Date: 2026-08-02
I watched The Martian a few days ago. It was on the AMC channel and I started watching it part-way through. The movie is about a guy stranded on Mars who is saved due to the efforts of people on Earth and his fellow crew members who had accidentally left him behind when they left Mars. I have seen the movie before, however I decided to watch it again after I started watching it on the AMC channel because the situation of the guy stranded on Mars reminded me of my situation of being trapped in my apartment. I also sometimes wonder if, in real life, we are actually living in a computer simulation, and I thought perhaps it was not a coincidence that I happened to be seeing this movie on television while being trapped in my apartment.
It was a reasonably good movie. I felt a bit emotional watching the guy being rescued at the end because it made me wonder if this was a sign that I would eventually be rescued.
Immediately after watching The Martian, I decided to watch The Butterfly Effect on Netflix. I realized that I had enjoyed watching a movie after not having watched one in a while, and The Butterfly Effect was suggested by the Netflix algorithm. I believe I have actually seen this movie before, around when it first came out in 2004, however I liked the idea of rewatching it for nostalgia reasons. The movie is about a guy who experienced trauma when he was young and at various points in his life had periods of time during which he had lost his memories. The movie is a sci-fi movie, and the name of the movie comes from the butterfly effect, which is the idea that a small change in something that happens at the beginning of a complex series of events can have a big impact on the events that happen later on.
While I watched this movie, I tried to consider each thing that happened in the movie and whether or not it might be the case that I was seeing it because I actually live in a computer simulation and the movie was supposed to contain clues that I was supposed to notice. It was difficult to tell if this was the case. In my own life, I had an Animorphs website a long time ago. I unfortunately have lost all of the files for the website and do not remember how I lost them. I sometimes wonder if I had a traumatic event which I have forgotten which explains what happened to the files. Maybe this was something that made the movie similar to my life, since the guy in the movie also experienced traumatic events. The other thing that I considered was related to some events that occurred in the movie in which the guy figures out a way to change some of the things that happened in the past which then causes big changes in the present. The guy in the movie uses some of his journals in order to do so. I wondered if maybe this was supposed to be similar to my life, because I have recently been wondering if there are people who have had a negative impression of me for a long time, and if maybe the reference in the movie was a clue that I was going to be able to change that using the journals on my website.
I enjoyed watching the movie. While the guy is in university, he stays in a dorm room which has some computers that were modern around the time that the movie came out in 2004, with large CRT displays, which I thought was interesting to see for nostalgia reasons.
I made popcorn using my Whirley-Pop machine to eat while watching the movie. It tasted great at the time, however I think I might have added too much salt. I woke up the next day with a headache and I suspect that it might have been because I had somehow dehydrated myself due to the large amount of salt.
The day after watching The Butterfly Effect, I decided to watch the movie Slingshot. Before watching it, I briefly considered watching The Mothman Prophecies, because Netflix suggested it and it came out around the same time as The Butterfly Effect, which I had enjoyed watching due to nostalgia associated with the time period. However, after I started it I decided that I did not feel like watching a horror movie, and so I started watching Slingshot instead.
Slingshot is a sci-fi movie about three astronauts that have been sent on a mission to visit Titan, one of the moons orbiting Saturn. They use a method to get there which involves a slingshot maneuver around Jupiter, which is where the title of the movie comes from.
In the movie, the astronauts start having psychological issues due to the stress of the isolation, and I enjoyed this aspect of the movie because it reminded me somewhat of my own personal isolation as a consequence of being trapped in my apartment. I have not been experiencing anything similar to the psychological issues that they experience in the movie, like hallucinations, though I can understand their anxiety. I am trying not to give away any important plot points, however at one point one of the astronauts starts to wonder if his fellow astronauts actually really exist. When this started to occur, I felt like it reminded me of my personal situation, because at that point it seemed to him like he might be totally alone on the spaceship, like I am in my apartment. I enjoyed the creepy, anxiety-inducing feeling of the movie.
Aside from the fact that one of the guys suspected that he was alone, there were a few other things that seemed similar to my situation. One of the guys kept checking some hand-held radios to see if they were still functional. On my website, I have a page where I suggested that people should buy a specific kind of hand-held radio, and this part of the movie reminded me of my suggestion. When I personally suggested this on my website, one of the reasons that I suggested it was because I thought it might be a way that I could communicate with people outside of my apartment, which I had been inside for a long time at that point. In the movie, the guy actually tries to use the radios to communicate with people outside of the spaceship, which seemed similar. Also, the guy with the radios often thought about a woman that he had dated. This reminded me of my personal desire to have a girlfriend.
I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, and I clicked the button on Netflix to give it the maximum approval rating so that the algorithm would suggest similar movies. I read online afterwords that it received mixed reviews, which I found strange because I liked it.
Yesterday, the day after watching Slingshot, I decided to watch the movie Spaceman. Spaceman is another sci-fi movie that takes place in space, similar to Slingshot. Given that I had enjoyed Slingshot I felt like watching another similar movie.
Slingshot is about an astronaut that had been sent on a mission to examine a strange space phenomenon that had been observed from Earth, which consisted of a cloud of purple particles that were floating in space beyond Jupiter. The astronaut had been sent to examine the particles by himself and was the only person on the spaceship. While on the journey to examine the particles, he encounters an alien being which appears inside his spaceship. The alien is very strange looking, and looks similar to a large spider, though it speaks English perfectly. The astronaut does not tell the people on Earth about the alien. Instead, he makes friends with the alien, and they often have discussions about the life of the astronaut. In particular, they often talk about relationship problems that exist between the astronaut and his wife on Earth.
The movie has a creepy, anxiety-inducing feeling to it, somewhat similar to Slingshot, though with an even stranger feeling due to the presence of the very strange looking alien. After finishing the movie, I felt that I enjoyed it, however during the middle of the movie the alien made me feel very uncomfortable. It was also somewhat depressing in the middle of the movie, because the storyline kept emphasizing how lonely the astronaut was. I personally feel lonely as a consequence of being trapped in my apartment, and I liked that the movie was portraying emotions that were similar to how I felt, however it made me feel a bit sad to be reminded of my personal situation. Nonetheless, I felt like it was a good movie. Sometimes it is strangely enjoyable to experience different kinds of emotions, even if they are sometimes negative emotions.
After the movie was over, I considered whether the movie might contain any intentional clues from the creator of a potential computer simulation that I might be living inside. There did not seem to be as many potential clues as there appeared to have been with The Martian and in particular The Butterfly Effect, which had specific references like the journals. The experiences of the astronaut did seem similar to my own experiences due to the fact that he was very lonely. I spent some time wondering whether his relationship with his wife on Earth was something that I was supposed to consider to be similar to any relationships that I had in my life. This seemed like it could be possible, though it was not a precise match for my own experiences. However, there are probably a lot of people who are able to relate to the movie in that way, so it seems less likely to be an intentional reference from the creator of a potential computer simulation that I might be living inside.
I tried again making popcorn to eat while watching this movie, and this time I used a lot less salt. The popcorn did not taste quite as good, though I woke up this morning without a headache, so maybe it worked.
For this movie I also clicked the button on Netflix to give it the maximum approval rating.