Harper Kingsley blog

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July 2, 2026 0 comments

Can retailers really sell stuff that far over the MSRP?

I keep seeing all this stuff about scalpers ruining regular Pokemon card purchases. Like, people that just want the cards to play the game can’t get them because scalpers are out there clearing out the store shelves, and like literally fist fighting each other as they try to get all the packs for themselves for resale.

And now Game Stop, who buys their cards at wholesale prices are selling Pokemon cards at 3x the MSRP. And local shops are selling theirs at 7x of MSRP.

EVERYONE is trying to screw over the kids that just want to play the game. And I think that really sucks.

It’s probably illegal and I don’t suggest people break the law, but I wouldn’t be angry if a group of people that just wanted to play Pokemon printed their own cards that were clearly marked as fake. Then they could randomly distribute the cards to each other and play Pokemon the way they want to.

Sure, they wouldn’t be able to play in official competitions or anything, but if a group of people wanted to meet up and play each other? Having a mix of real and unreal cards could still let them play the way they want to.

If you’re buying Pokemon cards for the love of the game, I think that’s better than people just collecting them to collect them and resell them later at ridiculously high prices. Starve the scalpers. I don’t even see them as people at this point.

Like, there are people ROBBING stores and individuals for their Pokemon cards. Someone GOT SHOT for their Pokemon cards.

THEY ARE A CARD GAME.

People are beating each other up and killing each other to get game cards so they can resell them to collectors.

I miss the days when kids were just buying cards to play the game. Now it’s adults hoarding unopened packs so they can resell them. Kids have been completely priced out of the equation.

It’s just one more instance where children are being pushed out of something they enjoy by selfish adults. It’s gross.

~Harper Kingsley

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An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good at Amazon

June 27, 2026 1 comment

Some thoughts on Aliens and Superman

I had a moment of introspection, and it gave me some thoughts:

ALIENS

If Ripley hadn’t gone with the Space Marines, the xenomorphs never would have gotten off the planet and would have been wiped out when the colony exploded.

Even if Bishop, as the "sole survivor" called the backup shuttle from the main ship, he wouldn’t have lingered around on that platform for the mother alien to get on board and impregnate him with an egg. He was only there because he was saving Ripley and Newt.

Perhaps if all of the humans had been killed, he would have followed the orders from the company and brought some xenomorph samples off planet, but there’s a good chance that he would have been "killed" along with the humans. It was with space marines protecting him that he was able to make a hole in the pipe for him to crawl out to the beacon and call down a shuttle. By himself, he probably would have been torn apart by xenomorphs before he could get into the pipe. And who knows if he would have been able to close the hole after himself, as it was Valdez(?) that welded it shut behind him.

Any way you look at it, if Ripley had told Burke to fuck off and had stayed on Earth… All those prisoners on the prison planet would have lived. All those military guys in Aliens Resurrection would have lived. And Ripley herself would have been able to live out the rest of her life… though she would be spending that life paying off the cost of the Nostromo. Plus the company was fucking her over, making it hard for her to get any kind of good paying job, so who knows how miserable her future would have been.

SUPERMAN

I had a thought wondering why Jor-El didn’t save himself and others along with Kal-El, especially since Kryptonians know that the light of the yellow sun gives them superpowers. There have been instances where Superman was able to use artificial yellow sun to keep himself powered up even when he was on a planet with a red sun, especially in conjunction with an armored protective suit. So I had to wonder why artificial yellow sun technology wasn’t something Kryptonians played around with.

I understand that there were only a few weeks or months as warning to Krypton’s destruction, and most Kryptonians were like "Pshaw. Climate change isn’t real. GTFO." when Jor-El tried to warn them that their rampant mining of the planet’s core was going to cause catastrophic destruction and the extinction of their species. But I had to wonder why he didn’t save more children or send along a whole bunch of frozen sperm and ova that could be grown by the robots and technology he packed into Kal-El’s little ship.

I had questions.

But when I looked things up, there were several answers as to why more Kryptonians weren’t saved: Something called the Eradicator tied all Kryptonians to their home planet. So Jor-El changed Kal-El’s DNA which allowed him to be able to leave. Or there’s other storylines where Jor-El was basically on house arrest, and he was only able to assemble a small ship to be able to break containment. Or he was planning on saving more Kryptonians by using the shrinking technology, but he was attacked by Braniac and only Kal-El’s ship was able to escape destruction.

So my questions about why more Kryptonians didn’t survive were answered, but… If I knew that blasting myself with artificial light could naturally give me superpowers? Why wouldn’t I be flying around inside my house? Superspeeding around and having a great time?

And the idea that even the animals on Krypton were able to get superpowers with a yellow sun? Holy shit. What if some cockroaches had made it aboard Kal-El’s little ship? Or like what if his blanket was infested with bedbugs or something?

News anchor: "The small town of Smallville is under quarantine as the CDC deals with a fungus that does not respond to any available antifungals. Bleach does nothing. The fungus only seems to become stronger when exposed to sunlight. Multiple herds of cattle have had to be euthanized to prevent the spread of the deadly fungus."

A Kryptonian prion would be a nightmare for Earth scientists. Mad cow disease times 1,000,000,000,000,000,00…

~Harper Kingsley

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June 24, 2026 0 comments

I watched some movies

I watched some movies and I have some thoughts.

Superman

I watched James Gunn’s "Superman," and I really enjoyed it. I like the more hopeful Superman, that’s my kind of Superman.

I’m just not into the grimdark Superman. Sorry not sorry. We already had Hyperion from the Supreme Power comics to give us a taste of Bad!Superman. We did not need to screw around with the canon.

To be honest, when I watched "Man of Steel" and then later they announced they were going to make the "Justice League" movie, I was honestly hoping it was going to be the Justice Lords universe. That would have been very interesting.

So I’m glad we’ve got a reboot and that we’ve returned to the more hopeful "I love humanity, I really want to be a part of humanity" Superman.

Like, "Superman Returns" was a continuation of the Christopher Reeves Superman. Lois Lane having Superman’s baby makes sense from what we saw in the Christopher Reeves movies, though I kind of wish they would have mentioned how fucked up it was that he wiped her memory and then she found out she was pregnant. Because wow. FUCKED UP is a mild interpretation of what she probably went through when she realized that she was pregnant and had no memory how it happened.

But yeah, Henry Cavill is a good actor, but the Superman variant he was playing left me cold. Like, the minute I saw Clark ruining all those cars in that parking lot, I knew I wasn’t going to be happy with what I was watching. And I wasn’t.

And the new Superman? I am very pleased. I enjoyed watching the movie. I didn’t fast-forward through any of it. I wish there were some dog training courses we could send Krypto to. But in all, it was a fun movie.

I can’t wait to watch "Supergirl." I’m excited.

Shell

Okay, this was a really dumb movie. It’s like "The Substance" but dumbed down to the point of "What the fuck am I watching?" levels.

You go for beauty treatments that somehow involve the telomers of crustaceans because they don’t age, and voila, the horror movie is about the treatment causing bodily transformations. And a woman becomes what looks like a lobster or something, and there’s murders and deaths and blah blah blah.

It was just an all-around stupid movie. Like, I’m willing to watch a fun stupid movie, but this was not that. I did not have a good time. I don’t want to watch it again.

It was a waste of what could have been a great cast. I’m just glad they all made some money. Keep getting that work, guys!

Strange Darling

I finally watched "Strange Darling," and I’m sorry to say–if you love it–that it was not for me.

It is a non-linear story with unlikeable characters doing unlikeable things in an unlikeable way. The music was good. The style of the visuals was good. But the movie itself was not something I enjoyed. I was not the intended audience, sorry about that.

They Will Kill You

I saw someone mention the movie "They Will Kill You," and they referenced "Ready or Not" and said that if you liked "Ready or Not" you would likely enjoy "They Will Kill You." But unfortunately, I did not.

I think "They Will Kill You" has some interesting ideas. There’s a lot of action and violence, so if you like that, you will see plenty. But there’s also that "samurai movie vibe" like Quentin Tarantino loves, which gives you a kind of choppy "Why are you talking like that?" dialogue style that I don’t really enjoy. And there’s a lot of "samurai movie"-style to the visuals and the outfits–the pants she was wearing with the bare feet–and the sword stuff.

It definitely seems like the kind of movie I would love, but I was just not into it. I love Zazie Beetz–she was great in Deadpool and in Bullet Train–and she wasn’t bad in this movie. I just didn’t really enjoy the movie as a whole. It seemed very jerky? Like maybe there’s a thousand cuts in every scene and that made it hard for me to watch? I don’t know.

You may enjoy "They Will Kill You." The idea was entertaining. The eyeball zipping around on its own was an entertaining WTF. There’s lots of fight scenes. I don’t know, for whatever reason, I just wasn’t into it the way I probably should have been.

Project Hail Mary

I read the book "Project Hail Mary" a long while back, and I really did enjoy it. And now that I’ve watched the movie… I love the movie!

It was a very enjoyable watch. Ryan Gosling is incredibly charming. 10/10, would totally watch it again.

There was laughter. There was tears. There was great dialogue. I love the alien. Every part of the movie was fantastic. The graphics were beautiful. Just an all around wonderful movie.

I definitely recommend watching "Project Hail Mary."

~Harper Kingsley