Yes. Yes I know that it's Wednesday. But I always have to juggle the last Bullet Sunday of the year around so I don't mess up my year-end Best Lists. But don't despair... because a special New Year's Bullet Sunday (on Wednesday) starts now...

   
• Resolute! My New Year's Resolutions are the same every year. 2013 was a yet another piece of cake...

• Try a Pop-Tart flavor I've never had before. DONE! Unfortunately, it was the horrendously shitty "Oatmeal Delights Strawberry" flavor, which was awful.
• Travel somewhere I've never been before. DONE! I visited Finland, Estonia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
• Visit a Hard Rock Cafe I haven't seen before. DONE! Visited the new cafe in New Orleans, Helsinki, and Saigon.
• Drink a beer I've never drank before. DONE! Umm... yeah... really overdid this one. Especially at the "beer tasting" they had at the resort I stayed at in Luan Prabang in Laos. I am now a fan of delicious Beer Lao.
• Get another Apple product. DONE! Kinda. Since I was still riding high on all the Apple stuff I bought in 2012, all I really bought that was Apple-branded this year was a new Magic Mouse and an Apple Thunderbolt cable. But that Thunderbolt cable is more than just a cable... it is a COMPLETE AND TOTAL BREAK from buying shitty USB peripherals with their ever-changing connectors, each and every one of which are TOTAL CRAP! From here on out, I'm done with USB.

   
And what am I looking forward to this year?

   
• Travel! I honestly thought that I would be better organized for 2014 than I was in 2013. But, alas, no. So many places I want to go this year... but I have no idea where I'm going to end up. Hopefully somewhere amazing.

   
• Movies! About the only think that's hit my "must-see" radar for 2014 are the two Marvel films we're getting... Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy... oh, make that three... becauseVeronica Mars. Other films that may entice me to the cinema... The LEGO Movie, Muppets Most Wanted, RoboCop, Tomorrowland, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

   
• Music! Macintosh Braun, Garbage, Blondie, Foo Fighters, Broken Bells, and Matt & Kim, perhaps?

   
• Fiction! As THRICE Fiction continues to defy odds for a magazine by forging ahead into Year No. Four, I'm hoping for more of the same great content.

   
• Apple! iPhone 6? Probably! Apple Smart Television? PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! Hoping to be thrilled by my favorite fruit-themed computer company this year.

   
• Ink! I want to keep forging forward with the pieces of my forearm band... but this may be the year I finally get "that big tattoo" that I've been saving my right arm for.

   
But, mostly, I'm looking forward to a year filled with mostly good news for once.

Here's hoping.

Grass. Weed. Reefer. Pot. Skunk. Bud. Chronic. Mary Jane. Ganja. Herb. Wacky Tobacky.

No matter what your name for it, Marijuana is now legally for sale in Colorado... and will be legally for sale here in my home-state of Washington sometime this Spring.

And while I was a huge proponent of legalizing marijuana for personal use, I will undoubtedly not be partaking myself. That would be money wasted when Jägermeister already does such a great job of ejecting me from reality when I need that...

But I make no promises.

The reason being that I am so rarely able to keep my promises.

As an example, I once promised that I would no longer write editorial rebuttals on my blog because they so rarely do anything to elevate the conversation. Probably because the only reason I write editorial rebuttals in the first place is that I'm very, very angry about said editorial. And while angry rants may be a release... may be cathartic... and may even be fun... they're also overly-emotional, profanity-laden, and sometimes even incomprehensible.

Thus my promise.

Except...

A pathetic joke of an op-ed piece in The New York Times' by David Brooks was published today. It's rife with the kind of condescending rhetoric that a sane person would avoid at any cost but, like the fool I am, I dove in anyway. And, while I honestly don't give a shit about Brooks or his laughably transparent attempt at manipulating his readers, I do give a huge shit about what the fucking douche has to say about legalization supporters like me.

But, before we get there, it's important to put it into context.

The first half of his op-ed waxes poetic about how Brooks smoked pot when he was a teenager, but eventually gave it up.

And then we get to this...

"We now have a couple states — Colorado and Washington — that have gone into the business of effectively encouraging drug use. By making weed legal, they are creating a situation in which the price will drop substantially. One RAND study suggests that prices could plummet by up to 90 percent, before taxes and such. As prices drop and legal fears go away, usage is bound to increase. This is simple economics, and it is confirmed by much research. Colorado and Washington, in other words, are producing more users."

And this...

"But, of course, these are the core questions: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned."

So...

• In other words, Brooks was "self-governing" enough to decide that he wanted to illegally smoke pot when he was younger... but he doesn't think that anybody else should be legally able to make the same decision today.
• In other words, Brooks believes that marijuana should stay expensive and illegal so it's use is exclusive to wealthy people who can afford the product and the legal ramifications associated with it.
• In other words, Brooks feels that only Brooks is smart enough and responsible enough to handle cannabis because only he is smart enough and responsible enough to quit using it. You, however, are not, so shame on you for wanting it legalized.

Well fuck you David Brooks.

Will legalizing marijuana bring about more drug users? I have no clue. It's not going to change my habits. Will there be people who abuse legalized marijuana? Of course there will. And they should be punished just like alcohol abusers are now. Driving while drunk or driving while stoned, it doesn't matter... you break the law you pay the price. The precedent has already been set, so move along, there's nothing to see here.

Seriously, there's nothing to see here.

Which is why, after reading this piece, I can't quite decide whether David Brooks is pretending to be so obtuse... or if he is, in fact, mentally deficient.

A few points...

• I voted for legalization because it should be my fucking decision whether or not I get high, not yours.
• I voted for legalization because responsible use of marijuana shouldn't be treated any different from responsible use of alcohol... and I fail to see how being an alcoholic is somehow more desirable than being a stoner when people do abuse it.
• I voted for legalization because IT'S BEEN CONFIRMED BY MUCH RESEARCH that marijuana is less of a health risk than alcohol.
• I voted for legalization because... cigarettes and tobacco products. Look into THAT one, bitch.
• I voted for legalization because I'm sick of the racist bullshit surrounding marijuana use. It runs roughly an equal percentage between whites and blacks, but guess who bears the brunt of arrests when it comes to getting caught using it?
• I voted for legalization because now pot smokers are fucking TAXED just like alcohol drinkers such as myself already are. Fair is fair, blazers!
• I voted for legalization because the massively expensive (yet massively ineffective) "War on Drugs" needs an equally massive overhaul so we're not dumping tons of effort and taxpayer cash ON FUCKING STUPID.
• I voted for legalization because I am sick and tired of self-righteous assholes like David Brooks unleashing the "Do as I say, not as I do" edict for acceptable behavior in America.

If nothing else, smoking a join would sure beat lesser pleasures... like reading unintelligent op-ed trash by David Brooks.

Don't believe me? Just ask a teenage David Brooks.

I miss reading. I used to read a lot. Like... really a lot.

I'd easily tear through 25 books a year, and it wasn't unheard of to do double that. I'm a fairly quick reader, so a book a week is a piece of cake if the material isn't too challenging (Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco was insane and took over a month to get through).

But then stuff started getting in the way.

Video games got more complex and time consuming.

Work got more and more involved.

Social media became a time-suck of epic proportions.

Now-a-days the only time I get to read is when I travel, and even that's diminishing. I'm either catching up with movies on my iPad, using in-flight wi-fi, or playing with my Nintendo 3DS. For a while I thought audio-books were a way to keep "reading" in my life, but so few books are enjoyable to me that way (David Sedaris, for example, is better on audio-book, but good sci-fi is almost impossible for me to get through).

In 2013 I read three books.

Pathetic.

And so I've set a goal for myself to read six books in 2014.

Wish me luck.

Well, crap.

As winter storm warnings drop across the USA, better bundle up tight... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Return! Dan Harmon is back to running Community after having been canned from it last season. And even though only two new Harmon episodes have aired, it's clear that the show is going to be as good as it ever was. If you're not watching the show... or quit after Harmon left... it's time to jump back onboard.

Just don't remind me that Troy only has three episodes left before his character is written out...

   
• Good Bye. Was really sad to learn that James Avery died this past week. Immortalized as Will Smith's "Uncle Phil" on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Avery was an actor who somehow managed to hold his own in scenes that would seem impossible to do so...

So long, Uncle Phil.

   
• Snack! ZOMG! THESE NEW SARA LEE DEVIL'S FOOD CREME CAKES ARE LIKE CAKE AND CANDY IN ONE! LOVE THEM!

And are as bad for you as you'd imagine them to be. Oh well. At least they don't have DISGUSTING LARD like Hostess snack cakes do.

   
• REALLY? Speaking of things that are bad for you... When it comes to stupid fucking idiots, it's pretty tough to top Jenny McCarthy. She advocates not vaccinating your child (based on bad, inaccurate information) under the guise of "saving children from autism"... but then turns around and glamorizes smoking and nicotine addiction with her Blu e-cig commercials...

For the children, I'm sure.

It's bad enough that her anti-vax idiocy is spreading illness and death... now she's promoting an unhealthy habit too? I'm guessing that whoring herself out for huffing gasoline is next. All she has to do is find somebody to pay her to make an ad for it.

   
And... I think I'm done. I'll just let that last bullet sink in a bit...

As somebody who has been stuck because of weather many times, this so-called "Polar Vortex" that has descended on North America has me incredibly grateful that I'm not traveling right now.

And yet... when I try to recall horrible experiences I've had while being stuck traveling, it's not as easy as I thought it would be. Yeah, spending hours on end at an airport waiting for weather to clear is awful, but when it comes to serious travel delays... e.g. days... it's not so bad. I don't know if that's because I tend to make the best out of a bad situation or what, but I have only good memories of the times I've been stranded for extended periods.

I was once stuck in Germany for three days. It was a very expensive problem to have because hotels were pricy and difficult to come by... but I drank a lot of beer and spent time goofing around the local Christkindlmarkt (Christmas Outdoor Market) so I didn't mind at all.

I've also been stuck in Japan for three days because my work ran late and I couldn't find a flight home... but that was almost like a mini-vacation, because it was over a weekend and I had friends in the city to keep me occupied.

Domestically, I've been stuck overnight many, many times, and that's not so great. But the time I was stuck in New York for four days? Glorious! Two unplanned days in Orlando? Great! A half-week stuck in Chicago? So awesome.

Even my worst delay ever of nine days ended up being a lot of fun...

      First I was stuck in Arkansas.

      Then I was stuck in Minneapolis (fun times at Mall of America!).

      Then I was stuck in Seattle (funner times spending an unplanned five-day Christmas vacation with my sister!).

By the time I finally got "un-stuck" I was a little depressed at the idea of having to go back home.

So maybe I shouldn't be quite so grateful that I'm not traveling after all. Maybe I'm missing out on an awesome adventure by being stuck at home instead of being stuck someplace interesting. Maybe serious weather delays are the best excuse ever for skipping out on life for just a little while.

Maybe.

Darn it.

Thou shalt not avenge , nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD. — Leviticus 19:18 (KJV)

Grudges are always more destructive to the person holding them than the person who's a target of them. Which is why it's not terribly smart to hold grudges, and you'll be a lot healthier and happier if you heed Holy Scripture and just let things go. Bygones, and all that.

But "letting go" of those you feel have wronged you is not always an easy thing to do. Thus a grudge by inaction becomes revenge in action.

Humans are hard-wired for revenge, and modern humans have elevated it to an art-form. When we're not seeking revenge, we're enjoying it as entertainment. This is not something we're proud of. Our aspirations are so much higher. But you can't fight human nature.

And by "you" I mean "me."

I expect so much better of you.

Snow ain't what it used to be.

When I was a kid it would snow as early as Halloween, last through March, and be so deep that you could tunnel under it. Now it's lucky to snow before Christmas, last through February, or be deep enough to matter. I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. The good news is that I won't have to move to Arizona any time soon. The bad news is that lack of snow now means lack of water later.

This year, our first snow happened today. I know this because I had to scrape it off my car after work...

It won't last.

Which means it's only here long enough to be irritating.

What else is new.

"Dave 2 will be the first to admit that his blog is mostly crap. But there's some interesting stuff in there if you're willing to dig through all that crap." — StuckyTruth

"Too much work." — Sam R.

If that doesn't sum up Blogography, I don't know what does.

Thanks for putting up with my crap, fearless reader!

As expected, today was a lovely Spring day with gorgeous blue skies and warm temperatures. Which means the brief snow we got on Wednesday has evaporated.

For now. I'm guessing Winter... what little of it we're going to get... is still ahead. Hopefully the mountains are fairing better, or else we'll be in the middle of a drought come Summer.

In other news...

Literally in other news...

If you hadn't noticed, the whole Chris Christie Bridge Scandal exploded this week. The gist of the story is this...

• Back in September, on the first day of school, three lanes were closed on The George Washington Bridge in New Jersey... the busiest bridge in the world, linking Fort Lee, NJ to Washington Heights, NYC.
• The closure caused horrendous traffic jams in the city of Fort Lee, which was a nightmare for commuters and badly delayed emergency services for the area.
• The bridge closure was said to be a "traffic study." But when no evidence of a "traffic study" could be found, it was suspected that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had shut down the bridge in retaliation for Fort Lee's mayor, Mark Sokolich, not endorsing Christie during his campaign.
• When asked if the bridge closure was retaliation, Governor Christie was a raging fucking dick in his denials.
• Fast forward a couple months and, SURPRISE! Communications surfaced which confirmed Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, had arranged the "traffic problems" in collaboration with David Wildstein, a Christie appointee to the Port Authority.
• YESTERDAY, Chris Christie had to eat shit and apologize for being a raging fucking dick, AND the heinous abuse of power by his people. He also tells everybody that Bridget Anne Kelly had been fired, and he had no idea all this was going on.
• TODAY, even more documentation has surfaced, showing a ruthless campaign of intimidation and full-on threats to cover-up the scandal by Christie's people in the Port Authority and his own office staff and campaign committee.

The million dollar question remains... How much did Chris Christie actually know about the closure, and was he the person behind it all? He denies it, of course, but he's a fucking politician. They don't know how not to lie.

But whatever. For me, whether Christie was or wasn't behind everything is secondary to his disgusting behavior as the scandal unfolded. THIS was a top contender for the office of President of the United States?

And it got me to wondering. Are there ANY contenders for President out there that I would actually want in office come 2016? So I started looking into the top people rumored to be in contention for the job. And the answer was not at all surprising...

No. No there are not.

I think of politicians like Paul Ryan, Hilary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bobby Jindal, Andrew Cuomo, Ted Cruz, and (God help us) Marco Rubio as President of the United States and I feel like I'm going to vomit then crap my pants and die. These people are PRESIDENTIAL material?

No. No they are not.

Which means somebody has got to step up to the plate and captivate the country Real Soon Now. Preferably somebody who's not a polarizing, divisive figure. And somebody who can be tough but fair. And supports personal freedoms. And has a brain in their head.

Somebody like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But, you know, real.

Not that blood-sucking vampire hunting skills wouldn't be handy in Washington DC.

I have no opinion on ketchup brands. Heinz, Hunts, Del Monte... whatever.

I have a very serious opinion on things that matter. Like taco sauce (La Victoria), cola (Coke), toilet paper (Charmin), and handbags (Dooney & Bourke).

And while having opinions is all well and good, sharing opinions can sometimes get you into trouble. Well, not "trouble" per se... but opinions can certainly get you unwanted drama. Especially if you share those opinions with the entire world on the internet.

This morning I went to approve some comments on my blog. One of them gave me an error, so I clicked through to see what was wrong. My guess is that the comment was too long, as I was having to scroll through pages of it before I got to the end.

Apparently somebody took issue with my opinion that Lost was one of the shittiest television shows ever to air on television because, after a great start, the writers didn't know what they were doing or where the hell they were going with the story. The point of the comment, if I had to guess, is that I am "too stupid" to understand how great Lost is, so my "opinion is invalid."

And so I started dicing up the comment so I could get it to post it over several comments... all so I could type some snarky one-sentence response to their ten-page rant. But then I realized just how much I don't give a crap over this person's opinion of my opinion, and just deleted it. That'll teach you to call me stupid, you stupid-head!

Or probably not. Because internet, and all that.

Just five years ago, I would have not only figured out a way to post that comment, but would have written an equally-long point-by-point response justifying my opinion. I don't know what's changed in me since 2009, but I can't fathom doing that today. I just don't care enough to put in all that effort over a television show that ended ages ago.

Especially a show that ended so badly.

Oops. There I go again.

Grab onto those Golden Globes... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Seahawks! And so the Seahawks won their NFL Second Round Playoffs game against the Saints. Here in Washington State, it's kind of a big deal. And while I support the home team, of course, I'm not a rabid Seahawks fan, so it's more of a passive activity...

But for most everybody else, it's a bit more obsessive than that...

It's important to note that quite a few of these fans are only fans when the Seahawks are doing well. When they're doing shitty, these same "fans" will be back to bitching about how much the "SeaChickens" suck.

All I know is that I wouldn't be caught dead at a Seahawks home game any more. The whole "12th Man" phenomena is just too crazy. The entire object of which seems to be to maintain Seattle's reputation of having the loudest fans on earth. Which is something to be proud of, I guess? Personally, I don't get it. Who wants to stand in the middle of a bunch of people screaming non-stop at the top of their lungs? Oh... die-hard Seahawks fans, that's who. Oh well. Good luck, Seahawks!

   
• Miyazaki! The Simpsons unleashed a wonderful, beautiful, amazing tribute to anime and Hayao Miyazaki in a recent episode. So cool...

Time to go watch Spirited Away for the hundredth time.

   
• Veronica! Two months. Two short months...

Yeah. I'm excited.

   
• WD-40! Don't you hate it when you're focused on your work when all of a sudden you find yourself thinking "Hey, what's the deal behind WD-40?" And "Why is WD-40 called WD-40 in the first place?" Then, unlike in the past when you'd just shrug your shoulders and go back to work, you instead waste 15 minutes getting caught in a Wikipedia black hole?

In case you're wondering... WD-40 was a scientist's 40th attempt to create a Water Displacement formula to prevent corrosion in nuclear missiles. Personally, I would have lied and said it was my 43rd attempt, because WD-43 sounds a lot more fun. Which is important when you're talking about preventing nuclear missiles from corroding.

   
• Globes! Was very happy to see that Breaking Bad got some recognition. Great to see Jennifer Lawrence be her amazing self once again with her American Hustle win. Having Spike Jones win for Her just makes me want to see this film even more than I already did. And Amy Poehler and Tina Fey did a fantastic job hosting, as expected. The only two complaints I had were... A) Most of the award speeches were seriously bad, and B) The tribute to raging pervert Woody Allen had me wondering if everybody had forgotten how he HAD AN AFFAIR WITH HIS WIFE'S ADOPTED DAUGHTER, THEN MARRIED HER... and is STILL under suspicion for molesting one of his wife's other adopted daughters... WHEN SHE WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD! If everybody did forget, we have Woody Allen's son on Twitter to remind them...

Not to mention the fact that I think all of Allen's movies are shit anyway.

And, there you have it. No more bullets for you.

And so I received notice that I have to call in for jury duty... AGAIN.

I swear, I get called for jury duty more than anybody I know. Hell, just since starting this blog I've been summoned September 2003, February 2006, May 2008, and December 2009... and at least three times before then. That's seven times when most people I know are lucky to be called once. I guess I should feel lucky that it's been four years since my last one. I think that's the longest I've ever gone between notices, as I am usually summoned at least every two years.

I don't know how jury duty works for everybody else, but here you are given a time to call in to see if there's a trial needing your service. If there's not, you keep calling in over a two week period to see if you're needed. So, basically, I have to completely rearrange my life for TWO WEEKS when I'm lucky to be able to schedule that much vacation time after planning months in advance.

How in the hell is this considered acceptable?

Surely the court has a FUCKING CALENDAR where they can ACTUALLY SCHEDULE THE FUCKING TRIALS so they can FUCKING CALL A JURY IN without DICKING PEOPLE AROUND with this stupid "Call us!" bullshit. I mean, seriously, TWO FUCKING WEEKS?!?

My disgust for our legal system is so intense that I always worry that I'm going to be slapped with a contempt charge whenever I have to show up in court.

But how is that my fault when our courts are so contemptible?

It's all I can do to contain myself while being subjected to the outrageous crap you have to endure for "justice." I put "justice" in quotes because the last trial I served at had a prosecutor who expected the jury to find some guy guilty of drunk driving... WHEN THE OFFICER LET HIM DRIVE HOME AFTER HE WAS STOPPED! Yeah, that wasn't a waste of my fucking time and our tax dollars.

And yet... I'm not expected to be in contempt of the court system.

Right.

If there were ever any doubts that our American politicians and courts are in the pocket of lobbyists and corporations, you can pretty much shove them aside now that the FCC has struck a blow to net neutrality.

I don't think I'm understating things when I say that the internet... the one true outlet for freedom and equality left in this country... is now totally fucked.

Unless this gets overturned or revised, you are no longer in control of the internet content available to you. Your Internet Service Provider is in control. Which, odds are, is a mega-corporation like Comcast, Time-Warner, Charter, Verizon, Cox, Frontier... and their confederates and owners. This is horrendously bad for many, many reasons, but your government just doesn't give a flying fuck. They're bought and paid for just like everything else in this country...

• Some small company comes up with something cool and revolutionary... but it competes with Verizon's business model, so all Verizon internet subscribers get that content blocked.
• You got rid of cable TV so you could watch entertainment via Netflix and Hulu on your Charter internet connection... but Charter decides that's cutting into their revenue stream, so now access to Netflix and Hulu will cost you $20 extra a month.
• You decide to cancel all your magazine subscriptions because all the stuff you're interested in is more timely... not to mention FREE... on the internet... but Time-Warner decides they should get a piece of the pie, so the only way to get unlimited access to news sites is to subscribe to TIME magazine first.
• You do all your shopping through Amazon.com... but Comcast would rather you spend money at their new online shopping site, so all orders now have a 5% "carrier fee" added to them unless you shop directly with Comcast.
• You are frustrated with all the ads junking up the internet... but Cox can get additional revenue from advertising, so now all Cox internet customers have a permanent banner area displayed at the top of their screens when browsing the internet.
• You use Skype to make phone calls to friends and family abroad... but Frontier no longer allows Skype on their network, you instead have to pay $10 a month plus 10¢ a minute to use their "voice calling" feature.
• There are websites you require access to for your business... but your ISP decides these sites are "premium sites" so they will be throttled to slow speeds unless the site owners pay them for full-speed access.

And so on. And so on. And so on.

There are people, of course, who feel that the free market will sort all this out. And I feel sorry for those who cling to this delusion, because there is no free market any more. The people who own everything will be deciding how you access the internet, and there's nothing "free" about that. Especially if you're in a rural area where you don't have any options for which company you can use to even get access to the internet in the first place.

When I think of all the tax dollars... OUR tax dollars... that went into building the internet only to have it fall into the hands of corporations, I'm shocked and disgusted. I know I shouldn't be, because that's the way everything else has gone, but I am. I always thought that the outcry against unfettered access to the internet would be so huge that there was no way it could ever happen.

Yet here we are.

Or maybe it's just me. For all I know, your ISP could decide that Blogography is an undesirable risk to their revenue stream, and my blog will no longer be accessible.

In that case, it's been nice knowing you.

Jeez what a horribly mundane day.

The only thing that's keeping me going is that I have a bag of Budget $aver Banana Popsicles waiting for me at home.

I may even have a tub of Snack-Pack Chocolate Pudding left.

Wouldn't that just be the best thing ever?

Remember when taking pictures was a relatively complex ordeal where you had to load your camera with "film" and then send it off to be developed and printed? And THEN if you wanted to get those photos into your computer you had to have them scanned, touched-up, color-corrected, and burned to a CD? Hard times. Hard times.

Back in the early 1990's, Kodak came up with a system to cut down on the hassle called "Photo CD." This was a service where you could have your film developed, scanned, and a CD burned all at the same time. I loved it. The scan quality was pretty darn good if you went to a reputable lab, and the convenience was fantastic. It also saved a lot of money over paying somebody to scan them for you or buying the equipment to do it yourself.

Unfortunately, Photo CD never really went anywhere for a number of reasons. Eventually Kodak abandoned their proprietary format, and that was the end of that. Soon after, digital photography caught hold, and film died a long, agonizing death. With that in mind, it's not like PhotoCD had much of a chance had Kodak hung in there. Still, for somebody stuck in the film era, it was good while it lasted.

Flash forward to today, and there are a lot of Photo CDs still floating around out there.

Tonight I ran across a pile of them while tossing out some old computer junk.

Needless to say, you can't just pop a Photo CD in your iMac and look at all the pretty pictures. Modern computers have no frickin' clue how to read (let alone display) any of the images in that dead format. Lucky for me, people have reverse-engineered the proprietary Kodak file scheme and there are decoders out there (assuming you're tech-savvy enough to hunt them down and figure out how to use them). Or, if you have an antiquated computer laying around with old software installed, you might be able to read Photo CDs (Photoshop v5 anyone?)... which is probably the easiest way to do it. Eventually, I might get around to converting them to JPEGs (or whatever) but for now they're just sitting in a pile on my desk.

And it gets you thinking.

Photo CD died less than 20 years ago and it's quickly becoming impossible to read them.

And it's just a drop in the bucket. Think of all the dead formats out there... ZIP disks, JAZ drives, SyQuest cartridges, floppy disks, VHS, LaserDisc, digital video cassettes... the list goes on and on. And can CDs and DVDs far behind? Does Apple even sell computers that have CD/DVD drives any more? How long before they're just two more dead formats on the pile?

If you've got any media sitting around that has stuff which is important to you... I wouldn't wait too long to get it transferred.

In twenty years, you might not be able to. At least not easily.

My "not-my-day-job" job requires a lot of patience, perseverance, humility, dedication and, above all... flexibility. Most every appointment I make involves my being "squeezed in" to somebody's calnedar, and things often change with only a moment's notice. Most times I will fly into a city a day early and leave two days late because I just don't know when I can get in the door. Often times, the trip itself happens without warning because an opportunity arises. Once I got a call as I was driving home from the airport telling me I had to turn around, go back to the airport, and be on the next flight to Orlando (which left in 90 minutes). Good thing I had a clean pair of underwear left over.

Needless to say, making personal plans while on the job is not easy. Often times it's impossible. Not that this stops me from trying. Fortunately, most of my friends in far away places are very understanding and forgiving when it comes to my having to change or cancel plans. They know it's not my choice that I can't make it to dinner or show up for a movie... it's just part of the game.

But it's not something everybody can handle.

Next week I have to be in San Francisco. Last time I was in the city for work, it was very last-minute, but my appointments were pretty well nailed-down to the daytime. So I made plans to get a tattoo and attend a farewell party during my free evenings... knowing full well that either could be canceled without notice. Lucky for me they weren't, and everything worked out fine. Until I got an email from a friend who was upset that I didn't contact them for a meet-up while I was there. I explained that the trip was a last-minute thing and all my time was booked, but promised I'd let them know the next time I was in San Francisco.

Except when I went to message them on Facebook once my schedule had been tightened up, I found out that I had been unfriended.

Like I said, my wildly erratic work and travel schedule is not something everybody can handle.

Which makes me really appreciate those friends who can put up with me.

Because sometimes it's all I can do to put up with myself.

I packed a sack lunch for work today.

Mostly because I wanted a cheese-and-potato-chip sandwich, and you can't get that at the mini-mart. So long as you pack the potato chips separately so they don't go all soggy, it makes for a pretty good meal...

And THAT was the highlight of my day.

If it were any other day except Saturday, that would be enough.

Hold on to those Super Bowl XLVII predictions... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Seahawks! And speaking of the Super Bowl... looks like the Seahawks are getting their second trip to the big game. Ironically they'll be playing the Broncos, which means it's a battle between the two states that legalized marijuana. That's quite a bowl.

   
• Security! Show of hands... who thinks that President Obama would have held a press conference concerning infringements on civil liberties and new restrictions on NSA surveillance if the government hadn't been caught spying on all the wrong people? Another show of hands... who thinks anything is going to actually change? Meh. It's all bullshit anyway. Politicians can say whatever they want to mollify the public, but whether it's our own government... or a company like Google... personal privacy is gone.

"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither" — Benjamin Franklin

   
• Freedom! To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Freedom Industries (the company whose badly maintained waste storage tanks are responsible for a chunk of West Virginia losing their water supply) have declared bankruptcy. Typical. Big corporations pay for politicians to advocate the elimination of environmental protections under the guise of "job creation," when everybody knows they're only angling to avoid paying for eco-friendly business practices. Then, when their reprehensible excuse for "public safety" fails, they declare bankruptcy so everybody responsible has their ass covered and everybody else gets screwed. Now that's freedom!

   
• Gilligan! Was sad to learn that Russell Johnson, the guy who played the professor on Gilligan's Island, has died. As the guy who could make a nuclear reactor out of a coconut and two bananas, he was always my favorite castaway...

Smooth sailing, sir.

   
• Betty! Very happy birthday wishes to Betty White who turned 92 this week!

Still one of my favorite actresses.

   
And... time to put away my bullets and pack a suitcase.

This morning I started out the same way I begin every Martin Luther King Jr. Day... by listening to his beautiful I Have a Dream speech in its entirety.

Man, did Dr. King know how to inspire with his words. And his actions.

This year I'm seeing more and more people posting great stuff beyond his most famous speech, which is very cool...

• CNN promoted a previously unheard recording where Dr. King is discussing John F. Kennedy... but the true gold of that piece is the link at the bottom which goes to another of their articles: The greatest MLK speeches you never heard.
• Slate posted a great piece about what Dr. King did after his successful coordination of the Montgomery bus boycott, and it's amazing: In Suggestions for Victorious Bus Boycotters, MLK's Powerful Turn Toward Nonviolence.
• Lt. Uhura from Star Trek, Nichelle Nichols, talks to NPR about how Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her to stay on the show when she was thinking about quitting.
• Daily Kos has an article that lays it all out brilliantly: Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did.
• Even Forbes got in on the MLK action in a surprisingly relevant way: 5 Entrepreneurship Lessons from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Worth your time, all.

And if all that's not enough MLK for you, here's a great time-lapse film of an artist creating a sketch honoring him on this day set aside to remember...

   
And if celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. has put you in too good of a mood today, no worries. You can always count on Sarah Palin to come along a destroy everything.

I'd usually say something horribly offensive here in response the the utterly insane levels of stupidity that seems to flow endlessly from Sarah Palin's disgusting mouth... but today... today... I'm inspired to be better than that.

After a series of nonsensical delays, I landed in Seattle with less than ten minutes to make my connecting flight. Luckily I arrived at the same terminal as I was departing, and I made it on the plane just as they were closing the door. Looks like I would be getting to San Francisco on time after all... even if my bag wouldn't.

Except... my bag did make it to San Francisco, so many thanks to the Seattle Alaska Airlines ground crew for pulling that off. I wasn't particularly looking forward to having to wash my underwear and socks in the sink at my hotel.

Which is another story entirely.

The hotel I usually stay at in San Francisco didn't have availability for all three nights, so I told the person making the arrangements to please find me a decent hotel nearby, as I was familiar with the neighborhood. And so she did. It's an older hotel, but perfectly fine... clean, comfortable, and safe... which is all I care about.

As I was making my way through the lobby to the check-in desk, a woman barged through and screeched "I'VE GOTTA POOP! DO YOU HAVE A PUBLIC TOILET??!" So now that's my first impression of this hotel, and about the only thing I'll remember if anybody asks me about my stay here.

My day wasn't all horrible flight connections and poop though.

I managed to get the paperwork for my meetings tomorrow, which means I won't be desperately reviewing the material 10 minutes before I walk in the door like I usually do. Hopefully the fact that I'm actually prepared this time won't put me off my game.

When I got back to Poop Toilet Hotel, I got an email telling me that I'd be receiving a royalties check for $17.28 — which is not a lot of money, I know, but it's nice to see a small project I worked on in 1994 is still bringing in the cash!

I also got a notice informing me that I was over-billed by my email service for all of 2013, so I'll be getting 6 months free service posted to my account.

As if that wasn't enough, I also got invited to have Indian cuisine with a friend in town.

And now it's time to catch up on the latest episode of The Blacklist here in my ol' Poop Toilet Hotel room. What more could I ask for?

"I DON"T LIKE SANFRISCO ANY MORE!"
        —Kid waiting in line for a cable-car ride this morning.

Much like the side dish made famous as a "San Francisco Treat," I find Sanfrisco delightful. I fall in love with the city all over again every time I'm lucky enough to come here and never pass up on an opportunity to visit... even if it's just for a job.

After breezing though mountains of paperwork and a presentation, I was able to escape for an afternoon of bigtime fun with long-time blogging friend, Jester (right after randomly running into another bloggity friend, Dickie Maxx!).

First it was lunch at Boudin Sourdough (where we both got a slight case of food poisoning?). Then, after neither one of us could think of anything to do, I remembered an ad for "The Walt Disney Family Museum" I had seen yesterday, and away we went.

The museum is a pretty big deal, encompassing three buildings in The Presidio. I never quite figured out what a museum dedicated to the life of Walt Disney is doing in San Francisco, but they couldn't ask for a more beautiful location. The view from the back of the museum's glass panorama wall is great...

Having nothing to do with the mega-corporation that is The Walt Disney Company, the museum is a non-profit organization dedicated to Disney's life, and was founded by his eldest daughter, Diane (who sadly died last November).

Everything about the museum screams "quality," and the numerous displays all look as thought they could have been designed by Disney Imagineers (and who knows, maybe they were!). The lobby features some of the many awards won by Disney, including his Emmy and numerous Oscars...

Walt's early days are explored via audio recordings of Disney himself, which are accompanied by fantastic Monty Python-esque animation screens. Throughout the displays are many photos, letters, and other personal effects which are (as with everything in the museum) beautifully exhibited...

Eventually... inevitably... you get to Mickey Mouse, whose creation is given an entire room. Here begins Disney's many, many innovations when it came to animation, including the way audio was recorded via visual cues. There were no multi-track recorders during those early days, so coming up with the sound for a cartoon was an elaborate affair involving several people working together at the same time. An interactive display shows how it was done...

And, of course there is a nice chunk of Mickey memorabilia...

The animation process is explored thoroughly, and displays include many props... including an original Disney animator's desk and the revolutionary multi-plane camera, which added depth and realistic camera panning...

Animation cels, color tests, production drawings... it's all here...

The section on Disney's war-time contributions is interesting. In addition to anti-Nazi propaganda, Disney artists did all kinds of things to support Allied war efforts... including illustrating pin-ups for the troops, which I did not know. Why children were included in the drawings I can't fathom, but there you have it...

It's not all fun, games, and gratuitous cartoon nudity though... the museum also takes a look at the not-so-nice stuff that Walt went through. Including a cartoonist strike (which Disney attributed to a Communist plot... but wasn't everything back then?)...

And then things get really interesting because... DISNEYLAND!!! Here the museum pulls out all the stops, and leads you through all the planning that went into making the park...

Click photo to embiggen in a new window.

My favorite part of the museum is a relief map of Disneyland... not as it exists, but as Walt Disney had dreamed it would one day be. So much of it is the same as what we ended up with, but very different at the same time. Space Mountain, for example, had the roller coaster on the outside of the structure instead of being a dark ride inside of it. Thunder Mountain Railroad was not the high-speed thrill-ride it turned out to be, but a scenic ride through the American Southwest (and included a ride under a waterfall). It's all just so fascinating. If you're a Disney parks whore like me, you could stare at it for hours...

The museum is a cradle-to-grave experience, and includes a nice video montage retrospective of his life as you exit...

And, no, you don't get to see Walt Disney's cryogenically-preserved body at the end. You do get to see a very nice tribute to one of Walt Disney's favorite artists, the incomparable Mary Blair, if you go down to the restroom level though...

   
All in all... the museum is worth your valuable time to visit. I had a great time, could have spent the entire day here, and thought it was worth the $20 price of admission because there's just so much... stuff... to see.

Since taxis didn't seem to exist in The Presidio, we decided to try an Uber driver. For those not in the know, "Uber" is an iPhone app that allows you to call a car to your location and have them drive you to your destination. It's pretty cool, because you are given a map with a real-time GPS location of your driver, the driver's name, a car model, license plate number, and an estimated time of arrival. For the budget-conscious, there's an Uber-X service, where you can hire regular people driving their own vehicles to give you a ride. In San Francisco, the price is up to 35% cheaper than hiring a taxi. Needless to say, this is not without controversy. Taxis are regulated... have experienced, knowledgeable drivers... and operate under safety standards dictated by the city. With Uber, you're just getting some dude and their car.

The first diver I tapped was nearby and had an estimated arrival time of four minutes. But, even after calling me, he couldn't figure out how to enter The Presidio and ended up driving all around it trying to find a way to get to us. It was pretty comical watching his GPS location on the map, because he'd drive one way... get frustrated... turn around... drive the other way... get frustrated... turn around... AND EVENTUALLY CANCEL OUR PICK-UP BECAUSE HE COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIND AN ENTRANCE! I was relieved to get the cancelation, because the ETA went from 4 minutes... to 8 minutes... to 12 minutes... and I was going nuts (on the bright side, we got to watch the worst 20-minute parallel parking job EVER).

When I tapped a new driver, he was much more knowledgable on how to get to THIS MAJOR CITY LANDMARK, and picked us up in just five minutes. Nice guy too.

If you want to try Uber for yourself (and live in a city it services) you can get $20 applied to your first ride by using the promo code ba9az (just tap the little "person" icon in the upper-left corner of the FREE Uber App and go to the PROMOTIONS link).

   
Anyway... Jester and I goofed around the Mission District for a while, and eventually decided to find a tapas bar for dinner. Yelp suggested a tiny little place called Lolo, and off we went...

...to a fantastic meal. Seriously delicious food. The guacamole was flavorful and amazing... the chips super-crispy... the corn with crema was so tasty and sweet it was like candy... the quesadillas unique and mouthwatering... the flaming cauldron of melted cheese was creamy and dangerous*... the berries and mascarpone with honey crumbles was mind-blowing... everything was great, and the service excellent as well. Highest recommendation for Lolo!

*Dangerous because the cheese is kept melted under an open flame and, if you're not careful (like me), you can set your chips on fire!

   
Thus ends my first day of adventure in Sanfrisco, and how great was that? The kid complaining about the city this morning obviously didn't spend time with Jester, Mickey Mouse, and a flaming cauldron of cheese.

Who?

BETTY WHO! And tonight Jester and I got to see her perform LIVE!

Which was the perfect end to my day, even though it's now 1:00am and I'm ready to slip into a coma. Maybe it's because I'm old, but I thought 9:30 was a really late start-time on a work-night to be holding a concert. It was made all the worse when you consider Betty Who didn't even take the stage until 11:45...

• 9:30-10:00 • Great dance remixes that set the tone for Betty Who perfectly, culminating with a great Blondie Heart of Glass remix. I had Shazam running the entire time so I could track down what was being played.
• 10:00-10:45 • Some of the shittiest, most mind-numbingly boring, repetitive, redundant club music I've ever had to listen to. Absolute torture. I was THIS CLOSE to walking out.
• 10:45-11:20 Music by Holy Child. Didn't hate it. If not for the terrible sound system at the Rickshaw Stop, I might have actually enjoyed their set.
• 11:20-11:45 A better selection of club music.
• 11:45-12:40 Betty Who...

She totally lives up to the hype. Her music translates beautifully to a live set. Her performance was energetic, infectious fun and Betty gives 200% to her audience. She has a commitment on stage that equals any "big-name" act I've ever seen...

And that's what made this show so fascinating for me.

I was in Seattle as the grunge scene started to ignite. I saw small bands before they were huge bands. It was a genuine thrill to see these musicians in their early days, watching them work through the kinks, find their footing, and then go on to become these massive success stories.

Betty Who has the same feeling about her.

The sound system at the venue was awful. Weird things were happening with the mix. Betty's earpiece looked to be malfunctioning. The lighting was off. Her backing tape was miscued half the time. But it just didn't matter. Betty Who has the talent and star power to rise above it all. And the audience loved her.

I am genuinely thrilled, again, to see an artist at the beginning of their career. This was the last date on Betty's first tour and her first show ever in San Francisco. You can't help but wonder where she'll be a year from now... five years from now. Opening for P!nk on an arena tour, I'd imagine. She's that good...

   
Anyway... I had a great time. Though I did have to climb up on a table when I thought I might inadvertently be having sex with the two guys grinding away in front of me. They apparently liked Betty Who's show even more than I did.

Betty promised another EP with new songs will drop this Spring.

Then she stepped into the TARDIS and faded off stage, becoming one with time and space.

   
If you haven't bought her EP yet, you're missing out. CLICK HERE TO BUY IT! BUY IT NOW!

IT'S TATTOO DAY!

Originally I planned to fly back home today. But the layover for the connecting flight was awful, so I decided to leave tomorrow instead. This meant having to add an extra day to my hotel stay at "The Handlery Hotel" (instead of the Parc 55 Wyndham where I usually stay). When I called, they wanted $160 which was surprisingly high for a Friday night... especially for a 3-star property. Usually downtown San Francisco hotel rates plummet over the weekend when there are no business travelers to gouge on pricing.

A quick check at the 4-star Wyndham (which had availability this time), and I could get a much nicer room for $120.

Which meant The Handlery was basically saying "WE WILL PAY YOU $40 TO WALK TWO BLOCKS!"

And so I took them up on that generous (but very stupid) offer.

Anyway...

Time to get more ink work on my forearm band...

Beautiful line-work courtesy of Michael DeMatty at Black & Blue Tattoo...

I started with the Roman numerals.

Then added a Dharmachakra, the spokes of which represent The Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

Now I've surrounded the Dharmachakra with symbology representing The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. You start in the upper-right where there's the acknowledgement that suffering exists, move to the bottom-right which ties our suffering to our desires and craving, move to the bottom-left which is the need for cessation of suffering causation, then move to the upper-left which leads us back to The Noble Eightfold Path and a quest for enlightenment and freedom from suffering.

Which is just a long-winded way of saying that the tattoo is a reminder for me to stay on The Right Path.

And so... three parts down, three to go...

And now I suppose I should pack my suitcase so I don't have to do it at 4:00am tomorrow. Blargh.

I woke up at 3:30am this morning with a feeling of dread over having to leave San Francisco.

Last night Jester invited me to join him and a friend for dinner, and we ended up at a fantastic Turkish restaurant called Troya where I ate entirely too much hummus and falafel. An experience I can't even dream about having back home.

Good times. Hence my reluctance to leave.

About the only thing that kept me going was unwrapping my new tattoo, which turned out even better than I thought it would. I never realized how incomplete it looked before. Which only makes me want to run right back and have more added to it. Or start someplace new. I dunno. I've decided I want something inside my left upper-arm, so maybe that will be my next piece. And even though I wanted some asymmetry going on, now I'm thinking I might like something on my other inside forearm too. Still don't feel like I want to go past my arms... but who knows?

Meanwhile, back at 4:00am...

I don't remember the ride to the airport.

The only thing I recall about my flights was the yogurt parfait they served out of SFO.

I can't even remember how I got home.

I suppose the fact that the entire day's travel is one huge blur is a good thing? Funny it doesn't feel that way. Or maybe I'm just imagining it. Because all I'm feeling now is tired.

Now there's a full year of Bullet Sundays ... because a Very Special THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIFTH edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Mac! Happy 30th Birthday to the Macintosh. It's easy to overlook the importance of something when you use it every single day, but I love my Mac more now than I ever have...

If you haven't seen Apple's look back at Mac innovations, it's well worth exploring If I were forced to pick that one year of Macintosh history that was the biggest for me, it would have to be the release of the Titanium PowerBook G4 in 2001. Not only was it sexy as hell, but it was also the first time I felt I could do everything on a portable that I could do on my desktop Mac.

Here's to 30 more years of kicking ass.

   
• Truth! The greatest concert I ever saw was Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses tour back in 1988. A close second would be P!nk's Truth About Love tour from last year. Absolutely spectacular. If you didn't get to see it... or just want to see it again... it's been released on video and is for sale at the iTunes Music Store for just $15 and it's worth every penny...

Just an FYI... the tour is actually still ongoing, with three more dates remaining for Anaheim, Fresno, and Las Vegas. If you've got loads of money sitting around, it's worth tracking down tickets for this sold-out show.

   
• Bernice! Looks like I need to start watching South Beach Tow! Because, BERNICE! How awesome is she?!?

Holy shit! I hope her ObamaCare has kicked in by now... she's got a rough job!

   
• Unintelligent! I have been recording the new show Intelligence on my DVR, stacking them up in the hopes of discovering another Black List. No joy. This is easily one of the stupidest shows ever to air on television. It's yet another one of those shitty series where the writers are constantly pulling some kind of random techno-bullshit out of their asses not because it makes sense for the story... but because they're too fucking lazy to come up with something... intelligent... for lack of a better word. "HOW ARE WE GOING TO STOP HER? SHE HAS A COMPUTER CHIP IN HER HEAD?" — "I KNOW! LET'S PRESS A BUNCH OF RANDOM BUTTONS AND EXPLOIT SOME HERE-UNTO NON-EXISTENT FLAW IN THE CHIP SO WE CAN HACK HER HEAD AND SAVE THE DAY!" — YEAH! WHO GIVES A SHIT IF WE ARE THE VERY DEFINITION OF DEUS EX MACHINA! IT BEATS HAVING TO USE LOGIC FOR A LIVING! Seriously, I don't understand how this crap-fest ever made it to air.

   
• LEGO! Just when I think that I couldn't possibly be more excited about the upcoming LEGO movie, this comes along...

"Epic" isn't an epic enough word to describe the epicness of just how epic this movie is gonna be.

   
And there it is... a year's worth of 365 Bullet Sundays in the can. And you said it wouldn't last. Shame on you!

The iTunes Music Store had the Duncan Jones film Moon on sale for $10 so I snapped it up. In many ways, I consider it to be the 2001 for a new generation... but without all the ambiguity and confusion. It's just really good straightforward "science sci-fi" at its best (a genre that seems to be rapidly disappearing). The entire film is a showpiece for Sam Rockwell, who should have been Oscar nominated for the role of Sam Bell (Sean Penn in Milk was good... but Rockwell's performance in Moon eclipsed it, in my humble opinion). Having Kevin Spacey as the voice of the HAL-inspired GERTY was just the icing on the cake...

I've probably seen the film three times already.

But this was the first time it occurred to me that the scenes outside the moon base make a half-hearted effort to simulate the moon's lesser gravity... but all the scenes inside the moon base take place with full earth gravity.

Now, from an artistic and budgetary standpoint, this makes perfect sense. If Sam were in 1/6th gravity as he was running his scenes, that would be a huge distraction from his performance. Not to mention a very expensive series of special effects shots. And I get that. But now it kind of bothers me when I'm watching the film. Obviously, there's got to be some kind of Star Trek type artificial gravity thing going on... but no mention is made of it. Duncan Jones probably doesn't want to mention it specifically because it would make his serious attempt at science-fiction feel too much like fiction.

But it's there.

And it's to the film's credit that I didn't pay much attention to it until my fourth viewing.

I can pretty much count on it being at the forefront of my mind on my fifth.

Darnit.

"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."     —The Principal from Billy Madison

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." —Groucho Marx

"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." —Leo Tolstoy from A Confession

"It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right." —Lemony Snicket from The Blank Book

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." —Thomas Sowell

If somebody could just take me off this planet, that would be great.

And so it did occur that snow hath fallen in the amount of six inches upon the glorious plains of Redneckistan.

As somebody who exists with uncovered parking I was not pleased.

As somebody who appreciates having oh... I dunno... WATER, come summertime, I was elated. Though this is most probably too little too late. Even if we were to suddenly get a windfall of snowfall in record-setting amounts, it's going to be a dry summer. Which means drought and wildfires. Again. This was made abundantly clear when I flew back from San Francisco last week. The surrounding mountains, which should have been completely covered in the white stuff... errr... weren't...

   
This morning I ended up getting stuck in my driveway.

But by noon the sun was shining and the roads were bare.

Then around 4:00 it started snowing again, but lightly.

The forecast for the rest of the week is sunny. For those keeping track... that's one "real" snow for our entire winter. I'm beginning to doubt there will be another one.

On the bright side, I don't have to scrape my car windows in the morning.

"I'm never leaving my house again."
          —Everybody who has ever seen a bed bug in their hotel ever.

Back when I was traveling poor and sleeping in hostels (on good days) or train stations (on not-so-good days), I fully expected that I'd eventually wake up to find a spider on my face... or cockroaches in my shoes... or rats in my luggage... or some other infestation nightmare. I took every precaution I could but, when you're lodging on the cheap, there are inevitabilities that you learn to accept.

But I was ridiculously lucky.

With the exception of a minor ant problem once, I don't have any such horror stories to tell.

And once I was making a bit more money and started staying in nice hotels, I never thought I would. Even once a resurgence of bed bugs was being reported. "Surely that won't apply to me and my four-star hotel!" I'd say to myself.

Except I was living in a dream world and it was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down.

So when, at long last, I finally awoke to find two bed bugs crawling on my comforter, I was anything but shocked. My astounding run of luck had come to an end and nothing more. It was a horrifying wake-up call, and I tried to be grateful I wasn't bitten, but it's not like freaking out about it will do any good.

And that's when you start combing the internet to find out what to do.

Only to find out that any hotel can get infested with bed bugs regardless of how much money you pay. Even worse, no hotel is really immune from being infested because there's simply no way to avoid the problem when you've got a steady stream of people passing through your doors... any one of which could be bringing unwanted guests with them.

So this is my new reality...

• Packing everything in plastic zipper bags within my suitcase.
• Bagging my electronics before putting them in my backpack.
• Immediately inspecting my room, tearing apart the bed looking for signs of bed bugs.
• Spraying a human-safe death potion around the mattress.
• Never setting my suitcase (or anything else) on a bed... instead using a table or luggage stand (which has been carefully inspected).
• Putting all dirty clothes into a sealable bag.
• When arriving home, pulling out my toiletries in their sealed bags... then double-bagging my entire suitcase before putting it in my trunk. Ditto for my backpack, once my gear has been removed.
• When getting back to my house, immediately hopping in the shower, bagging all my dirty clothes, and taking a hot shower.
• Putting my bagged dirty clothes and double-bagged suitcase into a thermal oven overnight.
• Removing all my clothes, washing them in hot water, then drying them until thuroughly dried.
• Re-bagging my suitcase, backpack, and toiletries pack, then putting them back in the thermal oven for another round.
• Filling all cracks and crevices in my entire home with diatomaceous earth.
• Wrapping my mattress, box spring, and pillows in encasements.
• Making sure everything I store away is in air-tight containers or bags.
• Regularly inspecting/cleaning everything I own.
• Assuming my stuff is infested every time I return from a trip.

The good news is that I found no evidence of bedbugs after baking all my stuff. But I regret nothing. Not the $350 I spent in bed bug defense. Not the extra time and effort it took to be cautious. Not the paranoia in going above and beyond in making sure I'm not unleashing an infestation in my home.

Because the alternative... having to get rid of bed bugs when they're so notoriously difficult to get rid of... is so much worse.

Better safe than sorry and all that.

And if you do any traveling? Better protect yourself. It's only a matter of time.

It's the Year of the Horse!

Or, to be more accurate, it's the year of the WOOD HORSE. Apparently, this is supposed to be a good year for me since I was born in the year of the FIRE HORSE and there's some kind of compatibility thing there. I'm not one to place a lot of faith in astrology, numerology, and all that stuff... but I admit that the Chinese zodiac has shown some eerie coincidences over the years...

While mostly associated with being outgoing and successful, Fire Horses are also considered to be harbingers of rebellion and destruction. This is apparently a good thing for a men but a horrific prospect for women and, historically, baby girls were at risk for infanticide because of the doom and gloom they would bring upon a family (including an early death for her father). Fortunately for everybody, Halle Berry and Janet Jackson were allowed to live anyway.

Luckily, girls born in the year of the Wood Horse fare much better... being known for their dedication, creativity, and patience.

Still... probably not a good year for Trojans though.

I spent most of today being angry.

Angry that I had to work all weekend even though I've been putting in crazy hours all week.

Angry that Adobe has made stupid little changes to their apps that have destroyed my productivity... and still hasn't fixed mind-bogglingly obvious bugs that have been around for years.

Angry that the quality of Mac OS X seems to be plummeting with each new release, and even simple details (like arranging icons on your desktop) is now a battle you have to fight.

Angry that so many money-grubbing hypocritical douchebag politicians continue to get support from people either too deluded or too stupid to care that their representatives are money-grubbing hypocritical douchebags.

Angry that the people most under-represented by society are being further marginalized with each passing day.

Angry that more people give a shit about a talentless hack like Justin Bieber getting arrested than they do about people whose water supply in West Virginia has been destroyed by people who were not arrested.

Angry that the mega-corps continue to get away with destroying the planet, destroying society, and destroying lives without consequence but with full government endorsement.

Angry that I live in a country built upon a government of the people, by the people, for the people, that is not controlled by all the people... but a select few rich and powerful people who care nothing for anybody's welfare except their own.

Angry that I live in a country built upon the concept of religious freedom whose laws are increasingly being dictated by religion.

Angry that more people aren't angry about stuff that matters.

Like the fact that I just found my cable company doesn't broadcast The Puppy Bowl in HD tomorrow.

Put down that foam finger, because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Bowl! Congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks for their massive Super Bowl win. I'm especially happy for long-time Seahawks fans who have kept the faith for so very long and have now had their devotion rewarded...

Pete Carroll, 9/11 Truther and Seahawks Coach, celebrates! Photo by Charlie Riedel at the Associated Press

I'm less excited for all the fair-weather Hawks fans who are all too happy to shit all over Seattle when they're losing... but will still be celebrating "their" victory tonight.

   
• Twelfth! Personally, I think the whole "Twelfth Man" thing is annoying as shit, but there's no denying that it's become bigger than the team they're dedicated to supporting. This was made abundantly clear when a Boeing jet was taken out to draw a big "12" across Washington State...

It's the ultimate Etch-A-Sketch!

Though, I have to say that this huge display of fandom pales in comparison to this guy...

He's probably the only person happier about the Seahawks' victory than the actual Seahawks.

   
• Kitteh! Everybody knows about The Puppy Bowl... but did you know there's a KITTEN BOWL?!? I just finished watching the big game, featuring Meowshawn Lynch...

Adorable. You can get more info at The Hallmark Channel.

   
• Cap! Holy cats does Captain America: Winter Soldier look frickin' amazing...

Thrilled to see The Falcon debut at last... would be even more thrilled if a black super-hero would get their own film. Hello? Black Panther? Luke Cage? Brother Voodoo!? And while I'm equally thrilled to see Black Widow making an appearance (which makes total sense because of The Winter Soldier)... where is her frickin' movie? Even if the film is a dud, at least we're finally getting to see S.H.I.E.L.D. at the high-tech kick-ass organization it is (as opposed to the embarrassment we've been getting from the lame-ass television show).

   
• Mine! I'm probably going to catch some crap for posting this... BUT IT'S JUST SO TRUE!

I've lost count of the number of times I've asked "Do you want something?" and am told "No!"... only to have my date/girlfriend EAT MY FOOD! Seriously, you said you didn't want any... SO KEEP YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF MY FRIES! Not that I can actually say that, but I want all the fries!

   
• LEGO! Okay... okay... I know I won't shut up over The LEGO Movie's impending release, but how can you blame me? The latest trailer is beyond awesome...

And...

Could Chris Pratt BE any more perfect for the role?

This may very well be the greatest movie ever made. I cannot wait to see it.

   
Annnnd... chocolate pudding time!

Three or four mornings each week, I stop at the mini-mart so I can buy two bottles of Grape Powerade (2 for $5) and a bean & cheese burrito. It's the perfect breakfast, and a delicious excuse to eat lots of ketchup (no joke... I can use three packets with one small burrito).

Not exactly healthy though.

So this morning I thought I'd try a breakfast that's better for me... an Amy's Tofu Scramble...

I like Amy's stuff. Her Mexican and Indian entrees are darn good, and I'm a loyal customer to her brand. Once I Googled a few reviews on how awesome her Tofu Scramble was, I didn't think twice about putting it in my shopping cart. And today was the day!

It tasted like a bowl of barf.

The potatoes were okay... but the scramble was just awful. I didn't like the flavor and really didn't like the texture. While nowhere near as bad as the Special K Breakfast Flatbread Sandwich I tried last month (vomit-inducing gross), I just couldn't bring myself to eat it.

And so I stopped by the mini-mart for two bottles of Grape Powerade and a bean & cheese burrito.

Which was delicious, as usual.

And while not exactly healthy, it was probably no worse than a bag of Doritos and a Coke, which was my go-to breakfast before I found out Hometown Market had bean & cheese burritos and a good price on double-Powerade.

I really need to go back to Eggo Waffles one day.

But right now I'm still dealing with the crushing disappointment from last time.

Like the mysterious Scottish village of Brigadoon which appears for a single day every one hundred years, some events are destined to happen but once in a lifetime. Twice if you don't smoke, eat your Wheaties, and get very lucky.

I've had my share of "once-in-a-lifetime-opportunities." Some passed me by. Some changed my life for the better. Some ended up being huge mistakes. Some didn't turn out to be quite as important events as they had first seemed.

Today I had a choice to make on a "once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity."

The consequences... good or bad... of my decision won't be known for months. Maybe years.

In the meanwhile I'm trying not to think about it. Life goes by too quickly to waste time obsessing over the road not taken. It's hard enough to concentrate on the road you're walking.

Especially when your shoelaces are untied and raw sewage is gushing over the pavement.

I was a fan of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Not necessarily for the bigger parts which won him accolades, but for the smaller "every-man" roles he excelled at. I also liked him when he played creepy. That was something he also did well. I was sad to learn that he died of a heroin overdose. I am sadder to hear all the horrible things being said about him over the way he died.

I don't read the gossip rags, so I don't know what they're saying compelled Philip Seymour Hoffman first try heroin.

I don't need to read the gossip rags to know why he kept doing it. Addiction is a horrific, life-destroying ordeal so overwhelming that even millions of dollars and a successful career can't save you. It's a fight that never ends, and sometimes people lose the battle... despite their best efforts. And the efforts of people around them.

Why that terrible battle is something to belittle or ridicule, I don't know.

Why somebody who couldn't overcome their problems is beneath compassion or sympathy, I don't understand.

Why people feel the need to mock and ridicule somebody's death, I don't want to understand.

My deepest sympathies to Hoffman's family, friends, and fans. I'm sorry he lost the fight. I'm even sorrier that people with no understanding of the power of addiction are so cruel in their ignorance. He will be missed.

Don't let those swill merchants rewrite you. —Lester Bangs from Almost Famous

To say I am excited for The LEGO Movie is a drastic understatement.

And tomorrow is the day we've all been waiting for!

   
Everything IS awesome!

This could have so easily been a five-star film.

Seriously. The casting was impeccable. Chris Pratt embodied the lead flawlessly. Will Arnett redefined LEGO Batman. The voice talent behind every character was perfectly executed. Even Jonah Hill, who I cannot stand as an actor, was unerringly lovable as a Green Lantern who nobody can stand ("I super-hate you!"). And don't even get me started on Will Ferrell, who played the "villain" as only Will Ferrell can.

As the story unfolded, I was near-giddy in my seat. It's so beautiful and... fun! Genuine laugh-out-loud fun! You don't have to be familiar with LEGO to enjoy the movie... but true fans expecting cameos and a little LEGO history will not be disappointed. This is a movie that will beg to be seen over and over again just to get a handle on all the little details packed into every scene...

And the animation.

Holy crap is it amazing. Every frame had a lot of thought put into it.

From a cursory glance, the animators behind The LEGO Movie made it all look so effortlessly "LEGO." But when you look a little closer, each scene was meticulously executed in a way that had to be anything but easy. Action has a stop-motion feel to make it look hand-animated where it helps the story... but they weren't chained to that, and smooth motion was used when jerky movement would have been distracting. I love the fluid dynamics. Water and smoke are all rendered with LEGO, yet flow with a bizarre kind of realism that makes "the world" seem fully-realized. Fire is likewise grounded in LEGO reality, but has a kind of eerie presence that transcends those little orange "flame pieces" that any LEGO builder will recognize instantly. And I love, love, love how everything has a solidity to it. Laser blasts are rendered like rods that are physical pieces instead of blobs of light. It's all so... awesome!

If The LEGO Movie doesn't get nominated for a ship-load of animation awards, it will surprise the hell out of me.

When it comes to the story, things start off brilliantly.

Emmet is a LEGO minifig who is average in every way. He follows instructions to the letter like every good LEGO minifig should. He just wants to fit in and have people like him. And that's all he aspires for. It's all he knows and needs. But then he meets Wyldstyle... a minifig who doesn't follow instructions. From her Emmet finds out that he is "The Special," a fulfillment of a prophecy (by Morgan Freeman, in yet another example of flawless casting) who is destined to stop the evil Lord Business and save the world.

Hilarity... genuine hilarity... ensues. And it's all adorably funny and a joy to watch.

Until...

WARNING! Spoilers (kinda) are below!

...the movie then takes this utterly bizarre meta "fourth-wall" turn in the last quarter. And, to be perfectly honest, it kind of ruins the film for me.

Had they just stuck to the animated LEGO story everybody has been dying to see, this would have been a flawless motion picture. Everybody wins.

But they didn't. For reasons completely unknown, the creators decided to spin off on this crazy tangent that undermines all the characters, grinds the movie to a halt, and is completely unnecessary! All of a sudden Emmet, Batman, Benny, and Wyldstyle are not living out their own lives and shaping the story of the world they live in... they're just pieces of cute plastic crap being manipulated by people "in the Real World." Which I guess could be argued to make sense to the story. But not really. There's no internal logic to it. If Will Ferrell is the real-life "bad guy" and his son is the real-life "hero" then why wasn't Emmet voiced by the real-life kid just like Lord Business was voiced by the real-life Will Ferrell? I guess it's the kid's imagination at work voicing the characters, so that could make sense. I guess. But if the entire movie is just a story made-up in the imagination of the kid (and, eventually, Will Ferrell), how can we care about the individual mini-fig personalities when they don't actually exist? Emmet's "journey" as a character who learns that breaking free from the mold allows them to live happier, more fulfilling and creative lives is all rendered moot... because it's not his experience at all... it's a lesson Will Ferrel learns from his kid.

And for what? I just don't get it. And I really don't get the half-hearted "effort" of dropping real-world items into the LEGO world like they're some kind of "clue" as to what's going on. Suddenly the things that internally make sense become senseless when you stop and think about it. Why does Will Ferrell decide to start gluing everything down... it's as if he's suddenly being inspired by the evil alter-ego his kid invented? Say what-?!? Why couldn't there just be real-world items introduced as weird artifacts to LEGO World... just as they would be in real life? THAT was all the "meta" the story really needed.

It's almost as if the people behind the film said "Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa! This is turning out to be entirely too cute and fun. Let's just toss a monkey-wrench into the whole damn thing so that our audience will be ripped out of the story we've worked so hard to build. Because we certainly don't want to deliver on the promise of a fun and engaging movie starring LEGO characters everybody will love... we need to go deeper. That way we can confuse everyone and bore the fuck out of any kids in the audience! But, hey, at least we can pretend to be something smarter than a stupid toy movie... right?

The answer, in case you're wondering, is a resounding "no."

This kind of twist has been done many times before. And done far better. And in a way that makes sense. And doesn't completely undermine all the characters that people want to fall in love with.

Well, whatever.

I hope somebody edits out all the "fourth wall" crap and LEGO fans get to experience the pure LEGO extravaganza they deserve.

   
So... taking away one star for a senseless finale in a five-star movie? Four stars. You will love the film... a lot... but, if you're like me, not all of it. Oh... and one last thing... don't bother with the idiotic 3-D version of The LEGO Movie. The bright and colorful world of LEGO is dimmed to the point of being depressing. And the 3-D effects actually ruin otherwise brilliantly realized action scenes.

In my earliest days of blogging (back before it was even called "blogging") there wasn't any software to help you out. My first blog, "DaveWorld," was entirely coded by hand. Any time I wanted to add something, I'd have to manually edit the HTML code. This was a cumbersome process that was way too much work, so the blog died a slow death and was eventually deleted. My second effort, "DaveBlog," was created on the Blogger platform. This made things easier... but writing was still a chore. And customizing the look of your blog in any meaningful way was nigh impossible.

Then the husband and wife team of Ben & Mena Trott came up with Movable Type and everything changed.

With Movable Type, all the technical crap required to run a blog vanished. Third-party blogging tools like "Kung-Log" made writing a breeze. And since everything ran on templates using a dead-simple coding language, customizing your blog was a piece of cake.

Blogography was born, and I have Movable Type to thank for it.

Eventually Movable Type was sold. An Open Source version was released (and powers my blog to this day), but the focus of the platform was steered towards "professional" and "enterprise" environments, so development of the "free personal" version stagnated. An effort to create an independent version (called "Melody") died. Third-party support dried up.

Movable Type as a viable platform for small bloggers like was coming to an end.

And now the Open Source version is being suspended.

In order for me to keep using a supported version of Movable Type, I would have to purchase a 5-user "Pro" license for $600.

Well fuck that.

So now I am forced into something I should have done a long time ago... changing blogging platforms. I toyed with the idea of switching to Ghost, which looks to be coming along brilliantly, but my only real choice is the 10-ton gorilla of personal blogging: WordPress.

Which is not easy.

My webhosting company, Media Temple, doesn't allow software processes to last long enough to export all my data. So I have to hire a third-party to convert my entries and comments.

And, of course all my templates will have to be converted. The cost to hire somebody for the work is outrageous, so I'm having to do it myself. It's not rocket-science, but it's slow-going. Very slow-going. Everything I learned when building DaveCafe on WordPress has long-since been forgotten. And so I'm starting from scratch.

And so there goes my weekend. But the blog must go on.

Yay.

Grab a grey base plate, because an ALL-LEGO edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Movie Game! I haven't had a chance to finish the LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes videogame yet, but decided to jump into The LEGO Movie Videogame to check it out. One thing I can say from the levels I've played... you need to see the movie first. Events in the game are ripped directly out of the movie, so it is a massive spoiler if you play before you watch...

Shocker... this LEGO videogame is pretty much like all the other LEGO videogames. You take control of a LEGO minifig to collect LEGO studs and solve mostly easy puzzles based on the film...

The voice talent is pretty good, as half the time I didn't know if the characters were being voiced by their movie actor counterparts... or if they just managed to get really good imitators. A new addition to the LEGO games is the need to hunt down "instruction books" to build some items, but most everything else you've probably seen before. Not that this is a bad thing... most times it's a relief that Traveler's Tales Games has had time to refine their play mechanics to such a fine point. But not always. Racing controls are still shitty, just as they are in every other game where you have to take command of a vehicle. And yet... still a lot of fun, as expected. I'm going to wrap up Marvel LEGO Super-Heroes first, but look forward into playing more of The LEGO Movie Videogame.

   
• Movie Essentials! All the things I loved most about The LEGO Movie are beautifully examined in DK's Essential Guide to the film. Like all DK LEGO books, a lot of love went into making sure that readers get their money's worth, and I'm very glad to add this edition to my growing collection. I'd write a review, but BrickQueen has already done a brilliant job of it...

Totally worth the $8.21 it costs... especially if you love LEGO.

   
• Movie Minifig! I gave up trying to buy the hundreds of minifigs that LEGO releases each year because it's just too darn expensive to collect them all. But Series 12 is based on The LEGO Movie and so I'm sorely tempted because they're all pretty cool...

The problem is... even if you manage to collect all the characters in Series 12, you're still not going to have them all. LEGO released two exclusive minifigs exclusive to AMC theaters. And since I don't have an AMC within a hundred miles, getting my hands on them is not an option for me...

If I wanted them, I'd have to pay absurd bank on eBay. That's pretty shitty. Especially considering that there's probably other exclusives out there I don't even know about.

But, dang is Pajamas Emmet adorable.

   
• Soundtrack! While I had a few problems with the movie itself, the soundtrack was absolutely not one of them...

Featuring beautiful synth tracks by Mark Mothersbough, there's some good stuff to be found here. Most tracks are short bits that end before you can get into them (what I wouldn't give to hear more of Emmet's Plan, which clocks in at under two minutes!)... but they all flow together nicely. The theme song Everything is Awesome by Tegan & Sara (featuring the Andy Samberg's The Lonely Island) has some alternate versions here... including a rendition by Jo Li and a not-so-great acoustic version by Shawn Patterson and Sammy Allen. Also included is a bizarre piece by Will Anett (who plays Batman in the film) called Untitled Self Portrait. Overall more hits than misses. If you liked the film and enjoy synth music, this is worth a listen.

   
• Heart! There's been a few spoofs of the infamous Vinnie Jones "Hands-Only CPR" commercial from the British Heart Foundation (this one with Mini-Vinnie is classic). And now they've released one with LEGO...

Genius. Everything is better with LEGO!

   
• Online! I am still very, very upset that LEGO canceled LEGO Universe Online after I had invested so much money and time playing it. For this reason, I took a pass at the Legend's of Chima MMORPG when it came out. But there's a new Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game coming this Summer called LEGO Minifigures...

Needless to say... after watching the trailer, I want to play it. Hopefully LEGO will find a "revenue model" this time around so they won't have to cancel it just as I'm getting into it.

   
Annnnnd... time to play a few more rounds of LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes!

Today sucked. Bad. And just when I thought it couldn't possibly suck any more, it did.

I knew it was going to be a bad day when I woke up to snow dropping from the sky like a plague of locusts. Locusts I then had to scrape off of my car.

Everything was uphill from there.

It just turned 10:00pm and I haven't reached the peak yet.

I'm beginning to think it doesn't exist.

Today was a much better day than yesterday.

Which, technically, isn't saying much. The only way it could have been worse would be if somebody shot me. In the spleen. And then poured salt in the wound. Salt that had been urinated on. By Justin Bieber.

But instead I pulled something in my leg.

Now I walk funnier than usual and I'm on pain-killers.

See, I told you it was better than yesterday!

For better or worse, this blog is now running on WordPress.

Migrating was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I was dreading converting all my templates because Movable Type has a far easier template language to work with. Much to my delight, it took me just under two hours. Much to my horror, the comments display looks like complete shit. And the comment form is wonky. I've spent around SIX HOURS trying to fix everything, but WordPress uses a stupid fucking HTML List Element to output comments, and all attempts to figure out how to style it have failed. I've read dozens of tutorials and read loads of documentation, but nothing works, and I have no idea why. So... something left to do, I guess.

Anyway... for anybody wanting to dump Movable Type and switch to WordPress, I have notes.

DATA
Movable Type's "Export" function has always been incomplete and terrible. They tried to fix this with a "Backup" function, but I was never able to get it to work. Ever. Part of the problem is that my hosting company, Media Temple, has a pathetically small time-out value for their Grid Hosting. If you have more than a couple hundred entries, this means Media Temple will never get to finish the job. So there goes my hopes of spending $49 at TP2WP.com for a quick and dirty conversion of my entries and comments to WordPress. Fortunately, Mihai at Pro-IT-Service has near-miraculous knowledge of all things Movable Type, and I was able to hire him to do the job for me for a reasonable fee (considering I have over 4,000 entries and nearly 52,000 comments!). He did a flawless job. Permalinks were preserved. Extended entries were merged to WP format. Categories were not only preserved, but he provided an .htaccess file update so that referrers to my categories would be redirected to a WordPress-friendly URL. Just like his previous work for me, Mihai totally delivered, and I couldn't be happier.

MIGRATION
My hosting company allows me to host multiple domains on my account. All I have to do is create a folder in my "domains" directory, point my NameServers to their servers, and I'm done. This made it dead-simple to install WordPress in an unused domain, then just rename its folder to "blogography.com" after Mihai migrated my data. All I had to do then was let WordPress know that its domain had changed and I was done. For some reason I thought it would be a lot more difficult.

STATIC
One of the things that I really, really liked about Movable Type was the option to go with statically-generated honest-to-goodness html files. You can do this with WordPress by using a clever plugin, but that adds a lot of overhead when you're working on converting your templates and are making lots of changes. For now, I plan on leaving things dynamic. But the security of having static html files that will still work even if your database craps out is something I'm too paranoid to resist for long. Even so, I am using the W3 Total Cache plugin so WordPress serves up pages more efficiently in the meanwhile.

SECURITY
Something you're forced to learn when switching from Movable Type to WordPress is that securing your site is a big deal. I learned this the hard way when I converted DaveCafe as a WordPress blog... and got hacked in four days. Yes, four days. I installed a bunch of security plugins to help clean up all the malicious code and my database, but was hacked again the following month. Eventually I just locked down WordPress completely by editing my .htaccess file so the back-end is completely inaccessible. Which means in order to work on DaveCafe, I first have to edit my .htaccess file. Then edit it back. Every time. It's a pain, but I only update the site a few times a year, so I can live with it. Obviously, this is not an option for a blog I'm updating every day. Enter the Better WP Security plugin. It seems comprehensive, so I'm hopeful. Then again, I've only been running for one day...

BACKUP
Back when I first began with my web hosting company, Media Temple, they had a backup tool included. But then they switched to their "Grid" service and backup was dropped. I never understood why. This is a BASIC FUCKING FUNCTION that even the cheapest hosting companies offer. Years later Media Temple managed to finally get around to it, but you have to pay for their premium "CloudTech" service to get it. At least you did. I have no idea what the situation is now. In any event, I'm done with dealing with this crap, so I'm using the WordPress Backup to Dropbox plugin to keep my data safe.

COMMENT SPAM
I frickin hate... HATE... CAPTCHAs. Every time I go to comment on a blog and I see I have to interpret some crazy-ass bullshit in order to post, I think twice about whether I want to put in the effort. To avoid this on my Movable Type blog, I used some javascript code called Obfuscator that passed code from the comment form to prove the comment was manually generated instead of a spambot. I haven't yet figured out how to use it with WordPress, so I'm relying on the included "Akismet" plugin to catch spam for me until I do. So far, so good. Akismet has blocked 32 pieces of comment spam in 6 hours. If this keeps up, I won't worry about figuring out Obfuscator after all.

SUPPORT
Going from a fringe product like Movable Type that few personal bloggers are using anymore... to a 10-ton gorilla like WordPress that everybody is using... well, it's quite an adjustment to make. I'm simply not used to having such a huge community available with instant answers to even my most bizarre problems. But the best part of WordPress is ACTUALLY DOCUMENTATION! Movable Type always had shit for documentation, and it's wonderful to not have to worry about putting up with outdated, shitty docs any more.

DEVELOPMENT
Another reason I'm ecstatic to finally be rid of Movable Type? WordPress has an active development community. Plugins are plentiful and current. You can extend functionality in just about every conceivable way. Finding new themes for you site design is easy... whether you want something free... or to pay for something more. And the apps! WordPress is well-supported because so many people are using it. My third-party blogging software, MarsEdit, barely supports Movable Type. Subcategories never worked right. A lot of features weren't supported. But with WordPress? An entirely different story. Everything works flawlessly. I can use categories again!

PAGES
WordPress has an irritating schema that omits the ".html" extension on Pages. I have no idea why since they have no problems appending it to Posts, but there it is. It isn't too big of a problem... slapping some 301 redirects in my .htaccess file fixed the problem nicely. Which is a good thing, since Google's Custom Search refuses to work without it.

TEMPLATES
And now we've come full-circle to WordPress template-building. As I said, Movable Type has the upper hand here in a big way because they use simple tags. WordPress uses PHP code snippets. Which makes getting anything out of WordPress a bit more difficult (and, in the case of formatting comments, a hell of a lot more difficult). Still, once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad. Just not as easy as it could be.

LINKS
When you've been blogging for 11 years, you're bound to accumulate a few broken links. Thanks to a plugin called Broken Link Checker, I now know I have 1,214 of them. Most are from people who left comments linking to their blog... which no longer exists. Kind of sad to see so many sites having died. I remain amazed mine isn't one of them.

CONCLUSION
Ultimately, I'm happy with the move. If the plugins I'm using will keep spammers and hackers at bay, I'll be very happy. My only regret is that I didn't do this much sooner. If you have a solution for migrating your data from Movable Type to WordPress, this isn't a difficult decision to make. The resources, tools, and activity benefits are pretty much a no-brainer.

   
And now I should probably work on getting my Archives page running, my comments formatted, and my comment form working... but it's past midnight and I'm all WordPressed out for the night.

P.S. Originally, I had coded big purple X's before all my posts on the WordPress blog so I could easily tell which site I was working on. After a couple hours, I actually grew to like them there (especially when scrolling through a long list of posts) so I think I'll keep 'em!

This morning I got dragged into the ol' "Kill Hitler Debate" where people were discussing whether or not they'd kill Baby Hitler if they had the power to go back in time. It was the whole "Is evil predestined so Baby Hitler deserves to die... or is Baby Hitler innocent because he hasn't done anything evil yet?" situation.

At first I remained silent, believing that the influences and circumstances that made Baby Hitler become Hitler would have ultimately ended up encouraging somebody else to fill the void left by Hitler's absence.

But eventually I chimed in with "I'd go back in time and kill myself before I decided to purchase a 1999 Saturn SC-2." It was a joke, but there are days that I actually think that way. To call my Saturn a pile of shit implies that it can serve a useful purpose... like fertilizing the lawn. As it is, a pile of shit is probably more valuable.

Which is my way of saying that even more crap is breaking off the my car. This time it was the emergency brake release button... which, coincidentally enough, also keeps the brake applied. Which means I have no emergency brake right now. Hope I don't have to stop on a hill until I get a replacement piece.

You would think something in your car with the word "emergency" in the name would be made of anything except cheap plastic.

But I suppose something has to fill the void left by Hitler.

Hope your Valentine's Day is a good one!

You can see the past ten years of Valentoons right here.

I am running out of things to reveal in these "Ten Things You Don't Know About Me" memes, but that doesn't stop people from tagging me!

One of my previous stabs at it can be found here.

And, without further delay, here's the latest...

1. Despite all the wonderful opportunities I have to travel and all the amazing jobs I am lucky enough to work on and all the cool stuff I've been fortunate enough to see and do... I still think that everybody else has more interesting lives than I do, and often feel like I'm missing out.
2. I loathe both grapefruit and coffee, but wish I didn't because it seems like it would make for the perfect vegetarian breakfast.
3. Laziness bothers me and I have a hard time respecting people who don't work hard at something in their life... and it doesn't necessarily have to be a job.
4. I have a near-pathological hatred of Jonah Hill as an actor, which upsets me because everything I read about him and every interview I've seen paints him as a cool guy that I'd totally like to hang out with.
5. I have hundreds of Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts I've collected of the years which are piled in plastic storage tubs and have never been worn.
6. I was once slapped in the face on a date... not because I said or did anything inappropriate, but because she was drunk and I took her car keys. I drove her home while she screamed at me the entire way, returned her keys as she screamed at me some more, and volunteered to drive her to her car in the morning as she continued screaming. Not surprisingly, we ended up going on a second date... because I just never learn.
7. I've been to Disney World so many times for work-related projects that I thought surely I was sick of the place and didn't care if I ever went back. But, much to my surprise, when my annual trip was cancelled last year, I found myself genuinely upset. I guess Disney is an addiction you can't ever truly shake.
8. I have the first season of Three's Company on DVD. I have no idea why. Sometimes I buy things just to have them, and this is a flaw I desperately wish I could correct. Games I've never played. Books I've never read. Movies I've never watched. Comic books I've never looked at. Stuff like this drives me nuts. And yet... it still happens from time to time.
9. I wish I embarrassed more easily and cared more about what people think of me. Alas, I don't embarrass easily and honestly don't give a flying fuck what people think about me. Not even a little bit. Which means I'll sometimes say or do things which, in retrospect, I shouldn't have. And probably wouldn't have... if I worried about how others would perceive me for it.
10. A lot of great songs have good stories behind them, but I'm kind of obsessed with the tale behind Robbie William's brilliant song, She's Madonna. Apparently the lyrics are based on Guy Ritchie's ex-girlfriend telling him how Guy broke up with her by saying "Look, you know I really love you, but she's Madonna." The first line of the song, "I don't miss you, just who you used to be." is printed out and posted to my wall as a reminder of the Buddhist precept that everything changes. And also to remind me that even a person you consider a close friend can become somebody you don't recognize given enough time.

   
I was also tagged in a "Ten Things You Don't Know About Me" meme having to do with books, television, and movies, which I didn't quite understand... but here is my attempt anyway...

1. Now that Veronica Mars has been given a new lease on life with a movie and some novels, I am obsessed with the idea of getting to see more Wonderfalls, a shamefully underrated and wholly amazing television show that I re-watch twice a year.
2. And when it comes to movie sequels I pine over most, Strange Days is at the top of my list. The universe that Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron created is begging to be explored.
3. My "stranded on a desert island" books would be Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions by Richard Bach, Noble House by James Clavell, Dune by Frank Herbert, Lightning by Dean Koontz, Curious George Goes to the Hospital by Margret and H. A. Rey, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and as many Edgar Rice Burroughs books as I could get my hands on. Most of these I have read several times and never get tired of revisiting.
4. While I love the original Star Trek television series, I hated every Trek TV show that followed, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. This bothers a lot of Star Trek fans I'm friends with.
5. I will never forgive 20th Century Fox for canceling The Finder. Not just because it was an incredible TV show, but because it deprived the world of seeing more Michael Clarke Duncan before he died.
6. I have been disappointed by a lot of television shows... but Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the biggest by far. I hate the show. This kills me because I positively love the Marvel movies, and think that Clark Gregg and Ming Na Wen are brilliant actors.
7. I have read Catcher in the Rye twice in an attempt to appreciate it for the literary genius everybody says it is. Didn't work. I still hate the book, though rarely admit it because people chide me with the old "You didn't like it because you didn't understand the symbolism that makes it so powerful!" bullshit. Nope! I just think it's a crappy book. And don't get me started on Steinbeck.
8. I always put movies on while I work because it masks the outside world. I always choose movies I've seen before so they won't distract me from getting things done. The three movies I play above all others are 1) Marvel's The Avengers, 2) Undercover Blues, and 3) Wimbledon... which I finally bought on iTunes because I got tired of having to load the DVD over and over. I have no idea why these titles win out over others. I guess it's because I never tire of them.
9. If I had to pick the book I most want to see made into a movie or television series? Isaac Asimov's Foundation. The book I least want to see made into a movie or television series? Isaac Asimov's Foundation. The story has so much potential to be adapted... but my gut tells me it's just not going to be possible. Especially when the latest rumors have Roland Emmerich at the helm, which has to be one of the worst choices possible.
10. I have seen every feature film Samuel L. Jackson has ever appeared in (of which there are over a hundred!) except his first two... Together for Days and The Displaced Person. Needless to say, I want quite badly to find them so I can finish off my checklist. There have been more than a couple movies I have watched only because Mr. Jackson has appeared in them. And I don't care how bad the film, he is great in all of them, and one of the most versatile and talented actors the world has ever known. Picking my favorite Samuel L. Jackson role is near impossible but, if forced to choose, I'd have to go with Mitch from The Long Kiss Goodnight. Not because it was some kind of Oscar-worthy performance, but because nobody else could have played that role. Period. Nobody.

   
And... I'm all memed out. Have a great weekend!

Time to put House of Cards on pause, because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Random! Sometimes when I'm stuck on a phone call, I'll fire up Wikipedia and click on the Random Article link for a while (WARNING: no telling where that link takes you). It never ceases to amaze me what pops up. Yes, there's a lot of random stubs that flash by... but there's always a few articles of substance that will teach you something. Today my articles were... HUMAN TOOTH SHARPENING!... CERATONYKUS!... FRISKNEY!... and the HOUSTON THUNDERBEARS! — But be careful. If you click too fast, you could skip by something interesting (like NEW KOREAN ORTHOGRAPHY!) and not be able to get back to it (your browser's back button won't work). And who knows what knowledge tomorrow will bring? (perhaps the BARCELONA INTERNATIONAL EROTIC FILM FESTIVAL!).

   
• Ellen! Even without her personal announcement, Ellen Page's speech for the Human Rights Campaign this week was powerful, inspiring, and well worth watching...

I hope Ellen Page knows just how much her words mean to a lot of kids struggling with acceptance... not only with their sexuality, but with all the challenges they face because they're different... or merely perceived to be different. The more people keep speaking out for treating people with decency and respect, the more attitudes will change. And the more kids will feel less alone as they struggle to figure out their path in life.

   
• Please! Oh please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please let this happen.

   
• Bloop! Because I just can't help it, I now present The LEGO Movie blooper reel...

Awww! Is there anything cuter than LEGO minifigs?

   
• Search! For years, I've been integrating Google Custom Search into Blogography. But it's grown increasingly unreliable, and I'm tired of having it fail when I go to use it. So when I switched to WordPress, I decided to dump it. Only to find that WordPress search sucks. It sucks so bad. And so I found my way to the Relevanssi plugin. It's an order of magnitude better than what comes with WP, for which I'm grateful. I just wish it had pictures like Google does. Everybody loves search that comes with pictures! Bummer. I do like how it highlights the search terms though.

   
• Archive! And while I'm on the never-ending subject of my migration to WordPress, I am compelled to bring up how crappy their archiving is compared to what I was using with Movable Type. Hopefully one day you'll be able to navigate between monthly archives without a plugin, but not today. Hopefully one day you'll be able to navigate subcategories within a category without hard-coding IDs in an array, but not today. Both of these are not revolutionary features by any means, and it mystifies me as to why they aren't included. Luckily WordPress is ever a work in progress. So maybe one day.

   
And now, if you'll excuse me, another episode of House of Cards awaits...

The mind-blowing thing about political dramas like House of Cards and Scandal is that you know... you just know... that the outrageous fiction the writers dream up for these shows undoubtedly pales in comparison to what really goes on behind closed doors in Washington, DC.

And no wonder. Politicians do all kinds of crazy shit because they can. Not that I blame them... I shudder to think about all the horrendous crap I'd get into if I had political power rendering me invincible from consequence and knew that a whole team of people are dedicated to cleaning up my messes. Seriously, what wouldn't I do under those circumstances? I just don't know. I'm not into drugs, but you don't think I'd be the first one in line to snort cocaine off a hooker's ass with John Boehner if given the chance? You're damn right I would! Drugs, hookers, theft... even murder... it's all on the table. Political power makes everything possible...

Which means it's probably good that a megalomaniac with an addictive personality like me has never run for office.

And yet...

Don't be surprised if this page disappears one day in the future. I don't need it coming back to haunt me if I should ever decide to become a Congressman.

Because I'd like to think that I could resist an invitation from Paul Ryan to chase down homeless people in Foggy Bottom and taser them for sport, but you just never know what a taste of power is going to do to the mind of a politician.

If past precedent is any indication, they all end up fucked in the head sooner or later.

I had some work calls to make during my lunch hour, so I decided to catch up on Facebook while I was making small-talk. Despite current bullshit studies by managers with too much time on their hands who say multitasking is counterproductive, I can't fathom wasting my time by not doing multiple things at once.

And so there I was discussing ink limits for printing on plasticized board... when I lose my ability to speak. I somehow manage to end the call as my heart starts crushing my chest.

Long-time blogging friend, Tracy Lynn "Kap" Kaply, is gone.

It's impossible to reduce Kaply down to words. She was hysterically funny, yes. She was exceedingly kind, sure. She was delightfully raunchy, indeed. She was keenly observant, absolutely. She was craftily opinionated, no doubt. But to keep piling adjectives on her seems somehow a disservice when no amount of words will ever paint the whole picture of who she was. You had to know her to love her and, even though I didn't know her exceedingly well, I came to love her just the same. Your life was far more entertaining with Kaply in it than out of it, and I just don't know what higher praise I can offer than that...

You will note that she is wearing one of my "Try Evil" T-shirts. When looking for photos of her, it was almost impossible to find a recent image where she wasn't wearing one. She'd wear them until they were falling apart, then ask me to send her another one. And I always did. She told me that the T-shirt said everything about her that she wanted people passing her on the street to know. Adjective-free, of course.

I think the first time I met Kaply in person was back in 2007 at the first Daveattle blogger meet, but we had known each other online for years before that...

I'm pretty sure she introduced herself with "Yeah, I'm Kaply. Try not to fall down at my feet or anything embarrassing like that." Which is oddly typical of the Kap I would come to know.

It's more than a little sad to see that Kaply is the second person in this photo to leave us. Rick Leonard, another wonderful human being, passed on a while back.

People wonder why I act like a two-year-old most of the time. It's because growing up means your friends start to leave you.

And Kaply is somebody I just don't want to say goodbye to.

So I won't.

I'll just say that I will miss her.

   
Now if I could just figure out to do with all these fucking "Try Evil" T-shirts I had custom-printed in her size. It figures that Kap would go and die on me before she had worn them all. So typical. It's just like her to be sure that I had something hanging around to remember her by.

As if I could ever forget.

What a completely messed-up day.

I am *THIS* close to that psychotic break I've always dreamed of.

   
Here's hoping they have internet at the asylum for the criminally insane.

There are some days I don't know what the hell I'm doing on this planet.

Then I fire up a game of Portal and suddenly don't care any more...

...until I find out The Cake is a Lie.

Which pretty much sums up my day.

After getting slammed with snow for the past couple days, Stevens Pass was "chains required" this morning, which meant I had to go Blewett-Snoqualmie since it was merely "bare & wet." Unbeknownst to myself at the time of purchase, my piece-of-shit car is not able to wear chains, which means the fucker should have never been sold in the Pacific Northwest to begin with. Oh well. It's an additional 20 minutes to my travel time, but them's the breaks...

Great way to spend a snow day!

It seems so very simple. If you have a penis, you're male. If you have a vagina, you're female. Yes, there are people who are born with/without sexual organs that challenge this two-party system, but it's a rare event and shouldn't change established conventions, right?

Right!

Unless you happen to be one of those precious few people who aren't born 100% male or 100% female, in which case being forced to check a box on a form that doesn't address your sexual identity seems unfair. Society treats your existence like some kind of a mistake, when you're just living your life the way God or biology made you. And that IS unfair.

But it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Because a person's sex... even if defined 100%... doesn't necessarily match your intrinsic sexual being. Which is where gender enters the picture.

I was once working with a team on a massive project that consumed our lives. As the days flew by, all our waking moments were spent in each other's company and we became quite close. As we were eating dinner one evening, one of the guys was lamenting how tough the gay dating scene had become. He thought that "Straight World" had more opportunities for finding someone than "Planet Gay," and he had resigned himself to dying alone. I didn't know if it's true that straights have more opportunities, but I assured him that it was no easier for dorky straight guys like myself to find somebody. One of the ladies chimed in with horror stories of being a woman in dating hell, and the competition for who had it worse was on. Until...

"You all have it easy. Try being trans and finding somebody to date!"

Turns out Margot had started out in life as Mark.

This was a bit confusing to me. Trans? Meaning transexual? What does that even mean? The extent of my knowledge on the subject was hearing a crude joke about "chicks with dicks," which meant I knew absolutely nothing. And since I hate wallowing around in ignorance... especially when it comes to somebody as great as Margot... I did the only thing I knew how.

I asked her.

A part of me worried that asking about something so personal would be offensive, but Margot wasn't offended at all. I guess she would rather somebody care enough to ask than to speculate, which is true for all of us, I suppose. And so I found out how being born with a penis is not necessarily the defining attribute of a person's sexuality. Yes, young Mark liked boys, but his feelings went beyond identifying as "gay." He was never comfortable as a boy, never felt like a boy, didn't fit in as a boy, and felt trapped pretending to be a boy. It's not that he didn't want to BE a boy... penis notwithstanding, he simply WASN'T a boy. Not on the inside. So when it came time for the boy to become a man, Mark decided his sanity and survival depended on giving up on pretending and finally embracing who he was always meant to be... which turned out to be a woman.

Simple, really.

Which is why I just don't get the continuing drama over Facebook adding a bunch of gender identity options for people's profile page. Apparently it makes some people "uncomfortable" to be exposed to the idea that humans exist who are not decisively male or female. And because they are "uncomfortable," these humans should be forced to conform to somebody else's personal standards as to what constitutes "gender."

And how fucked up is that?

Somebody telling you how to define who you are?

I mean, seriously, how does somebody wanting to identify as "trans" affect you? It makes you "uncomfortable?" Welcome to LIFE. If it makes them happy, makes their life bearable, makes them feel true to themselves, why would you give a fuck? It's their life. They are the one who has to live with it. Just be happy they're happy and live your own life for a change.

I don't understand how anybody thinks this world would be better off if everybody conformed to the exact specifications they have in their head as "normal." I have even a harder time understanding why people who feel this way decide to force their "normal" on others. Because, hey, everybody is abnormal to somebody.

Even you.

Margot went through a fucking gauntlet to get to where she needed to be. Her entire childhood was a battle that most people wouldn't survive. She faces challenges in day-to-day life that would humble most people. And yet she made it through. She's figured out what makes her happy, and is content being who she is.

I think she's fucking earned the right to define her gender however the heck she wants to.

Anybody who disagrees doesn't have the strength to put themselves in her shoes for even ten minutes.

Which is a shame, because she always wears such nice ones.

My plans for yesterday were simple.

Work. Lunch. Shop. Memorial. Work. Fun.

Alas, everything came to a screeching halt after "Lunch" because my trip to Olive Garden resulted in gastrointestinal distress so bad that I would have been relieved if an alien were to burst out of my intestines...

Not an actual representation of my afternoon... but darn close.

Then things got a little depressing for me, because nobody wants their plans foiled by a plate of Fettuccine Alfredo.

Especially when the Fettuccine Alfredo isn't even real Fettuccine Alfredo, and is made with a cream base.

But then I saw a video of French goats playing on a "flexible steel ribbon," and everything was fine again...

Silly goats.

I was drinking heavily at a Daytona 500 Race Day party yesterday, so prepare yourself for Bullet Sunday on Monday, because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Gravity! Just in case you're one of the few people on earth who hasn't seen Kate Upton's Zero G photo shoot from Sports Illustrated, it is truly something you need to be checking out. Even if just to see the =ahem= "technical challenges" of shooting a swimsuit model in space...

You can see more at Sports Illustrated Online.

   
• History! I don't normally link to stuff like this, but there's a Reddit thread that is epic, and I can't stop looking at it. If you have even a passing interest in history, here's a black hole for you to fall into... What are two events that took place in the same time in history but don't seem like they would have?

   
• Egon! I was saddened to learn that actor/writer/director Harold Ramis has died at 69 years old today. While he is probably best known as Dr. Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters, he was also an actor, writer, or director on other amazing films I love... like Stripes and Groundhog Day. Such a hilariously smart and witty individual will be missed.

   
• Ivory! Prince William is wanting to remove and destroy all ivory art and artifacts in possession of the Royal Family as an example to other world leaders that elephant poaching should not be tolerated. While I applaud his efforts in saving these wonderful creatures from senseless slaughter, is destroying beautiful works of art really the way to do that? Yes, by all means, do whatever is necessary to defeat the ivory trade moving forward... but for those pieces already in the royal collection, the deed has been done. Destroying works of art is not going to bring those elephants back. I'd even go so far as to argue that if people start destroying the world's ivory, it's just going to make the stuff more enticing as a rare collectible, putting more elephants in danger. And what's next? Do we start burning priceless ancient books that were printed on vellum? Or are calves less worthy of protection? We're evolving to a society which is more compassionate towards animals, and that's wonderful. But show some compassion towards the artists of the past whose only sin was using "the material of the day" in their work.

   
• Heroes! I've already wrote about how much I fucking loathed the television show Heroes...

Just like with Odo, the non-shape-changing-shape-changing character on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Heroes was the show about non-super-powered-super-powered-heroes. And it just sucked. It was SO bad, and this is coming from a super-hero comic book junkie who lives for shit like this. And now I learn that NBC is resurrecting the show for a 13-episode mini-series. Really. REALLY?!? Because, aren't there like... i dunno... a MILLION television shows more worthy of return than this pile of shit? Probably. What a waste of time and money. Somebody bring back a show that actually mattered... like Firefly.

   
• Arizona! From the blog of George Takei, regarding Arizona's new bill allowing businesses to refuse service to LGBT customers on religious grounds: "...The law is breathtaking in its scope. It gives bigotry against us gays and lesbians a powerful and unprecedented weapon. But your mean-spirited representatives and senators know this. They also know that it is going to be struck down eventually by the courts. But they passed it anyway, just to make their hateful opinion of us crystal clear. So let me make mine just as clear. If your Governor Jan Brewer signs this repugnant bill into law, make no mistake. We will not come. We will not spend. And we will urge everyone we know — from large corporations to small families on vacation — to boycott. Because you don’t deserve our dollars. Not one red cent..."

Just as I feel that businesspeople who believe selling flowers or cake is a "lifestyle endorsement" are businesspeople too stupid to survive economically... I also feel that they should have the right to be that stupid. But to pass a law which supports their stupidity? That IS an endorsement. An endorsement by politicians who are supposed to represent ALL of their constituents, including the LGBT community, equally and fairly. So, yes. I will absolutely take up George Takei's call to boycott if Governor Brewer is insanely stupid enough to sign SB-1062 into law. You don't have to be gay to oppose such blatantly anti-gay politics... you just have to be human. Ironically, the people who think this is truly about "religious freedom" instead of "an excuse to legalize persecution" seem to be the same people professing to want a smaller government that doesn't intrude on our lives. Do you smell it? The stench of hypocrisy has once again shit the bed.

   
And now I am still recovering from yesterday and too tired to keep blogging, so I guess this is goodnight.

Yesterday I went and saw The Monuments Men. Given the high-caliber cast (George Clooney, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Matt Damon, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett), I expected this was going to be a killer film. But it turns out that the cast was about the only thing I enjoyed. There just wasn't much of a story... the characters broke up into pairs and wandered around Europe trying to save art during the final days of World War II. The End. I was told this was a "caper" film... kind of like Ocena's 11 or something. But other than trying to blow a mine open before the Russians arrive, there wasn't much of a "caper" to speak of. I was bored.

Which is a shame, because the movie is based on real events that sound anything but boring.

Oh well.

I did see this poster in the theater...

That's Angelina Jolie starring as Maleficent.

Which would be the evil witch from Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Heaven help me I actually want to see this film.

Home again.

I strapped my iPhone to my sun visor for the drive over Stevens Pass in Washington State (through the Cascade Mountain Range on US Route 2). The rough road and weight of the iPhone moving the visor made for a messy (but pretty!) video... but everybody who keeps asking me to post a movie of the trip finally get's their wish! Music is Dream of Me (Based on Love's Theme) by OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) off their amazing album Liberator (and you can buy it here).

Pretty drive, is it not? I don't mind it so much when the roads are bare and the weather is nice, like today.

And... back to Real Life for a while.

This morning I woke up in a panic because I could no longer recall my CompuServe ID number. I don't know why it bothered me so much... I haven't used CompuServe in decades and there is no earthly reason I'd ever need to know it... but it did.

After thinking about it all day, I'm sure it's something like 74724.1609 — but that's not it. Darnit.

There was a time I was more familiar with my CompuServe ID than my own birthday. For those too young or not geeky enough to know what "CompuServe" was, Wikipedia to the rescue...

CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its acronym CIS) was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates.

While nowhere near as magical as the modern-day internet, CompuServe certainly felt more magical back in the day. Despite the fact it was glacially slow and massively expensive, it was 200% wonderful, and I would have spent all day using it if I had the time and money to do so. Finding new friends... joining common interest groups... exchanging information... downloading programs... doing research... even accessing a rudimentary internet gateway... CompuServe had it all. For a big fat price.

Luckily we all had Bulletin Board Systems to fill the gap. They were every bit as entertaining in their own way and, most importantly, free... assuming you could get past a busy signal.

Until AOL came along.

Cheaper, faster, prettier, more expansive, and a lot easier to use... AOL bested CompuServe in almost every way.

Just like the internet would eventually best AOL.

And everything else.

Still, nostalgia for the good ol' days dictates that I should still remember my CompuServe ID...

Nope. I got nuthin'.

Odds are, this post isn't going to be of any interest to you.

But the math geek in me feels that it should, so I am pushing onward.

Wolfram Research is a company that's been evolving the language of mathematics for over 25 years now. Initially, this was via a program called Mathematica, which I used back in the late 90's to map out data for a shareholder newsletter I was responsible for. It's an elegant and easy solution to creating visuals out of complex sets of information. Eventually Mathematica lead to Wolfram Alpha, a "computational knowledge engine." It's a really cool tool that anybody can use for free on the Wolfram Alpha website (click on the "examples" link to get some idea of the amazing things it can do). If you have an iPhone and ask Siri something which requires calculation, you're already familiar with Wolfram Alpha, because that's where Siri goes for answers.

Fast forward to today, and we get the Wolfram Language... a programming language leveraging the power of Mathematica. Mind-blowing stuff.

Galileo Galilei is noted for saying "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe." If this is true, here's your chance to play God...

I think of myself as a kid learning how to program code using crude computer languages like BASIC and PASCAL, and I can't help but wonder what I might have created if tools like the Wolfram Language were around.

Oh the interesting times we live in.

This morning I made the heinous error of starting work at 4:00am.

So I was pretty much done by noon. Except I couldn't be done by noon, and so I pushed through for another six hours.

I have nothing left for this blog. So I offer this...

Have a nice evening.

No more bitching about how your favorite movie/actor/director didn't win an Oscar, because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Oscar! First of all, I just have to say that Ellen DeGeneres did an amazing job as host. Funny, entertaining, yet still nice to everybody. And now my take on the big awards...

• BEST PICTURE: Should have won: 12 Years a Slave. Won: 12 Years a Slave. This was an incredible movie that was painful to watch. Totally Oscar-worthy, even though I doubt I will ever watch it again.
• BEST DIRECTOR: Should have won: ? Three-Way Tie ?. Won: Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity). This was hard. I honestly felt that David O. Russell (American Hustle), Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity), and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave), all had a claim to the prize. That Russell both wrote and directed American Hustle made me want him to win a bit more over the others, but the technical challenges that Cuarón had to rise above were legion, so I get it. McQueen is a solid choice too, so I just don't know.
• BEST ACTOR: Should have won: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave). Won: Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club). McConaughey was good, but I just didn't see his role (or the film, in general) to be riveting enough to grab the prize. Ejiofor on the other hand?
• BEST ACTRESS: Should have won: Sandra Bullock (Gravity). Won: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine). I fucking hate Woody Allen and, even though I'm sure Blanchett was her usual incredible self, I'd rather any other picture win. Bullock managed to overcome a lot of technical challenges to pull out a very good performance, so I'd probably give her the nod.
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Should have won: Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave). Won: Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club). Leto was the best thing about Dallas Buyers Club, but the sheer volume of emotional wreckage that Fassbender had to claw his way out of to deliver his performance must have been epic.
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Should have won: Lupita Nyong'o, (12 Years a Slave). Won: Lupita Nyong'o, (12 Years a Slave). A complete no-brainer. Nyong'o had the performance to beat (even though I love Jennifer Lawrence so much that I probably wouldn't complain if she won it for her awesome turn on American Hustle).
• BEST ANIMATED PICTURE: Should have won: Frozen. Won: Frozen. Animation god, Hayao Miyazaki, had his final feature film (The Wind Rises) in the running and I would have loved for him to have won... but Frozen was the film to beat.

   
• Marshmallow! And speaking of Frozen... there's a lot of things I could say about this brilliant Disney animated feature. Maybe that will happen later in the week. In the meanwhile, how much does everybody love Marshmallow? Probably my favorite animated character since Sully from Monster's Inc....

If you love Marshmallow too, be sure to keep watching past the Frozen credits.

   
• Ark! As I mentioned a year-and-a-half ago when I visited The Creation Museum, the group behind it all (Answers in Genesis) is working on a second museum... ARK ENCOUNTER! Apparently it's going to be a life-size replica of Noah's Ark (or something like that). They were in a bit of financial trouble but, after their leader Ken Ham had a much-publicized debate with Bill Nye The Science Guy, it apparently garnered them enough attention that they got their money after all. Personally, I can't wait to go... even though I believe absolutely none of it...

There's some pretty harsh criticism of Bill Nye for giving Ken Ham a platform to "legitimatize" his beliefs... but that seems kinda lame. I may vehemently disagree with Ken Ham, but I find value in understanding what he (and countless others) believe to be true, so I was happy to have a chance to see him actively debating it. And I'm looking forward to ARK ENCOUNTER as well... if it's as nicely done as The Creation Museum, it'll be worth a stop.

   
• About! Nick Hornby's About a Boy is a remarkable book that I've read at least three times. Much to my shock, the movie adaptation starring Hugh Grant was quite good... though very different in parts (and with a crappy Hollywood ending slapped on). So when I heard NBC was creating a television series for About a Boy, I was intrigued...

And so I watched it only to find out it was TOTAL SHIT. As an adaptation of the book. As a television show though? Not terrible. Not good, but not terrible. It seems to be based more on the movie adaptation than the book, but it fails pretty badly there too. The concept is the same, however. Will Freeman's dad wrote a hit Christmas song that set him up for life. Since he doesn't have to worry about money, he's living a self-absorbed life that revolves around fun instead of responsibility. Enter Marcus Brewer. He's an odd kid (mostly due to his mother, Fiona, who has severe emotional problems), and he's ruthlessly bullied at school. Will and Marcus cross paths, and both their lives are forever changed. The movie, while not entirely faithful to the book, does get a number of things right. Most importantly, they very clearly show just how miserable a life that Marcus leads and how terrifying it is to not know from moment to moment whether his mom is going to survive her depression. The TV show? Pretty much none of that. They focus more on Will being an idiot than the boy in About a Boy. And that's the biggest problem. The kid playing Marcus is good, but you never feel for him or his situation. And that leads to the entire premise of the show falling apart. And who knows if we'll ever see Ellie, a critical character from the book who was glossed over in the film and seems to be absent from the TV show entirely (so far). I dunno. I guess I'll give it a shot for a while, but my love of the book and movie is kind of killing me here. Maybe if I play the absolutely amazing movie soundtrack while I watch the TV version it'll be more tolerable?

   
• OREO! So Marshmallow Crispy OREOs and Cookie Dough OREOs happened a while back, but I've only just now gotten around to trying them...

Love the Marshmallow Crispy version. They're very sweet, but the crap actually tastes like a Rice Krispies treat in the middle! The Cookie Dough? Not so much. The flavor is vaguely there, but it actually seems more like coffee(?) (which I hate) than cookie dough. Doen layik it.

   
Sorry to end on a down-note, but I do proclaim this Sunday's bullets ended!

There's some irony that my copy of the Kickstarter-backed book project I wonder what it's like to be dyslexic shows up the day after John Travolta transformed "Idina Menzel" into "Adele Dazeem" while introducing the singer at the Oscars.

I, for one, don't know whether or not John Travolta has dyslexia. It doesn't show up in his Wikipedia profile, and a cursory Google search doesn't reveal an interview where he discusses it. When people talk about John Travolta having dyslexia, I think they are confusing him with fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise, who has stated that Scientology helped him to overcome his dyslexia. Honest mistake, I guess.

However... as somebody who lives with a mild form of dyslexia, I can say that mangling "Idina Menzel" into "Adele Dazeem" certainly feels like something which can be attributed to dyslexia. But not everybody with dyslexia experiences it the same way, so the only person who can say for sure whether it was a factor is... John Travolta.

All I can do is speculate based on my experience, which would go something like this...

For the most part, seeing words as being made up of letters is not how I read. The Roman alphabet upon which English writing is based has letterforms that easily transform or flipped around when viewed individually. Thus my mind can play havoc with "p" and "q" and "d" and "b"... all of which can be mistaken for each other. And that's just the beginning. English has numerous complexities that make understanding words from letters no easy chore.

Nope. How I seem to read is to recognize words by their shape... as most people do, to a certain extent. But since I ignore the letters, which can be confusing, the shape alone is critical to comprehension. Which is why there are many factors that lead to how easily and how quickly I can absorb something. The contrast between letter color and the background color... the size of the text... how far apart the letters are... how wide the letters are... how tired I am... etc. etc. etc. But the biggest factor by far? The typeface (or font) used. If things get too fancy or deviate too far from the standard letterforms I read 96% of the time, my reading speed takes a dive and things get a bit difficult...

As illustrated above, cursive fonts are the worst. Unlike "standard" serif and sans-serif fonts which maintain a distinct shape... cursive writing just degenerate into a mess of lines to me. There's no "form" for me to pull out of the words, so I have to struggle through the actual letters to try and figure out what I'm reading. As you can imagine, things like wedding invitations, fancy poetry journals, and the like can be a real bitch.

Which brings us to Adele Dazeem.

Reading by shape pretty much requires that most of the words you're reading are words you're familiar with and can recognize.

"Idina" and "Menzel" are not such words. Beautiful as it is, John Smith it ain't. Enter the dyslexic swapity-do, where syllables get shuffled in your head as you strugle to make sense of the letters and what they're spelling to you...

Now, I'm not making excuses here. I don't even know for sure if Travolta is dyslexic. If he is though... the pressure of presenting an unfamiliar and difficult name live in front of a bazillion Oscar viewers is going to be rough-going no matter how much you've prepared. Even if he memorized the intro, it's not a guarantee of success when words are a struggle for you. All I can say for sure is this: If John Travolta is dyslexic, I very much admire the guts it takes to put yourself in a high-pressure situation (like live television) where words are involved.

And while I think it's a bit harsh to make fun of someone who is challenged with something as fundamental as reading... having a sense of humor over stuff like this is kinda essential.

Thus I, Dawid Shunter, give you... The Adele Dazeem Name Generator!

Here's hoping your Monday was better than John Travolta's.

Unless you ARE John Travolta, in which case... I LOVED YOU IN PULP FICTION!

IT'S FAT TUESDAY, PEOPLE!!!

I know I've posted this DaveToon before, but it's one of my all-time favorites. Just like New Orleans. Happy Mardi Gras, everybody...

And now I want a piece of King Cake.

The video was recorded on an old VHS tape which had been in service far past the point it should have been discarded. Carter's annoyance with the badly degraded image caused his right eye to twitch, but nobody in the room seemed to notice.

"Look! Look at this!" Carter said as his finger punched the rewind button yet again. Then, for what seemed like the fiftieth time, he pressed play.

The VCR lurched into action with a heavy "clunk" as the tiny television came to life.

A nondescript convenience store materialized out of a wash of video noise. The image was so bleached of color that it might as well have been black and white. The camera was focused on the service counter where a young man was ringing up purchases into a cash register. His customer, a middle-aged man in a full business suit, stood waiting with his wallet open.

There was no sound, but everybody's imagination was filling in the blanks. A 2-liter bottle of Coke. Beep Beep Beep. A bag of OREO cookies. Beep Beep Beep. A roll of mints. Beep Beep.

The image began to shudder as a blast of jagged white lines started rolling through the picture. Then, just as suddenly as it had been obscured, the image cleared again. The store clerk had finished ringing up the man's purchases and was dumping everything into a plastic bag. The customer tossed a wad of bills on the counter as a woman appeared behind him holding a six-pack of beer in her left hand.

"Here it comes!" Carter whispered.

The woman, who had very dark skin, closely-cropped hair, and was wearing a magenta mini-skirt that burst out of the muted display like a signal flare, was talking to the man now. It was impossible to know what she was saying, but the man appeared calm and relaxed.

At least he was until she pulled a gun out of the breast pocket of her heavy black leather jacket and shot him twice in the heart.

Carter laughed with a high-pitched squeal and started rewinding the tape again. "Just look at you there with your big gun and stiletto heels! What a mess you made!"

"I know, I was there."

The woman from the video sat bound to a high-back chair. Her jacket was now splattered with blood that had dried to a dark carmine color. One of her eyes was swollen and her lip had been split. This time the blood was fresh and glistened a bright crimson.

"Yes. Yes... you... were," Carter said with a grumble as he pressed play for what seemed like the fifty-first time. The woman's eyes rolled back in her head as the scene started yet again.

"Tell me, Monica, because I truly am curious... who got to you? Who convinced you that betraying me was in your best interest? Who was it that deluded you into believing this was survivable?"

On the display, a store clerk was ringing up a 2-liter bottle of Coke. Now, in the recorded past, he's reaching for a bag of OREOs.

The woman tried to shift her position to something more comfortable, but the tubing that tied her to the chair was too tight. She tried twisting her torso to loosen her bonds, but was defeated. With nothing better to do, she began to speak. Carter stopped the tape and tossed the VCR remote on a nearby table.

"Your interdimensional friends, of course," Monica said, her voice eerily flat and expressionless. "They told me everything. They spoke to me from a beam of sunlight and told me that you were going to destroy the world."

If Carter was surprised, he didn't show it.

"But you're wrong about one thing. They never told me this was survivable. I have no delusions."

Now something changed on Carter's face. Fear?

The woman began to speak again, but her voice was drowned out by a high-pitched squeal. Carter and his assortment of hired killers were all covering their ears. Monica would have covered hers if she could, but she was tied to a chair and couldn't move. It didn't matter. The sound was growing louder, and nothing was going to stop it.

Despite the deafening audio assault hammering into her skull and the brilliant white glow clawing its way out of her chest, the woman smiled. She had sacrificed herself so that the whole world might live. She had atoned for her many sins and, if there were a heaven, she was guaranteed entry. After a decade of despair, she finally had something to smile about. She finally understood.

And then Monica exploded in ball of light, taking six city blocks with her.

Carter died wondering how things had gone so terribly wrong.

Sixteen dimensions away, a sunbeam quivers in amusement. Tomorrow he will shift back through the time stream and find something new to play with. But today? This refraction is over, and he's hungry. He wonders what frequency of photons will be served for dinner. There are no shadows in his world.

Two weeks.

Two weeks until I blow this popsicle stand for twelve whole days...

   
Guess I should really start making plans and stuff.

Every time there's a mishap, problem, disaster, or close-call with a flight, I'm inevitably asked something along the lines of "You fly a lot... don't you worry about this happening to you?"

To which I always answer "No. Not even a little bit."

And every time I say it, I realize that people must think I'm lying... or dismissing them... or saying whatever I have to say to convince myself that I'm invincible. But I'm really not. And this is why...

That's a FlightRadar24 map of all the commercial planes in the air right now. Thousands of them. And here's a close-up look at what's flying over the mainland US alone...

That's pretty much going on all day long, though things shift a bit as some parts of the world go to sleep and other parts wake up. With this kind of traffic in the air 24/7, it's easy to see how flying truly IS one of the safest activities you can do. My drive to the airport is a far, far more dangerous journey than my upcoming flight to Europe.

And so no, I don't worry about flying.

Not even a little bit.

If it happens, it happens. But the odds are so mind-bogglingly low that it's just not worth fretting over.

Getting trapped in a middle-seat between a smelly person and a crying baby however?

   
My deepest sympathies to everyone affected by the disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370.

Today was a piece of crap smothered by a pile of shit kind of day.

As if that weren't bad enough, everybody in North America living where Stupid Fucking Daylight Saving Time is observed has to "Spring Forward" with their clocks tonight. Which means there's one less hour of sleep tomorrow morning. Which means that everybody's internal clock is going to be fucked up for a couple weeks. Which means everybody's cranky and unproductive. Which means everybody is angry and nothing gets done...

Stupid Fucking Daylight Saving Time. I MEAN, COME ON! PICK A TIME SCHEME AND STICK WITH IT! SERIOUSLY, EITHER SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE OR JUST FUCKING PICK ONE. I DON'T EVEN GIVE A SHIT WHICH ONE... STANDARD TIME... DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME... AMERICAN SAMOA TIME... WHATEVER TIME YOU WANT. JUST STOP DICKING AROUND WITH THE DAMN CLOCKS!

Okay then. I'm good for six months now.

Hope you're fully functional on one less hour of sleep today... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Persecution? My very first bullet of the day got a little out of control, so I'm saving it for an entry of its own tomorrow. Don't you love it when that happens? I'm a blog entry ahead for once!

   
• No Sale! Ke$ha has exited rehab... and celebrated the occasion by dropping the dollar-sign from her name! Say wha-?!? So now Ke$ha is Kesha and I'm not sure what that's going to mean for the future. Hopefully it still includes her working a metal plate on her crotch with a metal grinder, because isn't that what we all expect out of Ke$ha... errr... Kesha?

Whatever she calls herself, best of luck as she gets out of rehab and moves on with her life and her music.

   
• Enlisted! This show is so much better than it has a right to be...

Seriously. I had -zero- hope for this series. The ads all looked stupid-horrible. The concept of three brothers in the Army sounded lame. The only reason I bothered to tune in at all was because I liked Geoff Stults in The Finder. After the first episode, I was in shock that I liked it. The show was more smart than stupid... more funny than not. After the second episode, I was upset that I ended up liking it even more. Now I've just given up all pretenses of hating Enlisted and enjoy watching it. If you haven't given it a try, and you like comedy, it might be worth a look.

   
• Wenatchee! The valley in which I live is abuzz over this pretty new promo video that was released this week...

What's odd... or maybe it's not odd at all... is that the video barely touches on the City of Wenatchee itself. They fly above it. They explore around it. They look at it from afar. But I'm guessing only 5% of the footage actually takes place there. City streets, buildings, parks, public spaces, services, and all the other stuff that someone visiting Wenatchee proper would recognize and see... it's all condensed into a few seconds. Growing up in this area, I used to think that Wenatchee was a boring shithole in the middle of some nice scenery. And while the city has grown and changed since those days... along with my attitude towards it... it seems as though the filmmakers felt the best thing about Wenatchee was getting the hell out of it. So I guess I can relate. I've been there. And I've been to Wenatchee too.

   
• Quark! For a hefty amount of time in computing history, desktop publishing was owned by a single company, Quark, and their software solution, QuarkXpress. It was a majestic mess of a program that I always hated... so much so that I would often-times use Adobe Illustrator for page layout, even though it was ill-equipped to handle that task. I didn't care. I'd rather juggle 50 separate Adobe Illustrator files than a single 50-page document in Quark because it was ultimately far less hassle. Even their "competition," PageMaker, which was woefully underpowered for serious DTP was a better choice. Quark was a buggy, crash-prone mess that ate up so much time, money, and resources that anything was a better solution. Then Adobe came out with InDesign, which was sheer nirvana compared to shitty Quark, and I never looked back. Even when somebody sent me a Quark file to work with, I'd inevitably recreate the entire thing in InDesign from scratch because it would be less work than having to fire up Xpress to deal with it.

Whether that's your experience with Xpress mimics mine... or whether you loved it with a passion that InDesign could never match... anyone who has been touched by QuarkXpress should read this terrific article over at Ars about the rise and fall of a giant.

   
• HBO! And lastly? This fan-made mash-up trailer for Game of Thrones... as if it were airing in the 1990's... is pure genius, even if you know nothing about the show...

Seriously. This is a flawless victory so far as tributes go.

   
And now? Bullets be gone!

And here's that missing bullet from yesterday...

When it comes to the politics of religion, I generally remain silent because the fallout just isn't worth it. Even when I make a simple observation on the topic with no opinion whatsoever, it seems I end up with hate-mail or nasty comments. And it's not just here on Blogography. I once made the following comment on Facebook...

"Separation of church and state only seems to work one way, and that's to the sole benefit of the churches. They are given tax-exempt status so that their financial operations are kept separate from the government, as interpreted by the First Amendment, and that's fine. That's the law. But more and more we are seeing churches being actively involved in politics and government. They use their monies to sponsor candidates for public office, back legislation, contribute to lobbying efforts, and otherwise influence or control matters of the state. They are clearly not maintaining a separation from their side of the bargain. And yet there are no repercussions for them doing so. Get caught stepping over the line and you should be getting your tax exempt status revoked. But how often do we hear of that happening? Our government is tasked with upholding The Constitution and protecting the religious freedoms of the people they serve. Apparently this doesn't include protecting a person's freedom from religion. Which is why I want to vomit every time I see somebody claiming that they're being persecuted because they can't put Jesus on top of a post office... or same-sex couples can get married... or somebody says "happy holidays"... or whatever. Clearly, they have no fucking clue what "persecution" even means. Some churches have evolved into tax-free political action committees operating outside the law, and nobody does shit about it. The truth is that the only people being persecuted in this scenario are people wanting to live their lives free from religious rule and have a government free from church influence."

I ended up having to de-friend two Facebook "friends" and completely blocked a third over it.

And so I try to avoid the subject entirely, even though I think things are far worse now than they were when I wrote that five years ago. As churches and people of faith... namely, the Christian Right... feel more and more threatened by things they don't like (e.g. marriage equality), they've stepped up the persecution rhetoric to an all-time high. Many times I've wanted to write about this grotesque mockery of people who are enduring actual religious persecution... and the height of hypocrisy fueling it... yet I have resisted.

But now I don't have to write about it because somebody has written about it for me: News Flash to Christian Right: Religious Freedom Doesn't Give You the Right to Control Other People. So thank you, Robert Boston.

The only reservation I have over endorsing articles like this is the same one I always have... it does not apply to all Christians. I'm guessing it doesn't apple to most Christians. Not only that, but it could equally apply to any religious organization which feels their beliefs should dictate how other people live their lives in a society built on freedom of religion.

Or Freedom from Religion, as the case may be.

I am watching a new show called Believe off my DVR. It seems to be a "girl with special powers on the run" rip-off of Steven King's Firestarter, except it's total shit... which is surprising given the fact that it was created by Alfonso Cuarón and is being produced by J.J. Abrams. Right now a little girl just started screaming her head off which is exactly the kind of thing I go out of my way to avoid in real life. Why somebody would think I want to listen to this crap as entertainment is beyond me. What's next? A man stares at the camera while chewing with his mouth open and clipping his fingernails?

HELPFUL HINT: If You are creating a television series, try not to actively annoy the ever-loving-shit out of your viewers. And if you do, don't expect them to hang around.

Which is advice I should have given myself when it comes to writing in this blog.

But at least I don't make my viewers sit through a bunch of commercials. That's gotta count for something, right?

Ever since the time change, I've been sleeping worse than ever. I never thought I'd look back on insomnia with longing, but at least then I was getting 4-5 hours rest a night. Now? I don't sleep at all. Even sleeping pills fail completely. I nap for maybe 20-30 minutes, two or three times a night. That's it. To be honest, I don't know how I'm conscious... let alone how I'm managing to type coherent sentences.

At least I'm guessing they are coherent.

I'd check, but there's a chocolate alligator blocking my keyboard and I won't be able to get rid of him until this bag of potato chips lands in my toothbrush. Or the taco bar beams me up again. Which would be great, because I'm really craving carpet tape. The kind with extra 2400 baud modem... not the kind that swims with toilet paper.

The cornerstone of my life-philosophy is to "Live In The Now."

But that's proving extremely difficult given that the long-awaited Veronica Mars movie is finally being released tomorrow. As if that weren't enough distraction, in a mere seven days I'm off to Europe. So I don't want to live in the now. I want to live in the future...

...but after I finish my chocolate pudding.

Veronica Mars is my second favorite television show of all time. Coincidentally enough, Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (not the singer) is also responsible for my first favorite television show of all time, Cupid (the Jeremy Piven original, not the shitty remake). Given my adoration of all things Rob Thomas, I had zero hesitation in joining 91,584 other fans in supporting his highly successful Kickstarter campaign to bring Veronica Mars to the big screen.

As part of my "reward" for being a backer, I get a digital copy of the film so I can watch it on the day of release. Which is today. Much to my horror, the code to access the film wasn't through iTunes, but instead via UltraViolet, which is one of the single biggest technological pieces of shit of all time. But I'll get into that in an extended entry. Meanwhile, back to the movie...

I'm just going to come out and say it. The central "whodunit mystery" around which the story revolves is pretty lame. A few red herrings, but none of the twists and turns or shocking revelations that made the television show so compelling. This is hardly surprising. The movie has the rather daunting disadvantage of having to educate viewers new to the franchise plus showcasing enough insider goodies to satisfy die-hard fans as well as having to catch up with an entire cast of characters people haven't seen for seven years.

To be honest, I'm surprised they managed to fit a mystery in there at all.

But squeeze it in they did, and the result is a love-letter to everybody who put up their hard-earned money to get the film made. Which is to say it's a total success story, and I don't think anybody who's a fan of the show is going to be disappointed.

The plot is fairly straight-forward. Veronica's bad-boy ex-boyfriend, Logan Echolls, has been framed for murder, which results in Veronica dropping her new life in New York City so she can return home to help him out after nine long years away. Once back in Neptune, which is even more deadly, ruthless, and corrupt than ever, we catch up with all her old friends and enemies. Well, not all of them... but most of them. The laundry list of cameo appearances is shockingly long.

Where the movie shines is in the way the Rob Thomas manages to get everybody on that list involved in the story. Yes, a few of the cameos are just quick distractions (hey, Corny!), but the bulk of them are carefully interwoven into events so they are appearing for a reason. Not many writers could pull that off without everything degenerating into a pile of crap, but Thomas seems to excel at it. And that's the fun. That's what makes the movie so darn good. Yes, your appreciation of the murder mystery is deeper if you know that Carrie Bishop put herself in the firing line to seek revenge for her best friend Susan Knight getting seduced and knocked up by their history professor. Yes, Piz's familiarity with Wallace and Mac makes more sense if you knew that Piz was Wallace's roommate in college. Yes, Veronica's relationship with her father is more meaningful if you know that she destroyed his chance at a career, but he still loves her unconditionally anyway. Yes, there are scads of moments in the film that only pay-off fully if you're intimately familiar with the Veronica Mars universe. But, much to my surprise, it's still perfectly watchable even if you've never seen a minute of the television show.

But totally watch all three seasons of the television show if you plan on seeing the movie. It's so much sweeter if you do, and the original show is required viewing anyway.

So two thumbs way up and no spoilers from me!

And my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell, and everybody else who worked so hard to get the movie made. It was worth the wait. And if there's a Kickstarter campaign for a sequel... TAKE ALL MY MONEY, PLEASE! Heaven only knows the ending to the movie leaves that door wide open (perfect for the forthcoming line of books).

BONUS FEATURE! I was very happy to hear that one of my favorite bands, Mackintosh Braun, has a great new song on the Veronica Mars soundtrack. Here's their lyrics video for Don't Give In for your listening pleasure...

And now, for anybody who wants to read a rant about my efforts to plow though the pile of shit that is the "UltraViolet" digital video service, that's in an extended entry...

You often hear "Youth is wasted on the young."

Less often you may hear "Wealth is wasted on the rich."

Something you don't hear very often is "Intelligence is wasted on the smart." And that's probably because smart people are smart enough to put their intelligence to good use.

But not always.

I've seen a lot of stupid people do a lot of stupid shit.

Most times it's relatively harmless... like when somebody gets drunk, decides they can fly, then jumps off the roof and breaks their leg. So they end up in a cast for a while and learn a valuable lesson. Which they will immediately forget the next time they get drunk. Because they're stupid.

Sometimes it's tragic... like when somebody gets drunk, decides they can fly, then hijacks a plane and crashes it into a football stadium during playoffs. So they end up dead for a while and learn a valuable lesson. Which, unfortunately, took their life and the lives of thousands of other people to learn. Because they're stupid.

But whatever. There's no sense getting too worked up over it because it's stupidity and that's what stupid does.

No, it's when I see smart people doing stupid shit that I fly into a rage. They should know better. They're smarter than that. They have the ability make better choices.

Today I had to deal with the consequences of somebody who is incredibly smart doing something mind-bogglingly stupid. They made a horrible decision which is not only going to destroy their own life, but is going to affect a lot of people in a bad way for a long time. And the more the situation sinks in the angrier I get and the more I want to know why. Why did you do it? What could you have possibly been thinking? How could you let this happen? Why? WHY? WHY? WHY?

And so, against my better judgement, I asked them.

Their answer?

"I don't know."

You don't know?!? Really? BZZZZZZT! WRONG ANSWER! That's the answer a stupid person gives. That's the answer that comes from somebody who never bothers to think about what they're doing or what the consequences might be. That's the answer from a person who just doesn't give a fuck and has resolved to live their life free of responsibility. That's the answer you get from idiots who "don't know" because they never know anything. They don't know and they don't care that they don't know, so they never make the effort to know, and THAT'S what makes them stupid.

You often hear "Even smart people make stupid decisions".

I know first-hand that this is true.

But if you're a smart person making a stupid decision that's going to ruin lives, you'd better damn well come up with a better answer than "I don't know."

The people who cared for you and trusted you deserve better than your playing the stupid card.

Stop digging out that old bomb shelter... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Cold? "Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash." — Kremlin-backed television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov, host of a weekly current affairs show in Russia. Behind him was a backdrop of a mushroom cloud following a nuclear blast. (from Reuters)

You wanna know what bothers me more than the thought of being turned into radioactive ash? I really, really, want to visit Russia. I always have. Ever since I first saw a photo of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. For most of my life, the idea of it has been an impossibility. But then the Soviet Union collapses, the cold war thaws, relations normalize, tourism becomes more and more common, and suddenly... but not really suddenly... the impossible becomes possible...

And now I'm asking myself... Are current tensions going to blow over? Are current tensions going to escalate? What happens if they do escalate? Have I waited too long? Am I too late?

Last year I ultimately decided to visit Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. But also in the running? A river cruise through the Ukraine, including a couple stops in Crimea...

I guess that ship has sailed... for a while. Or forever. You just never know. How shitty is it that we can't all just get along?

   
• Flash! The first two comic books I ever bought were Green Lantern/Green Arrow #121 and The Flash #277. Not coincidentally, they became my favorite super-heroes for quite a while...

At least until I discovered The Legion of Super-Heroes. And Batman, of course. But even so, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for those first heroes. Green Lantern finally made it to the big screen with a fucking horrendously shitty movie that I hated. Then Green Arrow got a very good television show I'm currently enjoying called Arrow. Next up? The Flash!

It's a spin-off from Arrow, so my hopes are high. The costume is certainly a step in the right direction.

This isn't the first iteration of The Flash on TV. The first was a show starring John Wesley Shipp back in 1990. It was surprisingly good, but limited by the technology of the day. To say I'm anxious to see what we'll be getting in the year 2014 is an understatement. The pilot is filming now. I'm assuming we'll be seeing it this Fall. Assuming the show is picked up. That's a lot of assuming.

   
• Drop. Apple has a terrific bit of tech called "AirDrop" that allows you to share iPhone/iPad photos, contacts, files, and whatnot pretty much effortlessly. Open what you want to share, activate AirDrop, and you can beam stuff to other AirDrop users...

Cool!

Apple has a terrific bit of tech called "AirDrop" that allows you to share Macintosh photos, contacts, files, and whatnot pretty much effortlessly. Locate the file you want to share in the Finder, activate AirDrop, and you can beam stuff to other AirDrop users...

Cool!

BUT YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S NOT COOL?!? EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE BOTH CALLED "AIRDROP," THE iPHONE AND MAC TECHNOLOGIES ARE NOT FUCKING COMPATIBLE! This is outrageously stupid and, for the life of me, I just don't get it. I keep thinking "It's coming any day now, I'm sure!" But then it doesn't, and I get pissed off all over again. Why bother naming them both "AirDrop" if they are so different that they can't even talk to each other? How is it that Apple can be so smart in so many ways but so stupid in others?

   
• Stick! I promised myself that I wouldn't start in on the new video game, SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH, until I finished LEGO MARVEL SUPER-HEROES, but I just couldn't resist any longer. I'm a massively huge South Park fan, and the trailer looked amazing (warning, NOT safe for work)...

And you know what? It IS amazing! It looks exactly like you're "playing" an episode of the TV series. As if that weren't enough, it is frickin' hilarious. As in laugh-out-loud-funny. Not only because it's South Park, but because they've managed to create a fully-realized RPG game that's actually a parody of RPG games... with humor built into practically everything you see and do. I'll want to play it a bit more when I get back from vacation before I write a review... but, if you're a South Park and video game fan, it's pretty much a no-brainer. You simply must own this.

   
• Mars 2. The Veronica Mars movie (which I reviewed here) has only been out for three days, and already the sequel talk has started. Here's creator Rob Thomas Himself..

“With the first movie, because it was crowd-funded, it was a love letter to the fans,” he explains. “I put every character they loved back into the movie. There are a lot of inside jokes. With a second movie, I would build it from the case out. In the first movie, I feel like I did just the opposite. I put all the dessert, all the frosting on there, and then put a detective case in the middle. On the next one, I would want the detective case to be the driving force of the movie.”

It's as if he read my blog post and is answering my prayers!

Needless to say, I would be positively thrilled to get a sequel. Especially if we get a fantastic Veronica-Mars-style mystery on-par with what we saw in the first and second seasons of the show. NOW SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

   
Annnnnd... the end.

I had an incredibly difficult day today.

Which wouldn't have been so bad... it's a Monday, after all... except I worked all weekend to get caught up so I would have an easy Monday.

All for naught, it would seem.

And now? I just want it all to end. St. Patrick's Day or no...

One of these years I really need to draw a new DaveToon for the holiday.

Most of my day was spent thinking "One more day. Just one more day. One. More. Day."

One more day until Winter is over. One more day until Spring is here.

One more day until I leave. One more day until I'm on vacation.

I can't fathom what tomorrow is going to be like. I can only guess I'll be skipping down the street while singing "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love yA, tomorrow. You're only a day awaaaayyyyyy!"

Which would be pretty odd considering how much I hate that song.

Well, unless it's being sung by little Quvenzhane Wallis. How adorable is she?

And now... packing.

I had planned to catch up on work over the weekend so I'd have an easy three days leading up to vacation. Instead I worked 16 hours every day and will be up working until at least midnight tonight.

I had planned on having my suitcase packed and everything ready to go yesterday so that I could spend a night relaxing before driving over to Seattle to catch my flight. I think we all know that didn't happen. I'll be lucky if I manage to grab a handful of clean underwear as I'm running out the door tomorrow morning.

I honestly don't know who I manage to get myself into this same situation every single time I go on vacation...

Oh well. After tomorrow I suppose it won't matter.

Until I end up in Europe with no pants.

I woke up.

I finished packing.

I drove over to Seattle.

I made my way through SeaTac Airport (barely, as it was torn to shit as usual).

Then I caught a flight to the Netherlands.

The end.

Or... the beginning?

The flight over The Atlantic was a non-event. Which is the best kind of flight to have, really.

The plane was one of Delta's latest Airbus A330-300's which feels like the seats are even narrower than usual. It was uncomfortable for me... so I'm only guessing it must be downright miserable for at least half the passengers on the plane. I suppose it's only a matter of time before airlines do away with seats altogether. They'll just stack everybody in the plane like firewood.

On the bright side, the new entertainment system features Picture-In-Picture...

After landing, I took the train to Leiden so I could kill some time until The Dutch Bitch got off work. Back in 2012 I walked around the city to see the sights, but this time it was pouring rain...

To escape the weather, I went to Leiden's National Ethnology Museum, (Museum Volkenkunde)...

It features artifacts from peoples around the world (outside of Europe), with sections devoted to North America, South & Central America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania...

The museum is incredibly well-done and has a surprisingly deep collection. The only problem is that everything is suspended in glass cases with no background, so it can be tough to focus on the artifacts. A few times I experimented with angle-shifting to see if I could add some separation, but it wasn't terribly effective...

The display spaces are pretty amazing, and full-wall projections are used to put you into the place where the artifacts are from...

And then? It was time for PATATJES MET!!!

And now I could really use a nap...

I've been meaning to get to Rotterdam for years now, and today it finally happened.

The reason I most wanted to visit was so I could see the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. It's one of those places that comes up in conversation from time to time when discussing art. It totally lives up to the hype...

From the minute you enter and see how the coat-check room is a series of cages for your belongings and a rope-and-pulley system for your coat, you know you're in for something good...

The collection is varied and excellent...

After I managed to pul myself away from the exhibits, I saw that I had plenty of time to walk to the waterfront and see Erasmusbrug (the Erasmus Bridge... also known as the "Swan Bridge" or the "Harp Bridge), then take the metro back to the train station...

As most of Rotterdam was destroyed in World War II, the city has a modern aesthetic, with a lot of new architectural and artistic structures...

ANYWAY...

I had about 25 minutes to get back to Rotterdam Centraal, which was no problem since the metro only takes 10 minutes.

EXCEPT...

When I went to purchase a ticket, I found out I couldn't buy one. The machine only refilled chip-cards. No problem, I'll just buy a chip-card. Except they don't fucking sell chip-cards. No ticket window. No attendant. No Assistance. Nothing.

So I had to run as fast as I could to get back to the train station.

I hauled ass.

Which was not easy because I don't run very often. At least once along the way I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

But I made it to the station with two minutes to spare, so it's all good, right?

No. My train was running 14 minutes late and so I ran all that way for nothing...

Note how my transfer time is 0 minutes. But not really... if you do the math, it's actually -7 minutes. Yay.

After all that bullshit, I decided I deserved PATATJES MET...

Well, I always feel that way, but still...

Unleash the haggis... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Prayers. Truly horrible news from back home... a massive mudslide has devastated a residential area east of Arlington in my home state of Washington. All my hopes go out to friends who have family amongst the 18 people still missing... along with everybody else affected by this tragic event.

   
• Air Yet another excellent flight on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines... this time from Amsterdam to Glasgow. My only disappointment was that they didn't hand out landing cards for non-EU citizens during the quick 1-1/2 hour trip, which meant I had to fill one out at the airport. But that's hardly worth complaining about. Oh, a bit of advice... when offered a choice between "sweet snack and savory snack," go for the savory snack, it's a packet of incredible Gouda cheese biscuits.

   
• Immigration. When you arrive at passport control there's a big sign telling you that tougher border control laws in the UK will cause a longer wait. Since I was at the front of the plane I didn't have many people ahead of me... but the sign wasn't lying. I've been to the UK many times, but on this trip I really got the third degree. They wanted to know absolutely everything about me, my job, my past travels, and the purpose of my visit. Usually I just say "tourist" but, given the level of detail they were drilling for, I literally said "I am a Hard Rock Cafe collector and I am here to visit the new Hard Rock Cafe Glasgow." Then I had to explain what I collected and what else I would be doing while in the UK. And then... then... because I am such a shifty-looking character, I had to go through it all over again with a police inspector. Despite the hassle, everybody was friendly and welcoming, so I guess there's that.

   
• Cash. I never bother getting local currency for my destination ahead of time, because I usually get a better exchange rate by using a cash machine when I land. The only problem being that Glasgow's airport only has a pitiful four ATMs, all of which have insanely long lines. Since I had to have cash for bus fare into town, I was forced to wait. So lesson learned. I'll be going home with a few quid in my pocket for my next trip to the UK, as it would seem cash machines are a rare and elusive creature in these lands.

   
• No. 153. And, now, the reason for my visit... The Hard Rock Glasgow. Like many of the UK properties (both current and past), the cafe is located in a beautiful old building. This particular cafe is in a great location, directly across from the Queen's Street train station on Buchanan Street, a popular shopping district in the city. It's not at all flashy, and would be easy to miss if you weren't looking for it...

The interior is truly bizarre... in the best possible way. It's equal parts classical architecture and starship Enterprise...

The bathrooms are located off a spiral staircase that's filled with silver guitar sculptures...

The surprisingly-spacious Rock Shop is at the front of the building, and you pass right by it coming and going...

All in all, a terrific property. Alas, sadly, the rock memorabilia adheres to the new "hipster lounge" aesthetic so it's badly displayed and there's not much of it, but at least the building is interesting. Oh... and if you're not a vegetarian like myself, you'll be happy to know that the specialty burger for this Hard Rock is a hamburger smothered in haggis with cheese on top!

   
• In A World... I was saddened to learn that one of the most famous voices on the planet, Hal Douglas, passed away. If you've ever seen a US movie trailer, odds are you know who he is... even if you didn't know his name...

One of kind. You will be missed, sir.

   
And now I must say cheerio, as I am falling asleep as I type this.

When I learned that there was a new Hard Rock in Glasgow, my idea was to fly into Edinburgh (my favorite city on earth) and hop over and back for a quick visit. But when it came time to book my tickets, I realized that this was a risky prospect. Odds are I'd arrive in Edinburgh and never leave. So I decided to fly into Glasgow after all.

But there was no way I was going to pass on the opportunity to spend my birthday in the one place I love more than any other. No way at all. And so I took a 50-minute train ride across Scotland just because I can. But, before I go... an egg and fire-roasted tomato sandwich from Pret-A-Manger (my favorite breakfast on earth)...

Because the weather was so amazing,* I decided to do something I've always wanted to do when visiting Edinburgh: climb the extinct volcano there (named "Arthur's Seat") so I could look out over the city...

The panorama view is pretty incredible (click to embiggen)...

I had photographed the city to death on my last trip here back in 2009, but I just can't help myself when it comes to the majestic old buildings, so I ended up taking a boat-load of new photos...

Since I've been to Edinburgh many times, I'm always looking for something new to see and do. This trip, that ended up being a visit to Camera Obscura. It's a kind of museum filled with optical oddities and illusions...

Which is all well and good, but the main attraction for me was the rooftop view...

And, yes, as the name implies, there is indeed a camera obscura at Camera Obscura. It's an old-school attraction that was probably a lot more impressive back in the day... but it was still interesting since I had never seen one before (you can read all about the device at Wikipedia). Basically, a lens on the roof of the building captures light and beams it down onto a big white table in a darkened room. Everybody stands around this circular "screen" as the operator pans around the city while pointing out things of interest.

Not wanting to ride the train back to Glasgow during rush hour, I said goodbye to my beloved Edinburgh after all too short a visit...

Once back in Glasgow, I rushed out to the famous Kelvingrove Museum so I could take a look before it closed. Part art gallery and part natural history exhibit, it was well worth the effort...

Across the parking lot (and a creek) is the University of Glasgow. I wandered up to take a look before heading back downtown for dinner...

After a quick dinner (and a nap) I headed to George Square to try and get some photos without tons of people around. The beautiful Apple Store was on the way...

And that was that for my short visit to Scotland. I leave tomorrow morning on a very early flight, so off to bed I go.

*Dear Apple... while I love Siri, and use this miraculous feature often on my iPhone, there are times I have to wonder just how idiotic technology can be. I am in SCOTLAND. My iPhone is LOCATION AWARE. I am asking what the weather is like IN EDINBURGH. But I am given locations in the USA? Oh well... I'll just clarify that I mean the Edinburgh IN SCOTLAND then...

Nope. No matter how I pronounce it, Edinburgh is not in Scotland. Holy crap does this make Siri look like a fucking moron.

I've already been to the Hard Rock Cafe in Rome several times. The only Italian property I haven't been to is the new cafe in Florence. But if I flew directly to Florence, I wouldn't have the opportunity to eat at my favorite restaurant on earth.

So I got up at 3:30am. So I could get to Glasgow Airport by 4:30am. So I could fly to Rome at 6:40am.

This meant skipping breakfast, but that's okay. By the time I got to The Eternal City I was starving, which meant I had room for the city's signature dish for lunch: Cacio e Pepe ("Cheese and Pepper" on spaghetti pasta)...

It's a classic dish that's deceptively simple. The trick is getting the pasta cooked to a perfect al dente texture, which is tough in the USA because everybody overcooks their noodles. So you either have to go to RW's house or fly to Italy to get it done right.

Now, the prudent thing to do when you are in Rome is to run around and see all the sights. But I've already done that. And I've been up since 3:30am, so I took a nap instead.

But no worries, I was sure to wake up in time for a late dinner at my most favorite restaurant in all the world: Alfredo alla Scrofa, where Le Fettuccine Alfredo was invented...

A heart attack on a plate, gloriously mixed to order right at your table...

After dinner I decided to wander over to the Spanish Steps so I could climb to the top and visit the cafe where I first tasted Stracciatella Gelato, my all-time favorite...

And, because this is Rome, the walk back to your hotel is filled with incredible sights...

Buona Notte!

With the exception of one horrendous problem, today was a pretty great day.

My plan was to head up to Florence to see the new Hard Rock Cafe there, but I had a long-time friend (and fellow Hard Rock fan) who had wanted to trade a few pins, so I decided to visit him in Milan, a city I have never been. For some reason I had thought the city was quite close to Florence, but it's actually two hours by train farther... which meant I started my day with a three-hour train ride out of Rome.

It was all worth the trip though, as Milan is a beautiful city. I started with a visit to Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral)...

After the cathedral, I was going to visit a small church called Chiesa di Santa Maria presso San Satiro, but I walked right past it and ended up finding Tempio civico di San Sebastiano (The Temple of San Sebastiano), which is a rather unique and beautiful round church...

I did a quick back-track to Chiesa di Santa Maria presso San Satiro (no photos allowed) but couldn't spend a lot of time because I would be late for visiting Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Library of Ambrose), which is home to Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, a massive set of books containing anything and everything from the mind of one of my all-time inspirational heroes, Leonardo da Vinci. You enter through an art gallery that's connected to the library. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to browse the collection of art here, but it's a very nice collection...

The Codex itself consists of over 1,100 pages, but only a fraction of those are viewable at any one time. Usually the rotating collection on display centers around a theme which, in my case, ended up being music. Included in the display I saw were pages with Leonardo's sketches for an automated drum machine, various instrument ideas, acoustic architecture studies, and much, much more. It was absolutely fascinating, and I could have spent hours pouring over those few pages available. No photos were allowed (of course) but I found a sample page on the internet to give an idea of what they look like...

Fantastic stuff.

After a visit with my friend to exchange some pins, it was time to head to the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, for what is arguably Milan's most famous attraction.

But first... a cookie break while I waited for my ticket reservation time...

The Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a rather unassuming building that's almost boring, when compared to the many other religious buildings in the city...

It's what's inside of it that makes it worth the effort of visiting, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper...

One of you bitches is going to betray me!

No photos were allowed, of course, this is just an image of an image I found on the internet. But it's not like any photo could do the work justice anyway. I had always thought that it was an interesting, but not terribly inspiring work, and didn't have much of a desire to see it. But that opinion was formed by looking at photos of it in a book.

And then I got to visit the painting in person, and now I know what all the fuss is about.

It is an awe-inspiring work of art. Both artistically and technically, it's mind-bogglingly beautiful. Definitely worth a visit. But, as with most exhibits of this importance in Italy (or most any other country), MAKE TICKET RESERVATIONS IN ADVANCE! Tickets are guaranteed to sell out, and if you just wander in hoping to see it, you're going to leave disappointed.

And here is where disaster occurred. I left myself one hour to get back to the train station to catch my ride to Florence. As always, I consulted Google Maps to get me there. The instructions were quite simple... take the Malpensa Airport Express Train two stops to Bovisa, then take the S2 train to Milano Porta Garibaldi railway station.

Easy, right?

So I ran to the train and hopped on just before the doors closed. I grab a seat just as the train leaves. And then I notice that the train didn't stop at its first stop. Much to my horror, the train didn't stop at the Bovisa stop either. We just kept on going...

Turns out Google has the train information wrong. This particular run of the Malpensa Airport Express IS FUCKING NON-STOP! And so I ended up having to ride all the way out to the airport (35 minutes), wait for the next train back to Milan (15 minutes), then ride all the way back (35 minutes). Needless to say, I missed my train. Which means I would also miss my train to Rome. Which meant I had just wasted one hour and 25 minutes plus $120 in non-refundable train fare.

THANKS, GOOGLE!

Oh well, I made it to the Hard Rock a bit late, but I did make it. And Florence has a great property that was made from an old movie theater building...

On my way back to the train station, I passed The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower) or, as it is better known... Il Duomo di Firenze (Cathedral of Florence)...

Even more beautiful at night, I think.

Back in Rome, I went for a late dinner at Alfredo's, of course, because I just couldn't help myself. And... my short visit to Italy is done.

I've been around Nice when visiting Monaco and Eze, but have never actually been to Nice proper. Now that there's a Hard Rock in town, that had to change.

Well, that and the movies shot in the city always make it look so amazing. Like that car chase in Ronin... or that car chase in The Transporter... or the car chase in Never Say Never Again (well, not a car chase per se, but that would have been an excellent addition to the film, wouldn't it?).

And so... on to Hard Rock No. 155...

Beautiful views. Lovely restaurant. Kind of boring for a Hard Rock.

After lunch I headed to the beach. The weather was not great beach weather, but it was still a beautiful day on the Côte d'Azur...

Lovely turquoise water, but something seems... off...

Wait... that's not sand... it's... ROCKS?!?

Yes. The famous beach at Nice is covered not with sand, but with rocks? All this time I had no idea. And yet there were people laying around with beach towels and the whole bit. Which can't be comfortable, can it? As I stumbled across the "beach," attempting to keep my footing while walking on cascading stones, I admit to being a bit disappointed.

Until I stopped for a second and listened to the rocks rolling in the surf. It was totally hypnotic...

Nice itself is quite a lovely city. Especially back at their main square, Place Masséna, which features the "Fontaine du Soleil" (Fountain of the Sun) in the southern half. From a distance, it looks quite impressive with a giant statue of Apollo standing in the middle...

It's when you get closer to the fountain that things start to get disturbing. Apollo has freaky bulging eyes staring at you. And the crown of horses on his head look more like those baby chest-bursters in Alien. Not to mention his dick... swinging...

And the statues in the fountain basin? Utterly bizarre...

Clockwise from the upper-left...

1. Nude Woman Flying with Buffalo While Holding a Baby?
2. Nude Pipi Longstocking Riding a Giant Ugly Carp?
3. Nude Man Shielding His Eyes from the Sun While Walking a Bull?
4. Nude Man Directing Traffic with a Horse?

The northern half of Place Masséna is wide open... except for these poles that have nude men (covered in bird shit) kneeling on top of them...

No idea what that's all about.

Walking back to the train station, I passed Nice's version of the Notre Dame Cathedral...

Which looks better with a little HDR magic...

My original plan was to take a train to Cannes or Monaco for dinner, but I was just done traveling for the day. I was actually done with traveling for the week. Tomorrow's flight back to Amsterdam at 6:30am will be hard enough.

So an early night to bed it is.

"We have arrived!" announced the hotel shuttle driver to myself and another passenger as we pulled into the Nice Airport around 4:30am. And so I climb out and ask the driver to open the back of the van so I can get my bag. He says "This stop is not for you," and so I start to climb back on the van... only to have the driver slam the gas pedal to the floor as I am half-way in. The van lurches forward, causing the sliding door to smash into my side and send me flying 20 feet. My head crashes into the pavement and, as I lay there bleeding and trying to breathe, the driver stands over me and says "I said this stop was not for you!" — which is why I was climbing back on the van, of course, but let's not apply logic to the situation. You would think that A) The driver would make sure everybody is actually ON the van before hitting the gas, and B) He would start out slowly just in case the first passenger was still standing near... or the second passenger was in the process of boarding... or a pedestrian is crossing the street... or whatever. But, alas, no.

Blood pouring down my face and hunched over in pain, I somehow make my way inside the airport (at the next stop, natch) so I can try to clean myself up in a bathroom. Much to my horror, my glasses are destroyed, so I have to fish for contact lenses in my suitcase. But I can only put a lens in one eye because blood is pouring over the other one. A package of antibiotic wipes and 20 minutes of direct pressure later, my second lens is in and it's time to head to the gate for my flight.

The wonderful KLM cabin crew gave me ice for my head on the flight back to Amsterdam. This made the swelling die down a bit, and also caused the pain to subside. As for my chest where I was hit? The pain became searing, so when I got off the plane I started pressing around and... SNAP... I think I had a fractured rib, because now that it's been set back in place I feel totally fine... just a little sore now.

In other news... I have never felt so fucking macho in all my life as to snap my own fractured rib back in place! I'd go to the doctor, but all they would do is wrap me up and give me pain meds, so I'm just going to put on a tight T-shirt and self-medicate. Same difference! A-fucking-right... this is one macho bitch right up in here.*

Anyway...

My plans to visit some work colleagues in Amsterdam had to be abandoned so I could recuperate back at Casa de DutchBitch for five hours until she got off work. At which time we decided to visit "Europe's Garden"... the Keukenhof. I was there back in 2012 and loved it, so I was looking forward to another visit on this beautiful day, even if I was loaded with pain-killers...

After a wonderful afternoon looking at flowers, it was time for dinner at one of my favorite places on earth, Restaurant De Kas. It's a beautiful eatery outside of Amsterdam that resides in a greenhouse where they grow their own food. It's pretty special.

But it's at night that this place becomes really special...

The menu is a surprise, built around what came from the garden that day, and they accommodated my vegetarian diet beautifully...

An absolutely wonderful evening. After an absolutely wonderful day. After a terrible morning.

And now? Having experienced first hand what it's like to get run into by a car, I'm going to take some heavy drugs and go to bed. So good night to you! And (hopefully) a good night to myself.

*Unless, of course, it wasn't a fractured rib at all... in which case I have no idea what snapped inside there. Maybe I'm the moron who just cracked his own rib? I dunno. Playing doctor is a lot harder than it looks on television. Still, I'm feeling 1000% better than I was, so you can't argue with the results.

Fryslân (Friesland) is a region in the Northern Netherlands I have long wanted to visit. Partly because I want to visit all regions of the country... but mostly because it was home to some of my ancestors. My family name of "Simmer" is from the word "Summer" in the Fresian language, and my father has traced our genealogy back several generations to the area.

There are a number of routes you can use to get to Fryslân from South Holland, but The DutchBitch decided to take us the most direct (and interesting!) route... across The Afsluitdijk, a massive dike constructed from 1927 to 1933 which has a roadway over it. The dike completely enclosed a saltwater bay (known as Zuiderzee) which eventually became a giant freshwater lake called IJsselmeer. The 20-mile long dike also allowed for the reclamation of the land masses Wieringermeer, Noordoostpolder, and Flevoland, which added considerable area to the country. On a map, The Afsluitdijk (marked with a red arrow) looks like this...

Amsterdam is in the lower-left there. The areas I've shaded green are lands reclaimed from the sea.

When looking at a map, any time i saw The Afsluitdijk, I thought of it looking like the Øresund Bridge or something...

Which is absurd, of course, because a dike is nothing like a bridge. I guess in my mind it would just look cooler if it was. The reality isn't quite so glamorous, but still interesting...

Obligatory iPhone panorama shot (click to embiggen)...

Stopping at the half-way point.

After an hour-and-a-half drive, we arrived at our first stop... the city of Harlingen. It's a beautiful old fishing town that's the birthplace of my great-great-grandparents...

Stopping at the tourist office, we learned that the area where my great-great-grandparents were born was the poor part of town and a real shit-hole, which is why it was eventually torn down. Which is to say that it was undoubtedly a beautiful and incredibly desirable area of the city to live until my family left, at which time it became a detestable shit-hole, I'm sure. Today, it has once again become a premium, expensive neighborhood to live, so I guess things have come full circle.

Because this area had been completely torn down, the street where my great-great-grandfather was born no longer exists. It has become a private dead-end alley to the right of this cool little house here...

The place where my great-great-grandmother was born has been torn down and divided up into different lots, so I just walked around the block to see the area where she had lived...

After a nice lunch downtown, The DutchBitch and I walked back through the city where she spotted this...

PIRATE brand Virginia Cigarettes... made in the Netherlands?

From Harlingen, we headed to Leeuwarden for more family history. Our first stop was just a block up from our hotel, which is the former location of the Galileërkerk, a church where my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Johannes was interred. The original building was demolished in 1940, but it's location was just north of the former post office, which would be in the vicinity of the building to the left there...

The weather was incredible, and we weren't the only ones taking advantage of it...

Our next stop was the church where both my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Johannes and his son, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Frederik were married. It's now some kind of local performing arts center, but it still looks vaguely church-like. And it has some kick-ass door decorations...

From there it was onward to Oldehoofsterkerkhof, the church where my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Frederik was interred. In what I can only describe as a "Leaning Tower of Pisa Moment," I finally realized that the reason the tower looks so strange is because it's falling over...

And the closer you get, the more fucked-up things become. There doesn't seem to be a single perpendicular line on this entire building except the windows and doors. I was getting a headache trying to photograph it because my brain kept trying to straighten things out and line stuff up...

Like Harlingen, Leeuwarden is a rather nice city with a pretty downtown area...

Which you walk through in order to get to the part of town where my great-great-great-great-grandparents Hendrik and Catharina lived... and where my great-great-great-grandfather Willem Frederik was born in 1817 (he moved to Harlingen with his wife Geertje in 1845). Though, I'm sure back then it wasn't quite the boarded-up, graffiti-strewn mess it is now...

Our last stop was Blokhuispoort, a former prison where The DutchBitch thought I would feel right at home because my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Johannes was convicted of being drunk and insulting a widow named Dieuke Berents. Wrongly convicted, obviously, since the woman must have totally deserved it. I can only hope that grandpa Johannes gave her a nice bitch-slap for having the nerve to piss him off...

And thus ended my tour of the lands of my ancestors. Now it's time to dope up on pain-killers and see if I can get some sleep before tomorrow's adventure.

Boy, getting hit by a car is not all it's cracked up to be.

Our final day in Fryslân was spent taking the ferry over to Schiermonnikoog, a kinda resort island that's home to a massively huge beach.

Cars are only allowed for registered residents, which means that visitors have to either ride the bus, arrange for a resident taxi driver, or rent a bicycle. The DutchBitch opted for the bicycles, which was an interesting prospect considering I haven't ridden one in over 30 years. With this in mind, she rented bicycles which feature "Electric Assist"... a small motor that helps you along as you peddle. Turns out that this was a very good move, because my crushed ribcage left me needing all the help I can get...

Turns out that riding a bike is... errr... just like riding a bike, and I managed just fine. The only problem I had was getting off and on it, but that was thanks to getting run into by a car more than anything else.

Our first stop was a World War II bunker that oversees much of the island...

In the same area is Vredenhof Cemetery, which is a peaceful little place where we spotted soldiers buried from France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Germany...

Then it was time to cycle to the massive beach that covers the north-side of the island...

It's an impossibly huge beach, as this pano shows (click to embiggen). This is but a small section of the waterfront, and those dots in the distance are people...

From there we rode around town a bit, then went to a cafe for drinks while we waited for the ferry back to the mainland...

Pretty much the perfect end to my brief adventure in Fryslân!

Now to spend some time resting up for my trip home. Which I am most certainly not looking forward to.

Don't go checking your calendar just yet... because Bullet Sunday on Monday starts... now...

   
• Skuttle. The plan was to head into Amsterdam today... the reality is that I'm laying around on a big red couch trying to rest up my aching rib cage for a ten-hour flight home tomorrow morning. I tried feeling sad about it, but this has been such a great vacation that I just can't muster the pity.

   
• Heart. Did you know that the seven red shapes on the flag of Fryslân are not hearts?

They're pompeblêden... the leaves of yellow water-lily! But in blood red for some reason. Probably because that's more scary to their enemies than if they were yellow-green...

No. Yeah... red is definitely more bad-ass.

   
• Smurftastic. And so the Netherlands has Smurf-flavored gelato...

There was no ingredients statement, so I don't know if it's made with real Smurfs or not...

In any event, I'm guessing Gargamel won.

   
• Tagged. While I don't necessarily condone defacing public or private property, I have to say the graffiti in Leeuwarden was some pretty impressive stuff...

But what would you expect from Wom the Hipster-Killing Zombie?

   
• Chickens. And, just when you think that beautiful hand-painted signage is a lost art, also in Leeuwarden...

You almost don't notice that the building is crooked and all the windows are jacked up. Perhaps Wom the Hipster-Killing Zombie has a day-job?

   
• Cheese. My biggest regret in leaving the Netherlands is that I can't bring a big wheel of cheese with me. They had it for sale at The Keukenhof, but it weighs 20-30 pounds and costs around $120-$200 (depending on how aged it is and how much your wheel weighs). You do get to buy it from a wooden cow, however...

I'm guessing 30 pounds of cheese would last me about a week.

   
No more bullets. No more vacation.

I really hate having to leave the Netherlands.

Almost as much as I hate stupid "April Fools Day" pranks that get unleashed everywhere. And since there's always somebody who believes people's outrageous shit, the fools-pranking will never end.

At least Google puts some effort into their pranks each year...

The really cool thing about this year's gag is that this is something that will probably actually happen one day. It's only a matter of time before augmented reality games are this good.

The Virgin America & Nest prank was pretty funny too...

And since YouTube is where most of the pranks live, they decided to get in on the act themselves...

But my favorite? SelfieBot!

And now I guess it's time to climb in a metal tube for ten hours. Then drive in a car for two-and-a-half hours. Then go to the clinic for my smashed ribs for an hour.

Ha! April Fools! You can never get out of the walk-in clinic in under five hours!

See you across the pond.

"Tetanus is not a fun way to die."

My smashed ribs were really tender when I boarded the plane yesterday, so I bit the bullet and popped the Oxycodone I keep on-hand in case I have a kidney stone attack. This kept me (relatively) comfortable throughout the flight, for which I was grateful. By the time we landed in Seattle I was considering not going to the doctor at all, as I was feeling considerably better than when I left DutchyLand.

Until I reached up into the overhead bin to grab my bag.

Searing pain shot through my entire side, and I suddenly couldn't breathe. I'm guessing the drugs must have worn off after my ten hour adventure in the sky.

Not wanting to drive under the influence of Oxycodone, I retrieved my car for the (painful) two-and-a-half hour drive home. Where I did not pass Go. Did not collect $200. Did not even drop off my suitcase. Instead I drove directly to the walk-in clinic to see a doctor.

An hour-and-a-half plus three X-rays plus many hundreds of dollars in deductable later, I found out that nothing is broken. It would seem I merely have a hairline fracture in one of my ribs or something. It hurts like hell, but my lungs aren't punctured and I'm going to live.

At which point the doctor looks at the scrape on my head and asks when was the last time I had a tetanus shot. From what I could recall, it was in 1998 when my brother and I went to Bangkok. This caused the doctor to suck wind through his teeth and inform me that somebody who travels as much as I do should really stay current with my tetanus shots, which expire after ten years. Oops.

I was going to pass because I don't like injecting crap in my body that's not the sweet, sweet release of freshly-cooked black tar heroin, but then the doctor tells me that "tetanus is not a fun way to die." He looks really serious about it, so I get the damn shot.

Turns out the doctor is right. Wikipedia explains it thusly...

Tetanus often begins with mild spasms in the jaw muscles—also known as lockjaw or trismus (aka "lockjaw"). The spasms can also affect the chest, neck, back, abdominal muscles, and buttocks. Back muscle spasms often cause arching, called opisthotonos. Sometimes the spasms affect muscles that help with breathing, which can lead to breathing problems.
   
Prolonged muscular action causes sudden, powerful, and painful contractions of muscle groups, which is called "tetany." These episodes can cause fractures and muscle tears. Other symptoms include drooling, excessive sweating, fever, hand or foot spasms, irritability, swallowing difficulty, and uncontrolled urination or defecation. The episodes can also cause destruction of elements of the nervous system through viral cell exchange.
   
Mortality rates reported vary from 48% to 73%. In recent years, and approximately 11% of reported tetanus cases have been fatal. The highest mortality rates are in unvaccinated people, people over 60 years of age or newborns.

They even provide a nice painting of tetanus in action...

Doesn't that look like buckets of fun?

So... if you want to die a drooling, urinating, defecating, mess... as your muscles rip apart and cause bone fractures (i.e. in excruciating pain), by all means skip out on getting a Tdap shot.

As for myself? I'm hoping to keep the drooling and defecation to a minimum when I die.

Though I think we all know the odds of that are slim.

Pain is quite a motivator. Which is good, because that's the way it's supposed to work. Your body produces pain to let you know that there's something wrong and you need to do something about it.

But there should be a way to turn the pain off once you've addressed the problem. I've been to the doctor... I've learned my lesson not to get run over by a van... I've been incredibly careful not to cause further injury to my ribs. Everything I can do, I've taken care of.

So why am I still in pain? Now it just seems cruel.

And yet here we are.

Getting in and out of bed is absolute torture. Sitting down and getting up are almost as bad. Coughing is outright agony. Reaching for anything higher than 5-feet or lower than 2-feet with my right arm feels like I am being stabbed repeatedly in my chest with a machete. And, as it's been for nearly a week now, any pressure applied to my rib-cage results in a flash of searing pain. Even the act of opening my laptop and typing this blog entry results in an ouchie.

I know. I know. I know. I know!... but since I have a life, remaining 100% motionless in bed all day is not really an option.

I'd dope up on pain-killers, but work is hard enough already.

And so I suffer.

Sucks to be me.

Well...

It's hard to come up with something to blog about when the only thing going on in your life is excruciating pain.

And I have at least another week to go... probably two.

The bigger problem is that I am getting incredibly behind despite the fact that I am working all the time. I attribute this to not being able to multi-task. Usually I am working on a couple projects in my head while I'm physically working on a couple others. But now? If I try to focus on more than one thing at a time, the pain proves to be such a big distraction that I get nothing done at all. And so I put all my concentration into the task at hand so I can make some progress. No matter how small.

Still haven't heard back from the hotel whose airport shuttle nailed me. I filled out a survey they sent explaining everything, but apparently they don't bother to read the surveys. Typical. It's all "We value your opinion!" — Until you actually give it to them.

And speaking of pain... today I found out that the US Dollar was far weaker against the Euro than I had previously thought, meaning I blew right past my vacation budget. Badly. 20 Euros does not equate to $22 US dollars, it's $27.50 US dollars. Which means every time I was spending 20 Euros I was bleeding $5 more than I thought I was. That adds ups really quickly when everything in Europe is expensive to begin with.

Oh well. Credit card debt won't kill you... it just feels that way.

Much like a fractured rib.

This week I decided that I wanted to start eating healthier. Less fat. Less sugar. Definitely less salt. Not radical changes... just a step or two in a better direction.

So today I when I went to the grocery store, I looked for foods that would put me on track.

One of the more promising options was a vegetarian bean, rice, and cheese burrito that I hadn't seen before. Nowhere on the wrapper did it say "healthy" (something which guarantees shitty taste)... it just said "70% Organic Ingredients" and the Nutrition Facts looked halfway decent. Dinner is served!

Needless to say, it was crap.

Bland. Boring. Tasteless.

Turns out that once you start taking the fat, sugar, and salt out of everything... "everything" loses what makes it oh so delicious to eat. Which is a statement that will insure everybody you know will want to give you That One Recipe which is the exception to the rule. But believing that is only setting yourself up for disappointment.

So I guess my new plan is to eat the same crap I've always been eating. I'll just eat less of it.

And squeeze in an apple or two.

Maybe some baby carrots and an occasional salad.

Because if I have to eat nothing but bland, boring, tasteless shit in order to be healthy, I'd just as soon skip it.

Now to make up for my crap dinner, I'm going to have two OREO Cookies. Which is ten less than I would usually eat, so congratulations to me for healthier eating!

Ooh! Game of Thrones is on!

Don't blink... because an express edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Lucy. It would seem that Luc Besson has something new...

Now this I am looking forward to. And a sequel to The Fifth Element, of course.

   
• Super. Well okay then...

I liked Gravity well enough, but thought it dragged in spots. This would have made for a bit more exciting film... assuming General Zod would show up. Then Sandra Bullock could KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

   
• Popular. It would seem that CBS News recommends meth addiction thanks to unfortunate placement of the story below this one...

Unfortunate placement happens all the time in magazines and newspapers, but for some reason I thought that websites were immune. Oh goodie... something new to worry about. In other news... how about that meth? It's a heck of a drug.

   
• Anti-Vax. Oh look! The mumps outbreak in Central Ohio has now reached 150 cases!

A job well done! Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, you crazy bitch!

   
• Micro. But to end things on a positive note, how amazing is this?

Absolute genius. I just love innovative stuff like this.

   
And now? Winter is coming...

If you're lucky, the wound will vanish without a trace. As will your memories of it.

The alternative being that you're stuck with a scar that will haunt you for the rest of your days, coupled with phantom pains that force you to re-live the nightmare over and over again.

That's a worst-case scenario, obviously, but does heartbreak ever end any other way?

This morning I needed to dig out a software manual from storage (remember when software came with printed manuals?) and had a small blue pressboard binder fall on my head. It looked familiar, but I didn't know why.

Remember when I was lamenting that I couldn't remember my CompuServe ID Number? Well, yeah, the small blue pressboard binder had all my CompuServe stuff in it... including my ID...

Now that I see it... 70717,3107... I can't imagine how I ever forgot it. Those digits flow through my mind like my own name, because it was my name for a number of years. When I typed it just then, I didn't even need to take a second look, my fingers automatically keyed it in. Just like old times.

Somehow, I feel more complete than I did yesterday.

ALSO in the small blue pressboard binder... COMPUSERVE INFORMATION SERVICE RATES: 1984!"

A few things...

• $2.00 per hour evening rates in 1984 is $4.52 per hour in 2014.
• $10.00 per hour daytime rates in 1984 is $22.60 per hour in 2014.
• Can you imagine paying $4.52 per hour for internet? $22.60 an hour in the daytime?
• If you lived in Alaska, Compu$serve was $33.90 per hour... $31.64 per hour in Hawaii.
• In 1984 I would have been a senior in High School working 18 hours a week (evenings and weekends) at a local shop... at $3.85 an hour, or $69.30 a week before taxes. Adjusted for inflation, that's $156.60 per week before taxes.
• And I think CompuServe charged extra to access the internet through their gateway.
• My access speed at the time was probably 1,200 baud. Just to put that in perspective, a typical 2.2 MB photo would take me 4 hours and 15 minutes to download. Not that digital imagery at the time was anywhere near that for consumer photography.
• You can probably guess where every cent I had in disposable income went in 1984.

Wow.

All told, I'm currently on the internet for one thing or another at least 5 hours a day. That's minimum 35 hours a week... probably much more. Putting two hours of that in the daytime and three hours of that in the evening, in 2014 dollars I'd be spending $58.76 per day... $411.32 per week... just to get online.

And "being online" then sure ain't what it is now.

How in the hell did we ever make it out of the dark ages of technology?

I'm going to just come right out and say it... I love McDonalds.

And that's no hyperbole, it's the truth. Sure I wish that they would take the McVeggie Deluxe national so I had a burger I could eat there but, even without a veggie option, I still like the chain. I love their fries. I like their egg & cheese breakfast biscuits. I like their side salads. I like their shakes. I like their McFlurries. I like their hot caramel sundaes. I like their fruit-n-yogurt parfaits. I even like their apple pies (just not as much as when they were fried). They've got food I like that's served fast at decent prices. What's not to love?*

But heaven forbid I ever mention liking McDonalds. Even hinting at having eaten there brings out all the people who think it's their mission in life to tell people what they can and cannot like...

        "McDONALD'S IS TOXIC GARBAGE! I WOULDN'T FEED THEIR 'FOOD' TO MY DOG!"

        "McDONALD'S IS DESTROYING THE PLANET! WHEN YOU EAT THERE, YOU'RE HELPING THEM!"

        "ARE YOU STUPID? WHY NOT JUST EAT RAT POISON IF YOU'RE INTENT ON BEING SO UNHEALTHY?"

        "WHAT KIND OF IDIOT RUINS THEIR BODY WITH FAT, SUGAR, AND CHEMICALS BY EATING AT McDONALDS?"

        "McDONALD'S TARGETS CHILDREN FOR UNHEALTHY EATING HABITS WITH TOYS!"

        "SO GROSS! THEIR CRAP ISN'T EVEN REAL FOOD!"

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Well, whatever. I honestly don't give a fuck. You don't like it? DON'T EAT THERE! You think it's unhealthy? DON'T EAT THERE! You have a problem with the food? DON'T EAT THERE! As for me? There's nothing wrong with an occasional bag of fries and a chocolate shake at McDonalds... AND I enjoy it, so just leave me the hell alone. I mean, thanks, but I am fully aware of the nutritional content (or lack thereof) of what I'm eating.

And then today a McDonalds post pops up in my Facebook feed.

The number of hateful comments shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.

For reasons completely unknown, there are people who hate McDonald's so much that they spend their valuable time ripping McDonald's to shit IN FACEBOOK COMMENTS! Which probably ranks right up there with "screaming into a pillow" when it comes to effectiveness, but whatever. At least when people feel the need to rip into me personally for my food choices, they think they're helping me out (or something) so they can feel good about doing me a solid. What possible benefit is there to leaving nasty comments for McDonalds on Facebook? Could there be a bigger waste of time?

Probably.

Like blogging about it, I suppose.

* Well, okay, I DON'T love McDonald's clown figurehead, Ronald McDonald, who is terrifying...

Last night I decided to stop taking the pain-killers I've been on since getting run down in France. I don't like the way drugs mess with my head, and this time it was more debilitating than usual for some reason. I wasn't just having trouble concentrating at work... I was having trouble concentrating while watching television, and that just isn't done.

The pain in my ribs is breathtaking, as expected.

But it's the pain in the arm where I got my tetanus shot that really took me by surprise. My arm aches. Every movement feels like somebody just punched me. Hard. I Googled my pain only to discover that, yeah, this is totally normal. Tetanus shots are brutal. So now I am questioning this foolish decision to live life drug-free, as I am a real weenie when it comes to pain.

I'm also questioning getting a tetanus shot, but that ship has sailed.

And then there's this...

Have a good night!

Over the past couple days, I've gone through every website I can think of so I can change my passwords. Not something I planned on doing, but the fucking "Heartbleed Bug" necessitated it.

This has been the single most frustrating and anger-inducing experience I've had in years. I have spent more time screaming at my computer in two days than I have in all previous days since the dawn of computing. It would be nice if I could lay the blame for my rage on a single doorstep, but the reason this has been such a horrible ordeal is that just about everybody is responsible...

WEBSITES

Too many websites make it too fucking difficult to change your password. Not only because they've hidden the option to make the change, but because they have absurdly stupid requirements as to what is acceptable for a password...

      SORRY! Password must not be similar to your old password!

      SORRY! Password must have at least one capital letter!

      SORRY! Password must contain at least one number!

      SORRY! Password must contain at least one non-alphanumeric character!

      SORRY! Password must not contain two of the same characters in a row!

      SORRY! Password must be a minimum of fifty-six characters in length!

The list goes on and on, and it drives me insane. It's MY password. If somebody guesses it because I don't have a number in it, that's MY fucking problem. All your efforts to force me into some absurdly random string of characters only ensures that I will never be able to remember it for those times I am forced to enter it by hand.

But here's the even worse part. Some websites force you to create some abstract password you'll never remember... THEN NOT ALLOW APPLE'S SAFARI BROWSER TO REMEMBER IT FOR YOU! Every time Safari pops up with a note that says "Safari cannot remember this password because the website has requested it not be stored" I want to put my fist through the screen and burn down the company who would make such a stupid fucking decision.

And don't get me started on websites which don't allow you to paste a password from your clipboard, but instead require that it be typed in manually. That should be punishable by death.

APPLE

But it gets better.

Apple doesn't allow the stored password in Safari to be applied to other Apple apps! It goes something like this: 1) Go to change my AppleID password. 2) Safari suggests a randomly generated password that you'll never remember. 3) Safari saves your new AppleID password, then kindly asks if you want to apply the password for other Apple Services like iMessage, iCloud, and Facetime... which is so nice! 4) You go to buy a new song in the iTunes Store and APPLE FUCKING ASKS YOU FOR YOUR APPLEID PASSWORD! AND, YOU GUESSED IT, THE ONLY WAY TO ENTER THE PASSWORD INTO ITUNES IS TO TYPE IT IN MANUALLY! And since you can't fucking remember something like "RJ%P-TK3sO-#cD9yp*o-Ibn" you have to switch to Safari, go to the password manageer, locate your AppleID, enter your login password, copy the AppleID password, go back to iTunes, paste the password... then hope that you don't have to copy something else to the clipboard before iTunes asks for the password again since it asks for your password every five minutes (especially if you use iTunes Match, it would seem).

This is MIND-BOGGLINGLY FUCKING STUPID, APPLE! You have to allow iTunes to have access to your AppleID password when a user is logged in. Otherwise, people aren't going to use complex passwords. Which means that when it comes to people choosing shitty, easily-cracked passwords... YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!

UPDATE: BWAH HA HA HAAAA! How fucking embarrassing. I get to work expecting my work computer will have synced my keychain with all the changed passwords... NOPE! I had to enter everything all over again! In order to get the NEW passwords to sync, I have to disable iCloud Keychain Syncing... THEN REACTIVATE iCLOUD KEYCHAIN SYNCING. Apple: It Just Works!

UPDATE UPDATE: And, my iPhone required me to log back into all my Apple apps... like "Find My Friends" because it is ALSO too fucking stupid to use the damn keychain with my AppleID and password THAT IT IS ALREADY SYNCING TO! What a fucking joke. I thought that with iCloud, Apple would FINALLY get syncing done right since they botched it so badly in .Mac and MobileMe... NOPE! Still a horrendous pile of shit. And don't get me started how every time I do fucking ANYTHING with my password on my iPhone, it broadcasts an announcement to all my other Apple devices that it's using FaceTime now... AS IT HAS BEEN SINCE FACETIME WAS AVAILABLE!! Heaven only knows how many years it will be until Apple finally gets this crap all figured out. At this rate, probably never.

1PASSWORD

Long before Apple built a password manager into Safari, I was already using a nifty password managing app called 1Password by AgileBits. I've had a few minor problems with it over the years but, for the most part, it's a terrific piece of software. It does a greatjob of creating, storing, managing, and filling-in all kinds of passwords, credit cards, bank accounts, identities, encrypted notes, and such.

When I started changing all my passwords, I discovered that the version of 1Password I'm using was outdated, and I needed to upgrade to version 4. Well, they don't offer an upgrade, so you have to purchase an all-new copy... but it was on sale for half-price ($24.99) thanks to the Heartbleed bug, so I just went ahead and paid for the shit.

Only to have one of the most frustrating upgrade experiences ever. Seriously... upgrading from 1Password v3 to v4 was worse than getting punched in the fucking face.

First of all, they warn you to sync your Safari Plugin data with your main data store. This is done by creating a new fake login, which they don't really explain how to do. Eventually I just went to a shopping site and created a real login so I could force 1Password to add it to my main data store and be sure everything was synced. But it never worked. Each time I'd create a login, I'd go to the main 1Password app, but the login never showed up. After 20 minutes of this stupid crap, I finally didn't give a fuck, and just uninstalled the 1Password Safari Plugin. Who knows what data I lost.

Then it came time to install the v4 Safari Plugin. I couldn't find a separate link on their download page, so I Googled their site to find it. But after installing the plugin found at the link, Safari reported it was v3. So I uninstalled again and Googled for instructions, only to find that I could choose "Install Browser Extensions" from the 1Password app. Well that's easy, right?

Not so much. I then spent a half hour trying to get it to install. First of all, it kept installing version 3.9.20 even though I was double-clicking on the version 4 plugin. Don't ask me why. I had to reboot my MacBook before it would finally install the new version. But then the real battle began.

The problem being that 1Password must be running for the Safari install to work, but it keeps quitting before the install happens. It was a game of Catch-22 over and over and over again...

Start 1Password, press "Try again," 1Password quits. Repeat. TIMES INFINITY!

Even a complete re-install didn't work. Eventually I had to uninstall the entire app plus its support files... then start all over again with a backup data store synced on DropBox. What a fucking joke. I just paid $25 to waste nearly and hour of my precious time... for an upgrade. Thanks, AgileBits!

P.S. Why in the hell does AgileBits feel the need to install 1Password 4 inside of a FOLDER? Especially when the app is the ONLY item in the fucking folder. I'm guessing it has to do with problems writing to the Apps folder if the old 1Password is in place... but wouldn't a better solution be to rename the app with the new version number added?

And now, after TWO DAYS wasted, I finally have most all my passwords changed. Whether or not I'll actually be able to retrieve them to log in anywhere remains to be seen.

Teletubbies say "Eh oh!"

Go Go Gadget Web Browser... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Penny. NEW CHRIS WARE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES!

You. Are. Welcome!

Nobody does what Chris Ware does. And why would they? Everything he creates is perfect.

   
• Shift? Bwah ha! This has to be one of Apple's biggest embarrassments. I frickin' HATE that I can never tell if my shift/shift-lock is on or not in iOS...

So now there's a new website in case you need a reminder! Sweet!

   
• Mail. Okay. Okay. I've used a lot of email programs. A lot. And while the features are tweaked from app to app, they all pretty much work the same way once you get down to brass tacks... no matter how different they look. Enter Unibox. Now THIS isn't just a different approach to email... it's different different. The biggest change? No inbox. There's a filter for your contacts, any attachments you've received, and that's it...

For my personal email, where I receive a cornucopia of crap every day, I prefer the "inbox approach." But for my work email? Where everything revolves around people? This has proven nothing short of revolutionary. Once I got used to it, I was amazed at how much of a timesaver this unique approach to email has been. If you're in a similar email situation and have a Mac... Unibox gets my highest recommendation.

   
• Flight. Every minute of this video is gold...

I don't know a better way to wrap up my Sunday than that.

   
• Good. Well, okay... maybe with this commercial from a Thai life insurance company...

Pretty much sums up why I love Thailand.

   
And... hope your weekend was a good one!

"Diane, I'm holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies..."
— Agent DaleCooper

I started re-watching Twin Peaks last Tuesday on the 24th anniversary of its 1990 debut (Netflix has it available for streaming, which is easier than pulling my DVDs off the shelf). After finishing the final episode of the first season while working tonight, I was surprised to see how well the show holds up. Yeah, it has some outrageous and over-the-top moments... but they were outrageous and over-the-top when they first aired in 1990.

Back when the whole world was asking "Who killed Laura Palmer?"

It remains one of my all-time favorite series.

Shows so rarely get this... interesting... any more. Or beautiful to look at.

Yes, it completely tanked in Season Two, but that hasn't made me want a follow-up series any less. Twin Peaks ended with the mother of all cliffhangers.

I think the world is ready.

I had been doing so well.

Then today I twisted wrong, and searing pain ripped through my ribcage so intensely that I thought I was going to pass out. It died out after a couple hours, but now I'm more than a little worried that I've done something to set back the healing process.

Guess there's just no easy recovery from getting hit by a car.

And on that note...

Ever since getting a tetanus shot, I've been a little on edge.

Sometimes when I'm chewing it will feel like my jaw is tightening up, and I start to wonder if the vaccine didn't work and I've contracted lockjaw. Then that's about all I can think about for hours.

But the bigger issue is the vaccine itself. From Wikipedia...

Tetanus vaccine is a vaccine composed of deactivated tetanus toxins. This vaccine is immunogenic but not pathogenic and is used to prevent an individual from contracting tetanus.

And that's not all...

The type of vaccination for this disease is called artificial active immunity. This type of immunity is generated when a dead or weakened version of the disease enters the body causing an immune response which includes the production of antibodies. This is beneficial to the body because this means that if the disease is ever introduced into the body, the immune system will recognize the antigen and produce antibodies more rapidly.

What if they accidentally shot me up with LIVE tetanus toxins instead of deactivated ones? That wouldn't be a good thing, now would it? This would certainly explain why my jaw keeps feeling like it's tightening up!

If you don't hear from me again, I'm probably dead.

After writhing in agony for hours.

For the first time... ever(?)... I had to take down a blog post.

Yesterday I said "If you don't hear from me again, I'm probably dead. After writhing in agony for hours." Right after posting that, I noticed there was a software update for my blog, so I installed it. After a few minutes I was all updated and good to go.

Until I sat down to write today's entry and noticed that the entry editor is... errr... "missing" for lack of a better word...

Uhhh... where do I type?

Well that's darn inconvenient! And since I am flying out early, early tomorrow morning it's not like I can fix it now.

So it's probably best that I take down yesterday's post telling people that if they don't hear from me I'm probably dead.

Now wouldn't it be ironic if I died right after removing it?

Almost as ironic as if my blog stays permanently dead and I never get to post this entry about my blog being temporarily dead.

San Francisco is one of the easiest gigs I have because it's only a two-hour flight out of Seattle. Adding in a drive to the airport, wait time, flight time to Seattle, and layover time... and I can get to The City by The Bay in under 6 hours. This is nice, because if I have an afternoon meeting I can fly down that morning instead of the day before. Heck, I could even fly back same-day if I wanted to!

In theory, it all sounds great when I'm booking my flights, as I'd really rather spend a night in my own bed than a hotel room.

Until the alarm goes off at 3:30am and I am forced to climb out of my own bed so I can get ready for my drive to the airport.

At which point it completely sucks, and I curse myself for being so stupid as to schedule such an early flight.

Which is why I just spent the last hour and a chunk of change-fee money to reschedule my next four flights. But it's all worth it, because I am definitely getting too old for this shit. 3:30am wake-ups are a game for the young, dammit.

So if science wants to go ahead and figure out the whole Star Trek teleportation thing, I'd really appreciate it.

In the meanwhile, here I am in San Francisco again. Guess I'd better get to work.

My lunch routine on a full work-day in San Francisco has been the same for years...

• Taxi to the Fisherman's Wharf.

• Johnny Rockets (Streamliner Burger, no grilled onions, no mustard, add ketchup and mayo).

• Crazy Shirts (T-shirt shop).

• The Pier 39 Sea Lions.

• Trish's Mini Donuts.

• Hard Rock Cafe (to check out any new pins).

• Street Car back to work downtown.

   
It's always the exact same thing.

Which is why I appreciate it when something happens to break up the routine. This time it was when I was walking past a guy buying a hotdog at a small food shack called the Doggie Diner...

After he picked up his food, he asked where their bathroom was.

I'm sure the order-taker told him there were public restrooms at Pier 39. I would have told him to use the garbage can out front.

And that's a wrap on my lunch hour.

One of the things R.W. and I set out to do when we created THRICE Fiction was to make sure it was available in a variety of formats so people could read it however they wanted. Want to read a printed magazine? You can order a copy. Want to view it as a PDF? It's there. Want to read it on an eBook reader? We got that. Have a Kindle? We got that too. We've had all of it since Day One, and all the digital editions can be downloaded for FREE.

Like our brand new issue released today (featuring a stunning cover by Chris Walton)...

And we're not stopping there.

Our next outlet for THRICE will be an online edition. We want for people to be able to read every issue right on the THRICE Fiction website. There are many, many solutions for doing this, and I've looked at dozens of them. You can see a sample of one solution (from JooMag) here...

If you expand it to full-screen and have a decent-resolution display, it's pretty nice. I don't know if this is the route we'll take, but we'll get it figured out eventually.

Anyway...

Back to THRICE Fiction No. 10! For a look at the first half of the art included in this issue, click onward to an extended entry...

Put on your Easter bonnet... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Overtime And... instead of being able to kick-back and relax tomorrow before flying home, I now have to work in the morning. So... this is going to be a really quick list.

   
• Yoga. The best thing you've seen all week...

There's more on Nic and Pancho's YouTube Channel.

   
• Ten. Did I mention that the latest issue of THRICE Fiction has been released and you can download a copy for FREE?!? Well, it's all true! Click here to grab a copy...

And, if you like that, there's nine other issues to explore...

   
• Wabbit. While stopping at the Jelly Belly Factory yesterday, I noticed that they add ears to Mr. Jelly Belly for Springtime...

Happy Easter, everybody!

   
And now... sleep.

Wake.

Work.

Presentation.

Fortune Cookies.

Lunch.

Tattoo...

Drinks.

Airport.

Good Bye.

Boarding.

Flight.

Warm Cookies...

Land.

Layover.

Flight.

Lawn Sprinklers.

Drive.

Home...

End.

Time for a YouTube time-suck!

Good luck getting out alive.

   
I. Am. So. Old...

"I feel bad for people in the 90's, I really do."

   
Reason No. 765,236 why I love Betty White...

Nice to know that Larry King is still alive... and as creepy as ever.

   
And now for something completely different...

You're welcome!

   
Lastly, one of many lists telling you what to see before you die (even if they put Santorini in Italy and don't know how to pronounce "buttes"...

I've barely been to a third of them...

1. Tianzi Mountains, China
2. ✓ Santorini, Greece
3. Machu Pichu, Peru
4. The Azores
5. ✓ The Great Wall, China
6. Petra, Jordan
7. Bagan, Burma
8. Antelope Canyon, Arizona
9. ✓ Ayers Rock, Australia
10. Tanah Lot, Indonesia
11. Meteora, Greece
12. Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
13. Preikestolen, Norway
14. Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
15. The Twelve Apostles, Australia
16. Angel Falls, Venezuela
17. Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
18. ✓ Positano, Italy
19. ✓ Angkor Wat, Cambodia
20. The Wave, Arizona
21. ✓ The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
22. The Maldives
23. Socotra, Yemen
24. ✓ Monument Valley, Utah
25. ✓ Phi Phi Islands, Thailand

Guess I'd better pack a suitcase...

When it comes to cashing in airline miles and hotel points for vacation, I've gotten pretty good at figuring out how to get the best value for my... err... dollar? Or whatever.

My routine consists of going down a list of destinations I'd like to visit, seeing how many miles it takes to get me there... how many points it takes to stay there... followed by crying because it's more than I can afford. Then down to the next location on the list. Eventually I work my way down to something I can afford and, voilà!, vacation is served.

But what do you do when you've already scratched off all the affordable destinations?

Turns out points and miles ain't what they used to be.

And so... money.

It doesn't matter how much you have banked, it takes money now.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of accumulating all those miles and points over the years, but nothing good seems to last forever. In this case it didn't even last a decade. The upshot being that I'll be burning my miles and points as fast as I can before their value drops even further. Because if things keep going like they are now, they'll be worthless within five years.

So much for my planned retirement travel.

Oh well. The world could blow up before I make it to retirement anyway.

YOLO!

Well, today didn't go as planned.

Not that this is in any way surprising.

In other news?

Crap.

Another trip over the mountains.

A really pretty trip this time.

I dare say Summer might very well be on the way...

And here we are again... this time with a look at the art appearing in the second half of THRICE Fiction Issue No. 10, you might want to go read Part One from last Saturday first (if you haven't already).

Oh, and if you haven't downloaded your FREE copy of our latest issue, that should be your first stop!

Alright? All right!

Last week when discussing the art from the first half of the book, I talked a little bit about the formats we offer for FREE downloads... and how we're wanting to expand into others. Here's the breakdown average from December's issue...

• PDF — 94%
• eBook — 4%
• Print — 1.5%
• Kindle — .5%

Anybody looking at this breakdown would say "Wow... why do you even bother with anything but PDF?"

The answer is because our "circulation" was around 2850 last issue and, as always when we release a new issue, it has climbed a bit. As of yesterday, we topped 3200. Which means 4% translates into 130 people who prefer to read THRICE via eBook. That's worth the 90 minutes it takes for me to create it. The Kindle version is automatically created from the eBook, so now we're up to around 150 people.

The print edition is just a higher resolution version of the PDF that takes 2 minutes to generate and 5 to upload to MagCloud. For the 30-50 people who want to have THRICE in print (including yours truly), I'll spend the seven minutes to make it happen.

And if we can expand our readership by adding an online version... an iPad version... or whatever else we can think of? We're going to do that too. Because as our downloads continue to blast past our every expectation, even small percentages are going to account for more people than R.W. and I ever dreamed would be reading in the first place. We're happy... nay, thrilled... to provide THRICE in whatever format people want to have it.

So look for our "Cerebral Implant" edition, coming 2025.

And now... back to the artwork for THRICE Fiction No. 10, which you can read about in an extended edition...

Finish up all those boiled eggs leftover from last weekend... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Bricked. If you are an iPhone user upgrading your iOS to version 7.1.1, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR PHONE IS BACKED UP FIRST! I attempted to update my iPhone and ended up getting it completely bricked. The only way I could make it useable again was to plug it into my MacBook and use iTunes to manually update it. Luckily, my phone had backed up to iCloud that morning, or I would have lost a lot of photos. Usually, I don't even think about backups because I've never had any update problems, but I guess there's a first time for everything.

   
• Quick. The recent run of absolutely brilliant Marvel Comics movie adaptations has been nothing short of miraculous. Everything Marvel Studios touches... from Iron-Man to Captain America to Thor to Avengers has been amazing. But we haven't been so lucky with Marvel movies from other studios. In particular, Bryan Singer's horrendously shitty X-Men films over at 20th Century Fox. The first three were gut-wrenchingly bad. The first Wolverine spin-off was tragic. But then the pendulum swung in the other direction. Matthew Vaughn gave us the excellent X-Men: First Class, then James Mangold unleashed a terrific sequel with The Wolverine. My hopes for the X-Universe were restored. UNTIL 20th CENTURY FOX GAVE IT BACK TO BRYAN SINGER! I mean, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?!? And, naturally, once we started seeing photos, it looked like Singer had once again spread his butt-cheeks and plopped a load of crap on the franchise. One of my biggest disappointments was his shitty interpretation of the character Quicksilver...

The ugly hair, freaky glasses, and idiotic belt of clunky gadgets just had to be a joke, right? And what's with that stupid jacket? But, no, it wasn't a joke. Subsequent photos confirmed the hideous outfit... but I was relieved to see the belt gone and the hair looking marginally better...

At least until a fucking hamburger commercial, of all things, showed the character in full lighting...

Holy shit. I MEAN, HOLY SHIT! Somebody dressing up for ComicCon does a better job than this embarrassment! But it's Bryan Singer. After the colossal dump he took on Superman Returns, nothing surprises me. This is what we expect.

But the good news is that Marvel Studios owns the right to The Avengers, of which Quicksilver is a part. Sure, they can't have him be a mutant, because 20th Century Fox gets all that with their X-Men license... but, hey, JOSS WHEDON WILL AT LEAST DO THE CHARACTER RIGHT IN AVENGERS 2!

Right?

And then I see this...

Okay. I admit it's a vast, vast improvement over the shitty X-Men version... but this is the best they could do? A nonsensical shirt with an ugly design and pants from some kind of Members Only 80's collection. Really? WHY? LORD, WHY?!?

   
• Smack. Advice as true then as it is now... DON'T BE A GUM-SMACKING WHORE, PEOPLE!

For more timeless dating advice, here's a link for you.

   
• Ten. And so Ronald McDonald got a makeover to make him less creepy. Here's the old Ronald....

And here's the new...

FAIL! If anything, the attempt to fashion-forward a fucking clown only makes the scary asshole even creepier. If this thing were to come walking towards me I would lose my shit.

   
• Shhhh! I've watched this at least a half-dozen times. You couldn't hope for a better end to Bullet Sunday...

   
And... have a good week, everybody!

"It's unbelievable."
"It's more than that. It's perfect."

Today is the 25th anniversary of my most favorite movie ever made, Field of Dreams. I've seen it dozens of times and love it more with each new viewing. In the past I've describe the film as "flawless" and, after having watched it again tonight, still feel that to be true...

The filmmakers somehow managed to pull together the perfect cast (including James Earl Jones, a long-time favorite) for a story that really shouldn't translate to the screen very well. So much of the plot revolves around things so fantastical, unbelievable, or just plain nuts that reenacting them in real life seemed like a ticket to disaster. But Kevin Costner was able to ground his character so fully into his world that it just didn't matter. His every reaction to the bizarre things going on around him made you believe there was nothing bizarre about it. He believes it, so you do too.

Spoilers, obviously...

One of my favorite things about the film is that nothing is explained. Absolutely no effort is put into explaining how any of the crazy events are transpiring because the only thing that matters is why they are happening... which results in one of the best movie endings ever.

And compelled me to visit the Field of Dreams movie site in Iowa.

Perhaps a movie will come along in the next 25 years that will knock Field of Dreams off the top spot in my list of favorite films. But somehow I doubt it. It's pretty hard to do better than perfect.

   
And now? A bit of trivia...

The little girl who played Karen Kinsella was named Gaby Hoffmann...

Who grew up to play Ruby Jetson in the Veronica Mars movie...

Tuesday is the toughest day of the week for me. If anything is going to go wrong, today is the day.

In this case, it was having a pile of work left over from Monday while I'm having to reschedule three flights. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the heinous change-fees that airlines like to charge now. I had to pay anywhere from $125 to $200... plus the change in airfare. Which always seems to increase, by the way. Kind of crazy how having your plans change can be so absurdly costly.

Just one more reason I frickin' loathe to fly any more. Even if you manage to get a decent fare, you still end up screwed if something comes up. And when you fly dozens of times a year, stuff is gonna come up.

Oh well.

It's not like I need to pay rent. Or eat. Or buy toilet paper.

Good thing I gave up taking a shit for Lent.

I once dated a girl who introduced me to the word "serendipity."

By using it repeatedly.

Absolutely everything was "serendipity" to her. Come across an empty parking space in a crowded lot? Serendipity. Find something you were needing to buy on sale? Serendipity. The rain stops just before you walk out the door? Serendipity. Nab the last bottle of your favorite fabric softener off the shelf? Serendipity. Your mother calls just before your boyfriend is making his move? Serendipity.

We didn't date for very long, but I really ended up hating that word. Her constant over-use ruined it for me.

ser·en·dip·i·ty (/serənˈdipitē/)
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
"a fortunate stroke of serendipity"

But a while back I saw a really good commercial for Subaru that had me revisiting the word again...

Find your soulmate when you pick up a woman who ran out of gas?

Now that's serendipity.

I love a really good commercial.

Almost as much as a loathe a really bad one.

Today it reached 84° F

Tomorrow it's supposed to hit 86° F

And so I'm guessing this means Spring is over. Which is upsetting since it never really started until three weeks ago. So much for my favorite season.

As if that weren't horrible enough, THIS pretty much sums up my day...

The good news is that not all the links I needed were broken.

Most of them were just linking to the wrong page.

I'm not sure whether this is the case of us spending too many tax dollars... or too little. But it would be nice if Secretary of State John Kerry could get his shit fixed.

Why does that lady in the subway give Thor the wrong directions to Greenwich in his The Dark World movie?

The bullshit "three stops from Charing Cross Station" line bothered me when I first saw the film... and it really bothers me whenever I re-watch it on video. Like tonight. I can only imagine how badly it pisses off a Londoner. I mean, sure, it would have sucked to say "YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE, GOD OF THUNDER! YOU NEED TO TAKE THE DOCKLANDS LIGHT RAIL BY SWITCHING TO THE JUBILEE LINE!" or whatever (I think that's how I got there when I went). But wouldn't that be better than forever having the distinction of being known as a writer who didn't bother to take two minutes to look at a frickin' London tube map?

Don't make Thor angry. You won't like him when he's angry.

And angry is what he would be if he were to find out that he was lied to about how to get to Greenwich.

Next up? Where was Captain Britain when London was being torn to shit by the Dark Elves?

"Master, are you a god?" "No," he replied. "Are you a reincarnation of god?" "No," he replied."Are you a wizard, then?" "No." "Well, are you a man?" "No." "So what are you?" The priest asked. Buddha simply replied: "I am awake." — A very loose translation from the Dona Sutta.

And yet, regardless of how much work I have to get through, Saturdays at least feel like they should somehow be special. This is probably a remnant of my childhood where I didn't have to go to school and didn't have to worry about going to school the next morning (as with Sunday).

With that in mind, anything that puts a wrench in my Saturday deals double damage. Or rather, I get doubly upset about crap when it happens on a Saturday.

And today it's because of this ignorant piece of shit, Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court...

And the story of his reprehensible behavior here: Alabama’s Chief Justice: Buddha didn’t create us so First Amendment only protects Christians.

I don't give a flying fuck if somebody wants to be a repugnant religious bigot and say stupid shit... zero fucks do I give... that's freedom of speech, even for dumbass Roy Moore. But if you're going to be an intolerant piece of shit, is it really too much to ask that you at least not be so grossly uninformed? You're a Chief Justice, for Christ's sake.

Buddha never claimed to "make" anybody. Nobody who practices Buddhism believes that Buddha "made" anybody. The Buddha was a teacher. A highly respected and revered teacher, but a teacher.

So when some redneck fringe Christian dumbfuck like Chief Justice Moore elevates Buddha to God, it's painfully obvious he has no fucking clue what he's talking about. Which obviously extends to his knowledge of The Bible, Christianity, The Constitution of the United States of America, US Law, State Law, the Treaty of Tripoli, and US History as a whole.

Yet at one point he was considering a run for the US Presidency.

And why not? People were stupid enough to elect this ignorant asshole into a State Supreme Court judge.

As with most positions of power in this country, smarts ain't required, yo.

I am so ready for Saturday to be over now.

Use the fourth, you... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Forced. It's Star Wars Day! "May the Fourth" be with you!

   
• Neutral. I have written about the importance of net neutrality many, many times (the latest is here), and it still completely boggles my mind how people just don't seem to care. The FCC, whose job it should be to ensure a free and open internet took a huge crap all over the American people when FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler came out in support of abandoning true net neutrality. This is a horrendous fucking blow to the internet, and I am disgusted to my very core that President Obama, WHO CONSISTENTLY PROMISED TO DEFEND NET NEUTRALITY DURING HIS CAMPAIGN, remains silent on the matter. When are these politician assholes going to remember that THEY FUCKING WORK FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? Oh... that would be never. Because companies with deep pockets are throwing a fuck-ton of money at them to get what they want. Democrats, Republicans, or whatever... our politicians work for lobbyists and corporate greed, not US citizens, and anybody who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. So, yeah... go ahead and buy into the artificial wall of hate created to divide and distract everybody... that's exactly what the people who really control this country want. In the meanwhile, say goodbye to the internet as we know it.

   
• Magic. I don't know if this can be considered cruel or not... but dogs being fooled by close-up magic is sure funny...

The reactions are priceless. I'm kinda amazed at how many of the dogs grasp the effects of gravity enough to think the treat must have fallen to the floor. Here's part two.

   
• Burrito. BECAUSE I JUST CAN'T HELP MYSELF!"

Videos like this are what the internet was made for.

   
• Stacked. So... apparently competitive cup-stacking is a thing...

Kind of a really cool thing. A search on YouTube turns up all kinds of fascinating cup-foolery.

   
Now, if you'll excuse me, if I don't have those units in the south range repaired be midday, there'll be hell to pay!

The work assignment was not very glamorous, but it did include an opportunity to visit a new Hard Rock property, so I jumped at the chance to travel to Palm Springs.

I haven't been to the so-called "Golf Capital of the World" in years, but it's all seems pretty much the same. The only things to do here are eat, shop, golf, and hang out by the pool. Which would bore the crap out of me if I didn't have work going on... and explains why I get here so rarely. One day I need to come here with a group of friends, because something tells me that is the best way to experience the city.

Anyway...

Yesterday I flew into PSP on a quick 2-hour hop from Seattle. The airport here is one of my favorites because it features a terrific open courtyard in the middle...

PSP Map Courtesy of... GOOGLE MAPS!

It's also small, which makes it easy to get in and out of. Always a plus.

Yesterday I didn't have any work, so I spent my afternoon eating. I started at Hamburger Mary's which has a decent Veggie Burger. And Godzilla vs. Mothra playing on the television...

The restaurant is billed as "gay-themed and LGBT-friendly"... but, to me, it's just a funky place to eat with good food...

For dessert? GREAT SHAKES! The only milkshake joint I know that hangs a mini-cupcake on the super-straw...

I turned in around 8:00 last night because I had a very early wake-up this morning. And I wanted to catch up on television.

Which brings us to today...

Because of work, I ended up having a very late lunch. So when it came time for dinner, I wasn't very hungry. The plan was to go out and have a margarita and chips to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, then turn in early.

I ended up having four.

Then five...

Then a burrito...

Then fried ice cream...

Cinco margaritas on Cinco de Mayo plus Way Too Much Food. What could possibly go wrong?

My hotel uses touch-cards for room entry. Since I my key was in my back pocket, I had the brilliant idea of touching my butt to the door to unlock. Since the lock-pad is higher up than my ass I had to jump up into it. Couldn't get it to work after three tries, so I decided to give up. Only to realize my room key was in my FRONT pocket all along. I seriously debated whether or not I should try grinding into the door to try to open it. Ultimately I figured that the people monitoring the security cameras already had enough fun for the night and decided against it.

Who says that alcohol dulls your thinking! Not me!

I did not set my expectations very high for The Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs. Even though it was a HR Corporate project, the website gave it the feel of a crappy quick-and-dirty "conversion property" like Tulsa and Albuquerque. Those lazy hotels where they just slap a few pieces of rock memorabilia on the walls, change a few door-handles to be guitar-shaped, hang a logo above the door, and call it a Hard Rock...

Nope, despite outside appearances, the Palm Springs hotel was actually really well done. Much more than just a coat of paint and some superficial decorations. The lobby was beautifully themed with rock instrument sculptures, a lot of music-themed details, and a surprising amount of memorabilia. The design is beautifully eclectic and authentic Hard Rock, featuring a full lobby bar, a restaurant, and a merch shop... all really well done.

The reception desk...

The very nice bar in the lobby area...

Lobby staircase and FUN...

Speaker sculpture...

Sessions restaurant...

Memorabilia case at the entrance...

But the biggest surprise? They actually put some effort into theming the rooms! Many times they don't even bother with a hotel conversion, but it looks as thought they gutted everything and made it be Hard Rock style...

The only disappointment in the conversion was the pool area. Not only is the pool tiny, there was no effort to make it look very Hard Rock. They half-heartedly spray-painted a few Banksy-inspired murals on a couple walls and that's about it...

   
Overall a pleasant surprise. This is a great hotel... and a great addition to the Hard Rock family. The staff was terrific. Everything is clean and impeccably-maintained. The location is fantastic, just one block off Palm Canyon Drive downtown. Even the pricing seems comparable with similarly-equipped hotels in the area (i.e. a bit expensive). I enjoyed my stay very much.

Except...

In keeping with the growing trend of screwing your guests, of course there's a fucking "resort fee" you have to pay at checkout. The Hard Rock Palm Springs charges $30 per day, which is definitely on the high-side. It includes the usual... local calls nobody will ever make because they have fucking mobile phones and don't know anybody local... access to the gym which nobody will bother with because they're on vacation... access to the pool, which you've been getting free at every hotel since the dawn of time... internet access, which should be included in the room cost anyway... basically, bullshit amenities that are valued a hell of a lot less the $30 a day. I'd give you a complete breakdown of what it includes but, of course, a complete breakdown cannot be found on the hotel website because they want to camouflage this fucking bullshit charge as much as possible. I dunno. Maybe it also includes parking, which helps justify the cost IF you have a car... but $30 a day still seems fucking insane.

I only stayed for one day and didn't have a car, but I did get a ride to the airport and use the internet, so I'm trying not to be sore about paying $30 for nothing (seriously, if you still charge for internet, you're a fucking nickel-and-diming douchebag of a hotel). I could not stay here longer than two days without feeling as though I were being seriously ripped off. I would not.

But this is how it works now. Hotels want to grab people with cheap-ass room rates on the discount sites, but don't actually want to give their customers a discount. Hence the "resort fee" bullshit.

Oh well.

If you're looking for a nice place to stay and don't mind being violated with a mandatory fee for shit you won't use, by all means give the Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs a look.

And I've always liked flying through SFO before. It's great... until you have to change terminals.

Thanks to flights being late, my connection was NOT two doors down... but instead across the entire airport at the International Terminal. Which is fine. I've got the time. Kinda. EXCEPT YOU HAVE TO EXIT FRACKIN' TERMINAL SECURITY TO GET TO ANY OTHER TERMINAL! LIKE THIS IS THE FRACKIN' 1950's WHEN YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH AN INQUISITION TO GET THROUGH SECURITY.

But that's not all. There's a Japanese toy exhibit in Terminal 3 that ends TODAY! (Thanks to James for the heads-up). So now, because we're late AND I HAVE TO GO THROUGH SECURITY TWICE... I may very well miss my flight. But I just don't care.

So I rush through the toys, run my ass off to get to the International A Terminal Security, then get to the gate as they're boarding.

This would have been so easy in most other airports where exiting Security is not required to change terminals. But not here. YOU SUCK ASS, SFO!!!

Except... Toys! How cool is that?

Very cool indeed. Good Bye, Kitty.

My drive to work is only five minutes long.

Coming and going each day I see more ridiculous crap on the road than should be possible in such a short commute... and yet, every day I am reminded that nothing is "impossible." People wandering all over the road because they're busy talking on mobile phones. People driving off the road because they're texting. People driving at insane speeds for a residential area. People driving half the speed limit and not giving a shit that they're backing up traffic. It never ends.

And today I saw a woman KNITTING WHILE DRIVING.

I shit you not.

She was all "knit one, pearl two" with her hands and somehow steering using her forearms pressed against the wheel.

I need to get a mountable video camera and start a YouTube channel.

For the longest time I've been dismissive of those who say that Apple has gone downhill since Steve Jobs left us (praise be unto His name). As a Certified Apple Whore, I pretty much have to, right? And besides, as great as His Steveness was, Apple has always been more than just one man. Steve Jobs didn't do it all alone, and the people who helped to make Apple into such a remarkable company are still around. So, yeah, Apple isn't going to be the same... but it couldn't possibly be the horrific disaster that all the nay-sayers keep insisting: "APPLE IS OVER!" "APPLE CAN'T SURVIVE!" "POST-JOBS APPLE IS DOOMED!" What nonsense!

Except...

As time goes on and the user experience with Apple products degenerates to complete and total shit, my opinion has been changing.

Don't get me wrong... I firmly believe nobody is doing it better... but the detail-oriented Apple that made me commit my eternal servitude over the past decade simply doesn't exist any more.

Let's walk through an example, shall we?

• I receive a coupon code for a new book from Apple's iBooks Store, so I open the iBooks app.
• Immediately, I'm asked to enter my Apple ID password.
• After entering my password, I click on iBooks Store.
• I am asked to enter my Apple ID password again.
• I get to the iBooks Store and click on the REDEEM link to enter my code.
• I am asked to enter my Apple ID password for the third time.
• I redeem my code and it starts to download, so I click back to my iBooks Library.
• I tap the new book to read it and am asked to enter my Apple ID password for the fourth time.

I perfectly understand the need to prevent random people from walking up to my computer and charging a bunch of crap to my Apple ID. Really I do. But having to enter my password four times? What kind of sadistic fucking asshole made that happen? And how badly would Steve Jobs explode over what a shitty user experience that is? I'd rather just buy a physical book at Amazon with their One-Click shopping.

This problem goes much deeper than just inconveniencing customers to enter their password over and over and over and over again... it encourages people to pick simple, short, easy-to-remember, passwords. Which is pretty much the opposite of what you want, because those are the passwords that are easiest to crack. What you want is people using heinously complicated passwords that are very difficult to crack. But to get this to work, you have to make it so the password only has to be entered rarely. The password should be remembered by the system and auto-populate whenever you want to buy something. Of course you have to secure the system with a password... otherwise you're back to square one. But THAT is the kind of stuff Apple figures out so well. Like the fingerprint scanner on the iPhone, for example.

So where is it?

And since one example doesn't build a compelling case, here are a few more things off the top of my head that have been bugging the shit out of me with Apple's "User Experience"...

• The bouncy self-hiding menu bar when you go into MacOS full-screen apps is laughably stupid. Give the user the option of having the menu bar visible at all times when in full-screen mode. Anything less is just fucking annoying as shit. Especially if you have a laptop and want to be able to see your battery level at a glance. Or you want to see what time it is. Or you just want to fucking get shit DONE without having to fight with the damn menu bar every five minutes. I mean, seriously, this is such a huge fucking FAIL that this alone leads me to believe that nobody in Apple's UI team actually USES Apple's shit.
• Why can't I STREAM my video purchases to my iPad, or Mac computer? Why am I forced to download everything in order to watch it? How can it be that Apple is such a bad joke when it comes to content delivery? Hulu, Amazon, Google, and every other fucking video service on earth can stream their stuff, but Apple can't figure it out? They did it for Apple TV... why is this so hard? YOU HAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, APPLE, FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT!
• Speaking of Apple TV, how embarrassing is it that Apple doesn't know how to make menus work efficiently? If I scroll all the way right, my next click should wrap to the left. If I scroll all the way to the bottom, my next click should wrap to the top. Otherwise, I'm having to press way too many clicks on the remote to do anything. How is it PlayStation and Xbox has this all handled, but Apple is still using menu technology stuck in the 1980's?
• AirDrop.
• Why does Apple work so hard to conceal purchases I make through iTunes? Over at Amazon, not only is it simple to look through my past orders... they're all searchable too! But with iTunes? Everything is coded into "batches" and nothing is searchable. On top of that, it's just such a bad experience. I have to go to my iTunes Store account settings to look up my purchase history? What sense does this make? This is fucking embarrassing. Even MORE embarrassing? You can't print out past purchases either (once you finally manage to find them, that is). Sure you can hit "print"... but you get blank pages? Amateur hour.
• iTunes Match is clunky and slow, and Apple should want to look into this for anybody to take them seriously in the streaming music arena. I am sick and fucking tired of opening iTunes to listen to my music only to have iTunes sit there like a dumb shit while displaying "Getting iTunes Match Results from Apple" for ten damn minutes.
• Since the dawn of time, when you want to use an old document to create a new one, you open the original document, then do a "SAVE AS..." to save it with a new name. Easy. But not with Apple. You have to use this weird "Duplicate" command with language so confusing that I never know what is actually happening. This is one area where Apple is over-thinking things in trying to make them easier... but fucked up horribly and actually made everything more difficult to use.
• And why is drag-and-drop so fucking broken in the MacOS? Especially in full-screen app mode. 75% of the time I drag a picture out of mail so I can save it on my desktop, the operation fails. And that's just the beginning. Dragging shit anywhere in MacOS is never something you can count on... whether it's dragging into an application... or even within The Finder itself. Why is such basic functionality that people use every day never fixed?
• Speaking of basic functionality... do you think Apple gives a shit how often my MacBook gets stuck in "right-click" mode for no fucking reason at all? And do they understand how the only thing that seems to fix it is to just keep randomly slapping the trackpad with multi-touch until the "right-click" comes un-stuck (or re-boot the whole damn machine?). Aren't they even a little mortified that such a massively huge and frustrating bug has been around for years and they just don't fucking care? Well, they should, because this is epic-level crap.
• Speaking of broken, do you think Apple suffers any shame what-so-ever that their calendar app is such complete and total shit? So much so as to be practically useless? And I'm not just talking about some of the horrendously shitty UI changes they made in the advent of the disastrous design that permeates iOS7... I'm talking basic functionality and comprehensive display of information.
• And speaking of iOS7... when did "style over substance" become a mantra at Apple? Buttons aren't buttons... text is hard to read... icons all blend together... Apple's overhaul of the iOS7 desperately needs an overhaul. Oh... and people over 30 buy Apple's shit. They should try to come up with an interface that acknowledges this for people with less than perfect eyesight.
• And, before I forget... HOW THE FUCK DO YOU TELL WHEN THE SHIFT KEY IS PRESSED IN iOS7? I have been using the "new and unimproved" keyboard for over a year now and I still have trouble remembering. It's such an absurd problem that somebody even created a website to help people out. I ask myself almost daily... "Did Jonathan Ive really approved this stupid shit? Really?" This is Microsoft-level FAIL. Or it was. Many aspects of Windows Phone 8 kick the shit out of iPhone now. Of all the things on this list, this is the one fix I am most hoping to see come out of the upcoming Apple Developer Conference.
• Now let's get to software... does anybody at Apple even give a shit about the software they develop anymore? If they do, nobody outside of Apple would know it. Has development of Aperture stopped and I should switch to LightRoom? Who the fuck knows! Every once in a while a update is released that fixes some bugs or adds some esoteric feature, but any significant updates for the software's main purpose... photo cataloging... hasn't happened in four years. I spent TEN HOURS trying to get an Aperture Vault copied to a new drive. Never worked. Never could figure out why. Never figured out how to get support to get it resolved. Why in the hell would anybody want to buy Apple-branded software when this is what you get? Secrecy is fine, but non-communication is paramount to abandonment.
• And since when did REMOVING features in new software versions get to be policy? The latest versions of iMovie and Final Cut Pro stripped out so many features from their predecessors that I have no useable solution for video-editing from Apple. Hell, even burning a video to a DVD requires a fucking third-party application. Yeah, we get it, the future is digital. But, in the meanwhile, we need shit to work in the present.
• Apple Mail... on any device... suck pretty bad. For something people use constantly, this baffles me. IMAP and Gmail support are completely screwed up in the MacOS app. The iOS app is even worse, because email goes missing at random. I'll see a piece of mail come in, click on it, only to have the mail vanish. Sending mail is equally bad because it will disappear without being delivered. Where did it go? What happened? Can I get it back? If it's not in "Sent Mail" and the recipient never got it, is it gone forever? It looks that way. Who knows? Oh… and do you know how many times I’ve gone to “undo” the deleting of an email only to find that “undo” is greyed-out in the menu and cannot be activated? Insanity.
• Why does Apple even bother with having a data detector for FTP in MacOS when they only allow read-only connections? Why not let me choose to have an FTP session with a client that is actually useful? Because, seriously, I'd rather have NO data detector than to have a link that's difficult to cut and paste without accidentally opening up a half-baked FTP connection through MacOS.
• Why is "list view" in MacOS X so mind-numbingly incompetent? The filename field never remembers the length I set it, and is always adjusting itself to be at least THREE TIMES the width of anything actually listed in it. This isn't just in the Finder, but everywhere a Cocoa app calls a list view (it really drives me crazy in Adobe apps, where the pallets are so small). So each time I have to widen the window enough to find the column mark, then re-size it down to a sane width. EVERY TIME!
• iCloud syncing is awful. Yes, Apple finally... FINALLY... added the keychain syncing that they tossed out when .Mac died, but the underlaying architecture is still crap. If I set up all my Mail accounts on my desktop Mac then sync it to iCloud... shouldn't I be able to turn on iCloud syncing on my iPhone and have those accounts automatically populate? Well, that's the way it SHOULD work. But, guess, what? IT FUCKING DOESN'T! What the hell am I doing wrong? It's a button that goes on-and-off! How can I screw THAT up? And don't get me started with "Notes" where the syncing is haphazard at best. Can't tell you how many times I've pasted some critical information I need into notes on my Mac only to have it never sync with my iPhone. If you can't get that crap right, why bother at all?
• Printing, in general, is an absolute mess. There have been many, many times when I can't even connect to a printer to get anything to print. Nope, you have to delete the printer and start all over again or re-boot ten times until MacOS finally realizes the network printer is available. Any time it takes you 20 minutes to print an email, you know that something is seriously wrong. Unless you're Apple, apparently.
• And is it too much to ask to have a working trashcan in OS X? Half the time it appears empty when there's actually something in it.
• And, lastly, Siri doesn't appear to be location-aware, which is about the stupidest thing ever. Google Maps in my frickin' desktop web browser even attempts to be location aware, but a PHONE doesn't? If a real-life "personal assistant" of mine tried to offer advice based on a location half-way around the world from me, I'd fire them.

Holy crap... and that was just the stuff off the top of my head. Had I put some actual thought into this list, it would be ten times as long, I'm sure.

And there's my problem with Apple. In the past, I would expect that insane shit ruining the Apple experience would eventually be fixed. Now? I honestly don't know. There's obviously people in charge of these problem areas. But is Tim Cook obsessing over making sure these people are getting things to work exceptionally well like Steve Jobs was? Or is he being distracted by shiny things to buy with Apple's massive bank account? Early after his take-over, I was willing to give him the benefit of doubt. But now? We're going on three years and I'm starting to worry.

I want... need... Apple to be insanely great.

Anything less isn't Apple.

I'm not 100% sure where or what... but at least I know when.

130 days.

18-1/2 weeks.

4-1/4 months.

1/3 of a year.

So close. Yet so very, very far away.

Time to put down that mommy... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Maternal! The happiest of Mother's Days to all the moms out there... including mine!

And if you're looking for an inspirational story for the holiday, look no further than this one.

   
• Chaz Darling. It has been increasingly difficult for me to accept the fact that The Colbert Report is ending this year. The show has some of the smartest commentary on on current events to be found anywhere, and it's been getting better and better as The End approaches. The May 8th episode was one of the best ever, and is well worth taking time to watch. If you don't have time for the full show, this interview will show you what you're missing...

Miss you already, Stephen T. Colbert. And congratulations to Larry Wilmore, whose new show "The Minority Report" will be filling the Colbert Report's shoes in January.

   
• Melting. Well, this is a conflict for somebody who loves cool art... yet finds all life sacred. Though, if they have to die, this is probably less cruel than gassing them or lighting them on fire?

Poor ants. But at least they didn't die in vain... those sculptures are pretty amazing.

   
• Hamster. Hot on the heels of last week's TINY HAMSTER EATING TINY BURRITOS comes TINY HAMSTER EATING TINY PIZZA!

I want Tiny Hamster Eating Tiny Quiche to be next... but, in all honesty, I'd take a tiny hamster eating a tiny anything, really.

   
• Free? Freedom of religion. It was good while it lasted.

   
• CANCELED. Two shows I really enjoy... Community and Enlisted... have been cancelled. And it doesn't end there... The Crazy Ones, Suburgatory, Raising Hope, and Killer Women have also been axed.

What bums me out is not that something I liked watching is gone... it's that the networks will undoubtedly replace them with total shit. Or some idiotic new reality show, which is worse than total shit.

   
• PICKED UP. Along with the myriad of cancellation notices, there were two bright spots amidst the gloom...

First there's Constantine, based on the comic book Hellblazer, which actually looks pretty darn good. Obviously they're trying to cash in on the supernatural success of The Walking Dead, but it seems as though this show is going to have a tough time within the confines of major network television...

Then there's Gotham, which is the "before Batman" equivalent to Smallville. Not really my cup of tea, but it looks as though they're at least trying to be interesting with the material...

Yeah, I'll give them both a whirl. As a comic book fan, I pretty much have to.

   
Until next week...

As I've repeated many, many times... visiting Antarctica has been a dream trip of mine for decades.

So I'd really like to know why it is that any news that comes from there is bad news? And today it was the worst news of all.

Yeah, NASA is saying that it could be centuries before massive chunks start breaking off fast enough to cause sea level to rise significantly, but massive chunks always seem to be breaking off the seventh continent. And who knows... the news coming from Antarctica could be even worse tomorrow.

So I guess it really is time to shit or get off the pot.

Either I make it to Antarctica in the next year or two, or I risk having to remove it from my list completely.

Guess I'll be robbing a bank or selling a kidney one day soon.

Fun trip to the eye doctor today.

Apparently my astigmatism, which has been growing progressively worse over the past six years, has done gone missing. Evaporated. Disappeared. Since I totally blamed my worsening eyesight on society's indoctrination by The Gay Agenda™, I figured I'd be completely blind by now since Washington State (and a bunch of other states) passed marriage equality and Michael Sam got drafted into the NFL as its first openly gay player.

But instead... my eyesight actually improved after Washington State (and a bunch of other states) passed marriage equality and Michael Sam got drafted into the NFL as its first openly gay player. So I guess I had it all backwards. Once marriage equality goes nation-wide and an NFL player's sexuality isn't considered news... I fully expect to get Superman's X-ray vision. Or his heat his vision. Or his microscopic vision. Or his telescopic vision. One of those visions. Maybe all of those visions.

Wow, Superman sure has a shit-ton of super-visions!

I guess that's why he's Superman.

But putting aside the fucking insane people who belief that The Gays are responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world... many happy congratulations to Michael Sam!

And his boyfriend, surely...

For the life of me, I cannot comprehend why two guys kissing caused a chunk of Americana to lose their fucking minds. Turn the channel and you've got people murdering each other... people abusing drugs... people having drunken sex... The Kardashians... and yet it's two guys kissing that makes people want to shoot their television and boycott ESPN?

"BUT, ZOMFG! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

Kids only think that something is a big deal if adults make it into a big deal for them. If your children are freaking out, it's because you're making it happen. Don't go all homophobic crazy, and Michael Sam's kiss is just another kiss in a parade of thousands of kisses that happen on television every day.

Maybe people will finally be able to see that with their super-vision once we finally get an openly gay president.

Blerrrrgh! I feel like crap.

It was a crazy day but none of it is really blogable, so I guess I'll finally answer this list of "Fifty Original Questions For You" that a reader sent to me... which they found at Liz From The Internet.

And here we go...

1. When you have a container of Neapolitan ice cream, what flavor do you leave for last? Strawberry. Not because I don't like it, but because I don't like it blended with my vanilla and chocolate.
2. Would you rather be caught in a thunderstorm without an umbrella or a snowstorm without boots? Thunderstorm without an umbrella... I actually enjoy that. The last time it happened was when I was in Vietnam. I got very, very wet from head to toe. But had a great deal of fun taking photos.
3. Let's say you have access to a time machine, but it can only go either backward or forward. One or the other. Which do you choose and where do you go? Forward. I can only hope that this world eventually develops into something better than it has been throughout human history, and I'd really like to visit Tokyo hundreds of years from now.
4. If you could choose to have any superpower ever, what would you pick? Flight.
5. Tomorrow morning, you wake up in the body of a celebrity, like in a '90s body-swap movie. Who is it? Chris Evans... aka Captain America. How do they react to your life? He would be incredibly bored by my life, I'm sure. What do you do when you're "them"? What do I do when I'm young, good-looking, rich, and talented? With women falling at my feet everywhere I go? Where I can afford to do anything I want? Wow... let me think on that for a while. Would you choose to switch back? Hell no.
6. Any allergies? When I was younger, I had a myriad of allergies, but outgrew them. Now I only seem to have problems when the seasons change. As we move into summer from Spring, I'm feeling a bit allergetic right now.
7. What would you be more embarrassed to buy: sex toys or adult diapers? I wouldn't be embarrassed by either. I've been the caregiver for an elderly person and didn't even think twice about having to pick up their adult diapers. And of course I've bought sex toys (alas, mostly as gifts) with no embarrassment... it's not like you're shopping for them at Wal-Mart.
8. Did you get enough sleep last night? Lord, no. I never do. Such is the life of a chronic insomniac.
9. You're the sole witness to a Mafia murder. Witness protection has to set you up with a whole new life in a totally new country. You have to leave everything behind, but you can pick where you move to. Where do you go? Edinburgh, Scotland.
10. If you could star in a biopic about any famous person ever, who would it be? Sir Nicholas Winston. Not because I think I'd do the job justice, but because his story is screaming to be told. He should be famous, but oddly isn't for some reason.
11. What's the biggest animal you've ever killed? Bugs count. I've never killed anything but bugs. And don't even do that any more if I can avoid it.
12. Would you rather have millions of dollars but always feel nauseous when you go outside, or be dirt poor forever but never get sick again in your life? This is confusing. Would I be nauseous if I were in a plane? In a car? Or is it any time I left my house? If it's the latter, what good is money if you can't use it? I'd take the health, please.
13. A wizard offers you immortality in exchange for your two front teeth. Do you take it? Hell yeah. Having two fake front teeth in trade for immortality?
14. Could you win the Hunger Games? No. In fact, I would undoubtedly be killed immediately.
15. What was your favorite Halloween costume as a kid? How about as a teen/adult? As a kid? Batman. As an adult? Batman.
16. Do you bite your nails? I couldn't if I wanted to. They are way too tough.
17. What was the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? Either Pete's Dragon, Blackbeard's Ghost, The Cat from Outer Space or Herbie the Love Bug... it's hard to tell because Disney re-issued movies all the time back before there were VCRs.
18. Do you prefer music with male or female vocalists? Male.
19. You and the love of your life are having a baby, and you get to choose the name! There's only one catch: your partner INSISTS that it be the name of a place, real or fictional. What do you name your baby? Lucia for a girl (after St. Lucia) and Ellis for a boy (after Ellis Island).
20. If you could reboot or remake any movie, what would it be and who would you cast? That would be John Carter... based on the amazing Martian books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was completely and totally fucked up by Hollywood and made into one of the worst films ever. As for who I would cast... I honestly don't know. Preferably somebody who can actually act after holding auditions. Hopefully unknowns.
21. If you could automatically know how to speak any language or play any instrument, which would you choose? Japanese (language) and piano/keyboard (instrument). I actually learned Japanese and played keyboard in the distant past, but have forgotten most everything about them. Use it or lose it.
22. For you, would getting amnesia be a good thing? Probably not. But I wouldn't be upset at starting over.
23. If you curse loudly and then realize that there are children nearby, what is your reaction? To not make a big deal out of it so they wouldn't make a big deal of it.
24. Of what animal are you most afraid? I'm not really afraid of any animals. More bugs than anything else.
25. Pizza or oral sex? Since eating pizza while having oral sex would be like... the best thing ever... I'm not going to choose between them.
26. Without looking them up, can you explain the rules of football? The fundamentals, sure. How about Quidditch? Not even a little bit, as I can't stand any of the Harry Potter crap. What do you think that says about you? That I probably shouldn't play football or Quidditch.
27. You're in the car, switching channels on the radio when you hear a song that makes you go "OH SHIT, THAT'S MY JAM!" What song is it? Wow. People are People by Depeche Mode? I dunno. Probably something by Depeche Mode or The Pet Shop Boys.
28. Have you ever paid to see a Step Up movie? If not, how much would someone have to pay YOU to see a Step Up movie? No. I don't even know what that is. But I'd probably see any movie if somebody paid me $500.
29. If you were being executed tonight, what would you choose for your last meal? Fettuccine Alfredo, but ONLY from Alfredo alla Scrofa.
30. Have you ever bought an item of clothing because it reminded you of something a fictional character would wear? No?
31. If you were invisible for a day, what would you do? Go to Washington D.C. and get incriminating evidence on as many shitbag politicians as I could so a scandal could erupt and they could be replaced by more shitbag politicians.
32. Have you ever been punched in the face? Kinda. I was hit in the face while in a tussle... but it wasn't like somebody teed off and punched me square in the face.
33. How do you take your ramen noodles? With veggie broth and some peas and carrots.
34. Do you ever rehearse or plan conversations before you actually have them? Not really conversations... but if I'm doing some public speaking I'll absolutely plan out what I'm talking about.
35. How much black do you wear on a regular basis (not counting funerals)? Not much at all. I'm too pale to pull it off.
36. Do you have any tattoos? Yes. Five in three places. Do you want any? Any more? Gawd yes. I love my tattoos and need more.
37. If someone offered you a free pet snake, would you take it? It's not dangerous or really big or anything. They're just moving to a place that doesn't allow pets. If it meant saving the poor thing from being put to death, then sure. But I have no real desire to own a snake. Not that I don't like them, I would just hope for a more interactive pet.
38. Do you know how to pronounce the word "pinochle"? The card game? Yes. PEE-KNUCKLE.
39. Can you think of anything more boring than birdwatching? I've been in many meetings that would make birdwatching seem like an action movie.
40. Are you better with numbers or words? Earlier in my life, I'd absolutely say numbers. Now? Definitely words.
41. At the movies, do you stay for the credits? Only if I know there's going to be something "extra" there... like in the Marvel films.
42. Is morality universal or relative? Relative.
43. Let's say you're getting married to someone you absolutely adore. The only catch is that you met them through a Craigslist hookup ad that was supposed to be just for one night of casual sex. Would you tell your friends how you and your fiancé met? Absolutely. I think that's an awesome story of how you met your spouse.
44. What's the worst name you've ever been called? "Faggot." Not because I was offended at being mistaken for being gay... but because that's a hateful, awful word designed to torment somebody because of their sexuality, which is repugnant.
45. Would you eat human flesh if it had been harvested and prepared humanely? (Say, from someone brain-dead who had marked him or herself down as an organ donor - same difference, right?) I'm a vegetarian, so no. But I'd like to think I'd make an exception for some fucking asshole like Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh... assuming the flesh was collected as inhumanely as possible.
46. At what age did you stop believing in Santa? No clue. But I was young. 1st grade maybe? Alternately, if you never believed in Santa, did you ever ruin Santa for anyone else? Not that I know of.
47. Do you get along better with old people or little kids? I get along equally well with both.
48. If you had to choose, would you rather become a nun/monk or a drug dealer? Monk.
49. What's your best bodily feature, objectively speaking? Height?
50. Who is your favorite late night talk show host? I'd like to appear smart and say Craig Ferguson (who I do like and will miss when Joel McHale replaces him)... but it's Jimmy Fallon. He's clearly just having fun night after night, and that's what I need to wipe away my day.

Travel costs, which have always been kinda expensive... but not prohibitively so... have been skyrocketing at a steady clip. Every time I turn around, the price for a trip goes up. Airfare keeps rising. Meals keep rising. Local transportation keeps rising. And hotels? Hotels are absolutely nuts. Even if you use Priceline and Hotwire to save money, lodging in most major cities is insanely pricey if you want to stay at a nice property in a decent location.

For my trip to Chicago today, I started adding things up and nearly passed out. Compared to six years ago, this trip will be almost double the cost. You read that right, double. Even the little things... like a bottle of Coke at the 7-11 (99¢ to $1.79) have gotten out of hand, and it all adds up...

I'm seriously starting to wonder if traveling for work is even worth it any more. If a huge chunk of the money you earn is pissed away on flights, hotels, and food... it seems a lot of effort for very little return.

And so I consider settling down and traveling less.

But then I happen upon the best fucking veggie burger I have ever had tonight, and begin to think that maybe it's worth it after all. I'd never be able to get something like this back home.

Or maybe I just need to move to Chicago.

Inflation, it's a bitch, yo.

My entire day was a build-up to returning to the restaurant I had eaten at last night to see if the veggie burger I had eaten was as good as I thought it had been.

Because when you've eaten the best burger you've ever had, you want to be sure, right?

Especially when you look back through your Facebook feed and see this...

And so, I went back for another late-supper veggie burger...

And it was indeed the best damn veggie burger I had ever eaten. Again.

I'm told that it's soy-based, but they add in roasted sweet red peppers, a bit of jalapeño peppers, and shredded beets (which makes the patty look blood-red when you bite into it). I still have no idea where the bun comes from... but it's got a texture that's amazing and a bit of sweetness to it.

Anyway... if you're ever in Chicago and have a hankering for a really good burger, 25 Degrees looks like it's the place! Though, fair warning, it gets really loud, as there's a bar in the middle of the room.

They also have locations in Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, and Bangkok.

But I have a feeling Chicago will always be my favorite.

What was supposed to be a "free day" ended up being a full-on work day from start to finish.

Which wasn't a terrible thing, because my seasonal allergies are back. The transition from Winter to Spring and Spring to Summer are always a miserable few weeks while my body adjusts to the changes. And I always seem to get nailed when I travel... I swear I could feel the assault on my eyes and sinuses the minute I stepped off the plane.

Thank heavens for Fluticasone, which at least makes it so that I can breathe.

And now, thanks to Wikipedia, I know how it's synthesized...

Or not.

But still, better living through chemistry, I always say.

No more waiting for your ship to come in... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Blinded. This is a great story... it's short and awesome and worth your time and it has nice photos and you should read it. Sometimes things that seem irreparably broken just need a little TLC to make it through. That probably goes for people too...

   
• Blinded Deux. And I can't post that wonderful story without being reminded of this wonderful story...

Remarkable how animals can fall between the cracks like this. That probably goes for people too. Again.

   
• Movie! Just a happy reminder... The LEGO Movie will be available at the iTunes Store tomorrow...

Though I was not happy with the way they wrapped it up at the end, The LEGO Movie has still been one of the best movies this year so far.

   
• Thrice. Today was the annual board meeting for THRICE Fiction Magazine, so I packed up and headed west to the wilds of ChicagoLand Suburbia to meet with our intrepid Editor at Large, RW and his lovely wife. After much exciting talk about future plans for everybody's favorite literature magazine, we were off to Lynfred Winery for some remarkable Sangria Blanc. Which was followed by delicious possibilities for food porn at Restaurant 1913 in Roselle...

Insider Tip: The "Pizzettes" are to die for. I had the Spinach + Artichoke with Herbed Ricotta... heaven on a wooden serving board...

I dare say it's a dining experience worth the 45 minute train ride out of Chicago proper.

   
• Selfie! Alex Chacon has been living my dream... traveling the world on a motorcycle... for three years now. The video highlights he's released from his journey is the most epic selfie ever created...

You can find out a lot more about Alex's travels at his The Modern Motorcycle Diaries site.

   
And that's a wrap from beautiful Chicago!

Well today was pretty much a crap day.

In that it was a gorgeous day out and I had to stay inside working.

The only time I could escape was for a quick lunch downtown after making a trip to Dick Blick. Much to my surprise and delight, Chicago has been flooded by Pret A Manger, so I indulged in one of their Mediterranean Salad Wraps. Oh how I love Pret's fresh approach to fast food. They've only just arrived on the East Coast... but their move on Chicago has me hopeful that they'll reach Seattle eventually.

In other news that's unrelated entirely...

   
Is it just me... or is $50 a shockingly inadequate amount of money to pay for puking in somebody's taxi? It costs at least that much to take a taxi from O'Hare to the city once you add a tip! I mean, come on, if somebody puked in MY taxi? Ain't no way $50 is going to cover it. The smell alone would make me puke all over my own cab... so there's at least $100 in charges right there.

Vomiting in a Chicago taxi is such an incredible bargain so far as entertainment is concerned, that I'm almost tempted to try it. Here's hoping that if I'm drunk enough to puke in a taxi that I'm drunk enough not to feel any shame afterwards.

Because isn't that the real price you pay?

Today started out so badly, but ultimately ended up being a really good day.

Mostly because I got to go to a huge candy show with Jenny (of RunJenRun fame) and then drop into a sugar coma.

And because I got to make my own custom box of Tic Tacs...

I called mine GREEN PASSION... and it's a mix of Green Apple and Passion Fruit...

After work I went out for dinner and saw that Disney is pulling out all the stops to promote Angelie Jolie's Maleficent...

Trump Tower Chicago is such a pretty building. But I guess The Donald must have run out of money because only the "T" and the "R" are up on the building... and only the "R" has the lights on...

On the way back to my hotel, I spotted these two lonely Safety Men... guarding nothing...

But at least they have each other.

Which is nice, because then it started to rain.

And thunder.

And lightning.

Which made sleeping a bit of a challenge.

As if insomniacs didn't already have it bad enough.

My last day in Chicago.

A pity I had to spend my entire morning working.

Well, not my entire morning. I was able to take a minute to meet with the Hot Coffee Girl herself for a meet-up at Hancock Tower. They have a new attraction called TILT! where you get to stand against a window, then be tilted at a 45° angled off the side of the building...

Not so scary as if they laid you out at a 90° angle, but still very cool.

They don't let you use a camera or a phone to take pictures... apparently they are worried about the safety of the glass (WTF?!?), but this is kinda what you see if you look straight down...

A little heart-stopping but, again, still very cool.

After checking out of my hotel and returning to work for a while, it was time to head home (with The Spirit of St. Lewis working my flight!) on a new Alaska Airlines livery for me... the Portland Timbers plane!

Layover in Portland. Layover in Seattle. A quick flight to my local airport. Then a half-hour drive home. Well, it would have been a half-hour... if not for having to wait for a stupid train.

I hate trains.

HATE them.

They always end up blocking my route no matter what time I'm trying to get somewhere... even past midnight, like tonight...

And as if that wasn't bad enough, you have to listen to their stupid-ass train whistles at all hours of the day and night.

Oh well. At least I'm home in my own bed at last.

Wish I was tired enough to fall asleep.

All things considered, I'd rather be back in Chicago.

Even with all their thunder and lightning...

At least there I could get a decent veggie dog.

Remember how excited I was over the upcoming Ant Man movie by Edgar Wright?

So, yeah... that's no longer happening.

"Marvel and Edgar Wright jointly announced today that the studio and director have parted ways on Ant-Man due to differences in their vision of the film. The decision to move on is amicable and does not impact the release date on July 17, 2015. A new director will be announced shortly."

That ugly bit of news was the cherry on the shit sundae of a day, and I'm not sure what this means for the film. Sure, it's still got Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas in starring roles... but what made this such a highly anticipated event for me was that Edgar Wright writing and directing Ant Man. It was such a perfect pairing. I can only guess that Marvel wanted a more serious take on the material than Wright had planned. Which is bound to happen when it's occupying the same universe as such massively lucrative properties as Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers.

Ant Man, after all, IS an Avenger, and that's a billion dollars in bank that I'm sure Marvel is nervous about jeopardizing.

But I have to wonder if Marvel's efforts will ultimately be wasted when people get tired of all their "Cinematic Universe" films becoming too much the same and stop going to see the films. Ant Man skewing a bit more funny and wacky was a good thing.

Alas, given Marvel's stellar track record in film adaptations, it's really hard for me to be too critical.

I just hope I can say the same thing after Ant Man is released.