The Cost to Entertainment Ratio in Media

Originally this was meant to be a part of a different post, but it ran as a long enough tangent that I decided to split it off.

Lots of people, especially these days, struggle financially. I'm not going to get into the woes of money and the economy, but you do have to consider ways to save money, even in entertainment. As of this writing Idaho's minimum wage is $7.25 which is the same as the Federal Minimum Wage. In order to save money in regards to entertainment your cost per hour to entertain yourself needs to be lower than the amount of money you make per hour and the cost to entertainment ratio of gaming is unbeatable if you know how to play your cards right.

I might be a little biased though. 

I couldn't find a breakdown of the cost so I'm going to do it here. Let's start with some averages.

Average cost of a movie ticket: $8.61
How many American households have computers: 84%
How many American households have gaming consoles: 80%

I'm not going to cite my sources since it's not really the main point, but it's a generalizing so that I don't have to calculate the extra cost of purchasing a game console or computer, because at that point I would then be calculating the cost of a TV to watch a movie and a car to go to a movie theater. You have to draw the line somewhere and so I choose to assume everyone has a TV, a game console, a computer, a car...

a house.

Watching a movie in the theater

Tickets(for two): $17.22

Movie length: Let's be generous and say 2 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $8.61 per hour

This is assuming you don't have dinner and don't buy anything from the concession stand (popcorn, drinks, candy)

Watching a movie at home

DVD: I've seen movies range from $10 to $30 so let's say it's $15

Movie length: 2 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $7.50 per hour

Reading a book

Cost of book: It varies. I tried googling it but I got some weird results:

I bought 4 trade paperbacks and now I can't afford groceries.

So let's say $10 for a book.

Book length: Again, it varies, but I've been able to read an entire book in a day so let's say 8 hours.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $1,25 per hour.

If you buy my book, however, you will gain money because the pages are actually made of solid gold.

Playing a videogame, Multiplayer

Videogame length varies more than anything else here, so I'm going to use several examples. Since I'm primarily a PC gamer I'm going to use those. I'm also going to use specific examples that are better for two or more people to watch or participate. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are amazing, but they work better for solo entertainment. I will be using my own gameplay time in games I have finished, so your mileage may vary.

Borderlands 2

Cost: $20, this is the current price, not on sale, without any DLC.

Game length: Variable. I have played through it multiple times and I have just clocked in my 200th hour (this is my 3rd most played game in my Steam library, under Team Fortress 2 and 7 Days to Die) I do, however, have all the DLC. Sometimes I have skipped a lot of the side quests, sometimes I don't do the DLC, so let's cut off 100 hours to be fair.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $0.20 per hour.

Divinity: Original Sin

Cost: $40

Game length: I haven't played the Enhanced Edition, which includes more stuff. I played the classic edition. So I'm being a little harsh with this one by using the Enhanced price with the Classic gameplay time, which is 67 hours.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $0.60 per hour

Left 4 Dead 2

Cost $20

Game length: Again I'm halving this because L4D has been one of my favorite games but it also has a ton of replay value. So let's say 95 hours.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $0.21 per hour

Playing a videogame, Singleplayer + Watching

Maybe you're not much of a gamer though? Maybe only your spouse is while you prefer to watch a movie. That's cool too! There are games out there that are just as fun to watch as to participate. These are going to have a less efficient cost to entertainment ratio compared to the multiplayer games but they are still significantly better in cost than a movie.

The Walking Dead

Cost: $25

Game length: 29 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $1.16 per hour

Life is Strange

Cost: $20

Game length: 13 hours (I cut my time in half because I have played the game twice.)

Cost to entertainment ratio: $1.54

The Stanley Parable

Cost: $15

Game length: 4 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $3.75


I will reference some of these specific games (and more!) in another post)

Did you enjoy this post? Then check out more!

Life is Strange Review
TFTBL vs LiS: Episodes 1
Tales from the Borderlands is my GOTY
I, Gamer

Please keep reading I have cats to feed.

The Maximum Ride Movie Snuck Up on Me

I love Maximum Ride with all my heart. Even now, after getting rid of books 4 and up, I still think to myself "Why oh why did I get rid of those?" before I read my old review posts and remember just how bad they really were.

I knew for a long time that a Maximum Ride movie was announced but, somehow, the production and even the release managed to evade me. When I first heard about it I tried not to get my hopes up, the longer something is hyped for me the bigger my disappointment seems to be, even when it's good. I resigned myself to the fact that it may or may not get made and, if it did, I would know.

So, imagine my surprise a week ago when the movie popped up on Amazon. My first thought was "Holy flockcakes, it exists?" followed by "Thirty freaking bucks!?"

Which translates to 39.98 Dollarydoos

Luckily, a few days ago, I found out Netflix has it on streaming. My Internet is slow, but I managed to watch it for the most part. 

It's actually weird that I didn't know. I don't follow anything but people on the book of faces, but I am a Jenna Marbles fan, who was one of the Executive Producers. I actually had to rewind the opening credits to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Other big names include the director Jay Martin known for his work...

...in the Art Department apparently.

Well, at least they got a a good actress for Max! Allie Marie Evans was great in...uh...

Actually I don't mind, I'm all for small names. As an indie author I would be a hypocrite if I wasn't, and everyone has to start somewhere, right? (I did catch the way you said "sorry" though, Allie, nice try but I worked with a Canadian nurse for 3 years, I am now deeply educated in Canadian culture. Maple syrup y'all!) I do have a small problem with her hair to eyebrow shade ratio:

Which actually looks even more exaggerated in the movie. A lot of people, oddly enough, had a problem with all the character's hair color. It looks like Miss Evans's original hair color, based on her eyebrows, would have been a better choice. Rather than a brunette Max they decided to go with Nevermore!Max.

I'll come back to this in a just moment.

So let's launch right into the movie itself. It's low budget and been trapped in development hell for ten years, what could possibly go wrong?

One of the beginning scenes has Nudge looking at an outfit on a laptop because she's the fashionista of the group. I wanted to show you a picture of her wearing a sunhat indoors in their gloomy house but all of the shots I can find are conspicuously absent of her (I think the movie poster even has Max twice instead of Nudge).

Oh, Nudge, did you get a tan?

She's thinking about running off to buy it but, when Max finds out, she's yelled at for risking exposure when they have to stay hidden. This is from Max who, from the looks of it, must go to the salon to get her roots done on a regular basis. An earlier scene showed her with black-painted toenails as well. At some point that nail polish had to have been purchased.

Anyway, it diverges from the book story-line in a few small ways, but it's the worst regarding their wings. The first time I saw the wings, I was expecting bad but not so bad I would start laughing. Apparently (?) the wings are stored inside of their bodies and slice open their backsides every time they are spread out. This has led to two built up lines of scar tissue.

Just like real birds.

My main beef is that the fun is missing. The characters in the book are witty and wry most of the time, especially in bad situations, and love to give each other a hard time. The movie focused entirely on dark brooding to the point where all of the characters wear black like they're an offshoot of the Addams Family.

Another weird problem is that, despite being a main character (second only to Max herself) Fang's name is never mentioned.

Uh....Chad?

The Erasers, the minion mooks, aren't even trying to be wolf-guys, they just look human, except for discount Jacob Black Ari.

"I'm here for Bella Max."

Suddenly, the movie comes to a halt halfway through the book because apparently they took the advice of Peter Jackson while he was directing The Hobbit. It ended as though it was going to continue, but I get the feeling that's not going to happen.

Despite all of that I actually liked it. I went in knowing full and well that it was going to be a steaming turd of a movie. I liked it for what it was, not what it was trying to be. Thanks to MST3K and Rifftrax I love B grade movies, the wackier the better.  I would say Maximum Ride almost verges on "so bad it's good."

At least it was better than Eragon.

Did you like this post? Then check out:

Nevermore Book Review

Max Ride Forever Review: Part 1

Max Ride Forever Review: Part 2

Max Ride Forever Review: Part 3

Books I read in 2012

Now you're stuck in an infinite loop.

Let's Get Started Shall We?

So I have basically been trapped in limbo for the last six months, August had been weirdly optimistic apparently. Luckily the hopes of people making a satyr costume has been keeping Dusted Glen alive.

Hopefully I can get back onto the scheduled bandwagon. Expect a brand new post soon! (I'd go as far as to say tomorrow but then if I miss tomorrow I'd probably shoot for the day after but then here come the people with the torches and pitchforks and how they managed to get here when I'm living with 97528395 inches of snow on the ground I don't know because I can barely get out of my driveway even on a good day not that I really have anywhere to go I'm kinda like that one song you know the one that was popular in the eighties from that band with the name that's a noun and the lead singer struck out on his own and still makes music as a solo artist to this day but it's just not quite as good as his original stuff with the band but don't tell him that because it was quite a falling out I'm pretty sure there was a biography or an autobiography why do they call them autobiographies it's not like the books write themselves although I suppose they sorta do because by living your life you're creating the story to your own biography so they should call biographies as "someone else wrote this"-graphy and autobiographies as iGraphies and lots of people would buy it because everyone rips off the lowercase i thing that apple did oh booyah I managed to have a lowercase standalone letter I be grammatically correct anyway the section in the parenthesis is longer than the entire posts so I'm going to call it good.)

Temporary Hiatus

Whenever I read that term on other stuff it usually translates to "gone forever" but I hope that's not the case here.

I am in the process of moving upstate and haven't had time to write any posts unfortunately. I hope to be back onto a regular schedule by August.

Sooner, if I eat my fiber,

Cinco de Kittens!

This blog post was five days late on purpose.

Exactly one year ago I ended up with a bunch of kittens. Not just your average age kittens like someone is trying to give away, these were dependent orphans.  A stray cat had some kittens and, unfortunately, got hit by a car. A coworker of a coworker is how I ended up with them. I did lots of research before taking them on. Still, there was lots I didn't expect.

Like the fact that they had all watched The Ring.

The lives of five little kittens were suddenly my responsibility. They were two weeks old (the picture above is from the day we got them, I do believe). I went in not expecting a single one to live. When the first one latched on and sucked part of the bottle down I had a good feeling. I felt even better when I got them to pee and, later, poop (I was always relieved to see them poop, which is probably the weird.)

Did you know Walmart carries tiny bottles and kitten milk replacer? I didn't either. Soon, I had making bottles of formula down to a science, feeding them every 4-6 hours. This went on for days, then weeks.

Four boys and one girl. Usually our kittens have a theme to their names, their theme was the letter X: Max, Drexel, Xero, Hex, and Pixel.

I still remember when they first began to play. It started as half-hearted bapping at each other, then wrestling.

"What do you mean you're not my real mom?"

They they got mobile enough that we had to start building fortifications. The baby gate we bought didn't last long before they began climbing it. Walls of Rubbermaid tubs and cardboard were built higher and more complex as they bested the previous versions.

No surface was sacred.

They had the run of an unfinished studio apartment.

Their claws grew sharp, and they became aggressive about eating. Soon, I had to wear a leather glove just to feed them, like a falconer of kittens.

The first night I didn't check on them once I sat in my house, listening to the quiet, wondering what to do with all of this time I suddenly had.

Occasionally I would watch movies with them. B-Grade movies à la Rifftrax was my culturing for them.

Which is probably why they chitter at the voice of Mike Nelson.

Soon, like all my kitties, they graduated to the outdoors.

I may be crazy and have lots of cats, but I ain't no lady.

This was the last photo of all of them together.

No, one did not die.

I had known a long time, from litters previous, that suckling for kittens is more than a food response, it is also a comfort one, like a pacifier to a human baby. What happens when you provide food, but not a pacifier? They turn to the only other thing that reminds them of their mother: Each other.

I learned the hard way that, apparently, male kitten anatomy tends to get, erm, suckled on. It was funny initially and I expected them to grow out of it, or at least the victim kitten would get old enough to knock some sense into the suckler. Out of the two of them, only one grew out of it. Unfortunately, the other one didn't. He was relocated to my parents house where he terrorizes their clowder to this day.

Even after subtracting one they got too big to all fit in my lap at once.

Despite not having a mother to teach them to hunt they managed very well. All of them were spayed and neutered because, after that much commitment, they sure as heck better not be going anywhere. The only weirdness different than other cats is the Pavlovian response to leather now.

Of course, with the spring comes a higher mortality rate. I still have two of them with me, and I gave them more time to experience life than they would have had otherwise.

That, and I have gained the most photogenic cat ever:

SO

GORRAM

PHOTOGENIC

So I Ordered a Bunch of Japanese Snacks: Part 2

After surviving the first half, which mainly consisted of fried salted everything, I decided to try the candy side of things. Starting with...

The Fruit Bowl

The bowl came broken.

First, I don't understand why my fixed pictures end up back to their original rotation. Oh well, just crane your head 90 degrees and keep reading.


Oddly, in this package was a toothpick (you can see it on the left side of the bag). I have weird luck with items so I honestly thought it was some kind of mistake, like finding a hair in your food, but another item also contained a toothpick, so it must have been on purpose. If US candy ever contained a toothpick in it, someone resembling Honey BooBoo's mom would have already sued the company for having swallowed it.

Ah maede elebendy billyun dullurs.

The smell of the candy made my stomach turn a little, but I decided to give it a try anyway. To my surprise they were fruit gummies (which explains the nasty smell. Although my favorite candy, gummies smell like ass.) Japan also has a kind of edible containers, like rice paper wrappers. In this case the fruit "bowl" was a very stale plain wafer that read "ICE CREAM" on the bottom. I still don't get the toothpick. Is there some sort of faux pas about picking up tiny pieces of candy with your fingers in Japan?

I decided to further my cavities with...

Cherry Squares, Mini Cola, and Terrifying Egg Thing

Is this what it's like to be illiterate?

The Cherry Squares were the other thing that came with a toothpick. They were gummy just like the fruit bowl.

The Mini Cola were tiny little crunchy bits that were actually pretty good! They have kind of a sour candy/cola taste that I would actually expect to find in the US.

Please don't sue us Coca Cola.

The Terrifying Egg Thing was the thing I was most hesitant to try (at least until I found the Strip of Skin, which I'll get to later.) I looked and felt like a marshmallow but I knew, just knew, that it would have something inside that would probably be a garish yellow.

I was right in that it contained something, but it was just chocolate. Crisis averted.

Looming on the horizon was...

Cola Balls

That "hairdoo" on the talking one should have been a warning.

Initially I expected these to be chocolaty until I looked at the package closer and saw a glass of soda on the right. At that point I assumed the things talking and smiling (and, in the far right one's case, looking constipated) were soda bubbles.
 

The balls were much paler than the package suggested (durr hurr). Instead of being soft, like the egg thing. When I bit into one though it was chewy, and had an oozing, bright yellow core like a cyst. One Amazon reviewer mentioned one of the items was gum, and that she had already eaten several pieces before realizing. With the gummies I was careful to be sure the first one completely dissolved before eating more. In this case I realized it was gum. It had no specific flavor I could pinpoint, but if it really was trying to be cola flavored, who wants cola-fresh breath? (A cola flavor did linger in my mouth afterwards.)

I don't like it when my candy oozes.

I have since renamed them Gum Cysts.

My stomach began churning after all the sweets, so I decided to change it up a bit with

Corn Potage

The more excited the mascot is the more cautious I am.

What is potage? Apparently a thick soup, and what can get thicker than solid, crispy form?

The sweetness hit me like a fist. I often forget people like their corn incredibly sweet since my family is more of a salty corn type. Once I got past that they weren't half bad and had more of a savory taste and smelled absolutely delicious.

It was enough to get me back on the sweets track with...


Candy Cigarettes, Vermin Discs, and Grape Box

Well what else was I supposed to call the Vermin Discs?

Along with candy birth control pills Japanese children also get to smoke candy cigarettes. I know the US used to sell them as such before redressing them as "candy sticks" with pictures of superheroes on them. I have, however, ran across candy cigarettes in rare places in the US.

Having been disappointed with my saccharine cigs I decided to dress things up a little.

I also drink black candy coffee and write dark poetry about candy.

They taste better than their US counterpart. Where the US ones are chalky and flaky, these ones are a sweet mint and solid.

The Vermin Discs were sour and powdery, leaving a grainy, floury paste behind, like the dusty sweepings of a Sour Patch Kids factory.

The Grape Box was filled with four or five very fake grape flavored gum balls.

The strangely mundane continued with...

 Crackers

Cracker

 They were crackers.

Mini Chow Mein Noodles

I wonder what the littler guy is worried about. Probably global warming.

These were completely plain and expected as well. Of course, I was stalling, stalling the inevitable, but now I was down to the last two. The finale, the creepy, the weird the...

Squirrel Balls and Strip of Skin

Hurr durr

The Squirrel Balls were poofier and much, much sweeter than I was expecting, especially after the crackers of noodles. I suspect they were made from rice flour.

Finally, there was the Strip of Skin. The picture made it look much better than the tiny little window they had on the package. Inside I could see a yellowish flat thing that had a texture of an old person's skin. When I had first started this venture I took one look at it and said to my brother "I'm really not looking forward to trying that" but here it is friends. That time is now.

I opened the package and took it out or, at least, I tried. Instead part of it broke off. I fished it out and set it on the plate.

It's more horrifying out of the package.

"Maybe it wouldn't be so intimidating if I smelled it?" I thought to myself.

Oh God.

A gross, saucy garbage smell reached up and gripped my nostril hairs so hard it made the pineapple worm in the back of my brain stir from its slumber. I didn't want to taste it, but maybe it would be okay, like a soy sauce flavor. I peeled it off from the plate, which it had immediately stuck to, and licked it.

No.

This thing was shat out from Satan himself before being pounded flat by a billion tortured souls. I tried to eat it again, this time biting down until a piece was almost loosed. I almost gagged. I couldn't do it. It went in the trash, which was then set on fire and prayed over.

This package didn't have a cutesy mascot on it because the mascot would have been Cthulhu.

Or her.

So I Ordered a Bunch of Japanese Snacks Part 1

Cracked is one of my favorite websites and is a huge basis on the layout of my blog posts. Some of the best articles are ones that involve food (like this and this and let's not forget this one) but it all started for me with a blog called The Sneeze under a section called Steve Don't Eat It. While looking for some bento tools on Amazon they recommended a big bag of Japanese snacks so I decided why not?

First was Amazon Prime's shipping. For it to get here in two days meant there was no possible way it could have come directly from Japan. Amazon probably gets a couple of them in advance and keeps them in a warehouse.

Actual photo of Amazon warehouse.

It took me a few days to gain the courage to actually open and start eating them. First was...

The Crispy Tube and Naked Pocky

I have no idea what's going on.

I got three crispy tubes, although I originally thought they were stacks of crackers, like Ritz. Just before work my brother convinced me to pick a snack and try one. I chose this one because the mascot is familiar to me for some reason, although I can't place him.

Inside was a tube of crisp with a hollow inside about the circumference of a pen. The smell was spot on as I thought to myself "This isn't going to taste very good."

It also made me vaguely uncomfortable for some reason...

It was salt with a bit of spice (if "spice" also includes Satan's stank farts). I had a rule to myself that I would finish off every snack and I broke my rule after the very first one.

You can actually see when my soul dies.

The taste not only lingers, but gets worse over time. My brother was hesitant to try it after I did, and he was right to do so. I'm pretty sure he ate an alcohol pad to get the taste out of his mouth.

Twinkie the Kid lost weight.

Pocky are chocolate covered biscuit sticks you will find in nearly every grocery store in the Asian food aisle. I've tried them and they're unimpressive, naked pocky is is even more so. They were crunchy with a little salt, like pretzels.

Next was...

Meat Pencil, Birth Control, and Gel Tube

Japan seems to have a thing for junk food in tubes.

The Meat Pencil actually had some English on it: Pencil Calpas. After some reading apparently Calpas originate from Russia and apparently contain the meats of chicken, pork, and horse. I already ate at McDonald's today so none of that should be new to me.

It had a texture like a Slim Jim but with none of the spice, more like one of those sausages mall kiosks sell at Christmas. It was actually much more preferable to a Slim Jim (and probably contains much less horse meat.)

The Birth Control was simplest but also the most amusing. It was milk chocolate in a candy shell, but I liked the packaging, you had to pop them out of the foil backing, like sudafed. Children are known to eat medications, mistaking them for candy, so let's make candy look like medication!

The Gel Tube had one ominous English word on it: Jelly. It had a zip strip down one side so that you didn't just eat it from the top, you had to expose it in all its oozy glory. That, of course, didn't work, so instead I cut one end off and squeezed it out, which is a horror that can only be described via the magic of video:

(Play in background for full effect.)

The texture was like those fake bait packages in the fishing section of a sporting goods store. It was unpleasant to both my fingers and my mouth. The taste was fake pineapple, which was uninviting, but the texture will likely haunt me for the rest of my days. It was only after another forced bite that I realized where it really belonged.

The pineapple has since laid eggs in my cerebellum.

After such a spread I was less brave to try...

The Wheat

Panda fresh!

I was expecting roasted, salted sunflower seeds in these, but instead I was treated to slightly sweet puffed wheat like what you would expect in American breakfast cereal.

I forgot to rotate the picture.

Next was pretty much the same thing, except one was covered in chocolate and the other was covered in strawberry flavoring, like strawberry milk. Both of these I actually enjoyed.

With a renewed sense of bravery I followed up with...

 Frog Balls and Samurai Snacks

 

The Frog Balls were bigger than I expected (hurr durr), about the size of a tater tot. Immediately there is a burst of dill pickle flavor, which eventually gives way to that fried crisp flavor. They are oddly addictive.

The Samurai Snacks have the words "Aji Curry" on them. I know what curry is, but looking up aji Wikipedia says "Ají is a spicy sauce that often contains tomatoes, cilantro, ají pepper, onions, and water."

No horses? Oh well.

The Samurai Snacks tasted like chicken broth on a cheeseless Cheeto. Not unpleasant. To my surprise, my brother actually enjoyed them.

This, logically, led to...

Fried Extras

These tasted like an unflavored version of the fried everything else I had been trying. The most entertaining thing about them were the bags themselves.

What I especially loved was the random sad tiger/monkey thing on the back of one of them. He's seen things man...

He's seen things...