Dang.

Sam Neil had a lot of great roles over his long career. I think the first time I saw him was as Borodin in The Hunt for Red October, where he had a small but significant role. A role which had the most memorable scene in the entire film for me. After that, he would pop up in oh so many films, his most notable likely being Jurassic Park.

He will very much be missed...

Photo by Ross Coffey via IMDB

I think the last thing I saw him in was Thor: Love and Thunder in a bit part. He was an actor playing an actor playing Odin, but he was immediately recognizable... and a real treat for fans of his work like I am.

Rest in Peace, sir.

I have been plugging away on a project at work for nearly six months. It's not so much a difficult assignment as one which is highly complex with a lot of confusing parts. And since I've always got a dozen things going on, sorting through those parts is always getting put on the back burner. Until there was no time left. With a deadline looming, I worked all through the night... reading staggering amounts of documentation and plugging numbers into a spreadsheet in an attempt to understand it all.

And this morning at 2:37am, I finally got a handle on it all.

No idea how I'm going to stay awake tomorrow, but I'm too relieved to worry about it right now.

I'm back home again and ready to collapse after a wild weekend, but hanging on long enough to write this... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• LEGO Giveth, LEGO Taketh Away... I feel bad for the independent store owners getting caught up in this Bricks & Minifigs drama that has nothing to do with them. But the CEO and every police officer and court official are fucking pieces of shit. Absolute trash. I watched this more than a little shocked...

Just goes to show... might doesn't always come from being right. But I don't need to tell you that.

   
• Filmable! George Eastman, the guy who founded Kodak, is one fascinating guy. As a phenomenally wealthy guy of his day, he was incredibly generous in so many ways. But a bit terrible in others. And I knew none of it until I watched this remarkable video...

And, like so much of history, he's just a small part of a much larger story that came after.

   
• Essential Viewing. Religious freedom is a vanishing breed here in the Land of the Free...

Find. Another. Job. is fucking right.

   
• Hummus! Who knew that it would be Ryan Gosling who would give me a cooking tip that's actually worth knowing...

Will I try it? Yes. Yes I will.

   
• Odysseus! Here's the deal... I have read The Odyssey in both full and abbreviated forms. But I didn't truly understand it until I read Emily Wilson's amazing translation. I was thrilled that her work is what Christopher Nolan based his new film. And this video explains why...

Really can't wait to see it.

   
• He'll Come Again. This week's trending topic... Anne Frank's diary is fake and the Holocaust didn't happen. I honest to God do not understand how we got to this point. I have been to Holocaust museums around the world. The evidence is massively overwhelming. As in unquestionably overwhelming. PHOTOS EXIST OF SOLDIERS LIBERATING THE CAMPS! EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY WAS CAPTURED FOR EVERYBODY TO SEE! — As for Anne Frank's diary being "written in ballpoint pen" years before they were invented, thus the diary is fake... that has been debunked multiple times with various evidence findings being released publicly. The thing that is so fucking terrifying about this is that denying one of the most horrific events in human history just sets us up for it to happen again. I can't believe we're this stupid as a society.

   
• So Long! Do not ask me to mourn the passing of an absolute fucking monster. I won't do it.

   
And now I will take a nap and try to recover.

My cats are at home while I am across the mountains.

They have robots to feed them, robots to keep their litter box clean, and fountains to keep their drinking water clean and cool. There's cameras and alarms and sensors to keep them safe and let me know if there's any trouble.

But all that doesn't matter.

They are 2-1/2 hours away being mad because I'm not there to cater to them.

But don't worry. They'll let me know when I get home.

After nearly two weeks of eye trauma spoiling my plans, I decided to head over the mountains to hang out with friends and forget about the day-to-day grind for a while.

The drive over was mostly a good one.

I still can't wrap my head around three things...

1. Drivers who have no plans to drive the speed limit, and are happy to be fucking over dozens of other cars by inviting other drivers to dangerously try and pass them (seriously... if you or your car can't go the speed limit, maybe it's time to stop driving).
2. Aggressive drivers who don't care about anybody's safety by driving like complete assholes... even when everybody else on the road is driving the speed limit or higher. One of the people who could end up dead is you, dumbass.
3. Why does the State always have multiple projects fucking things up on the same roadway at the same time? When your two-hour-and-fifteen-minute trip is 40 minutes longer than usual, it's a problem. In other countries (probably in other states) they focus effort on knocking out one project at a time so that they don't have to have many, many stops along a single route. But my state? No.

All that being said... it could have been worse. I could have been going East instead of West. The traffic heading East was insane. Just a massive line for miles and miles. If I were in the middle of that, I'd have to ask myself if the weekender trip was even worth it.

Maybe it's because I am a homebody at heart now-a-days... but for me the answer would be "no."

It was a rough night. According to my Apple Watch I only got 4-1/2 hours of sleep. I think I kept touching my eye or rolling on it which woke me up.

And when my alarm went off this morning, I was in quite a lot of pain. It feels like I've been punched in the eye. Except I wasn't. My doctor had to press on my eye hard enough to squeeze the liquid out from under my first surgery so he could try and better contain the tear on my retina so it doesn't spread and detach. A half hour of somebody poking your eye out don't feel great once the anesthesia they shoot into it wears off.

My cats must have sensed something was wrong, because I found them next to me whenever I woke up...

   
BUT THAT WASN'T ALL THE PAIN I GOT THIS MORNING!

This was waiting for me in my email in-box...

This is “health insurance” in America.

One health problem has me hitting 75% of my full-price, high deductible... and this doesn’t even include my much more intensive second surgery yet.

The cost for all this will be thousands upon thousands of dollars. It will easily wipe out my health savings account and likely wipe out my regular savings as well. And this is for one eye. Can you imagine if it were something far worse?

I’m just thankful that I have savings to draw from. And, believe it or not, I consider myself lucky to have insurance... because I might not have even been able to afford to go to the doctor in the first place if I didn’t.

Americans are paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for insurance which results in thousands upon thousands of dollars in medical bills.

This is fucking insanity.

Yet politicians who were bought by the insurance lobby tell us we have the best health care in the world.

Why aren’t Americans sick of this fucking scam yet?

Last week I had me some laser eye surgery in order to try and halt a tear in my retina before it ripped through completely. It went fine, my surgeon was great, and I walked away thinking that I'd be okay for a while... until the next time.

Which, as it turns out, was today.

And this time was SO much more painful.

Especially once the anesthesia wore off and I can feel where he jabbed me with the syringe multiple times... and where he had to push on my eye in order to force liquid out from under my previous surgery so he could super-laser it again... and where the laser burned my retina.

I have a high pain tolerance because I'm an alpha male like that, but still had to tap out at least five times because I needed a minute. Not just from having my eyeball pushed into my skull and the burning of my retina, but from the light so my surgeon could see inside... not to mention the laser itself.

But anyway...

THE GOOD: I'm alive, my vision will mostly return, and my surgeon was happy with how things went.

THE BAD: It will take weeks to months for my vision to mostly return... that second tear they found had to be dealt with which prolonged everything... and ... this likely isn't over. It's only a matter of time before I have to go again.

CONTRAST ENHANCE...

In other good news, my third doctor was just as awesome as my previous two. And he appreciated that humor is my coping mechanism. On top of the laser was protective eyewear, and I asked him to give me a pair because I didn't want the laser to accidentally blind me...

This might have been too much for him. But, hey, I was getting crap injected in my eye and having lasers burning my retina. I could have started screaming!

After I was set free I had to take a nap in my car in the parking lot after, but ended up throwing on two pair of sunglasses so I could drive home.

Along the way I had a disastrous visit to McDonald's which I'll talk about tomorrow.

And once I got home, I passed out on the couch.

And here I am. Feeling like I got punched in the eye and there's blurry spots everywhere.

Overall this was not a good time. Do not recommend. Unless you're going to lose an eye... then you probably want to put on your big boy pants and get it done.

Today was the follow-up to the surgery of my surgery. It went fine. Some fluid build-up under my surgical scar, but it would likely resolve itself. I drove home thinking that I was good for a few more years at least.

Turns out I was off by a few years.

After I got home from work I received a phone call from my surgeon saying that he consulted with another surgeon who spotted another tear on my retina. It was smaller, but should be taken care of. He then told me that the second surgeon also wanted to reinforce the surgery I just had given this new information.

I asked when I could be scheduled.

He said "Can you be here at 11 tomorrow?

When I was a kid, one of my favorite toys was my View-Master.

In an age before videotapes, DVDs, on-demand programming, and personal computers, it was a way to watch my favorite shows and movies... and travel the world... when such activities were impossible for me.

Last night while I was working I turned on YouTube and ran across this cool video on View-Master which is worth sharing. Especially if you're familiar with the device...

Pretty amazing, right? It opened a new world for an entire generation.

   
• Terrific! You knew it was coming... but it was finally announced that a series starring Mr. Terrific is indeed happening. Which is fantastic given how memorable he was in Superman...

Cannot wait to see it!

   
• Congrats! And so Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married in a massive ceremony at Madison Square Garden. It took quite a lot of people by surprise because they had over 1000 guests. It didn't take me by surprise, because I remember what she said to Graham Norton...

People are saying that they should have had their nuptials at Trump's Freedom 250 America's State Fair because they'd have loads of privacy given that this event has practically nobody showing up. Given how this joyous event has inexplicably pissed off a lot of people, I hope that Tay and Trav are very happy and stay together for the rest of their lives.

   
• Yes, Ma'am! "Babe, take off my underwear..."

Bwah ha ha haaaaaaa!

   
• Shadoe! Are you a Gen-Xer like me? Do you remember Shadoe Stevens? Then here's a TikTok for you, which is a darn cool distraction from the horrors of the day...
UPDATE: Why is TikTok such garbage water? Here's a direct link if the video below is wrong.

I love stuff like this.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Vatican excommunicates conservative SSPX followers — In all honesty, I'm surprised that it took this long. Vatican II ended the year before I was born. The simple truth is that the Catholic Church had to do something to modernize or else they would lose future generations of Catholics who felt that the Holy Church was too far removed from reality for them to stay parishioners. What is even more surprising is that there are still people in this day and age who feel compelled to cling to old doctrine... despite the fact that it was adopted by the Papacy, which cannot in any way be ignored WITHOUT excommunication. Anybody who thinks otherwise really, really doesn't understand the Catholic Church and the powers of the Supreme Pontiff.

   
• Time Damage, Eye Damage! ZOMG! They shut CERN's Large Hadron Collider down on June 29th. DO YOU KNOW WHAT DAY MY RETINA GOT TORN? Okay... it was June 24th... but I had the surgery on June 29th. COINCIDENCE?? I THINK NOT! Clearly the time-altering shenanigans of these "scientists" are responsible for my misfortune. Who can I sue?

   
• Baggage! Domestic carry-on size is 22 x 14 x 9 inches. If your carry-on is 18.9 x 13.0 x 8.3, YOU FAIL because you're not providing maximum space allowed. If your carry-on is 20.5 × 15.5 × 10, YOU FAIL because you're exceeding the maximum dimension in two directions while undersized in another (WTF, Nobl?). It's absolute insanity that luggage companies will call an oversized bag "carry-on" when it's not, and you are taking a huge risk every time you book a flight. Just make your damn domestic carry-on luggage 22 x 14 x 9 and be done with it.

   
Now I'm going back to whining about my eye.