September 21st.

Cannot possibly enunciate how badly I want to see this series. I haven’t loved many of the Star Wars movies after The Empire Strikes Back... but Rogue One is definitely a huge exception, and Cassian Andor is a big part of the reason why...

No K-2SO in the poster. I'm guessing that he comes along shortly. Or at the end of Season 01...

Apparently there are three planned seasons... ever-escalating quicker until the series matches up to Rogue One.

This morning I woke up and really, really wanted a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Fortunately, I had both. Unfortunately I had a very busy morning and didn't have time to fix one up before I left the house for work.

But I never stopped wanting that dang bagel!

All day at work. All through my errands after work. Right up through the evening when I finally got home... that bagel was all I could think about. And so that was my dinner. Toasted to get it crusty then microwaved for 10 seconds to get it softened. Then schmeared with cream cheese. It was perfect.

And now I feel as though I have nothing left to live for.

Except chocolate ice cream for dessert, of course.

For much of my adult life I've lived in upstairs apartments. Spider sightings were blissfully rare, and I never had to worry much about creepy-crawlies. Then six years ago I moved into my current home which is at ground level. And while there's not a lot of spider activity, there's more than I've been accustomed to. Much to the delight of my cats, who thrill at playing with a spider for a while before ultimately eating it then puking it up.

I don't want to kill anything, but I don't want to have to clean up cat puke either, so I invested in a box of those tiny paper Dixie cups specifically to be used for catching bugs and transporting them outside. They work great, and can be tossed afterwards so I don't risk dying from spider germs being deposited on my drinking glasses.

Today I found a weird tan spider by my cloak closet and went to get a Dixie cup so I can take him outside. After putting him in the shady part of my flower garden, I decided to count how many cups were missing so I could determine how many spiders I've saved over the years.

The answer is thirty-four.

That's thirty-four times I made the choice to not splat a spider with my shoe but instead set him free. I'd like to think that there's some future karma benefit at work here for me here... but the fact that I'm lucky enough to have a home in the first place is enough for me.

I had an 80's channel running while working tonight and was mostly able to ignore it until the song Time and Tide by Basia dropped. "Whatever happened to her?" I wondered... as I opened a tab to Google. What I found out that she never stopped making music. Her last album, Butterflies, was released in 2018. What's so amazing is that she still sounds incredible. How in the heck did she ever drop into obscurity with her level of talent?

Of course I could say the same for dozens of other musicians (at the top of my list would be a-ha, who is seen as a one-hit wonder for Take On Me, but had even more amazing tracks afterwards).

How she started...

Where she ended up (circa 2009)...

1987 seems like it was just yesterday. Time and tide really does wait for no man.

Sandman (on Netflix) is a fantastic adaptation of one of my favorite comic book series. And something I never thought I'd see happen despite numerous attempts to turn it into movies.

The 10-episode series is loyal to the source material... almost to a fault. There are segments which blew by in the comic at a brisk pace which have been dragged out to tedium to fill a one-hour runtime, and it hurt the series a bit. As an example, I wish I could have watched the fifth episode in 3X speed instead of the Netflix max of 1.5X because it was so slow and so tedious... attempting to fill 50 minutes with material that would have been a stretch at 20.

Much ado has been made about the "gender-swapping" and "race-swapping" of various characters. This is a bunch of rubbish, because these are not real-life people being portrayed, but fictional characters. "Death" being Black doesn't change a thing, and the actor they got to play her is fantastic, which is all that really matters...

Probably the biggest "controversy" (if you can call it that) was casting Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer. Now, in the comic book, it was never a secret that Neil Gaiman based his Lucifer on David Bowie at his most androgynous. So casting a woman... especially one as incredibly talented and nuanced as Gwendoline Christie... is not a stretch at all. I mean just look at this...

The casting of this series is impeccable... with one minor exception. I thought Patton Oswalt was distracting as Matthew (much as I love him in other stuff). But otherwise even small roles were cast with such care, and it enriched the series in every way.

So... yeah... worth the wait.

If you're a fan of the comic, you've likely already watched it. If not? Worth a look for sure.

Always looking for new things to entertain my cats, I purchased a big "puzzle box" for treats that they can poke into. Figured it would be a more interesting time for them than just putting treats in a bowl.

Both cats were intrigued. At first.

But after a while Jake found that he could just wait for Jenny to pull out treats, then attempt to take them from her. Surprisingly, she never got all that upset about it... she would just go poking around for another treat. To her, the challenge was as important as the treat...

Eventually Jenny started waiting until Jake was not in the area before she would go back to digging for treats...

Earlier this week I noted that Jake was laying down chillin' with Mufasa...

It was funny to me how Mufasa was sitting upright. I thought it was nice how Jake set him up like that. But then I took a look at the security camera footage and saw that Jake threw Mufasa down the stairs and he happened to land. One could almost say... he set himself upright, because just look at this!

GHOSTS!

Or maybe not. I think that my cats would let me know if we had ghosts.

World War III is back on the table thanks to politician idiocy, but don't let that harsh your mellow... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Wedding! To my fellow Hallmark movie nerds... Wedding Season on Netflix. The concept has been done to death, but this one is way too cute to miss...

I love how Netflix gives a good budget to their movies like this. It makes all the difference in diferentiating them from Hallmark.

   
• Star Wars Summer! The LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation Special has a gem of a Weird Al song attached to it, and the video is right here...

Whether you're a Star Wars fan or a LEGO Star Wars fan or both... the special is worth a look! Find it on Disney+.

   
• Eternally Again! Patton Oswalt leaked that they are working on another Eternals movie. Good. Now leave powerless, annoying Sprite the fuck out of it (or kill her to start off the film). Leave Ajak dead. Leave Ikarus dead. And as much as I loved Gilgamesh, leave him dead. Then kill off Druig (or turn him into the full-on villain he is). Focus on Sersi, Thena, Kingo, Phastos, and Starfox. FIVE characters instead of however the fuck too many were in the first film. Marvel needs to get over themselves that Eternals was an epic masterpiece and come to terms with the fact that they created a bloated, scattered, mess of a film. Avengers Endgame had DOZENS of characters and felt more focused. Don't get me wrong... I enjoyed Eternals and didn't think it was as awful as many people did... but it could have been SO much better. I do hope that Chloé Zhao comes back to direct because her work is so beautiful... but don't force her to cram so much shit in her film that it gets so very sloppy.

   
• Vacation! This is so accurate as to sting a bit (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

I haven't had a vacation in three years. Sure I have the hours... but I'm always too busy to actually use them.

   
• Trash! I will keep saying it... Nancy Pelosi is garbage. Everything wrong with government is right here (And here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

Like most of our politicians, she doesn't give a FUCK how many people she hurts so long as she keeps grabbing that money and power! And she doesn't care if she starts World War III or tanks our stock market to get it.

   
• PAID! I'd like to leave this Bullet Sunday on a good note... I paid off my blue iMac, Lemon, this week!

And in two months my MacBook Pro will also be paid off. Which will be very nice. The money not used for making payment can go towards groceries, gas, and everything else that's insanely expensive now-a-days.

   
TTFN, Bullet fans...

I was deeply saddened to learn that Olivia Newton-John passed away today.

I fell in love with her... and fell in love with her hard... while coming of age in the 70's and 80's. I wasn't allowed to go see Grease in the theater (I was 12 years old)... but it was one of the first VHS tapes I rented in the early 80's! That was back when VCRs were so expensive that you couldn't afford to buy one unless you were wealthy. Instead my family reserved the VCR at the local video store to rent over the weekend... then rented a stack of movies to go with it so we could get our money's worth out of the pricey machine rental.

And, yeah, I watched Grease multiple times on multiple weekends. I was never a fan of musicals but... well... Olivia Newton-John. Because, damn...

And I listened to that soundtrack many, many, many, many times.

And then there was Xanadu.

Because of my love of Olivia-Newton John, I begged my parents to let me go see it in the theater when it was released in 1980. I was 14 years old. It was a PG film. My parents relented, and let me go see it with my friends. The movie wasn't great... but I did like it because it played to a trifecta of my loves... Olivia Newton-John, Don Bluth Animation, and Greek mythology. Olivia Newton-John was positively radiant in every frame...

Kira never got to say which muse she was... but she started to say it. Her name started with a "T" which means she was Terpsichore, muse of dance. And while the movie wasn't all that great... the soundtrack was incredible. I played it to death.

In 2020 Olivia made a quick video on the 40th anniversary of the movie... looking as radiant and lovely as ever...

ONJ appeared numerous places over the years. More recently she was a guest-judge on RuPaul's Drag Race and even appeared in one of the Sharknado movies!

As sad as it is that she's gone, she leaves behind music that will carry on for a very long time. And that ain't nothin'. Rest In Peace, Olivia Newton-John, you will be so very missed.

Yesterday I had a disaster of a morning attempting to sign a frickin' PDF. Adobe continues to treat PAYING CUSTOMERS like criminals, which made activating Acrobat on my home iMac incredibly time-consuming and difficult. First it wouldn't authenticate. Then it wouldn't download. Then after restarting twice I managed to get it installed, but the installer wouldn't acknowledge that it was installed. Except I still managed to run it. But then the current version of Acrobat didn't work right with the current version of MS Word. So I had to create the PDFs manually, then load them. But then Adobe wouldn't allow me to sign the documents because I couldn't load my signature. So I had to go to the online version of Acrobat to load my signatures. Then I finally got to where I could sign the damn documents... only to find that Acrobat wouldn't allow me to save anything. Turns out I had to turn off online services for some reason in order to be able to save locally. A process that should have taken at most five minutes clocked in at just over an hour.

Remember the good ol' days when you could just buy a program and then use the program you paid for?

And, as bad as that was, today was even more frustrating.

But this time it was Apple instead of Adobe that I was battling.

My Apple Studio Display hasn't been able to play sound for more than 10 seconds since I got the thing. It starts to play and then almost immediately cuts out. Then you have to switch to a different audio, then switch back, at which time it plays again for another ten seconds and then cuts out. Yet again.

Well, today I finally got the software update which fixes the bizarre audio issues that have been plaguing Studio Display users for months... only to then have my computer get stuck in an endless update loop.

There's two hours of my life that I'm never getting back.

I totally appreciate that computers are getting faster and more capable all the time. The stuff they can do now is close to magic. But what good is all that when they go to shit so often that you actually lose hours of your life?

I tell you what... graphic design in the 80's is being remembered with increasing fondness with each passing day.

I've been having a terrible time sleeping lately. Last night I went to bed early at 10:00pm, but my watch shows that I didn't fall asleep until after midnight. Which means that I essentially laid awake for two hours with my mind racing. In other words, it's a day ending in "Y," and when I rolled out of bed at my usual 5:30am I felt like half my brain was missing.

I honestly don't think it's too must to ask that I get eight hours of sleep each night. Or even seven. Heck, over the past four months I'd settle for six. Instead it's been between four and five hours, which is simply not enough. I feel like a zombie all day long. Though I'm surprisingly able to function just fine and get all my work completed without issue. But it's like I'm on auto-pilot instead of being invested. And it's tough to enjoy life that way.

I thought I might be able to supplement my sleepy-time with naps, but that's proven equally impossible. For whatever reason I can't sleep during the day no matter how tired I am.

I guess it's time that I have a sleep study done again?

I dunno. The last time I paid for one and nothing really came out of it.

But at least I could say that I tried something.

Remember yesterday when I was writing about how lack of sleep was turning me into a zombie? Well... I honestly thought that would change last night. Except no.

I was awakened at 5:30am this morning as ping-pong-ball-sized rain was slamming into the roof. And there was Jake right next to my head crying about it. And I honestly don't blame him. The rain was so heavy that it might as well have been 1-inch hailstones, and I was worried about the skylight in my bathroom shattering (something I definitely cannot afford to have happen)...

After comforting Jake enough that he finally stopped squawking at my head and curled up asleep next to me, I started wondering where Jenny was. She's the one who is usually very upset when even a small amount of rain falls on the roof. She paces all over my bed while staring at the ceiling and meowing her head off. If this rain was enough to upset Jake, she must be very cross indeed. But nothing. Perhaps it scared her so much that she's hiding in the guest closet or something?

And then the thunder and lightning arrived.

At which time Jenny came bolting into the room at top speed. She rubbed up against me doing that wailing thing she does when she's worrying about stuff until she too settled down and went to sleep.

So there I was... wide awake after less than 5 hours of sleep, but unable to move without waking up my two sleeping companions. Mercifully, the breakfast feeding alarm went off at 7am at which time the cats went scrambling downstairs to eat... frustrated that my sleep-deprived ass was taking so long to feed them.

Between Mother Nature, Jake, and Jenny, the conspiracy to keep me from sleep continues...

I will never get used to the spatial audio in Apple AirPods. The way that the audio shifts to provide the illusion that the sound is always coming from in front of you is witchcraft, and somebody should be burned at the stake for it. Except not really, because it is so cool.

Even after all these months, I still feel like the AirPods are broken and the sound is, in fact, actually coming from my monitor. So I pull out the earbuds and confirm that they are, in fact, working... then immediately feel mad at myself for being fooled yet again.

Different topic, same subject...

I continue to make progress on setting up my studio. Most recently that meant trying to do something about the audio system so I can listen to music while I work. I started with a single SONOS One speaker, but missed having stereo... so I added a second one... only to end up still unsatisfied because they aren't spaced well for good stereo. Also, they're blasting at me from the sides, which is disorienting.

Unfortunately there's no much I can do about it, because my desk is pushed up against the wall. And there's a window above it. What I really need is SONOS PLAY bar right in front of my desk so that I could have simulated stereo separation coming from directly in front of me.

And that's when I was like wait a minute... I could relocated the SONOS PLAY bar to my studio, then upgrade my living room surround system to a SONOS ARC. That's actually a great idea all the way around, because the ARC uses HDMI for volume control that comes directly from my television instead of the janky optical+separate remote ordeal I have with on the PLAY. As usual, it only takes money. The ARC is $900. The mounting bracket is an additional $80. With tax that's over $1000, which is hard to justify. Except... July was one of those glorious twice-a-year months with three paydays instead of two... so maybe? SONOS has an upgrade program running where you can get 15% off your purchase, and it's only money, right? Who needs savings?

So I ordered it.

I'll spend every day until it arrives experiencing buyer's remorse, I'm sure.

I got a late start to my day.

After serving my cats breakfast, I went to read emails and look through my newsfeed before tackling the massive list of things I needed to get done. Last weekend I hurt my back, so I didn't want to waste too much time. Except my cats did something unusual... they immediately headed back upstairs to take a post-breakfast nap...

Not wanting to interrupt their busy sleeping schedule, I waited 45 minutes for Jenny to wake up before I got started on chores.

First up was cleaning out my bookshelves to make room for new books. Then I cleaned out my kitchen pantry. Then I washed all my dirty clothes. Then I decided to clean out my drawers, which ended with my re-folding all my ties. Jenny wasted no time "helping out"...

While Jake watched...

Once I took away the last tie, she decided she wanted to walk all over them...

I used to have to wear ties a lot. I had over 50 of them. I narrowed it down to my favorites since I rarely wear them now. I saved mostly my Disney ties (half of which are Hidden Mickey ties) and my cartoon ties.

Not like I ever want to start wearing ties again... but I'm saving them just in case. Even though they're now covered in cat hair.

Don't let my busted ass blog ruin your day... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now (even if it will have to be posted later)...

   
• Borked! Not only is my blog completely fucked today for unknown reasons, I see that now my heavy purple X's at the beginning of each entry are now regular-old black crosses?

Absolutely no clue what that is about. But it seems to happen on every browser I try and the code for them to be heavy and purple is still there... so one more thing to worry about, I guess.

   
• Found! One of my top-five favorite television shows of all time, The Finder, is streaming on Disney+...

The show has some things that did not age well (there is a Romani character which is referred to as "The G-Word" among other things) but the stories, characters, and concept are all fantastic. If you have Disney+, I urge you to give it a shot. If, for no other reason, to see the incomparable Michael Clarke Duncan in one of his final roles. HELPFUL HINT: The series was originally broadcast (and is still streaming) out of order. To watch it in an order where the plot threads all make sense, do so like this... Episode 01, 09, 03, 04, 02, 10, 05, 08, 06, 07, 12, 11, 13.

   
• Prequel Hunt! And speaking of streaming... I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but the Predator prequel, Prey (streaming on Hulu), is fantastic. It not only stays faithful to the original concept in a way that other "Predator" movies haven't, in some ways it's actually superior to the original. This time the action takes place on the Great Plains in the 1700's sometime. This time it's a Comanche girl who takes on an earlier concept Predator who hasn't gotten the same advanced weaponry we see in the other films...

Now, there's been some serious shit-talk online about the fact that a Comanche girl was able to battle a Predator without being immediately slaughtered, but if you actually pay attention to the film, it is well explained exactly how she could do this. Multiple times! I dearly loved this movie, and hope we not only see more Predators throughout history (somebody mentioned Predators in feudal Japan, and I got goosebumps)... but I hope we see a lot more of the movie's star... Amber Midthunder. So incredibly captivating and talented.

   
• Puppers! After you watch Prey on Hulu... treat yourself to this story about the other star of the movie!

   
• Sad! I don't get too excited for non-Marvel Studios movies lately... but this? This looks really interesting!

If nothing else, it looks like something that will be new and unique, so there's that!

   
• NEWS! This just in from the "No Shit, Sherlock" department... The More Money You Earn The Happier You Are, Large Study Finds.

   
• Denmark! This dipshit actually thought she did a thing...

All she actually did was show how utterly brainwashed Americans are by politicians and the wealthy corporations that own them.

   
No idea when I will have a chance to figure out what is wrong with my blog this time. I'm traveling this coming week, so maybe never! So see you next week... maybe.

Today I had to pay cash for something. This was an event which came out of nowhere and had me wondering how I actually get "cash" now-a-days. I just never use the stuff. Everything is paid on credit card (so I can get those sweet, sweet air miles that I can never use... thanks, COVID!) or, God willing, via my Apple Watch or iPhone.

It had me thinking back to the last time I paid cash for anything, and apparently it was so long ago that I can't remember. Fortunately I was owed some money where I was paid in cash (which I quickly forgot about) and so I didn't have to find a compatible cash machine or locate a checkbook. I had money waiting to be spent in my wallet.

It's bizarre how much has changed in my (relatively) short lifetime.

For the longest time, cash was all I had. I didn't get credit cards that I could actually use regularly until I was in college (something which would come to destroy me financially for decades).

Well, whatevs. I'd be thrilled to never use cash again.

Even though that will signal the End of Days, or whatever.

There comes a time where you just don't give a crap anymore.

For me that was 22 years ago... give or take.

But if it wasn't 22 years ago... give or take, it would probably have been today. Because I tell you what, I was at the end of my rope by 8:30am... and then had to go to work! I am increasingly mystified at how common courtesy and a willingness to Do The Right Thing have bottomed out. And then something happens to make you realize that there was a bottom underneath the bottom, and you hadn't bottomed out after all.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I've mistakenly though I hit bottom with people decades ago.

Turns out I was only getting started. And now I know better.

Sadly.

I am beyond exhausted.

Today I had to make the three-hour drive to Spokane for work... something I haven't done in quite a while. Years even. For decades I had to drive it at least once a year, if not multiple times. But given the general weirdness of the world and the way things like COVID keep popping up, it just hasn't been in the cards until now.

If there's one thing I can count on every time I make the trip, it's two things.

1. I will see some new construction that will make me think "WTF?" In the past this has included everything from a new chain restaurant very close to where another one already exists... or places I've been going for years suddenly bulldozed under... or something you just don't expect (the massive new Amazon warehouse outside of Spokane, to name one).
2. I will see some wacky-ass driver doing something so ridiculous and/or dangerous as to defy belief.

Sure enough, I was not disappointed.

The construction would be a new Mormon Temple just outside Moses Lake. This is a city between Seattle and Spokane which is quite literally in the middle of nowhere, and probably has around 20,000 some-odd people living there. It would not surprise me to know that Moses Lake has a Mormon church because loads of cities large and small have LDS churches... but a full-on temple?!? In Moses Lake?!?

To put this into perspective, this is only the fourth temple in the entire state. There's one in Seattle and one in Spokane (as one would expect) and a third one in Richland (which serves the Tri-Cities area of about 300,000 people). But frickin' Moses Lake?!? And it ain't no matchbox place of worship either... it's looking like it will be substantial. Which means that Moses Lake must have a pretty healthy number of Mormons residing there. Go figure. Still... kinda weird given how church attendance keeps falling year-over-year.

As for the unbelievable driving crap? Pretty much what you'd expect.

Probably the most dramatic was when a line of us were passing a motorhome in the passing lane... when an asshole went zooming past all of us in the right lane... got to the motorhome... then 1000% cut in front of a car to get back int the passing lane. Which was fucking stupid on every level because then he just ended up stuck behind the same car that was in front of us passing.

And boy was the person he cut in front of mad.

Not that I could blame them. Such recklessness could have caused a major accident. I saw the person who got cut off go grinding on the asshole's bumper... then zoom ahead of them and cut them off. Which was actually a dangerous thing to do, but sometimes we lose our minds when an asshole ruins our day, so I can understand it.

And now it's time to collapse so I can get up for work in the morning.

Turns out I only thought I was exhausted yesterday. Because today I found out exactly what "exhausted" really means.

Last night I was quick to take a nap because I knew I was going to wake up to watch the series premiere of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law that debuted on Disney+. Probably a mistake, but I didn't have to be to work until 9:00, so no big deal, right? (SPOILER ALERT: It would indeed turn out to be a big deal). I'm going to reserve comment on the show until we get past this origin episode... but my first impression was very good. I love Tatiana Maslany, and she brought everything you could hope for to the role. A guest appearance from The Hulk didn't hurt matters (where we also get a lingering question answered from the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings credits scene...

But anyway... Could not get back to sleep after hulking out, which ultimately lead to me getting a whopping three hours and twenty-eight minutes of sleep (according to Apple Watch). It didn't help that there were people in the neighboring hotel room who were making lots of noise and slamming doors until 2:30am. Thankfully work went very well, because if things went badly and a fully-functional brain was required, I would have been in deep trouble.

After work I stopped for a road pizza at David's...

And then I was on my way. Three hours of nothing but this...

Could be worse. It could have been five hours of nothing but that.

Last night I was in a movie chat room where the topic of discussion was Spielberg films. Not something I'm incredibly passionate about, even though he's made a dozen films I've really enjoyed.

Eventually talk turned to which of his films were our favorites, at which point I was mentally ranking them in my head. But them I decided to rank them in my computer when I couldn't think of more than a dozen.

Luckily I have a blog where I can dump things like this...

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
2. Minority Report
3. Jurassic Park
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
5. Schindler’s List
6. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
7. Saving Private Ryan
8. Jaws
9. Catch Me if You Can
10. Always
11. The Terminal
12. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
13. Munich
14. Lincoln
15. The Color Purple
16. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
17. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
18. War of the Worlds
19. Bridge of Spies
20. The Post
21. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
22. The Sugarland Express
23. Amistad
24. War Horse
25. Empire of the Sun
26. The BFG
27. Hook
28. 1941
29. West Side Story
30. The Adventures of TinTin
31. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
32. Ready Player One

My cats have been a little crazy since I got back from my work trip. I think they must have gotten into some catnip while I was gone. As I type this, they are chasing each other around the house at top speed... and I think it's because Jenny smacked Jake while he was getting a drink of water. It's like she wanted a little excitement in her life, and this was her solution.

Let's see... time to catch up on cat business after the big Blog Outage of 2022 situation.

Did I mention there was a SQUIRREL out on the patio? Boy did that cause a commotion. Jake ran right out to the catio to stalk it...

After the danger had passed, Jenny went out to patrol the catio to make sure that our territory wasn't invaded again. But then she got tired of patrolling and decided to take a nap...

A couple weeks ago I caught Jake sleeping in the chairs that I put upside-down on the table. I thought it looked uncomfortable, so I put a blanket in one of them. Now it's his most favorite spot to hang out...

He especially likes it because he can wander around the table and look down to see what's new on the floor...

But don't worry... Jake still sleeps in his normal spread-eagle configuration even if he's not in his chair bed...

Jake's a little more attentive when watching TV with me though...

While watching the underwhelming new Netflix documentary, Inside the Mind of a Cat, Jake was more intense than usual when he watches TV, so I left it running even though I wasn't interested in watching it...

And now I get to go clean my garage. Or start cleaning my garage. That's a job that will never be done in one day.

It's a bizarre situation when you have to figure out how to blog, but no worries... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• One Step Beyond! Ever since Marvel Studios announced that Secret Wars was happening, I've been a bit obsessed about who Marvel Studios will get to play The Beyonder. I think it's really important that they not make him be overly "cosmic"... instead he needs to be played a little funny and with a child-like wonder to belie his unlimited powers. And the person who could pull that off beautifully is Jake McDorman (who was exactly what The Beyonder needed to be in Limitless (the TV series, not the movie)...

Or somebody like him. It would be a mistake to go with somebody with too much seriousness and gravitas. That's just not going to play well in a movie like this.

   
• Sandy! I saw this incredible demonstration of sand art for The Sandman then spent a good chunk of time going through their Twitter feed to look at all the other amazing stuff they've done...

Here's the Twitter feed if you've got time to spare.

   
• TREK! This just slays me: "Strange New Worlds Showrunner Says Series Pitch Was “What If We Just Did Star Trek?” Such a novel concept!

I do not mind AT ALL doing something new and different within the Star Trek universe... I loved the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movies (for the most part)... but the way that they took the amazing first season of Star Trek: Discovery and just flushed it down the toilet with subsequent seasons drives me crazy. I am really, really hoping that future seasons of Strange New Worlds hangs on to what makes the show so great.

   
• TANOOOOOOO! I'm more than a little anxious every time there is news "from the production" of Asohka...

I thought it finished filming back in May, so I was expecting it would be released by the end of the year. But if this keeps up, it won't be until 2023! Bigly sad!

   
• My Modern Consumer Life! Tell me if this sounds familiar...
"wE'Ve SHipPed YoUR oRder!"
"Oh, great! Can I get a tracking number?"
"nO!"
"How do I know you shipped it then?"
"TRusT uS! wE'Ve SHipPed YoUR oRder!"

The fact that it's urgent is not as concerning as the fact that my credit card has been charged.

   
• My Valentine! Maybe one day I'll be able to clean my home without running across stuff like this. Valentine's Day was a holiday I went all out for with my grandma and mom. I'd order interesting flowers from around the country and always bought their cards the minute they were put out for sale so I had the best selection...

Once I started taking my mom on vacations to give her something to look forward to after her abusive boyfriend was carted off to prison, she asked me to stop spending money on flowers and put it towards her next vacation instead. Still bought her a card though.

   
• Blue! I finally finished the final episode of the Viagra documentary on discovery+. It's kinda fascinating, kinda impressive, and kinda thought-provoking. The "boner-pill" was discovered by accident when its primary function ended up being a side-effect for a different drug they were developing. That Pfizer took it and ran with it is a testament to the pharmaceutical industry. There's two things that this documentary series dismantles. The first is that Pfizer put huge amounts of time and money into R&D so that men could have erections... all while there's still not cure for cancer. Except it was discovered by accident. Erections are not what they were trying to do at all. The second is that the pill was designed so rich old men could have a sex life long after nature has taken its course and denied it to them. But the truth is that there are many young men in their sexual prime who can't have a sex life due to erectile disfunction, and Viagra completely changed their lives. Sex is a big part of the human condition, and to not be able to have sex is a serious point of suffering that can now be alleviated. So make fun of the little blue pill all you want, but for many people it's no laughing matter.

   
May the remainder of your Sunday be smooth sailing. Mine won't! I am fixing my deep fryer (or trying to).

Getting old sucks.

It's like something is hurting all the time... and even a minor activity can be recipe for disaster if something strange happens. I try to just take it in stride and be careful with myself... but shit can still happen from time to time, so I end up reaching for the Ibuprofen so I can deal. Yesterday as I was pulling the bottle out of the cabinet, my inner voice was all "Little! Yellow! Different! from those Nuprin commercials in the 1980's. It was just Ibuprofen, so I don't know what was "different" about it, but those commercials are still burned into my brain somehow...

I thought Ibuprofen had been around forever, but maybe it hasn't been? I suppose it's possible that Ibuprofen wasn't over-the-counter until the 1980's, so it truly was different at the time? Who knows. I'm too lazy to Google that shit.

A week-and-a-half ago I ordered a Sonos Arc using my "upgrade discount." The reason was two-fold... 1) I needed a flat speaker in front of my studio desk... and 2) I am really tired of having to use two separate remotes for the PlayBar in my living room (which, foolishly, doesn't use eARC, but instead clings to optical digital, which was outdated years before I bought the thing).

But heeeeere's the thing.

OF COURSE Sonos made it so that the PlayBar wall-mount doesn't work with the Arc so you have to buy a new one. OF COURSE they didn't put the cable hole in the same place. Because OF COURSE. So my first order of business was to move the hole in my wall 1-1/2-inches lower. Fortunately, that's fairly easy. You just flip the piece that you cut out of the new location and put it up top like so...

And, yes, I cover everything with plastic, because it's all too easy to accidentally spray where you don't want to spray, and I can't afford a new television or furniture...

Next I had to sand and spray texture to cover not only the patch... but the six holes that I had to make for the PlayBar mount...

After that, it's just a matter of installing the wall plug and painting the wall. Yeah, yeah, I know that it would be easier to just run the power cable through the wall, but I really can't afford a new house if an electrical fire burns mine down, so I did everything by the book...

Interesting to note... the PlayBar wall mount was shitty and stupid if you wanted your cables to come through the wall. It is perfectly flat, so if you use a wall port (AS YOU SHOULD!) then you have to shim the bar out with washers (or whatever) until it's flush with the port plate. The Arc wall mount bends outward, so no shimming is needed if you're using a wall port (AS YOU SHOULD!)...

A drill, a spirit level, and a shiny new HDMI cable pulled through the wall, and voilà... Arc installed...

It's pretty good. For one thing, the stereo separation is better than it was on the PlayBar. For another thing, this new sound bar has upward-firing speakers to bounce off the ceiling and provide sound from above the television. This isn't terribly effective... there are some Atoms-enabled movies that I can kinda get the effect. But it will never going to be the same as having an actual Atmos speaker setup. BUT THE BEST THING?!? Because HDMI-ARC allows the television to control the volume of the Arc, I can just use one remote control for everything. Yay!

And then there's the PlayBar...

The thing I hated about using the regular ol' Sonos One speakers in my studio is that I wasn't able to put them in front and to the side of my chair so that the separated sound is coming from in front of me as God intended. Instead they are off-center at different places on the side of me because of the way the room is configured.

But PlayBar is flat and has stereo separation in one spot so it can be directly in front of my desk, like this...

Piece-o-cake.

I was worried that sitting far closer than intended would screw up the sound, but that wasn't the case at all. There's pretty good separation, the sound comes from in front of me, and the quality is pretty impressive. It's actually a better fit for this than it was a TV sound bar.

And so... a lot of money well-spent, I suppose.

Tomorrow I have to go on a short work trip.

Today I have to clean my house. This is routine for me, because if something happens and I perish from this earth while away from home, I don't want people to think that I was a slob. And so... dusting furniture... vacuuming floors... cleaning countertops... clearing out the refrigerator... washing all my clothes... emptying all the trashcans... it goes on and on.

When I used to travel often, my house was kept a lot cleaner than it is now. But in pandemic times? Yeah, it's a mess more often than not.

The drive over to Seattle was blissfully without incident. The worst part of the whole ordeal was having to say goodbye to my cats. They always know that something's up with I pack up a suitcase, and this time was no exception. As soon as I rolled it out, Jake was going bananas and Jenny tried to climb inside the minute I opened it. Assumably because she wanted to come with me.

Fortunately I'm still able to distract them long enough for me to sneak out of the house by giving them cat treats. One shake of the little bag, and everything else is forgotten.

I should just go home. That would be the smart thing to do.

But I think we all know that I am not a smart man. No... I'm going to stay here over the mountains where I can have another couple evenings without wildfire smoke in the air.

   
Home again home again lickity kitty...

A time to be born, a time to die. A time to blog, a time to bullet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Confess! I love the Fletch books. I love the Chevy Chase Fletch movies... even though they are a different take on the material than I would have gone with. And now we're getting a new Fletch played by... Jon Hamm?!?

Couldn't be happier. Hamm has proven over and over that he has some serious comedy chops, and I think he's a perfect fit for Fletch. Hopefully it will be priced reasonably given that it's day-and-date with the theatrical release. I guess we find out on September 16th.

   
• Murders! I finally got caught up enough that I could spare enough time to watch the final episode of Inly Murders in the Building...

I didn't guess the killer, but I did enjoy how they wrapped it up. And that final star cameo? Brilliant!

   
• Alternative Facts! Do you know what makes for alternative eggs? POTATOES!

I don't know how accurate this is... but I do like me the potatoes.

   
• The Death of Streaming! As the whole Warner Bros. Discovery fiasco continues to implode... I find myself starting to not give a shit. At first I was outraged because shows like Infinity Train were being buried and movies like Batgirl were getting killed off during production. It just seems so incredibly disrespectful towards the people who work hard on these projects to have their efforts be shit on. And all to save a few bucks on taxes and residual payments. But now I am to the point where I'm just saying "good." That's two less streaming services I have to pay for. About the only thing left on Discovery I give a shit about is Bargain Block, and if HBO is going to waste away to a few shows I watch, then what's the point? I'll discontinue my annual memberships and just pay for a month or two each month when there's something I want to watch. So thanks for saving me a bunch of money, LOL! Although... I can only hope that this will actually improve the state of the DC Comics Cinematic Universe, which has been a festering pile of shit since the put all their eggs in a Snyderverse basket.

   
• Fake? As a long-time fan of Johnny Harris and his videos, I've had more than a few problems with his videos over the past year which tend to simplify things to the point of them sliding more towards fiction than fact. Now I'm a lot more selective about which of his videos I watch and how much credence I give to his thoughts (which is why I haven't been featuring his content on this blog as of late). And then I ran across this, which perfectly encapsulates where I'm at...

Like this guy, I don't want Johnny "canceled"... I just want him to do better. He's still a compelling video maker.

   
• EXCUSE ME! There's a lot of people who can do a President Trump impersonation. Jamie Foxx has a really good one...

Fun times. Fun times.

   
And now I must bid you (and my bullets) adieu.

When your day starts out with bad news, it kinda sets the tone for your day... probably your entire week. Here it is 11:20pm and I can definitely see how this is going to bleed into tomorrow.

Which makes me seriously questioning getting out of bed in the morning, I tell you whut. If I didn't have cats who insist on a timely breakfast, I'd probably take a pass. Because as if my Monday Morning Bad News wasn't enough, there's wildfire smoke in the air which is serious headache fodder for me.

In other news...

The attacks on my WordPress install have been unrelenting, and rather than getting hacked yet again, I installed not one... but two security packages. One for WordPress and one for everything else. It hasn't stopped the attacks, but it makes me feel better to know that they'll have a bit harder time trying to break in.

Except now it's harder for me to actually log-in to post, so I guess my life has been made worse as well (or, in the case of today, even more worse. But that seems to be how life works these days.

Lately I've been watching movies from the 80's to see how well they hold up all these decades later. The answer? It's a mixed bag. Some of them hold up just fine, even when you don't mentally place them into the time that they were released. But others? Yikes.

It all started when I watched the original Top Gun before watching Top Gun: Maverick again (I bought it, but original saw it in the theater). My verdict? Well... the action is just as good as it ever was. And while the whole You've Lost That Loving Feeling scenario is still kinda funny, it's also incredibly cringe. Sure it's funny that Charlie (Kelly McGillis being awesome) shot him down harder than any fighter jet crash, but it's the skeezy way that it was approached in the first place that has the scene hitting a lot different today...

Although... eh... it's not terrible. I mean, it's no The Princess Bride which is as wonderful as it ever was... but it's also not nightmarish bad.

What actually is nightmarish bad? Revenge of the Nerds. Holy crap! It's all predatory, rapey, exploitative, misogynistic, and outright horrifying behavior from beginning to end. I have no idea how it was made back then!

It's kinda weird how I've remembered so many movies completely different than they actually are. I'd like to think that it's because I was clueless back in the day... but I'm open to the possibility that my memory is just faulty. The other day I forgot where I set down a glass of water just five minutes after pouring it.

Living where I do, you always live in dread of hearing the words "LEVEL 3 EVACUATION ISSUED". Just in case you are blessed to live in an area without wildfires, LEVEL 1 is the Get Ready level where you should start keeping a very close eye on the local fires because you could be in danger of evacuation. LEVEL 2 is the Get Set level where you start packing up your crap, gassing up the car, and generally be ready to evacuate at a moment's notice. LEVEL 3 is the Go Level where your life is in imminent danger if you don't get the heck out of dodge.

I have been in a LEVEL 3 twice. The first time I wasn't at home, so it was no big deal to up and leave the area. I got in a line of slow-moving cars and drove back to my house. The second time was much more serious. Once we hit LEVEL 3, absolutely everybody had left the area except me. I stayed behind running around my apartment building putting out ember fires so that my apartment wouldn't catch fire. Part of the time I was on the roof with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth so I could spot problems easier. After a couple hours, the fire department told me that it had gone way past dangerous, and I had to leave. Because I had stayed behind and "bravely fought to save my home" they promised that they would do their best to make sure it hadn't been for nothing. And they totally did. Other than smoke damage, the building only had a few spots on it.

Yesterday some places in the Lake Chelan region hit LEVEL 3. As I heard the advisory start screaching through everybody's mobile phones, I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache that I always get.

Fast forward to today and all the evacuations have been downgraded and the bulk of the fire had been halted at around 20 acres lost. They still don't know how it started. Though I keep getting lightning alerts from my little weather station, so I guess that could be a possibility.

In Other News...

As a child of the 80's, I remember very well The Cold War... and Mikhail Gorbachev's "openess reforms" (гласность, a.k.a. Glasnost) which effectively ended it. Having lived through my entire childhood with nuclear war being a distinct possibility, it was nice to think that... just maybe... things had deescalated enough that the world could breathe a little easier knowing that catastrophic annihilation had been (temporarily, alas) pushed aside even a little bit.

Gorbachev's actions were wildly controversial. And nowhere more so than in the Country Formerly Known as the Soviet Union itself. Now that he has died at 91 years of age, I've seen his пицца хат (Pizza Hut) commercial making it's way through the internets...

If there's one short video which can sum up what Gorbachev in the 1980's was about to American audiences today... it's probably this commercial. I am still amazed that he agreed to actually do it. Which makes me kinda like him, because I love it when powerful people aren't above poking fun at themselves. Humor is a basic human condition, and willing to be the subject of it to better relate to those who are not powerful people... well... it just shows that you still have some humanity left in you. And that goes double when you allow the humor to be coupled with any amount of criticism towards your policies.

Probably why I'm such a fan of the White House Correspondents Dinner. Just the fact that an American president would dare to take part is pretty amazing when you think about it (well, when they actually do take part).

And I know this is a bit cliché... but now I actually want Pizza Hut. I'm all too easily susceptible to suggestion.