records then heads to Weatheria which is where Nami trained during the time skip. Weatheria is also the first instance of us seeing that knots could be used for more than just tying things, right before the time skip the wizards show Nami a rope that stored wind and would be useful for navigating. This could be where we learn how Joy Boy was able to store all that haki in the rope inside of Emeth.

Now for the huge reveal. We cut to Marijoa and see Figarland Garling, former leader of the Holy Knights, take a seat with the rest of the elders who were transported back after Joy Boy’s haki was released (an ability we aren’t sure is central to Imu or if it’s something to do with the elders). The rest of the elders are confused and shocked that Garling would have the gall to approach them like this. He then reveals he’s been promoted to be the head of science and defense. The title that Saturn held. We cut back to Egghead shows Saturn in pain and rapidly aging while the vice admirals freak out and call for medics. Saturn asks for mercy from Imu, but it’s too late and he falls over as only bones.

This bit was WILD. To see Saturn perish after having done all the evil things he did to Kuma and Vegapunk was very cathartic in a way. I’m a little sad it wasn’t at the hands of Luffy, Kuma, or Bonney. But it’s not surprising that Imu would want to kill him after what happened. Garling replacing Saturn was sort of out of left field, I was super surprised about that. This shows off a little more about the hierarchy of celestial dragons and Marijoa. It also gives us an idea of how strong Garling potentially is, to be next in line to the elders means that he’s either very well respected or he’s super strong. Could it be that Saturn was the head of the Holy Knights before? Were all the elders some higher up in their class system before they became elders? All very interesting questions. This means that the spot of Supreme Commander of the Holy Knights is open, so who will take over that position? Could this be the setup for another Garling son reveal (meaning that Shanks has a brother, potentially a twin)?

Lastly, we see the Revolutionaries reaction to the message and their resolve to finally make their move. Finally, Dragon is gonna do something besides looking to the east and saying “…”. Seeing that the world is about to go nuts and many more people are going to be looking for the One Piece with malicious intent, they presumably decide to go after it themselves. It’s not 100% clear that they’re going to go after it, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they only had a small task force attempt to go after it. Or maybe even only try to stop people from going after it. There’s a lot they could do in this situation. I think the surefire way to keep the weapons out of other hands would be to get it themselves. But, we’ll see.

Chapter 1126

Again, this is a chapter filled with a ton of stuff that’s very important to the story and how it will move forward. This is potentially the catalyst for what leads to a Davy-back fight between Luffy and Shanks. Something about this chapter had a different feel to it. I’m not sure what it is, but out of my friends I’ve been the only one to feel this way. I’m not sure, I’m probably just being weird. I really enjoyed this chapter though, this isn’t a bad feeling. It felt new, but old at the same time.

It starts out on the Giants’ ship where everyone is still partying and catching up. Dorry and Brogy’s battle never finished, their weapons just broke and they didn’t want to keep fighting each other with their fists. So, eventually they will return to Little Garden to continue the fight. I personally think it’ll be after the story is concluded, but it could very well be in the next few chapters and we just don’t see them again.

Everyone is having a great time right now, they’re drinking, they’re dancing, they’re singing. Robin is smiling (my bby girl), Franky and Chopper are dancing to Brook playing music, and Bonney and Kuma are catching up a little bit. Kuma is still smiling which is wonderful. With Vegapunk still being around in a sense, I wonder if the satellites will be able to reverse his cyborg surgery. I can’t remember the specifics about it, if Vegapunk said it was irreversible or not. Really, Vegapunk could have put a reverse switch in without Saturn’s knowledge and just not told Kuma or anyone. That might be too wishful of thinking. In any case, right now they’re chilling and they’re happy.

One of the giants mentions that they’re drinking absinthe. I don’t know much about alcohol, but I’ve heard that absinthe is pretty crazy stuff and will make you hallucinate, which is mentioned in this chapter. This is 100% an example of Chekhov’s gun. It wouldn’t be mentioned that it was a hallucinogenic unless someone will hallucinate from it. I think this may come in to play later on in the chapter, so I’ll explain that in a bit.

Now for the precursor to the Davy-back fight that I mentioned. A hundred chapters ago or so in a cover story, we saw Bartolomeo burn down a Red-hair pirates flag in one of Shanks’ territories and replace it with a Straw Hat flag. This was obviously going to cause some issues because emperors can’t let other emperors stroll in and steal their territory, so Shanks was forced to retaliate. He did this by beating up the Barto club and giving them the task of poisoning Luffy. Barto was to give Luffy this bottle of poison within 1 month and that would be considered the payback. But, this wasn’t really poison, it was a test to see what Bartolomeo would do and test Luffy’s allies. Bartolomeo, being the absolute chad that he is, drinks it without a second thought. Feeling a huge sense of responsibility for what happened he drank the poison, but then feels despair over never being able to see Luffy become the Pirate King. But, it turns out it was fake and they’re sent on their way…except not really.

Bartolomeo is a huge Straw Hat pirates and Luffy fan, and with him being a part of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet (SHGF) he’s gonna be proud of Luffy. For him to go and “claim” one of Shanks’ territories, I honestly don’t think he realized what he was doing. Bartolomeo is a HUGE fan, so he’s just a giddy guy and wanted to show off his loyalty. He’s a pirate, so he knows the significance of the jolly roger, but I think he was seeing it more like a poster of his favorite captain. Like Shanks’ said in the chapter though, he can’t just let that kind of behavior slide. It puts his friends in danger. Shanks and Luffy are very similar in that regard, they don’t put up with people hurting their friends. Literally in the very first chapter of One Piece, Shanks had beer spilled on him and was made fun of, but he didn’t bat an eye. But as soon as Higuma and his men started messing with Luffy, it was on. Even though what Bartolomeo did wasn’t a direct attack on Shanks’ friends, it could easily lead to one. I doubt it would come to it, but it technically could lead to a lot worse. Some pirate could just start destroying all of Shanks’ territories. Bartolomeo realized what he had done was wrong, but was immediately ready to face the consequences.

Once he was given the task to poison Luffy, his idol, his hero, he immediately decided to take the poison himself. I don’t think many people in universe know that Luffy’s immune to most poisons after what Magellan did to him in Impel Down. Since it wasn’t actually poison, it didn’t matter, but I figured I’d bring that up. After Bartolomeo is set “free”, Shanks and Beckman have this short conversations where Shanks reveals he’s thrilled that Luffy has people who care for him that much. We see moments like this every now and again where Shanks is super proud of Luffy and how far he’s come and how he’s on his way to becoming a great pirate. It always makes me smile. Then the biggest bum of a father has to come and ruin it.

All we’ve seen Yasopp do up until now in the story is be a horrible father to Usopp, a great uncle/father figure to Luffy, and be worried to see Usopp because he knows how crappy of a human he is. I didn’t really believe/feed into the whole Yasopp being a horrible dad thing, because there could be a bunch of reasons he didn’t go back to get or see Usopp. Him being on a emperor’s crew means that he’s a high profile target for both the navy and potentially other pirates, and he may not have wanted to put Usopp into danger by taking him on the ship with him or frequently visiting the home town. These are very similar reasons for Dragon not being a very good father to Luffy. Given these legitimate arguments for Yasopp not being a good father out of necessity, I hate him and want him to bite the curb.

Kidd had already challenged Shanks and lost before for very similar reasons. Kidd has always been hard-headed and has tried on 3 separate occasions to try to take Shanks down. The first time he lost an arm, the 2nd time he formed an alliance with Hawkins and Apoo and they got thwarted by Kaido. The last time his ship was destroyed with 1 attack by Shanks after directing an attack at Shanks and his friends, the 2nd time he directly attacked. Now he may not be alive, he probably is but there’s a chance he is gone for good, but it took him 3 times to get injured that seriously. 3 distinct attacks against Shanks. Bartolomeo on the other hand, got a little careless and too gung-ho and made a mistake. One which he was immediately apologizing for and ready to take responsibility for. I don’t think the 2 cases are very equal. Out of the 2 I think that Bartolomeo should’ve been given the leeway that Kidd was given. Not saying that I want Bartolomeo to lose an arm, but I think that’s a much more fitting punishment compared to his ship being sunk.

Now, if Shanks were to have given the order to take down the Barto club ship, I’d probably be mad at him, but it would make sense being a message for Luffy and all the other worst generation pirates to stop screwing around with an emperor’s territories and friends. Yasopp could’ve also acted in this way because it was coming from an emperor, and not just any one of the worst generation. Since Yasopp did it though, seemingly because he wanted to (or at the very least because he thought he had to), I’m not sure what to think.

Chapter 1127

When I first read this chapter I thought to myself “ok, this is a pretty easy intro to Elbaf chapter, I won’t write about this for the September blog”. But then people started noticing some inconsistencies in the chapter and it could be super interesting in what it means for the direction of Elbaf. There ere so many issues it’s made people start to question Oda and his editors. So many inconsistencies that it has to be intentional, or the One Piece team is being held up at gunpoint and are trying to send a message.

If it weren’t for the weirdness of the chapter, this would be pretty standard introduction to an arc. A slightly boring/slow chapter that’s getting us acclimated to the island, and splitting up the Straw Hats. The callbacks to Alabasta were cool. A pretty simple chapter with a little bit of what’s going on in Elbaf being shown off as well. The Yggdrasil, or the World Tree, is shown to be very important to the people of Elbaf and may be on fire currently (due to the Straw Hats or not). Lots of people in Elbaf live in what actually seem to be Lego houses. At the end of the last chapter it kinda looked like Nami was in a Lego house, and people were extrapolating that this was a reference to the country of origin of Lego, Denmark. Denmark has some ties to vikings, so it makes sense that there would be some ties to it, but Lego is a bit of an odd choice.

People started noticing that there were a few inconsistencies with what the characters were wearing, and how they acted. A few times someone would be wearing a sword on their back and in the next panel it was an axe, or it was totally gone. Nami’s tattoo was missing, thought it could be that it was supposed to be covered up by her clothing. Luffy isn’t wearing his straw hat that we can see, he called Gear 3 Gear 4, and HE TURNED DOWN FOOD. Now, all of these in isolation are minor things that could have been overlooked. Oda has made mistakes in the past. But, the fact that they all happened in the same chapter after having landed on a new island and after having mentioned the potential hallucinogenic effects of the booze they were drinking seems very intentional and some mind trickery Oda would try to pull. If this is intentional, a lot of people are wondering if it is the absinthe or if it’s potentially Loki, the prince of Elbaf. Loki in Norse mythology is known to be a half giant as well as a trickster, so it would be fitting that the prince of Elbaf (the land of giants) was a trickster. I personally like the idea of it being Loki more than it being absinthe, though I do think absinthe would have to come into play at some point later on during the story. Or at least some hallucinogenic situations.

Lot’s of cool implications for it.

August Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Pretty good month for me, to be honest. I’ve done a little bit of traveling, done a little bit of reading, done a little bit of exercise. I’m pretty much just going to go over the Disney trip in this post though. Might make another one soon about the end of Egghead in One Piece, which has been insane.

This was the coolest thing of August. I took a week off of work and went to Disney World in Florida with a bunch of friends. Three of the people going had birthdays within a week of our trip, and a different three people had never been to Disney before. It was a really good time.

Traveling to Florida

Traveling was the roughest part of the whole experience. Firstly, there was a hurricane/tropical storm (Debbie) right in our path that we were all a little concerned about. My family would’ve preferred I hadn’t gone at all. Second, we weren’t sure what car to take. It was between my friend’s Chevy Volt (hybrid sedan) and their F-150 lightning (full electric truck). We went back and forth for a bit, but we decided on taking the Volt. Even though it wasn’t as comfy, we figured having the ability to use gas would be easier to get around with. Also stopping in a storm and having to charge for 30-40 minutes with the truck would be a little cumbersome. We also figured if the storm knocked out electricity, the gas stations would be up quicker than the EV chargers and we wouldn’t be as easily stranded. The Volt had different plans for us though.

We left at about 6:30am and had to stop for gas. We got about 20 minutes away from where our friend lived, filled up, and then the Volt wouldn’t start again. It wasn’t wanting to switch from the electric mode to the gas mode, which is an issue they just had fixed on this same car. We were stranded at the gas pump. We called up support and eventually just decided we’d have to have it towed. So my mom came and picked the 3/4 of us up, while Kai waited with the volt, and took us back to the house so we could get the F-150 and then go back for Kai. It was about 8:30am before we actually made it out of our county and were officially on the road. Which, sounds like a pain (and kind of was in the moment), but was actually a blessing. If we had broke down in Florida then we’d have been totally screwed without a car, and they’d have to get it towed all the way back to North Carolina. Which could’ve taken a whole day off of our Disney plans. But, once we were on the road everything was good. On the way home we found out the Volt’s issue actually totaled it. It’d be like $6000-$8000 to fix, and they’d already spent $1.5k like 2 weeks before for maintenance and to (supposedly) fix that issue. So it really worked out that we didn’t take it.

In the charge we had to stop and charge several times, but that gave us time to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. We ran into a few bad spots of weather from the storm, but overall it wasn’t horrible. We stopped at 3 different Buc-ees gas stations, which only 1 of us had ever been to 1 before. We stopped at 1 in South Carolina, and then 2 in Florida. We would’ve hit the one in Georgia, but that was in the middle of the state and would’ve made our trip at least 4 hours longer. For those who don’t know, Buc-ees are these very huge, clean (very very clean), stores basically with gas pumps. It’s kind of odd to call them gas stations because they are so much more. I got a pulled pork sandwich, like 3 burritos, energy drinks/soda, and some mints across all our trips to give you an idea of what I mean. I wish I had gotten a hat or something, but I’m sure I’ll go back again. They have so much more stuff that I should’ve looked at, but we were already running way behind.

After leaving at 6:30am on Monday morning, we got to our Airbnb at 12:30am on Tuesday. What would’ve been an 8-10 hour gas car ride, turned into an 18 hour EV drive. Nothing we could’ve done though, weather and EVs were not on our side. It really could’ve been a lot worse, we got lucky in a lot of ways. But, at the time I was annoyed I hadn’t taken a 12 hour train ride for $80 like I had looked into. I seriously considered taking one home and ditching my friends, but that ended up back firing because the trains home weren’t running the day we were meant to leave. I’m glad I didn’t though, the car ride conversations were great. I got to hang out with our buddy Carson more than I really had before which was cool. A huge shout out to Kai though, he drove the whole trip, all 18 hours by himself.

The Airbnb was pretty nice. It was Disney themed to an extent, they had wifi, showers, a really comfy couch, and it was in a decent neighborhood. We ended up walking about 15-20 minutes away to a Walmart one day for lunch, and it was kinda in the middle of a lot of cool stuff.

Disney

Disney was super fun. I’d been one time in 2018 for my cousins 20th birthday. We flew down (also during a hurricane, which is a story for another post) and spent a week at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios (I think). Since it had been 6 years since my last visit a lot of stuff had changed and was a really good time. Our tickets this time didn’t include Magic Kingdom so we went to Hollywood Studios, Epcot and Animal Kingdom. I wish we had gone to Magic Kingdom because that’s like the Disney park and it has a lot of cool iconic rides, but all the others were really good. The weather was great for the most part, there was some torrential rain when we were leaving Animal Kingdom on the last day, but 99% of the time it was sunny and warm.

At Epcot we went and ate around the world. A really cool experience if you get to try it. There’s a lot of good food. It’s not necessarily the most authentic thing I believe. You can tell it’s kind of Americanized, or they don’t use the best ingredients. It’s a good time though. I bought a straw hat from the Japanese section and was wearing it for the rest of the day. I wish I had both something Ghibli related now that I’m home. They have pretty deep ties to each other, so there was a huge section of Ghibli stuff. In Germany I was getting a bratwurst and met a German man who liked One Piece and was caught up with the manga! He recognized the hat and asked me if I was a fan, and we talked for a second. I kinda fibbed to him because I thought chapter 1123 was coming out that week, but I was mistaken and it came out the next week.

We didn’t have a lot of time for anything else besides Disney and 1 rest day. We did go to an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet that included lobster one night. It was $80 and you could get as many lobsters and crab as you wanted. They also had all you can eat sushi. I was sort of excited because I’d never tried real crab or lobster, but the process of cracking them and eating them really turned me off of the whole thing. I like watching them get cracked, but I didn’t want to do it myself or eat them. They’re giant bugs that live in the water. Creepy. Everything else was decent though, they had more besides just seafood. I love sushi, but I’m not a huge fan of shellfish or fried fish, so my plate was high with barbecue and sushi. My friends also had me try part of an oyster which wasn’t bad. It just creeps me out. Those things are hell-bent on staying closed, why did we as humans decide to open them and eat them. Super strange.

Everyone took pictures and videos, and our friend Carson is going to edit it all together and upload it to Youtube. I’ll post a link once it’s ready. His channel is here.

Traveling home

Friday was the day we designated for Animal Kingdom because we knew we were leaving and that’s the park we didn’t mind leaving early. The last ride we rode was the one for the Avatar movie, which we waited in line for like 2.5 hours. As soon as we got off of it, it started POURING rain. I’m not sure we saw more rain anywhere else. All the way to the entrance of the park it poured. My feet were totally soaked. We actually got separated from our other car of friends. Which was mostly fine because they were going to drop off 1 person in northern Florida, and continue driving to Illinois. In our truck, from Animal Kingdom we were going to be going straight to the airport to drop off our friend who lives in Minnesota, and we were gonna take the original 4 of us back to North Carolina. His flight was at about 6pm and he was checking the whole day to make sure his flight wasn’t gonna get canceled or delayed or anything. Ten minutes away from the terminal he got a notification it had been delayed 3 hours. We debated not dropping him off so we could do one more thing and meet back up with the other car for a real goodbye. The McDonald’s in Orlando is actually the biggest one in the world and they sell a lot of unique food, and that’s what we were planning on. But looking at the map and traffic it would’ve taken 3 hours to drive there and back, and we’d need a charge, so we decided it wasn’t worth it. We dropped him off at the airport and then met the other car about an hour north of Orlando. They had made the stop at the McDonald’s and kindly bought us some pizzas. The pizzas were really surprising. They definitely weren’t my preferred style, but the quality beat my expectations. I was expecting the smaller pizzas you’d get at like Pizza hut for finishing a book. But they were more like legit pizzas, they were thin and crispy, and the sauce was decent. I give them like a 6.5/10. If I have the chance to go I’ll probably try some of their pasta.

After that we finally began the trek home. On the way down to Orlando, and all the 4 days that we were in Orlando we never had issues finding a charger. On the way home, Northern Florida turned out to be impossible to find a charger in. We stopped off at a Wawa (another gas station that people rave about, it was fine, but it wasn’t a Buc-ees) to charge. Kai, who was driving stayed behind to hook up the charger, but had issues because this one required you to download an app. We fussed around and finally figured out that these chargers were for people who used FPL (Florida Power and Light) as their utility provider, and also subscribed to their EV program. There was no way to just put our card in and pay to charge. This was super annoying and kinda scary because we couldn’t find a non-FPL charger close enough where we would make it with the charge we had. We were close to an apartment building, but it was also right next to a gas station which was super misleading. They have a monopoly of fast chargers in Northern Florida too it seemed. FPL sucks basically. We decided to chance it and went on to Georgia and found a charger right at the state line, thank goodness. We had like 10 miles left or something ridiculous. We pressed on and on and Kai drove most of the night. He took a break from about 3am to 6am so he could sleep and Josh drove because he had been sleeping. I made it home at about 8am, so this time the trip only took about 14 hours.

Conclusion

Long trips in EVs isn’t easy, it’s still probably better to take a gas vehicle, but it is possible to use one. You just have to plan for the charging stops, and then to be safe double that time. Disney is always a good time with the boys though, I’d do it all again for sure. I highly recommend taking a trip to Disney with a bunch of friends.

July Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Slam Dunk Review

TLDR: Read Slam Dunk, it’s great, it’s so hype. Even if you don’t like sports, give it a try.

I finished reading the Slam Dunk manga on the 14th of this month. I thoroughly enjoyed the series and I give it a 9/10. I think it’s underrated and should be talked about way more. Takehiko Inoue’s art and ability to make you care about all the characters is superb. I think this is probably my favorite finished manga as of now.

I have yet to find a story that made me as hyped to read the next panel as Slam Dunk did. One Piece has its moments, and I think it is my overall favorite story, but Slam Dunk had me grinning like an idiot when Shohoku would pull off a good play.

I really wasn’t sure if I was going to like a sports manga; the pictures aren’t moving, I don’t like sports, and how can high school basketball games be deep. I mostly wanted it to have something from Inoue in my collection. I was gladly proven wrong, I loved every minute of it. The entire story is great. It starts out being about a dumb guy who picks up basketball to impress a girl, and it morphs into a story about the entire team and their struggles, their strengths and weaknesses, learning to play effectively as a team all for this single goal that they share for different reasons. It’s a really beautiful story. Don’t let the fact that it’s a sports manga turn you off to it, I think it’s a genre that more people should try.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING

I think my biggest issue with Slam Dunk is the ending. This is mostly because it ended way sooner than I thought it could’ve and it didn’t end how I wanted it to lol

As I was reading and getting closer to volume 31 I realized the Sannoh game was probably going to be the last game we saw in full. Before I finished, I was on youtube and saw a video that was titled “Why Slam Dunk was canceled” (or something to that effect) which scared me because I really wanted to see how it ended. I realized there were going to be a few different ways this could end.

The series just ends on a cliffhanger never having been fully finished. (Super doubtful, I hadn’t heard of Slam Dunk never having been finished.)
They win this game against Sannoh and they ride that high to win the national championship. (Doubted it. Although Sannoh won the title last year, I didn’t think they’d have an easy ride for the rest of nationals. You can’t not show the last game.)
They lose the game, but they’re happy with their progress and go on about their lives. (Not horrible, but I’d prefer they win)

The real ending is kind of a mix of 2 and 3. They win a very heated match against Sannoh, but because they literally gave everything they had to win it, they then lose the next match and are sent home from nationals. It wraps up by showing a little bit of everyone’s lives afterwards.

Sakuragi is pretty badly injured in the game against Sannoh when he goes for a loose ball and crashes into a table. His back is so badly injured he ends up doing rehab after the story is finished. You guys know I relate to that with my back issues lol, I didn’t think it was “cool” that he got hurt, but having something real like that in the story was cool to see. Sakuragi’s injury wasn’t explicitly explained, but it didn’t seem entirely serious because he wasn’t paralyzed, unlike another character in Takehiko Inoue’s series “REAL” who has his spinal cord severely damaged/severed.

I really wish they would’ve won nationals. They tried so hard and there were so many people who were beaten by Shohoku, I think it would’ve been nice to see them show up to the final game supporting them and their progress. I honestly could’ve read another 30 volumes just of nationals to finish it up. But, I read somewhere that Takehiko Inoue didn’t think he could draw another game that was as good as the one against Sannoh, which makes sense. They struggled so much in the games leading up to the game against Sannoh, they hit a wall. Akagi really wanted to win nationals, but making it to nationals and beating a team that had won it before was amazing to see.

I think I would’ve liked to see what happened in the year following Sakuragi’s first year. Akagi, Kogure and Mitsui wouldn’t have been at Shohoku anymore, but that could’ve been a new opportunity for more characters with their own struggles. I basically wish there was a Slam Dunk 2. I’m highly doubtful of that ever happening though since it’s almost been 30 years since the series finished. Haruko and Sakuragi never got together either. They were friends and she was writing him letters while he was in physical therapy, but that wasn’t what I wanted :'(

Overall the ending was fine and to be expected. I’ll just keep my own head canon about what should’ve happened. Very good series.

My Next Series

I’m not 100% sure what series I’m going to read next. I’m only 2/3 of the way through Goodnight Punpun, I got the Monster perfect edition volumes this month, I just got Vinland Saga 1-7, there’s a few different things I could pick up.

I got Monster spoiled like crazy by reading an amazon description of the perfect edition set. So, be careful reading descriptions on amazon I guess. My buddy says that it doesn’t totally ruin the story, so hopefully I still enjoy it.

I really need to slow down on my manga collecting. I checked my savings account the other day and it’s lower than what I thought it was going to be lol. Nothing major, I’m not bankrupt, but just kind of had a reality check. The past few months have been a little expensive outside of manga collecting.

I bought the last volumes of One Piece I need and I got a really good deal on volumes 1-7 of Vinland Saga, but overall that was pretty close to $350. I’m going to Galaxy Con Raleigh this weekend, which has a lot of manga and collectibles. I’m just going to have to exercise some self-restraint and not spend a ton of money.

Anyway, this blog post ended up being a little weird with its contents and structure. I’m going to end it here though. I want to make sure it gets out in July, and if I wait until next week there’s a chance it won’t. See you guys in August!

June Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 13:05:59 -0400

Not too much going on in my personal life this month, thankfully. It’s nice to have a few calm weeks every now and again. My family has a lot of birthdays next month, so that’ll be a crazy time for us.

I guess this month I’ll just talk a little bit about the stuff I’m reading and watching.

Slam Dunk

I am still enjoying Slam Dunk tremendously. I don’t see why it’s not talked about more, to be honest. I think this is a really good anime/manga to recommend to people who are just getting started with it. If you’re reading this and you haven’t read it or watched it before, go watch an episode or 2 or read some of the manga and see what you think. I think it’s very good for beginners because it’s a straight forward story that is centered around something very popular in American culture. Dragon Ball and One Piece are great, and I do recommend them, but they have whole new worlds to learn and understand. It’s nice to turn on something and understand most everything that’s being shown. Most shonen are also very long. Slam Dunk’s anime doesn’t cover the whole story I believe but it’s only 101 episodes, compared to Dragon Ball’s almost 600 (for DB, DBZ and DBS, it’s more if you count the movies and GT) and One Piece’s 1118 and growing. The only bad thing is the anime is kind of old and it doesn’t have a very good English dub from what I’m seeing.

SPOILERS: The rest of this section contains spoilers for up to volume 21 of the manga, not sure about where that is in the anime.

I just finished up the Shohoku vs Ryonan game for the 2nd nationals spot. It was so hype, I was very excited the whole time I was reading it. This game was so bittersweet because you wanted so badly for Shohoku to win so Akagi and Kogure could go to nationals, but then they showed Uozomi’s backstory and his drive to want to go to nationals too so you wish they both could’ve won. The parallel of Sakuragi going up to Akagi when he was crying happy tears at the end of the game and the time Akagi told Sakuragi to stop crying when they lost to Kainan because of a bad pass was so amazing, I almost shed a tear. I love this series. They’ll be going to nationals next and have already been teasing some of the teams and aces for the tournament.

I’m going to take a little bit of a break from reading now, maybe a few days, just to kind of digest it all and watch some more of the anime. I have all the volumes collected now, so I can finish it whenever I want, which is really nice. The volumes are super nice, the covers have really nice art that changes from volume to volume. A lot of them are done in what looks like water color. They don’t reveal too much about the story either, which I love.

I’ve put REAL on a little bit of a hold too. Partly because keeping up with it and Slam Dunk was a little tough, REAL is much more depressing and a little more dense. I also don’t have volumes 4 and beyond, they sell out on amazon kinda frequently so I haven’t had a chance to get them. I’m going to buy some new bookshelves soon, so I’ll have the room for more and might collect the rest of the volumes.

One Piece

SPOILERS: This contains spoilers for up to chapter 1118 in the manga

These chapters with Vegapunk’s message have been crazy. Unfortunately, in true Oda fashion, it was cut short before he could finish it. There’s a few theories going around about what he was going to say based on the word that was cut off, but I don’t know how much that really helps. Obviously it was about the “D.” clan, but was he going to reveal the full initial? Was he going to explain why they’re called demons? So much mystery around 1 letter. And it has been like that for 20 years! But that’s what makes it fun, I’m happy to be reading at a time we are going to be finding that out. I wish I had started reading back before Whole Cake like my friend did, but I think I got in just in the nick of time to see the best mysteries being revealed.

In 1118 we also see Bonney use her powers to essentially unlock a gear 5 transformation. This has SPLIT the community, and many people are mad that this happened. I’m personally not mad at it. I think it’s been built up pretty well, and I don’t think it’s as powerful a transformation as people might be thinking. Saturn said that her powers will diminish in strength as she ages and her future is more set in stone, so it’s not like this transformation will get much stronger if at all. I think it’s just a nice thing to include, having a child born of a slave become liberated by THE king of liberation, Nika/Joy Boy/Luffy, and become as free as him.

I think everyone will just have to wait for 1119 or maybe even 1120 to see how it plays out. If her transformation continues to grow and be strong, maybe it’ll be better explained as to why that’s possible. If it’s short and weak, then hopefully a lot of people will stop complaining lol.

Monster

No spoilers in this section. I just wanted to say that I’m starting to watch the Monster anime. One of my friend’s favorite authors is Naoki Urasawa, and he’s told me several times about how he wants to collect his works (Monster, Pluto and 20th century boys specifically). I finally got curious enough to start watching it. It’s ok so far, I’m not very far in. The art is definitely unique, but it does have that 2000’s kind of animation style to it (not a bad thing). I think I’m gonna give it about 15 episodes (about 20%) and if I still like it I might start collecting the manga.

Relatively short and sweet post this month. I’ll see you guys in July!

May Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Back to regularly scheduled programming

The past few posts have been kinda bummers, so I’ll keep this one cheerful.

I’m going to talk about what’s been going on in One Piece, and a few of the things I’ve been watching and reading.

Movies

WARNING: These do have spoilers, so please be careful.

Smokey and the Bandit 1 and 2

These are some movies I didn’t really think I’d like, but really ended up enjoying a lot.

The general premise of both of them is Bo, aka Bandit, played by Burt Reynolds, has to drive some far distance in a ridiculous amount of time. The first one he has to take a truck load of beer from Texarkana to a party in Atlanta across state lines (which is illegal bootlegging), and in the 2nd movie he has to take an elephant to the GOP national convention. Both times they are chased by Sherrif Buford T. Justice and son, among other law enforcement.

These movies are silly in a good way. They’re cartoonish situations, but funny because they’re funny, not because they’re trying too hard to be. I had a lot of fun watching them, they are very quotable. I think my favorite one is the first one. The 2nd one is still pretty good, it’s more silly than the first because of the elephant.

I’m just now finding out there’s actually a 3rd one that I have to watch at some point.

Rocky I - V

Again, these are some movies I didn’t think I’d like. I saw the first one for the first time a few years ago, and it was ok. I wasn’t crazy about it like some people are. I’m decently fond of Sylvester Stallone. I love First Blood, and I really liked his new show Tulsa King. I just didn’t like the first Rocky the first time I watched it for whatever reason. I was reading David Goggins’ book “Cant Hurt Me” and he talked about how he used Rocky as fuel during his navy seal training, so I figured I’d give it another try.

Overall, I think these movies are pretty good and if you haven’t watched at least the first one you’re doing yourself a disservice. I wondered how they were able to keep making them, because “it’s just Rocky boxing right?”, but they aren’t as simple as that. Each of the movies have shown Rocky going through different situations, be it financial troubles, self esteem issues, growing old. They’re much more different from each other than I originally thought. It’s not just “Rocky gets beat, does a training montage, and then he wins” (except for the 2nd and 3rd one, but they’re not even 100% like that).

My older brother and sister, and a few of my friends say say that the 4th movie (the one with the Russian, Ivan Drago) is their favorite. So I was pretty hyped by the time I got to that one. I was a little disappointed in it though, I’m not sure what people see in it. Apart from Apollo, I think that Drago is the coolest antagonist that Rocky fights in the ring. But, it just wasn’t my favorite, it seemed the most unrealistic. Which, that might be the reason that some people call it their favorite because it is a little over the top.

I think Rocky II is my favorite, because most of the movie is just Rocky being goofy and buying a bunch of stuff, and I just think it’s funny. Rocky III was also really good, that one was probably the best all around one. It had the best montage in my opinion, some funny bits, and the emotional side with Mickey. But that one also seemed kinda long with the Thunder lips fight near the start. Rocky V is probably my least favorite so far, because it shows Rocky at his worst, and it was all so preventable. Paulie is such a jackass in that one.

I plan to watch “Rocky Balboa” and the 3 Creed movies soon, I’ve heard all of those are really good.

Manga/Anime

WARNING: These do have minor spoilers, so please be careful.

This isn’t going to include One Piece spoilers, that will be the last section.

Slam Dunk

I mentioned in a different post that I’ve been starting to collect manga (and that I’m going a little crazy with it). A series that I’ve wanted to collect but been super hesitant about is “Vagabond” by Takehiko Inoue. It’s about a swordsman/artist/philosopher from 17th century Japan, Miyamoto Musashi. I’m very interested in Musashi’s legacy, and have read a little bit about him before. Vagabond is incredibly well drawn and incredibly popular. But, Inoue has had it on hiatus for almost 10 years now I think. Vagabond is a pretty philosophy-heavy work, so the reasoning I’ve heard from online is that Inoue wants to go live more of his life and learn more. Which, I understand, but I have been burned on series not getting finished before. So I’m hesitant to start it or collect it. Although the story up to this point can probably stand on its own. I may end up collecting it, but who knows.

Anyway, I still wanted something of Takehiko Inoue’s work so I thought I would try out “Slam Dunk” and “REAL” that he’s authored. Slam Dunk is about a guy named Sakuragi Hanamichi, who’s around 6’ 2" tall, a first year in high school, and has just asked out and been rejected by a girl for the 50th time. Totally dejected going into high school, he’s heartbroken and moody. Until a girl in his class, Haruko, shows introduces herself and asks if he plays basketball. He lies and says “of course I do”. Then the story goes from there where he ends up joining the team and becomes a “genius basketball man”.

I don’t watch much basketball (the Timberwolves game 7 win recently was cool to watch though, shame they’re doing bad against Dallas right now though), sports have never really been my thing. But this manga was interesting because its popularity is known as one of the causes for basketball becoming so popular in Japan, leading it to become one of the top watched sports there. Inoue played basketball in high school and wanted people to experience it as well, and he himself was a fan of a baseball manga when he was younger.

I bought the first 3 volumes of Real and Slam Dunk, but they were taking a little while to get here so I ended up watching the first few episodes of Slam Dunk’s anime. It’s incredibly 90’s lol, it’s animated pretty well but it has those old techniques that make me nostalgic. After the first few episodes I was hooked on this series. I think it’s hilarious. I’m currently on volume 9, but I have up to volume 15 already waiting for me to read. The art switches from very serious and very detailed, to very silly and much less detailed, and I love that so much. You can tell when things are serious and when Sakuragi is being a goof.

Where I’m at in the story it’s getting more serious, and it’s going beyond just Sakuragi’s growth at playing basketball. There are some deep themes that you can tell it’ll go into later. It’s also starting to get more violent, so more of Inoue’s artistic abilities are coming through, which is awesome.

Another reason I thought to try this one is that it’s the Omnibus Collector’s favorite series of all time. My buddy thinks very highly of his opinions, and I think very highly of his, so I figured I’d like it too. As of right now, I’m loving it and I see why he likes it so much.

REAL

Real is another one of Inoue’s works, and is still being published. Very slowly though, it’s been being written since 1999, and it also goes on lengthy breaks (Yeah, I know I said I wasn’t going to collect Vagabond for that very reason, I’m a complicated man).

Real is about wheelchair basketball. I’m not sure about Inoue’s ties to wheelchair basketball specifically, if he has any ties, but it’s a neat concept that lends itself to deep subjects. I’m only finished with the first 2 volumes so far, but there are 3 main characters essentially. Nomiya Tomomi who is a high school dropout that was in a motorcycle accident that caused his passenger to lose her ability to walk and talk, Togawa Kiyoharu who lost a leg when he was younger due to cancer, and then Takahashi Hisanobu who was hit by a truck while on his bike and turned into a paraplegic.

This one is way less funny than Slam Dunk, so reading them both concurrently is kind of jarring. But, that’s just how I’ve been perceiving it since I’ve been reading both. Real is incredibly good so far, and you can see the progression in Inoue’s art style.

Real is a little more dense than Slam Dunk, and I feel like I more often read back panels a few times before I totally understand them. I’m probably going to keep collecting this, but I might wait until I’m done with Slam Dunk so that I’m not getting jarred as easily.

Funny side note, in Real there’s a scene where these kids are watching an anime and it’s actually Slam Dunk. Neat little easter egg.

Undead Unluck

This is a new anime that I picked up after my buddy showed me the first few episodes. It’s ok, I’m kinda losing interest in it the more it goes on. The first few episodes were very good and very funny, and they’re very interesting. Essentially, this girl, Fuuko, has a power that whenever she touches someone they experience bad luck (in varying degrees). She meets this man, Andy (kinda sounds like undead), who is hundreds of years old and cannot die, because he can regenerate. Everyone who has powers in this series has the ability to “negate” something. So, the 2 main characters have the powers of “Unluck” and “Undead” because they negate luck and death. They are on a quest to kill Andy because he wants to die, and he feels like she’s the only one whose powers would be strong enough to kill him.

The first few episodes were great and they did get me hooked; it was funny and cute, and it seemed like a cool plot (one that I could guess the end of maybe, but still cool). But as it’s gone on the powers have gotten strange and much more abstract. There’s also a secret agency, and there’s like a video-game/quest type aspect, so I’m just not enjoying it as much as I was originally. I dislike the secret agency trope for some reason. Chainsaw man was ok, but I didn’t like it there, and I’m not crazy about JJK for the same reason.

I think I’ll try to finish the first season eventually, but it’s just kinda been meh. The animation is very good, and I can see why people would like the story, but it’s not my cup of tea.

One Piece

WARNING: This section has spoilers up until Chapter 1115, so please be careful.

It’s been a minute since I’ve written about the One Piece manga. I try to write and have an opinion, but it ends up just being a recap more than anything. Which, you could just as easily go and watch a review if you wanted. But, these past 2 or 3 chapters have been pretty significant (most of Egghead has been, but these few specifically). Several characters have made a return, including Saul which was nice confirmation that he is indeed alive, and the GOAT Foxy.

Vegapunk has confirmed that the sea levels are rising (through man-made means), he’s confirmed that Joy Boy was the first pirate to go out to sea, he’s confirmed that Joy Boy’s defeat was the end of the void century, and he’s confirmed that the war that Joy Boy fought is still going on. We even got the very first silhouette of Joy Boy ever!

There’s been so much evidence pointing to the water levels rising: Long Ring Long Land, Water Seven, the old Wano, and the destruction of Lulusia causing water levels to rise by a meter. This was really no surprise, but it’s great that we at least have a scientific mind to confirm that they are indeed rising. This potentially opens the idea to a time limit on the One Piece world. I’m not sure if Oda would use it like that (think like the comet from Avatar the last airbender), but maybe? The fish men would be safe regardless lol

All the Joy Boy drops have been totally insane. This is the most we’ve ever really learned about him, until now we’ve just known that he lived during the void century and was tied to the ponegliffs. He was the last person to awaken the powers of Luffy’s fruit (that we know of at least). We also got confirmation finally that Joy Boy and Nika are not the same person, it’s kinda like the holy trinity going on. Luffy is not Nika, Joy Boy is not Nika, and Luffy is not Joy Boy. But Luffy is the new Joy Boy? I’m still not 100% sure if Joy Boy was a title or his name. Maybe it’s similar to how Luffy is called “Straw Hat Luffy”, maybe he is “Joy Boy…something”. He was the first pirate after all, so maybe that’s what his crew went by.

Him being the first pirate is super cool, because that’s one more piece of evidence towards the ancient kingdom being named something related to “pirate”. The theory goes that since Professor Clover was killed for almost saying the name of the ancient kingdom during the destruction of Ohara, the general public might understand the name and some things might start to make sense to them. Tekking talked about it in this video, and he explains it better. Because the word “pirate” had to come from somewhere, Joy Boy being called one could be related to where he came from. Just a cool thought I think.

The silhouette of Joy Boy raises some questions for me. I think up until now I believed that Joy Boy was going to be a Buccaneer, but now I’m not 100% sure. The Buccaneers believe in and pray to Nika, and that’s one of the reasons that they are persecuted and nearly extinct (also they committed a great sin, which I believe is them having built the Noah). Since we know now that Joy Boy is not Nika, that doesn’t mean that Joy Boy has to be Buccaneer. He never really had to be, but it made sense that he could’ve been. He still could have been a Buccaneer, but his silhouette doesn’t fit that same body shape that Kuma and his father, Clapp, have. Some people have the theory that he was a Mink, which could be true, but I’m not as convinced on that one.

Those are the biggest things I can think of that have happened recently as far as lore goes since I last talked about One Piece in depth. I’m really excited for 1116 this week, maybe we get a little more of Joy Boy, or maybe we even begin the final exodus from Egghead.

See you guys next month!

April Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

I’ve been struggling for most of this month, I’m not going to lie. I’m going to keep this post pretty short.

My grandmother passed away a few weeks ago, she was 91 years old. It’s been an incredibly difficult time for my family and I because she’s literally always been there for all of us. I lived with her for about 17 years, which is over half of my life, so anywhere I look I remember something about her. She was the only grandparent of mine that I got to meet.

She was a hell of a woman, she lived through so much in her life. She grew up poor and worked farming tobacco for a lot of her life. She didn’t get her license until she was 36 years old. She lived through WWII, the civil rights movement, us landing on the moon, 9/11, the rise of the internet, just so many events. She went from a time where having indoor plumbing and a radio was a luxury, to cars driving themselves. Although she was 91 years old, used Facebook quite a bit, which some 40 year olds don’t have a hold on like she did. She was incredibly goofy and we picked on her all the time for it, but if I make it to 91 I’d be ecstatic to be half as coherent and smart as she was.

I generally believe that everything happens for a reason, and for the longest time I could not understand the reason why I hurt my back so badly, or why I wasn’t getting better like everyone said I should have been. I had to work from home and skip out on a lot of trips over the past year, I couldn’t help her with her flowers or anything like I had been able to before, I felt totally useless. But then I found the reason. I was having a rough few days of back pain, and was being kinda emotional over everything. I was talking to my mom about how bad I felt, how I wish I hadn’t hurt my back, and how I should’ve been able to help her with more than I was able to. She said “Well, think about it, if it hadn’t happened then you wouldn’t have got to spend so much time with her. She didn’t have as many flowers or get to do as much, but she wasn’t alone very much like she would’ve been had you been going to work like normal.”. That made it all click. God knew I would regret the time I didn’t get to spend with her, so he let me work in the same room with her for almost her entire final year. God also knew she wouldn’t rest seeing me in such pain all the time like I had been, because she did worry about me and hated to see me hurting as much as I did. She got to see me start getting better and get to go places too, so she knew I’d be ok. That single conversation totally changed my entire view on my back problems. I used to say I’d give anything to go back and undo what I did to my back, but now I’d go back through that pain 10x to keep it the way it was. It hurt, very very badly, but I’d give anything to go back and live it all exactly the same way.

Last month I talked about Baxter and Thievin passing away and I ended the post by saying you how you should tell those you love that you do love them. Every time I left to go somewhere and every time we went to bed I would tell her I loved her, and she’d always say it back. Even though I told it to her every day, several times a day, I wish I had told her more. But, I’m incredibly blessed to say that my last words to her were “Goodnight, I love you. I’ll see you in the morning.”. Please, reach out to those you love and tell them that you love them. It takes so little time, but it’s such an important thing. And if your grandmother or grandfather is still around, hug their necks tight for me. That’s what she would always say when I would leave for a longer than average trip, “come hug my neck”.

I’ll try to get back to regular posts next month. Thank you for reading about my Nanny.

March Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Galaxycon Richmond 2024

This is probably the most Karen-ish I’m going to sound on my blog. I’m going to be constructive with my criticism and not expect unreasonable things. This was my experience from what I saw and have heard from several sources who attended the con, and things that I think could’ve improved the experience.

My brother, his 2 friends and I all went to Galaxycon Richmond on Saturday March 16th. My brother has been to a few different conventions across the US, and I’ve been to the Galaxycon in Raleigh a few times, but I think this was all of our first times in Richmond for one. It honestly ended up being a pretty bad time for our group. It took about an hour to find a decent parking space and about 3 hours just to get into the building. Then, by the time we got in my brother and his friends had missed all their photo ops which was really aggravating and disappointing. My photo op was later in the day, so I was lucky to be able to still get it, but it wasn’t as enjoyable since they didn’t get theirs.

I’ve never waited for more than an hour at any of the Galaxycon conventions in Raleigh, even when they were checking our bags. My best guess as to why it was so hard to get in is that they overestimated how many people they could handle. There were very few registration booths for what I heard was a sold out convention center (I’ve heard numbers like 30k-50k people showed up), and there was only 1 door to come in to get your badge, and I think 1 or 2 more doors you could come in if you already had your badge.

They focused very heavily on where the lines needed to be going outside instead of having that planned beforehand and working on getting people through the line faster. Maybe the path the line was meant to take was planned beforehand and it just wasn’t communicated well enough to the people showing up, so they were having to fix it as they went. Or they didn’t realize how much space would be taken up by all the people and they had to rearrange it on the fly to get us all to fit into the 1x1 city block by snaking us up and down. There were very few signs indicating where the door even was, you basically just had to look at where the people who were dressed up were going. The people who were guiding the lines probably could’ve/should’ve been inside checking people in instead of having to organize the line. They also probably should’ve had a louder and more commanding tone, it seemed like the person that was directing us was kinda timid and had to call out the directions several times. I understand that due to city ordinances and rules they probably couldn’t block traffic or anything without getting shut down, but the line situation seemed like it could’ve been a lot better prepared for.

I found a reddit post where someone was complaining about the lines from 2023 also taking around 3 hours to get in, so maybe this is just the usual experience. It was pretty quick to check in once you got up to the desk. I’d say it took at most a minute or 2 to get your badge and be able to go where you wanted, unless you had questions or some special circumstance. If they had more spots for people to check people in, or even mailed out badges beforehand, then it could’ve been significantly faster.

The food lines I don’t totally blame them for because there’s only so many spots to get food in the venue, they were going to be crowded anyway after waiting in line for a few hours near lunchtime. I feel like there could’ve been better organization around the lines for the food though. There were lines that stretched 50-100 people long that blocked some areas of the convention. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to try a Korean corn dog, they looked really good and I’ve wanted to try one for a while. I’m sure it was all pretty expensive, but that’s something I expected.

The lack of wifi was really annoying, but that’s because I couldn’t mindlessly scroll social media while I waited in the lines. I’ve heard the vendors wifi was acting up so people couldn’t pay by card, which made the ATM lines incredibly long. Then due to the long lines of the ATMs the machines were getting bogged down and started acting up or ran out of money. I’ve seen a few people on reddit complaining that they were double charged for things they paid for. I guess because they’d try with their card first, realize it probably wasn’t going to work and switched to paying with cash, and then when the vendors systems reconnected it would make the charge again. We were lucky not to have ran into any of those issues because we brought cash.

My brother emailed the organizing staff about how disappointed we were about missing the photo ops, the speed of the lines, the lack of wifi and the general poor experience, and they kinda turned it on him saying that he could’ve gotten his time slots switched once he got into the venue and how the food/lines/wifi weren’t their fault because that’s handled by the convention center themselves. It seemed sort of unprofessional and like they were just passing the buck instead of owning up to their shortcomings and coming up with a plan for the following years. Just sucks to hear their response. I’ve also seen on reddit that several people have had their comments deleted on social media after complaining. If that’s true, that’s really bad.

Overall, I think having a much lower cap of attendance and probably twice as many people working would’ve solved most of the issues and made the experience much more enjoyable. I understand they have to pay their expenses and make some money, but there’s gotta be a better way to handle an event this large. I probably won’t be going to another Galaxycon Richmond for a very long time, unless there is someone I’m really interested in seeing, in which case I’ll be waking up at 5am to get good parking and a spot in line. But even then, I’ll check the Raleigh Galaxycon site first to see if they’re going to be there lol.

Emily Rudd was the saving grace for my experience, if I hadn’t gotten to meet her I would’ve called the entire trip a bust. I was super excited to meet her and she was every bit as nice as I’d hoped she’d be and more. I was really nervous, tired, I hadn’t eaten or drank anything all day, I probably smelled really bad from sweating in line, and I was ready to go home. But she was incredibly sweet, shook my hand and introduced herself. She was like that with everyone I saw her interact with, it was so great to see that she was nice in person. I highly recommend getting a photo op with her, or stopping by her booth to get an autograph if you get the chance. If she’s coming to another con around me in the future I might get another photo op or an autograph to redeem myself. Here’s my photo op with her.

Back Update

After talking about walking and standing for 3 hours, you might be wondering how my back held up. I actually did WAY better than I thought I would.

I’m not gonna say it was comfortable the entire time, there were several points where I was bent over in a weird way to get the stress off my back, but I did stand the whole time. I only started sitting down once we were in the venue.

The ride there and back was about 6 hours total, and that was a little rough. On the way home I wanted to cross my leg but some muscle in my leg didn’t like that and started cramping. It wasn’t the same as nerve pain but I’m not sure if that’s related to the sciatica or if it was just because I was working muscles that hadn’t been worked recently.

I’ve gotten really slack about doing the MGB3, I only do it about once per week now when I go to my friends house. Thankfully I haven’t felt too much pain from not doing it as much, but I should probably get back to doing it 2 or 3 times a week.

Manga Collecting

My friend has gotten me hooked on collecting manga, specifically box sets. I never thought I would try to collect them because it’s expensive, I don’t have a lot of room in my house anyway and I can read a lot of them online for free. But, it’s been super addicting. I already had a few volumes like Dragon Ball Z volume 1 (I got this 10+ years ago, RIP Akira Toriyama) and the Berserk deluxe editions 1 and 5. But, he pointed out a few really good deals on box sets that I couldn’t pass up. A Silent Voice was like $50 for the entire series, the 4th One Piece box set was $100, Assassination Classroom was $100. I also got Goodnight Punpun for $160, but that’s about retail. I just wanted to read it badly (it’s really good so far).

I’m going to have to buy another bookcase or something soon, I actually have no more room on the shelf that I bought last month. I’m looking into getting the 1st One Piece box set soon (when it goes on sale) and maybe Fullmetal Alchemist if this ebay listing I’m looking at pans out. I like knowing that I kinda like the series before I actually buy it so I read a few chapters online and look at reviews. I also hate getting spoiled, so I have to be really careful about where I look things up. I’ve been burned by looking up certain series on social media and then having a spoiler come up in my feed.

I might make a new page on my site for a collection showcase or something. I’m experimenting with images in Hugo, and it’s a little bit of a pain. I’m probably just being dumb.

RIP Baxter and Thievin

I scroll tik tok a lot more than I should, but you find a lot of interesting creators on there. Two of which were Baxter Hosley and Garret MacDonagh. They both had fitness accounts that they would post on almost daily. They both lost a significant amount of weight, documented their journeys, made fitness content and worked with a supplement company called Ekkovision. I hadn’t really watched either of them consistently in a few months, but, I was still incredibly sad to see that they both had passed away on March 10th. They were both slightly younger than I am, which breaks my heart.

They were very loved by their friends and fans. To hear some of the stories that their friends from Ekkovision are telling is really sweet. So many people are pouring out support for them, it’s bittersweet. Ekkovision’s owner, Em, has come out and said that Ekkovision will be taking care of their funerals in full which is really really awesome to hear. I know it won’t replace the hole that they left, but I hope they stay close with the guys from Ekkovision and are able to hear all the stories they have with them.

This is not something that I would normally talk about, but I liked these guys and it struck pretty close to home in a lot of ways so I wanted to pay my respects to them. Last month was really busy and I was complaining a lot and not having a good time. This month has been pretty busy and sad, but very eye opening and I’ve been a lot more thankful for what I have and the experiences I’ve gotten. It can all be ripped away from you in an instant. Tell your friends and family that you love them, because they’ll be gone one day, and more importantly because they’re here now and it never hurts to let them know you care.

February Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0400

I really thought about skipping this month because it has just been one thing after another, and I didn’t want to deal with writing a blog post. But, I have a good streak going so I’m going to keep at it. I’m also not going to half-ass it.

Reading

It’s kinda weeb-adjacent, but this month I’ve been off and on reading “The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi” by William Scott Wilson. I have a bunch of samurai books I got from a humble bundle deal, and I’ve read 1 or 2 of them and this one stood out to me. I’ve been interested in Miyamoto Musashi for a while because I’ve heard he was a little bit of a troll in his duels. He would use wooden swords and he would show up late to make his opponent mad. The book is a little hard to read because a lot of it is the history of this person or that shogunate, so the names are a little hard to keep up with. Same with the locations. I may or may not finish this one. I have attempted “The Book Of Five Rings” by Musashi himself, but never got super far into it. Eastern philosophy and concepts are difficult for me to understand.

I’ve also sorta started reading “Goodnight Pun Pun” which as far as I can tell is about this little bird creature in school. I haven’t finished the first chapter yet, but I might do that after I finish this post.

It was my birthday a few weeks ago and I got a bunch of One Piece volumes as presents. I bought a bookshelf to store them and it’s already about half full. I got all of Water 7 and Enies Lobby for my birthday, and about a week later I saw a deal on the 4th box set for about $100 so I nabbed that too. That box set includes all of Dressrosa, Zou, Whole Cake Island and the Reverie (70-90 I think).

Tech Troubles

Computers have not been agreeing with me this month.

With my back being hurt for a lot of last year, I stopped using my x220 laptop and started using a different one. With it not being used for so long the battery wouldn’t hold a charge anymore, and it became super out of date (it would still work, but it’s arch so literally every package had an update). I tried updating it and the power cord came uplugged in the middle of a kernel update. It wiped out the important parts of my boot partition. To fix this in the past I would copy the kernel and initramfs from my t420 (same settings) and that would at least let me boot and finish the updates. But that didn’t work because I think it wiped out a lot of my root partition’s executables, which was weird. I couldn’t chroot to do anything because it had a format error, which usually means you’re running x32 on an x64 system or vice versa. But I eventually saw that my /bin/bash file was empty. I had my home partition separate from root, so I still have all my data I’ve just been trying to install the base arch system back to the root partition.

I had to reinstall ubuntu on my work machine in the middle of the work week, which was a pain in the ass and cost me a lot of time on this project I’m working on. I actually got back to a working dwm build pretty quick and painless, comparatively speaking though. But it won’t be totally right for another few weeks.

Back Update

Not much to update here. I’ve been doing the MB3 exercises at least 1x a week for the past month. I like to do them 3x a week, but I’ve been super busy this past week or 2 and haven’t done them. I’m hurting a little right now, so I need to get that going again.

One Piece Chapter 1108 mini-review

Obviously this is going to contain spoilers for 1108, so pleas skip this if you aren’t caught up.

Holy. Shit.

This chapter has gotten me so hyped it’s unreal. It felt like a shorter chapter, but it contained HUGE things.

Saturn is looking so menacing, his eyes are super expressive and have been getting crazier as the arc has gone on. His new eyes look non-human now, which makes sense being that he’s turning more into his demon form. They don’t even look like they’re expressing human emotions anymore. They used to express apathy, and then with Kuma’s punch they looked absolutely terrified. I really like this aspect.

Kizaru killing Vegapunk wasn’t something I really expected. I don’t think I expected Vegapunk to get off of the island, but this was really quick. I feel sorry for Kizaru in a way still, but this was pretty bad. I hope that Luffy continues to whoop his ass.

I’m not sure what the message that Vegapunk is releasing is going to be. The way the unofficial translation was phrased makes me think it’s something about the geography, or the science of the world. Meaning that we could get confirmation that the Red Line is artificial and the sea-levels are super high compared to what they are naturally. Once the official comes out, maybe it’ll be more clear. Because it could be that Vegapunk knows all about the void century. I don’t know which is more likely. I feel as though it could go either way, but knowing Oda there’s another way that’s been hidden in plain sight the whole time.

January Update 2024

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 23:17:15 -0500

Happy New year everyone! Like I said last month I’m going to try to keep that 1 post a month going into 2024 as well.

One Piece and Monsters

Spoilers: This has some minor spoilers up to Thriller Bark. Both about one of the villains of Thriller Bark, and the “gimmick” of the island. Nothing major. There is some more that is revealed with him in the Wano arc, so DON’T go to any wikis to look him up if you’re not caught up because it’s like the first thing that appears. What I will talk about is only from what happens in Thriller Bark and Monsters.

My blog is pretty much turning into One Piece updates, but I don’t have that much going on apart from it haha.

This month is actually pretty exciting for a story that isn’t One Piece, but is related. Before Oda wrote One Piece he wrote a few one-shots, one of which is called “Monsters”. Monsters is the story of a man named Ryuma who fights a dragon, and it is getting an anime adaptation on Netflix tomorrow actually (in a few hours).

You might recognize this name and description if you’re caught up to the Thriller Bark arc as the samurai that Brook and Zoro fight. Without spoiling anymore than that about the One Piece side of Ryuma, Monsters is the story where he becomes the well known samurai that he is in One Piece. I think a lot of people have it wrong where they think that this story is canon to One Piece, and only parts of it are. The character Ryuma is canon in One Piece, the fact that he fought a dragon is canon in One Piece, but the exact details that are going to be shown may not be canon. It looks like some things are actually changed from the original Monsters to be a little closer to One Piece (notable what sword he uses). I’m excited for it. I have a replica Shusui sword that I plan on holding while watching it lol.

I think I might wait for a few more chapters to talk about what’s going on with Egghead. It’s getting hella spicy right now. If you’re not caught up, you need to get caught up soon, you’re missing out on peak fiction and vengeance plots.

I’ll see you guys next month!