Today is the day I usually go into the office to box up all my 2024 files and get everything ready for 2025. It's a great day to do that because nobody is there to intrude and I plow through. But today, much to my surprise, people are actually working! And so I'm putting off my office clean out until Sunday.

Instead I'm cleaning out my laptop. I'm one of those messy people who just drops everything on their desktop and (wrongly) assumes I'll get to it later. Most of them are for work, so that's fairly easy to file away properly. But my personal stuff is more weird and complex. It's recipes. It's memes. It's stuff for this blog. It's photos. It's links. It's ideas. It's absolutely anything you can think of. That's not so easy to file away.

But anyway, here's some stuff that I think I collected for Blogography...

Here's an interesting land feature I found while randomly scrolling through Google Maps. It's a shockingly round island (René-Levasseur Island) inside of a shockingly round lake (Lac Manicouagan) in Canada. It's interesting enough to have its own Wikipedia page here. Long story short, an asteroid slammed into Canada 214 million years ago. And it must have hit near-perpendicular to make such a round hole. It's nicknamed "The Eye of Quebec."

Copyright Google Maps

Copyright Google Maps

Here's a video that I didn't end up using for Caturday because the camera wasn't pointed downward enough (or because YouTube made it into a reel, which displays weird). Still funny. Jenny ran around the corner at breakfast time to run upstairs. Little did she know that Jake was on his way down. She didn't even slow down or hesitate, but instead leaped right over him...

I don't know if I already shared this, but it's a cartoon that I absolutely love...

I have no idea why I saved this. It's a video from my doorbell cam showing the moon traveling across the sky in the upper-left corner there...

This is a photo that I was going to write a blog post about, but could never find a way to make it interesting. Basically, I was opening the drawers of my IKEA shoe cupboard looking for my water shoes and noticed that a shoe was missing. This makes absolutely no sense. I know it was there at one point. But now it's just... gone?!? How? Where did it go? I wouldn't have taken out just one shoe. Did somebody take it? I actually

This is a snack called "Kazbars" that looked amazing, so I took a snapshot of it to remind me to buy it. I ended up finding it (yep, delicious!), but never trashed the photo for some reason...

This is my favorite meme of 2024. It gets passed between my friends and I whenever we have a big expense pop up. It's especially apt for me going into 2025...

Oh look... it's the secret recipe for McDonald's Special Sauce that I've been meaning to try!

I ran across this "recipe" a month ago for Movie Theater Popcorn that I've been meaning to try once I get the ingredients...

And this recipe for School Cafeteria Cheese Pizza sounds amazing. I just found it a week ago and already I'm sad I haven't tried it...

And that's a sampling of what I'm having to deal with. I've got loads more just waiting to be organized and filed away. Happy New Year!

I didn't take enough vacation days, so I'm having to squeeze them in where I can. Which is to say that I have today and tomorrow off. Whee.

What I should be doing is absolutely nothing. What I'm actually doing is getting a lot of minor chores done that I've been avoiding forever. Scrubbing the kitchen. Scrubbing the toilets. Scrubbing the floors.

Pretty much just a lot of scrubbing going on today.

Which doesn't make for an exciting blog entry, but unless somebody is going to pay for a housecleaner to come take care of all this mess, it's all I've got.

I woke up feeling awful, because of course I did. I had the day off. If I'm going to be feeling super-great, you can bet your last dollar it will be on a work day.

So I spent most of my time watching Would I Lie To You? clips on their YouTube channel. As you'd guess from my obsession with British television programmes (see what I did there?) it is, in fact, a British series. A British Competition series hosted by Rob Brydon with David Mitchell and Lee Mack as the team captains. It is categorically one of the most consistently funny things I've ever seen.

David Mitchell is hilariously funny. Any time he's on a quiz show, you're guaranteed a laugh or ten (the second iPad story is so funny that I think I'm permanently damaged)...

Lee Mack is easily one of the quickest wits on the planet. It's insane how fast he is...

An important part of the show is when a guest comes out and each of the three teammates say how they know this person. Only one story is true, and it's up to the other team to suss out which is the truth. It gets crazy...

Sometimes the guests have stories that are absolutely mind-blowing. And half of them are from Bob Mortimer...

There's comedians that appear which I'd never heard of before who are just beyond funny. Like poor Sam Campbell, who has deadpan down...

But the funniest bit I'd seen all day was James Acaster doing a bit on the game of "Squirt." I nearly died...

If you ever need a distraction from the horrors of life, Would I Lie You You? is the place to be.

Yesterday the cats' feeders went off for lunch while I was meal-prepping ingredients for veggie wraps. Jake was all over his food but Jenny was nowhere to be found. I called to her, but she never showed up. So rather than having Jake scarf her food as well, I took the bowl out and sat it on the counter.

Then, as I was dicing tomatoes, I heard this howling that sounded like it was made by an animal on a vibrating bed. I looked down to tell Jake that he already had his lunch and he can't have his sister's too... but it WAS his sister! Jenny was howling, but apparently she was so furious that her lunch was gone that she was shaking. Or something. I honestly don't know what her deal was.

So I was like "Alight, ALRIGHT! I'm getting it!" and she started chowing down.

At this point I'm convinced that my cats really do see themselves as kittens and me as their cat dad. Because they act like spoiled little brats who just start complaining and crying and howling the second that something doesn't go their way. And it's getting worse all the time. Jenny has gotten frustrated and cried before, but it was nothing like what's going on now.

And just look at this shit...

There I was on a Zoom meeting, petting Jake all the while. All of a sudden I feel him flop on my hand and there it is... HE'S FALLEN ASLEEP ON MY HAND! Doesn't give a single shit about it. What's weirder is that one of his eyes was still kind of open, which lead me to believe that he might actually be faking it because he wanted to lay on my hand. That's totally something my cats would do.

The little bastards.

I'm just a boy. Standing in front of the blogosphere. Asking it to love him... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Well Hello Hello! YouTube's algorithm has found me some really cool content over the years. But sometimes it comes too late. This small channel of blacksmithing videos was being shut down. The two guys who created it could never seem to get any traction, as they were continuously buried by the algorithm. But then? YouTube promoted their final video. And it finally took off. They ballooned to 15,000 subscribers, and a lot of people who would have watched had they only known about it, commented as such. And so here they are... coming back...

Kinda a happy ending for everybody. I hope they can keep growing their channel. If you want to take a look, it's pretty cool.

   
• Future Dutch! So there I was taking a phone call after putting my television on pause. Eventually the Google screensaver engaged, and I came very close to saying WHAT THE BLADE RUNNER ALTERNATE FUTURE IS THIS SHIT?! And noted that the title of the photo included "Vinkeveen" from the Netherlands. So I looked it up and Google Maps and, sure enough...

© Google Maps

© Google Maps

© Google Maps

That is very cool, isn't it?

   
• Oh, Grand! Just a reminder to everybody who hasn't already used a VPN to watch the new Wallace & Gromit movie on the BBC (they've had it since Christmas)... Netflix finally got off their asses and has it available for streaming in the USA. I'll be watching it again just to show Netflix that this is the kind of awesome content I want to see... not another pile of shit that Zack Snyder crapped out his ass...

The movie is just amazingly well-done and well worth your valuable time.

   
• The Prologue and the Promise! I recently watched a video on the history of Walt Disney World's Epcot. That lead me to a video on one of the earliest pavilions in Future World called Horizons. I always thought it was a bit shit to two times I visited before they closed, but there was a giant mural inside that I loved. Never really knew who painted it until I watched this video. Apparently some genius at Disney thought to hire renowned futurist painter and celebrated "space" artist Robert McCall to create it. And it is stunning...

© Disney and McCall Studios

© Disney and McCall Studios

You can read more about this amazing work (plus see many others) on the artist's website here.

   
• Mixbox! WELP! Looks like somebody finally solved the thing I hate most about painting digitally... pigments never work as they should. Programs like Photoshop and Procreate use an additive model which turns everything into a muddy mess. But now a company has come up with a model which simulates actual pigments. This is incredible...

I hope that the Mixbox technology is added to mainstream apps very soon now... it's amazing to me that it's taken this long to get here.

   
• IT'S THE FOG! The Mystery Government Fog is out to get us! DEFEAT THE FOG 2025! (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick).

FINALLY! The threat of alien spores is being taken seriously by the health care community! Thanks, Dr. Eric!

   
• Unsurprised! My grievances against PayPal are well documented. They stole money from me. They said that a customer didn't get merchandise I sold to them and reversed the money. I provided USPS tracking showing the delivery. I provided an email from the customer saying that they received their order and that they didn't receive a refund. PayPal didn't give a single fucking shit. They kept the money. And since they are not governed by banking regulations, there's NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. After pestering them for months, they simply stopped responding. So I closed down the Artificial Duck store and was done. I never made a single dollar profit on the shop, sold everything at cost and exact shipping, and did it for the fun of it all. There's no way I could continue and take a loss because payments are revoked over a total lie.

And now it comes out that these heinous fucking assholes at PayPal are just as bad as we knew they were. They've been fucking over their advertisers and their customers with their "Honey" service. Get a load of this...

Nothing would make me happier than PayPal being sued out of existence and shut down. But that will never happen. They get protection from shitty fucking laws that our government creates because our government is too busy sucking Big Business dicks to give a shit about protecting the citizens that elect them. Welcome to the hellscape that it The United States of America.

   
Alrighty then. Until next Sunday then!

The Monday before Christmas, my work had a holiday luncheon. Usually these events aren't the best time for me because I'm a vegetarian trying to eat more vegan. So usually what I end up with is a piece of bread and some salad. But in the last couple years they've been kind enough to request something that I can eat.

This time they got me a vegan wrap that was incredible. Ridiculously delicious...

Ever since then I've been craving another. But I wasn't around enough to place a grocery order until this past Friday. When I ordered all the stuff needed to make an awesome wrap of my own.

And, because once you've prepped all the ingredients wraps are so easy to throw together, I've been eating them day and night, changing ingredients around to find the combination I like ...

After days of eating nothing but wraps for every meal, I have some tips for you...

1. Mixing all the contents in a bowl with the dressing before adding to the wrap is so game-changing. You get all the tastes in every bite.
2. I started with Italian dressing, but now I'm addicted to a kinda Southwest thing made from vegan mayo with vegan sour cream, chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder.
3. Spinach is so superior to iceberg lettuce in a wrap. Spinach has flavor, iceberg is just wet and crunchy. Still prefer iceberg in tacos though.
4. My favorite ingredients other than the Southwest dressing and spinach is... black beans, blackened corn, red pepper, black olives, onion, tomato, poblano, and crushed corn chips.
5. I nuke the wrap for 10 seconds just to make it a bit flexible before filling. Any longer than that and the wrap gets chewy. Not nuking makes it crumble.
6. At first I was wrapping the wraps with parchment to keep them together when I cut in half and eat them. Now I don't bother. Using a serrated knife allows you to saw through them while keeping the ingredients inside.

Wraps are such a healthy thing to eat with all those veggies. I hope I never get tired of them. Or at least not so tired that I stop eating them altogether.

As anybody who has read this blog for some time knows, I love LEGO building sets and really love LEGO video games. They're light puzzle games that are more fun than stressful, and I still play them often to relax. Over the years I've owned all of them, from Star Wars and Indiana Jones to Jurassic Park and Batman... and beyond! If LEGO has made it, I've bought it. They're clever, funny, and entertaining.

Today I discovered that Traveller's Tales (the company behind most of the games) had worked up a pitch for a LEGO James Bond game. It never occurred to me to pair them up, but now that their presentation video has leaked it's such a natural franchise to immortalize in LEGO...

Sadly, nothing ever came of the idea, which is a shame. I'd 100% buy it if it existed.

From 1998 through 2001, I was flying to Los Angeles fairly regularly. I had a project in "development" (AKA "development hell") and was consulting after the rights were optioned. This was a crazy period in my life, and I was trying to get the most out of my time there. I made important connections that I still have today. I did new work that was interesting and challenging. I tried standup. I got to know the city fairly well. I met great people. I had a lot of fun.

Which is why the massive fires burning down parts of city are more than a little upsetting. I look at the map and it's very worrisome. The Hollywood Hills are on fire, and the area around the Hollywood Bowl have been evacuated. The Palisades are on fire, and The Getty Villa is there. West Hollywood is endangered north of Sunset Blvd., and iconic places like The Comedy Store are there. Sunset Blvd. itself is closed. To say nothing of the many houses that have burned. It's a horrific situation, and high winds are making a bad situation worse.

Santa Monica, where I've stayed. Pasadena, where I've worked. Hollywood where I played. I could wake up in the morning and find any or all of them engulfed in flames. I have a lot of memories tied up in Northern L.A., and my anxiety is in overdrive just thinking about what's happening there and all the people who have lost their homes.

And the animals, of course.

This is Lahaina, Maui all over again for me.

I think that if I hadn't been through wildfires in my past I wouldn't react so horribly when they strike places I know.

But I have and they do.

Stay safe, everybody.

This morning I woke up to scour the news to find out what's happening with the L.A. fires. It's a depressing necessity because closing my eyes to it isn't going to make it go away.

The only thing worse than the actual news are some disgusting "Christians" enamoured with the idea that the fires are "God's punishment" for Hollywood. Because isn't that the way it always goes? If disaster strikes a largely Conservative area, everything gets blamed on anybody except the people living there. It's the gays. It's abortion. It's Obama. However... the minute disaster strikes a largely Progressive area, it's because God hates them and they deserve His wrath. How "Christians" think that this kind of idiotic "logic" makes it okay for them to promote hate against people they don't like... IN GOD'S NAME... is absolutely wild. Just further evidence that many "Christians" today are Christians in name only, and have no real interest in living a life that honors Christ. Compassion and mercy have gone right out the window.

But anyway...

I watched a lot of footage from the fires. But the one that hit me hardest was a video that Hallmark actor Cameron Mathison shot of his destroyed home. This looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic video game instead of reality, and it's a very sobering watch...

Yeah. Children are being murdered around the globe, but God is spending His time burning down Cameron Mathison's house. Get the fuck out of here.

Nothing happened today because I've been obsessing over a social media time-suck.

It's a tale as old as time.

A father, his two sons, and his son-in-law work together at a family realtor's office. One day, for whatever reason... be it boredom, nothing better to do, or an idea to "go viral" to drive more traffic to their firm... they make a video.

They apparently had fun doing it because then they made another. And another. And another. And eventually they're getting hundreds of thousands of views, and an occasional viral hit getting millions.

I've been following this group for quite a while, but this is the video which got me going back through their old videos this evening. Boy does it ring true right now...

   
So many of their ideas start from a mundane truth that's funny when viewed through the perspective they bring to it...

   
A lot of their best videos trade off their relationships as family...

   
As if that wasn't all enough... there's also surprisingly good dancing! And you can find it all right here.

My cats have been even more lazy than usual today and I'm following their lead. Instead of cleaning the house, doing laundry, and taking care of all the boring and mundane human crap that I should be doing... I'm laying in bed and scrolling through the internet.

Which, as you probably realize, is mostly cat videos and cat content.

I saw this post from last August and it couldn't be more authentic cat...

   
This one killed me. Be sure to watch with the sound on because the hilarity is worth the effort...

   
I'd gladly go to Starbucks for a pup cup for my cats if it would make them like riding in the car. Just listen to this cat...

   
And now, this...

   
I'll stop there because I could drop dozens and dozens of other things that have been inundating my personal time lately.

And you, if you'll excuse me, I'm scrubbing the cat feeding station, cleaning the water fountains, filling the Litter-Robots, washing the kitty warming pad covers, and doing all the other cat-maintenance chores that Jake and Jenny demand of me.

Don't look now but the world isn't ending after all... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• AMNK! Oh look. This is my life right here...

And here's Part One...

Yeah. Just like that.

   
• This Moment! Well this was unanticipated. I had no idea that Able Heart had beautiful feel good tracks like this until it popped up in my feed...

Another artist I need to keep an eye on, it would seem.

   
• Viral! NEWSFLASH: Crucial Firefighting Plane Grounded In LA Because Of Idiot Drone Operator. Who gives a crap that homes are burning... I want footage to go viral on TikTok!

   
• SPACE! ELEVATOR! I loathe the AppleTV adaptation of Foundation, but keep coming back to this awesome scene every time I see anything about building a space elevator. It's incredibly well-done...

The trail of destruction as the cable for the space elevator falls acrss the earth is epic.

   
• Baked! Have I mentioned that I still loathe my new Whirlpool oven? After finally fixing it so it will actually work (the element was not fully seated or something), I run into new things to loathe always. In addition to the control panel layout being shit, my latest consistent source of hate is that YOU CAN'T KEEP THE DOOR OPEN WHEN BROILING! WHO THE FUCK DESIGNS AN OVEN LIKE THIS? You can't look through the window to keep watch, it isn't tall enough. You have to constantly open and close the door to look. This is fucking madness. In all my years of using an oven, including my previous Whirlpool, you could leave the door open to broil. I will never buy another shitty fucking Whirlpool appliance again. What a waste of money for something so frustrating. — Seriously thinking of welding the fucking door sensor permanently shut. But then I'd void my warranty? Lord.

   
• Spring Break! NEWSFLASH: 2 bodies found in the wheel well of a JetBlue plane in Fort Lauderdale, airline says. WTF? So... let's think this through. You stow away in a wheel well where the landing gear goes after takeoff. Assuming you can avoid getting crushed by it, you'll then reach a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet where it's freezing cold and you can't get oxygen?!? I just... what could the motivation be for something like this? "Screw New York weather, I'm going to Ft. Lauderdale!" or something? I dunno. Maybe if they didn't have someplace warm to ride out the winter this would seem like a good idea... but if this "keeps happening" it seems as though there should be some kind of sensor to tell the cockpit if there is a presence in the wheel well.

   
Until next Sunday, assuming the earth is still here.

The big news today is that Sonos's CEO has finally stepped down after his company forced a shitty app release in order to meet a ship date on a calendar for headphones... not giving a crap that it fucked over longtime loyal customers in the process.

But this is a rather gross simplification of events of record.

• First of all, don't go crying for the now ex-CEO. He's getting $1.9 MILLION DOLLARS in severance. That's probably slightly more than the 100 people who got laid off because of a situation the now ex-CEO was presiding over.
• The new "Interim CEO" had a good message for Sonos staff that went out today. And he's worked as an engineer for Apple, so it's assumed that he understands the importance of earning and maintaining customer loyalty. But he also was leadership at Quibi, a disaster that's so massively huge that I'm surprised he's still able to work in the tech field. So while things are likely looking up, I'm tempering my expectations.
• The Sonos app, while greatly improved over the steaming pile of shit that initially got forced on everybody (hey, you can scroll through a playlist without constantly pausing now!), is still far from perfect. It's not intuitive at all. You can't configure it in a way that makes sense to you. Want to pin your playlists so you can get to them easily? FUCK YOU! And I just don't get it. There are plenty of talented UI architects out there, why isn't Sonos hiring people who understand elegance via simplicity in design? I'd assume that people developing the app at Sonos use Sonos, but you wouldn't know it given how the app works. Or doesn't. I still fucking hate it, even though it's mostly usable for what I need now.
• People are losing sight of the fact that not only was the now-ex-CEO in charge when the whole app fiasco happened... he also presided over the Sonos Arc's "Pop of Death" that didn't allow many customers to use its hallmark feature, Dolby Atmos, for nearly TWO FUCKING YEARS. He didn't give a single shit that the entire reason I purchased the soundbar was FOR DOLBY ATMOS. At no time did Sonos ask me (or anybody?) what our setup was so the could expedite a fix. Or ask us to ship our setup so they could figure it out. The CEO had them meander around FOR TWO YEARS working on other stuff before solving the problem. TWO FUCKING YEARS. This is inexcusable. This is unforgivable.
• I don't think I will ever forgive Sonos for all they've put me through. And if I could afford to replace my Sonos gear after lighting it all on fire in the middle of the street, I would do that. Probably. Sonos has gone from being a company I loved and advocated for to a company I loathe with every fiber of my being. And their management made it happen. Whether management can swing the pendulum back before they go bankrupt is anybody's guess.

My home is not very big at all, but still bigger than I need. I could get by with half the size for myself and my cats just fine. When I bought it the location was the most important factor, because I'd be taking care of a mom with dementia. Living in my old neighborhood where people know her and, more importantly, she knows them, is what mattered.

Because I'm single, I have been toying with the idea of finding something smaller. Cheaper to maintain and heat/cool (and clean!) as I get older. But something became immediately apparent as I was looking around... I wouldn't come out ahead on a downsizing deal, and it's proving really difficult to wrap my head around. Shouldn't the difference between the sale price of the bigger place and the purchase price of the smaller place be putting money in my pocket?

No. — At least not right now.

Smaller doesn't automatically equal cheaper.

Unless I gave up on home ownership completely and moved to an apartment. But given the money I've sunk into this place over the years, that's a short-term windfall that would likely cost me even more money long-term.

And so I guess I'm staying put for a while longer.

Which saves me from having to explain to my cats that they'd have to adjust their excessive lifestyle to live in less space. Something they probably wouldn't be happy about at all.

I've heard that as we get older we have a harder and harder time getting the sleep we need. It's hard to fall asleep. Waking up is what's easy. Then it's even harder to fall back asleep.

Apparently I've reached that point, because I feel lucky if I can manage to get five or six hours sleep. Most times it's less. Sometimes a lot less. As an example, here's my sleep from last night...

   
Three hours and nine minutes. I should have taken a nap when I got home from work, but I wasn't tired.

No idea how that was even possible.

How can I function on three hours sleep?

Awww, man. In many ways, David Lynch is a genius who cannot be touched. Between Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, and even Dune... WHICH I ARGUE WAS A FANTASTIC ADAPTATION FOR THE DAY... I admire his work so much, and was sad to hear that he had died.

YouTube is not letting me embed an awesome video where David Lynch is talking about the time he met George Lucas because Lucas wanted him to direct Return of the Jedi. But it's awesome so I am giving you the link right here. Everything I love about David Lynch is encapsulated in this story. You MUST watch it. Even if you're not a fan and don't understand his work. Especially then, because it will explain why so many people are fans of his, and how it translates to what he does.

Rest in Peace, sir.

And so our bought-and-paid-for "Supreme" Court has unanimously said that Americans don't have the fucking freedom to decide for themselves what they can and cannot access on the internet, making a decision for all of us that TikTok can be actually be banned. Turns out that only American companies are allowed to promote misinformation, exploit our personal information, and send our data to China! Anybody else does it and it's a "matter of National Security." Despite some valid concerns, this is some stupid shit right here. Guess TikTok didn't buy off the right politicians...

The entire TikTok fiasco is both straightforward and complex. President Trump is the one who set out to ban it. Then Democrats got into power and President Biden co-signed it, but passed the buck back to Trump as he returns to power. So now Trump is in a position to either save TikTok or sink it thanks to the "Supreme" Court (making Democrats look fucking stupid as usual, regadless of which way he goes). That's the simple version. The complexity comes from all the political shit surrounding the simple version. Take for example Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas. He's the guy who torpedoed an extension to TikTok shutting down. He's very aggressive about it. But why? Well, the corrupt asshole has a book coming out called Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Him being able to claim that he's the guy who took a tough stand against China by banning TikTok is great promotion for his book (which I'm assuming is about taking a tough stand against China). This is a total conflict of interest, but that's hardly surprising coming from a politician. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. All those politicians taking money from Facebook have to repay that favor somehow, and what better way than to shut down a huge competitor? It goes on and on. And until we start executing politicians who fuck over American citizens to serve their own lust for money and power, it's going to continue.

   
And speaking of seriously stupid shit... I have written about the flerfer (flat earther) movement many, many times on Blogography. I just don't get it. We had this shit figured out before the time of Jesus Christ. It's an easily verifiable fact that the earth is a globe. Shoot a rifle or mortar over a long distance. You'll have to adjust for the curvature of the earth and its Coriolis force to hit your target. Or, even easier, just watch a ship disappear over the horizon because it's going behind the curvature of the earth. Or you can do something like this simple two minute experiment where flerfers debunked themselves...

Fast forward to The Final Experiment. A guy flew some flerfers to Antarctica to observe the 24-hour sun, something that's impossible on a flat earth. And something I know is real, BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THERE AND HAVE FUCKING SEEN IT FIRST-HAND! And of course the flerfers are calling the whole "Final Experiment" a lie, which is beyond stupid.

And then today, finally, the video I've been waiting for has finally arrived. Professor Dave weighed in. It's certified gold. ..

   
Blergh. I was going to write about a few other stupid things... including, but not limited to, Apple "Intelligence," a teacher who left their cocaine in an elementary school bathroom in Vegas, and go off on social media influencers yet again... but stupidity is exhausting enough.

I had a huge list of chores I needed to get done today, but have been so exhausted from lack of sleep that I didn't really have the energy to do any of it.

So what did I do instead of working around the house? I sat on the couch and veged out in front of the television. I was hoping that would lead to me falling asleep and getting a nap, but that wasn't to be.

The good news is that I had company. I looked up and saw Jenny staring at me from the table...

And next thing I know, I have a television buddy snuggled up next to me...

Which, let's face it, is a lot better than sleep anyway.

I've made it my mission today to start deep-cleaning my home because it's just gone too long without. But I won't leave my daily blog entry hanging... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Furnishings! When I bought my home, I had less than no money. But I had to furnish it completely from scratch for two people because the stuff my mom had was all hand-me-downs that were damaged and falling apart. I ended up buying everything at IKEA because it was cheap (though I did buy the real wood "Hemnes" IKEA instead of the MDF fake wood stuff, because I needed it to last a while). With the exception of my IKEA Hemnes bed, which is a squeaky pile of shit, I'm happy with all the furniture. But it's not ideal. My dream is to learn how to make quality furniture to replace all my IKEA, but wood has just been too expensive. Maybe one day! — Anyway, this is a fascinating video which explains where we're at when it comes to furniture in America...

Yeah, I gotta learn to make my own furniture! Starting with a bed!

   
• -A45! She's not wrong. Just like America's idiotic failure to adopt the metric system, failing to adopt the A4 system is equally stupid...

I am increasingly convinced that the USA clings to stupid as a point of pride, because we do it all the time.

   
• Prophecies Unfulfilled! When Dune: Prophecy began, it had narrative and structure problems but I liked the idea of it all. For the first three episodes they felt like they were building towards something interesting, and I was intrigued enough that I was willing to overlook the flaws. Plus it was beautiful. Then the fourth episode came along and it was awful. It was so bad that it instantly negated the excitement I was trying to hold onto, and it only went downhill from there. It was so badly scripted and so boring, and by the end of it all I didn't give a shit about any of it. Everything amazing about the Denis Villeneuve Dune masterpieces was gone. I was badly disappointed. But not as disappointed as this guy...

Oh yeah, he totally nailed it. And watching this video shows me just how desperate I was to love the show that I was overlooking all the bad things about it. Until I couldn't any more with Episode 04. I hope to God that they manage to write their way out of the dud the show became in its first season, because I really want to have great Dune stories to watch.

   
• Shocking! BWAH HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA: The Vegas Tesla Loop Is A Glorified Crosswalk.

   
• Switch it Up! I bought the original Nintendo Switch the minute I could get my hands on one. I wanted a very good handheld system, and Nintendo pumps out games that are exceptional and fun. I wish I had time to use it more, but I don't, so I am not sure I'll be investing in the Switch 2. Unless there's a game for it that's super-compelling...

What we really need to see are specs. Just once I'd love for Nintendo to release something that's not woefully underpowered when compared to Xbox and PlayStation. Sure, Nintendo is smart in realizing that the game play is more important than anything else... but it's just sad that games which run beautifully on my Xbox drop to a subpar experience on my Switch. It would be different if it was only a handheld system, but it's a television console as well and really needs to be able to keep up.

   
• Climate Changed! NEWSFLASH: 2024 first year to pass 1.5C global warming limit. Online, people are laugh-reacting to this story. Guess they find the challenges and horrors that their kids and grandkids will face to be funny? — As for me? I'm done giving a shit about selfish, uneducated, ignorant, asshole humans. What I care about are the other living creatures on this planet that are facing extinction because of something they had nothing to do with.

   
• The Future is Now! Just over seven years ago, I wrote a post about guns. In this post, which got me some pushback, I said that passing gun control legislation was a stop-gap measure that was doomed to fail because technology would eventually allow people to 3D print any gun they want. Well... surprise: Americans Are Posting 3D-Printed Gun Videos to China’s RedNote With Surprising Success. This right here is what I've been talking about all this time. Banning guns in a day and age where anybody can 3-D print whatever they want in their basement is not going to solve the problem. And what happens when 3-D metal printing technology is mainstream? We need to be creative in how we address gun violence, and yet everybody continues to think old world solutions are going to work in the new world which we live. Just think about the horrors of what will be possible in another seven years. We're late on creating solutions. Soon we'll be too late, and hand-wringing has gotten us nowhere.

   
Back to house cleaning, I suppose. Ugh.

As I do every year, I started my day listening to Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech in its entirety. So many people quote snippets of it to support their personal narrative while completely ignoring the bigger picture, and that's why I listen to the whole thing every year.

I had the day off but ended up working most of it anyway. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow, so it seemed the smart thing to do.

Though now that I'm home and exhausted, perhaps it would have been smarter to stay home and zone out in front of the television? The world may never know.

UPDATE: And my blog is dead again. I don't know if it keeps getting hacked or what.

In order to de-stress from my day, I've decided to play through all the LEGO video games I own, trying to get them each to 100% completion. I started with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga played it off-and-on for a couple weeks, then set it aside to start in on my favorite of all the LEGO releases: the first LEGO Batman game, which is the first one that I bought in 2008. I skipped LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones because they looked like they were just replaying the movies. But LEGO Batman was a fully original story, looked like silly no-stress fun, and was playable on my Nintendo Wii (the only system I had at the time).

And it was exactly what I needed. A simple diversion from life. It was amazing just how much they packed into it, with clever puzzles and smart level design from start to finish...

The vehicle levels had crappy controls and the ladder/jumping mechanics were terrible... but still fun to play.

Then I went back and played LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones, found them equally easy to pick up as a distraction, and have been buying all the LEGO games ever since.

Just for fun I thought I'd rank all the LEGO games I've played...

1. LEGO Batman. It was the first one I played and still feels like it's the best. Newer games got bigger and more complex, but this was a home run right out of the gate.
2. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. It's LEGO. It's Star Wars. It's beautifully designed gameplay that has been refined to perfection.
3. LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes Collection. The missions for the sequel, LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes 2 were better, and the open world they created for it was incredible... but I still prefer the first one. It was perfectly balanced and meticulously designed in a way the sequel didn't quite reach. But when they both got released together, it elevated the pair.
4. LEGO DC Villains. I never expected that LEGO would build a game around the bad guys, but here it is. And it's a lot of fun to play.
5. LEGO Batman 2: DC Heroes. When this title debuted, I was shocked at the fact that they made an open-world LEGO game... and let you play as other DC heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman. That set the standard for everything that followed, but this is the game where it all began.
6. LEGO City Undercover. This huge open-world game has one of the best stories of any LEGO game. Plus it used the Wii-U touch-screen controller in fun and smart ways.
7. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. This collection included the first two LEGO Star Wars games in one box and, while not as vast as The Complete Saga, this was loads of fun to play.
8. LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures When I finally got around to playing this, I was surprised at the way they managed to take such a limited character set (compared to the huge number for Batman and Star Wars) and manage to keep all the levels so fresh.
9. LEGO Lord of the Rings. You just knew the game was going to be good based on the source material alone. But they got so many of the details so right that it was easy to look past some of the faults in the gameplay.
10. LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean. I spent way too much time just staring at how they made Captain Jack Sparrow walk. He kinda has this saunter which mimics Johnny Depp so flawlessly that it's almost a distraction. But a good one.
11. LEGO Dimensions. This incredible game which was massive in scope and had unexpected level releases that came with actual LEGO brick sets to build (seriously... everything from Wizard of Oz to Back to the Future to Ghostbusters to Doctor Who to ET to Adventure Time... and so much more!) were there. Alas, the game got shut down, so now I have are the memories.
12. LEGO Jurassic World. You can play as the LEGO dinosaurs. What more could you ever want in a game?
13. LEGO Harry Potter Collection. Containing both the Years 1-4 and Years 5-7 games, this is a good puzzler with a charming take on material that I don't care for at all (I hated the first two Harry Potter books so much I never picked up another). Then Joanne "JK" Rowling ended up being a raging bigot and transphobic pile of shit and I begrudgingly still play the LEGO games even though I have no desire to buy anything she touches ever again.
14. LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham This was a truly disappointing release after the brilliant original two LEGO Batman games. No idea what happened... maybe they were rushed... but this just didn't hit (or play) the same as what came before. But, hey. It's LEGO Batman.
15. LEGO The Hobbit. Just like the movies, this game took a small amount of excellent material and dragged it out in a way that made it less great. But it's still a lot of fun to play.
16. LEGO Indiana Jones 2. I had fun... I guess... but the puzzles and action were just not up to the stratospheric levels of the original. And there were parts of it that were incredibly frustrating to try and play through.
17. The Lego Ninjago Movie. This time around the game focused more on the combat than the puzzles. And since the repetitive combat is the thing I like least about the games, it kinda sunk this one for me. Still, the levels were well-designed and had enough to keep me playing.
18. LEGO Marvel's Avengers. This was a 100% adaptation of the movies, and kinda suffered because of it. Where the LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes games were a joy to play with their original stories and open worlds that could take you anywhere... this time around things felt a lot more limited.
19. The Lego Movie Videogame. Given how much I loved the movie, I was expecting this to be a home run. But it just... wasn't. It had problems. Though the way they mimicked the way the characters moved through the scenes was not one of them. That part was brilliant.
20. LEGO The Incredibles. This was a very good adaptation of the movies, but not a great game to play. It was so repetetive that it was a slog just to get through story mode, and some glitches had me screaming at my television. Not what I'm looking for in a game that's supposed to be easy and stress-reducing.
21. LEGO Universe. This was LEGO's attempt at a MMORPG (Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game) which was actually well-thought out and designed, but technically frustrating and difficult to play (and sometimes actually unplayable). Probably because I was playing the MacOS X version, which was actually the Windows version with an emulator wrapper (or so I've heard). I was ultimately mad that I spent good money to access it from its earliest days in public beta because I didn't want to play it. LEGO shut down the game servers fairly quickly (I don't think it even made it two years). Kinda a ripoff, to be honest.
22. The Lego Movie 2 Videogame. All the problems from the first game were somehow magnified. This is the only game I didn't even play through the entire storyline, because I got so frustrated with it. I will undoubtedly try again... though probably won't be worrying about going back in Free Play to get it to 100%. Probably.

Strange. It seems like there's more than this. Probably because I excluded the Nintendo 3DS and iOS games, which were well-constructed but just not as good as the console games and were less fun to play.

A couple years ago I didn't so much delist Blogography from Google as I stopped keeping Google in the loop as to what I was writing here. The pandemic had gotten to be more than enough to deal with, and referral traffic from people with an axe to grind wasn't something I felt like dealing with. A side-benefit was that the number of ridiculous marketing emails I received plummeted.

Then, over Christmas break I decided to rebuild my indexing and get Google to crawling again.

Obivously it worked, because this morning I received an email promising to "drive traffic and increase reveue for your website Blogography.com!" And it's like... what revenue? I ain't selling anything here. It was then I got to wondering just who in the hell would be stupid enough to hire some random company that's just spamming you with absolutely no effort made to even so much as look at your site to see if it generates revenue (even when they claim to have looked by adding some random link they found "interesting" on your site).

And so... yeah, my useless crap is back on Google now. But at what cost?

Despite being a certified Apple whore, I have never hesitated to call out their "smart voice assistant" as being stupid as shit. And even that's being generous. I wrote sometime last year that I was seriously excited that Apple Intelligence was coming to smarten Siri up and make the technology finally be consistently useful.

Well, I think we all know how that turned out.

I've been in on Apple's take on AI since the developer's beta, and Siri is stupid as ever. Absolutely nothing has changed. Basic commands fail at an alarming rate. Trying to get Siri to understand anything is a challenge. I have gotten so frustrated at times that I've been screaming at an iPod mini in the bathroom while getting ready for work... or into my iPhone in my pocket from my AirPods... or at CarPlay while driving.

Just today I asked Siri via CarPlay to get me directions to the grocery store in Big City. I knew where it was, but wanted the fastest route from where I was at. I asked, very specifically, for the store I wanted. Siri still gave me two options... one in the next city over that was farther away... which is absolute madness. After having to tap the screen for the one I wanted because I didn't know how the fuck you vocally tell Siri which option to use when you've already given it the literal city and street, Apple Maps sent me in the opposite fucking direction. So I gave up and told Siri to "cancel navigation." After a seriously long pause, Siri said that it couldn't do that right now, then proceeded to keep giving me directions to the wrong store. And it's like... what, exactly, the fuck do you have to do to just get Siri to send you to the fucking store that you asked for in the first place?

I was so fucking enraged by the time I made two taps on the screen to cancel the wrong directions that I very nearly punched my finger through the damn screen. Siri is fucking useless and Apple "Intelligence" is a fucking joke.

The problem is magnified exponentially when you're attempting to get Siri to take control of shitty fucking Apple tech like HomeKit. My God. How basic of a command is "Hey Siri, turn off the kitchen lights?" that Siri doesn't know what in the hell to do? How big of a fucking failure is your technology if the most rudimentary commands can't be interpreted?

And it ain't just me. This story on Daring Fireball is pathetically hilarious: Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber.

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

I've been a vegetarian since Earth Day 1988. Back when I first went out to eat meat-free, I had to do a lot of finagling to construct meals I could enjoy. And it was fine. Being vegetarian was my choice, and restaurants are in no way obligated to deal with that (though I usually prioritizing patronizing those restaurants that did).

Over the years restaurants have expanded their meatless options substantially. And I've been grateful. Now-a-days when I go to a restaurant, there's usually at least one dish that was designed to be vegetarian from the ground up. And it's usually delicious.

The problem has always always been that most times restaurants have a vegetarian option they are compelled to go way extra on it. You can't just get a veggie hamburger, it comes covered in mushrooms and piled high with roasted vegetables and shit I have no desire to eat on a burger. And I've never quite understood it. Just make the same burger you make for meat-eaters and substitute the veggie patty. Simple. Veggie patty, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles... cheese and sauce if you want it.

The exception has been fast-food chains.

Many times, they just get it.

At Burger King you can get an Impossible Whopper made just like a whopper, but with an Impossible meatless patty. It's amazing.

At Taco Bell you can get a Black Bean Chalupa made just like a Chalupa Supreme, but with black beans. They're great.

McDonalds had test-marketed a McVeggie burger in New York when I was there and it's long been my favorite vegetarian burger because it was just a delicious burger. That happened to be meat-free. I wish they had rolled it out nation-wide permanently.

Sometimes chains create something amazing only to drop it inexplicably.

One of the best sandwiches I've ever eaten was the "Veggie" at Earl of Sandwich. Perfect. Delicious. Perfectly delicious. Then they dropped it and gave us a Caprese sandwich as the vegetarian option. Still had all the ingredients to make a Veggie, but it wasn't on the menu. Infuriating. If I were to guess, they wanted a more expensive sandiwch so that vegetarians were paying the same amount that meat-eaters were paying. But if this was the case, just price all the sandwiches the same. I wouldn't care! I'd gladly pay the dollar extra to get what I wanted. Some locations brought the Veggie back, for which I am incredibly grateful because it's still the best sandwich going... but why not all? Disney Springs in Florida has the Veggie. Downtown Disney in California does not. What the fuck? Now, just like at Arby's, you have to pay for a meat sandwich, have them remove the meat, then pay extra to get the sandwich you want. Vegetarians have to pay more for less. But, hey... at least you can do that.

I haven't had to think much about eating out meat-free since the pandemic because I haven't done a lot of traveling. Locally I just stick to places I know and don't have to think about what to order. But this year I have a couple trips planned and know that decisions will have to be made. A part of me is excited at the idea of finding new and interesting dishes to try. The other part of me is hoping they've added a Burger King since I was last there.

Sometimes easy and tasty go hand in hand.

I feed my cats small meals throughout the day. For breakfast and dinner their meal is split between wet and dry food. The dry is always the same... the pricey "urinary care" food I buy so Jake hopefully doesn't end up with problems peeing again. The wet food varies. I like to give them different foods so they don't get bored. Jenny will not bite or chew anything wet. She'll only lick it. So I buy a lot of "broths" and "soups" and "purées" and such that don't require me to mix waters into her dish.

The wet food that seems to go over the best is "Lil' Soups" by Friskies. I rotate through all the flavors they offer, and the cats love them. I started buying them by the case to save money.

And you know what happened next.

Jake, all of a sudden, has decided he doesn't like the chicken version. A flavor I was surprised that Jenny would eat in the first place because she needs stronger-smelling foods to recognize them as food. No idea what happened. Jenny is still yumming it up, Jake won't touch it.

Tonight I thought I'd make it more appealing for Jake by sprinkling some dried fish flakes on it.

He still wouldn't touch it.

But Jenny did. She blew through hers then waltzed right over and ate his too.

I figured that this wasn't the worst thing in the world since Jake could stand to lose a few pounds, but nothing prepared me for what happened after dinner was over and the dry food had been eaten. Jake was laying on the table next to the auto-feeders so he could be nearby when their 9:00pm snack dropped.

He's never done that before, and I felt awful.

So I snuck him a treat to tide him over for the next three hours.

And now I've got a case-and-a-half of Lil' Soups chicken to get rid of.

I don't know if it's Winter or Spring, but I'm setting my weather confusion aside right now... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Snow Orleans! This should be the dead of winter where I live. But it's been sunny and warm. The snow is quickly disappearing. This will have dire consequences this Summer when we're likely facing drought conditions. But someplace that's not lacking Winter weather? NEW ORLEANS?!??

Photo taken from Louisiana Memories

Photo taken from Louisiana Memories

Photo taken from Louisiana Memories

I've been to New Orleans dozens of times in every season. I've never seen snow. It's rarely been cold, even in Winter. So I have no idea what to make of this.

   
• Unexpected Advice! I laughed way too hard and way too long at this. Genius...

I can't watch this enough times.

   
• Final Two! Aw, man. Vera has ended? I had no idea until I watched the last episodes! Brenda Blethyn is magic in the role and I will very much miss the series.

If you like British murder mystery shows, it's worth a look.

   
• FASTER! FASTER! If you've never worked in a restaurant, this is the kid of thing you have to deal with...

Funny if it's not you. Not so funny if you've got a customer screaming at you because you can't defy the laws of physics in your kitchen.

   
• Only at Night! Ya know, I was very excited for the new season of Night Agent on Netflix, but the first episode is so stupid as to be practically unwatchable. I'm no spy, yet I know not to make these many colossal mistakes he makes. It's pathetic and bad. And the main supporting character is an idiot despite being hyped up as "smart." Plus there's no Hong Chau. — The first season wasn't perfect, but it was still good television. Eventually I just skipped to the final episode and couldn't even make it through that. So disappointing.

   
• Transferrance! I've never been so crass as to pester my trans friends with invasive questions. It wouldn't even occur to me to do that because I wouldn't do that to any of my friends. Which is why it's a bit shocking to me how people think that trans persons are obligated to answer even the most private questions about personal aspects of their lives. A couple years ago a friend responded to a ridiculous question by a complete stranger by saying "I'm not comfortable talking about things like this, but here's somebody who is..." and dropped a link to Jamie (AKA Jammidodger). I ran across that video again today, and here it is...

I understand why people might be curious. I don't understand at all why people are invasive to ask weird shit.

   
• Declutter! For 2025 I've committed to tossing/donating a big chunk of my possessions. I've collected way too much stuff over the years, and my garage is packed to the rafters with things I'll likely never use. After four weekends and several carloads dispersed, I've made a noticeable dent. It's been so much work and I have a long way to go, but I will be so much happier without so much stuff cluttering my life. How did I become such a hoarder? And now that my bullets are over, guess I had better get back to it.

   
Now back to our regularly-scheduled Winter. Spring. Winter.

I just assumed that everybody agreed almonds are the best nut.

But then today I got into a big debate over it, because somebody was deluded into thinking that hazelnuts were the superior nut. And it's like... they're okay, but better than almonds? ALMONDS?!?

Hence, my Top Ten List for nuts...

1. Almonds. I love almonds absolutely any way I've been served them. Raw, roasted, blanched, boiled, unsalted, salted, chocolate-covered, candied, baked into anything. Sprinkled on top of anything. I love them in granolas and cereals. The best-tasting, most versatile nut.
2. Cashews. Buttery in a way that no other nut can touch (including macadamias), these soft-textured gems have a distinct flavor that's quite subtle, which makes them a great pairing for other subtle foods. I love them by the handful and really love them in salads.
3. Pistachios. The last of the three nuts that I enjoy eating right out of the bag, but they're also incredible in cooking and baking.
4. Walnuts. I don't care for these except is specific instances. 1) Dumped into Walnut Cream Pasta. 2) Baked into applesauce bread, banana bread, or other desserts. 3) Used in candy-making, such as in Aplets & Cotlets or See's California Crunch. And 4) Topping salads and wraps.
5. Macadamias. While I don't like to just chow down on these, any time they are covered in chocolate or dumped into baked goods, they become absolute magic.
6. Pecans. Only when used in some baked goods and candies. They've been nice on a couple salads I've had.
7. Peanuts. I really do not love peanuts, though I do like peanut butter and peanut butter candies. They are delicious in some Asian dishes, and I can snack on those big boiled ones for a while.
8. Pine Nuts. While I love pesto, and have enjoyed them in other uses from time to time, they're too expensive and limited in use for me to buy them.
9. Hazelnuts. Do not understand the devotion people have to them. I'll eat them in candies and can tolerate them in hazelnut spread, but I don't seek these out. At all.
10. Chestnuts. I suppose they're okay roasted, but the texture is the the problem for me. Kinda pasty and chalky. I'm including them on my list because I like them better than Brazil nuts.

Well that's a thrilling entry to start the week.

I've had two very serious water-related problems with my home.

The first was because the plumber my contractor hired did a bad job of remodeling my upstairs bathroom. Water leaked downstairs and I ended up spending a horrendous amount of money to have everything fixed.

Then while I was over on the coast I had a leak in my garage. I found out about it because the water sensor I installed for my water heater alerted me to it (even though the water heater wasn't the cause). I had a friend run over to see what was wrong, at which time he attempted to shut off the water to my home... only to find out that the "gate valve" that was installed wasn't working properly.

Turns out you should never use a gate valve for the water shut-off because sediment can accumulate and not allow the gate to close properly.

I called my favorite plumbing company to have them take a look, then saved the money it cost to replace the valve with the proper kind. It ended up being more expensive than it should have been because not only did the company that build this place use the wrong kind of valve, they embedded it into the wall! In order to replace it, the wall had to be cut open for access...

Then the pipe had to be built out from the wall to accommodate the handle. And since I was having to do that, I went ahead and had a "smart valve" installed as well as the regular valve. This device (the "Moen Flo") learns how you use water so it can try to figure out when you develop a leak so it can turn off the valve automatically...

The nice thing about the smart valve is that I can use the Moen app to manually turn off the water quickly and easily. So if I'm leaving on a trip for a while, I can just turn the water off so I don't have to solely rely on the Moen Flo to handle a leak.

The app will also tell me what my water pressure is and how much water I'm using.

For the first couple weeks, the app is in "Learning Mode" to try and figure out how you're using your water so it can better guess when there's a problem. It will be interesting to see just how smart this smart valve is going to be. Will I get false positives for leaks that cut my water off? Maybe.

But it'll all be worth it if I can avoid having a third water-related problem.

I decided to buy a freezer to stick in my garage.

Being single is incredibly expensive food-wise. It seems like absolutely everything that's affordable at the grocery store is made affordable by being sold in a huge quantities or forcing you to buy multiple packages of the same thing. But I can't do that because I don't have much freezer space. If I purchase some kind of "buy two get one free" deal for "Family Size" anything, then that's all I'm eating until it's gone so I can make room for something else in my refrigerator's freezer.

Small "garage-ready" freezers are actually fairly affordable. Unless you've just paid $1700 for plumbing work, like I have... but still... not terrible. A couple hundred bucks.

If you are happy to manually defrost it a couple times of year.

If you don't want to manually defrost the thing, then you're paying a lot more, even on sale. I bit the bullet and bought the frost-free version because I know for a fact that I won't bother to defrost anything until there's so much ice that I can't fit food into it any more.

So... a freezer will be here next week!

Which means I have to find a spot for it in my garage.

Given that my garage is full of woodworking tools that have been piled up until Spring arrives and I can start building things again (assuming I can afford to buy the wood), making space is easier said than done. I've been throwing out stuff I don't need and donating stuff I won't use in anticipation of buying a freezer since January 1st. But that's only gotten me so far. So tonight I started completely rearranging everything. Which has been quite a chore. But I think I've finally played garage Jenga enough to figure it out. I'm 85% there.

This weekend I'll take another pass and shore up that remaining 15%.

Either that or I won't, which means I'll be parking outside for a while. Which is not great because we've had some seriously cold weather here, and I don't relish the idea of scraping frost off my windows in the morning. That's the kind of freezing I don't want.

Why does life have to be so incredibly messy?

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. I love his works. So when I heard that the amazing Colleen Doran was illustrating a graphic novel based on Neil and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens back in the Spring of 2023, I never backed a Kickstarter so fast.

Since then Doran has been diligently trying to complete the project... even working through cancer treatment to finish. Because of her health issues, the book is way overdue, but I didn't care because I love her art so much. Definitely worth the wait. BUT THEN there's all the horrific allegations of grooming and abuse by Neil Gaiman that came to light.

As a result, the Kickstarter has extended the refund window and stated that Neil will not receive any of the proceeds from the project... so now I'm stuck. Do I cancel because supporting Gaiman in any capacity is impossible for me given how awful he turned out to be? Usually I'd say yes. But Colleen has poured years of her life into this book... and had nothing to do with what Gaiman's done. The idea of not supporting her is really impossible for me.

Ultimately my desire to not punish Colleen Doran won out and I've decided to keep my Kickstarter pledge. But holy shit is this an awful place to be. How many people have to get their lives upended by this one asshole? Because on top of the people making the Good Omens graphic novel, there's the people working on adapting his other works for stage, screen (most notably the amazing Netflix adaptation of The Sandman), and other graphic novels.

This really blows. Sometimes I can manage to separate the artist from their art. This time around it's been really, really tough.

Here I am opening up my laptop after waking up this morning when I see this...

City-killer’ asteroid has a 1-in-77 chance of smashing into Earth in 2032.

Image credit: Getty Images

And the only thing I can think of while reading it is... I'm so ready. Let's just end it all and the universe can stop worrying about how awful we've become. Shame about the animals though.

Weekdays are packed with work at my job... weekends are packed with work at my home. And I'm overwhelmed with stuff to do at both, so I'm having to pick between blogging or napping. Lucky you...

Yesterday I sat down to work and it took all of ten seconds before Jake decided to crawl on top of me. Of course he never wants to sit on my lap when I'm just watching television. Only when I have something important to do...

But it's not like I can ever refuse my cats anything, so I let him fall asleep while I continued my Quentin Tarantino marathon.

Not that Jenny is innocent when it comes to demanding my attention. Both of my cats are demanding attention lately...

Oh well. Who needs sleep?

There will be no crying that I don't know where my weekend went... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Well Hello Hello! If you want to escape from the horrors of the world, I love the Black Hammer Artisan YouTube channel. The two guys behind it were giving up because nobody found their videos. Then their goodbye video blew up, so now they're back! They make things with medieval blacksmithing methods and it's so zen to watch...

I hope they get a lot of support from YouTube so they can keep going.

   
• Cursives! Things like this bring a smile to my face even as the world burns to the fucking ground...

I am one of those people who thinks that cursive writing is antiquated and unnecessary. Schools need to teach more modern, relevant subjects that will actually get used. Leave cursive to art and history electives. Though this is a highly entertaining use of a dead writing style, so there's that.

   
• Evaporation Blankets! I always keep a heavy blanket in the car in case I have to help somebody or rescue an animal or something. I ordered a new blanket because the one I had was 20 years old or more and was getting a little brittle. The blanket was not cheap because I wanted something heavy enough to insulate from the ground in the cold. I finally got around to opening it and washing it... and what a disaster. The washing machine was filled with fuzz. And now I've run it through the dryer three times in an effort to get all the fuzz stuck to it to come off... and it still needs to be run again. I swear the blanket has lost half of its volume. This is stupid. Why make a blanket that can't stay together through even one washing?

   
• DOON Fumble! Of all the videos dishing on why Dune: Prophecy was a disappointment, this one is right on target...

I too hope that they recover with the second season because I want to love this series. I think they were so hot to make it be Game of Thrones that they forgot to make Dune. That needs to change.

And while we're at it...

If show runners don't want to be "shackled" to an Intellectual Property and feel the need to "do their own thing"... THEN GO DO YOUR OWN FUCKING THING AND STOP FUCKING UP BELOVED IPs!! NETWORKS NEED TO HIRE SHOW RUNNERS WHO **WANT** TO BE "SHACKLED" TO THE IP! THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT OF CREATING A SHOW BASED ON IP!

   
• Fare Thee Well, Dream! Welp. The Sandman is done at Netflix. I mean, I'm glad that Netflix is giving the show one more season... but it being the "conclusion" of Sandman when there are loads of stories left to adapt is incredibly sad. I really, really, really wanted a Death: The High Cost of Living mini series. But nope. Neil Gaiman had to end up being a piece of shit, so now this is all there is...

Very sad to all the actors who don't deserve to have their work cut short because the creator of the source material ended up being garbage.

   
• Old is New! It's not all bad news out of Netflix. Here's a returning show that I'm really looking forward to...

Oh man do I hope it's as good an adaptation as the first season.

   
• Fresh Young! Emily left Linus Tech Tips and started her own channel... her intro is pretty great...

Young is very good at what she does, and her being trans has absolutely zero effect on her ability to do it. If people just get the fuck over themselves and just let trans persons exist, then she likely wouldn't have needed to even address it. She shouldn't have to address it. But... here we are. So many people clutching pearls over something that has no effect on them whatsoever. I wish her the best of luck.

   
And that's it for another Sunday. Time to prepare myself for a return to Real Life.

   
I am so tired that I think my brain is turning to mush.

Finally. FINALLY... after twenty years of attempts to bring the Fantastic Four to film... the actual Fantastic Four from the comics is landing. The Thing finally looks like The Thing. The core concept of the book that is based on a CLOSE FAMILY who are EXPLORERS that go on INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES together has been embraced. And having their story begin on an alternate earth from the 1960's which will differentiate the movie from all the other super-hero movies is absolute genius..

H.E.R.B.I.E.!

THE FANTASTICAR!

THE BAXTER BUILDING!

GALACTUS!

And how flawless is that casting?

Wait... I take it back... The Incredibles was a brilliant adaptation of The Fantastic Four. By far the most accurate, even though it wasn't actually The Fantastic Four. Yet they managed to capture who The Fantastic Four are better than any of the movies with the name did.

The marketing is phenomenal...

My mind is reeling over how the team will be brought to the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper. Will their earth be eaten by Galactus but they're able to cross over to the MCU to try and save our earth from Galactus? Who knows! But I'm dying to find out!

When I became a vegetarian in 1986, there wasn't the abundance of fake meats that there is now. Since I've never been a big tofu fan, this made for tough meal-planning. I ate a lot of Garden Burgers. A lot of cheese sandwiches. Some salads. That was my diet and I was fine with it.

But there was another food I ate quite a lot of... rice.

Specifically, Farmhouse Mexican Rice.

I was (and still am) a massive fan of Mexican food. I needed a substitute for meat in Mexican dishes. One day I goofed around with making enchiladas with Mexican rice and was soon using it for everything. On tacos. On nachos. On taco salads. Everywhere. It was a miracle for food diversity for me...

I've been eating this same box of rice for decades.

Until I couldn't any more.

Last year I found that I couldn't find it at my local grocer. Nor could I find it at non-local grocers. Or online. In a panic I went to the Farmhouse website and saw that it was still there. I just couldn't buy it anywhere. Via Googling I found outdated rice some places, but also found that other people weren't finding it as well.

Pretty sure Farmhouse has discontinued it.

Which is awful for me.

I've found many Spanish Rice mixes (which are not the same)... and a few other brand Mexican rice mixes... but none of them are what I'm looking for.

So now I've been working with recipes to try and find out if I can make it myself. Which is tough because the Farmhouse mix has ingredients which you never find in regular recipes, and that means that they're likely contributing to the taste in subtle ways that I can't figure out. Yet.

One day I'll crack the code. At least I hope so.

In the meanwhile, I'm really missing the Mexican foods that I can't make the way I used to.

It's Koogle all over again.

I find it categorically disgusting that credit reporting companies have such absolute and total control over your ability to EXIST in this world, but have absolutely zero accountability for this power they hold over you.

Take for example, Experian. I have to create an online account with them. I fill out all the information they require, but it says they can't verify me. I try THREE TIMES, making extra careful that I was accurate in the information I provided. Won't verify. So I call the number they give you.

No person answers of course. You get some awful automated system that asks you what you want. I tell them I need to verify my account online. It doesn't understand. I try again. THE SYSTEM HANGS UP ON ME.

I go through this crap TWO MORE TIMES, trying to rephrase it in different ways. Not even saying "REPRESENTATIVE" works. So I have to Google for a different number. I call it, get connected with customer service, who proceeds to ask me numerous questions. I answer each question accurately... even looking up specific amounts online to make sure I'm correct. Doesn't matter. I'm told that I answered one of the questions wrong. EXCEPT I DIDN'T. I VERIFIED EVERY DANG ANSWER IN REAL TIME.

So what now? NOTHING! THAT'S WHAT! The rep was going to escalate my to somebody, but their manager refused to talk with me because I answered a question wrong? Again, I didn't. BUT ISN'T THAT WHY YOU TALK TO A MANAGER IN THE FIRST PLACE?!? So what now? Wait 72 hours and try again. I'm not even joking.

I've wasted 40 minutes dealing with Experian, got nowhere, and have to call back... at which point they'll likely find a way to deny verification AGAIN.

How is this legal? If this company has this kind of power over me, they shouldn't get to blow me off when I need help. When a company has this kind of power over me, they should be REQUIRED to resolve stuff like this BY LAW.

Then again, a company shouldn't have this kind of power over me in the first place.

I detest watching shows on ad-laden HBO Max.

Because I know I'm going to have to endure those shitty "HAVE A LITTLE FUN!" Volkswagen ads over and over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER. This is clearly HBO ripping off Volkswagen by saying "GIVE US LOTS OF MONEY BECAUSE WE DISPLAYED YOUR AD A MILLION TIMES LAST NIGHT!" without telling Volkswagen that those million ads were served to only 50 people. I have nothing against Volkswagen, per se. But the way HBO abuses their advertising has me on the verge of HATING Volkswagen.

I'd walk into one of their dealerships, hear that song in my head, then walk right back out the door.

The movie I am watching... again... is Taking Chance.

Years ago it was mentioned as a good film to watch so as to understand why Dover Air Force Base should be open to the media to cover fallen soldiers returning home. And so I watched it. I was not prepared. I don't think you ever could be prepared to watch it. But it's such an important film that's so beautifully crafted that I think everybody should watch it...

I make a point to see it every couple years when I want to be more emotionally devastated than I already am.

Which is most days, lately.

I don't know about y'all, but the height of anxiety for me is giving my cats a new brand of cat food. The odds are 50/50 that one or both of them won't like it. THEN... once I confirm that they both like it, the odds are then an additional 50/50 that they will stop liking it the minute I order a case of it. Fortunately there' little sample packs you can get for foods that cost a little more, but at least I'm not paying lots of money for food only to have it end up at the shelter.

Jake has turned into a total lap-cat.

The minute I sit down he's all over me. Not for hours, mind you... but he'll lay there to get petted for a good 20 minutes. Sometimes less if if not paying him enough attention...

To give Jake something to do while he's on my lap, I found a bird video made for cats on YouTube...

And he was 100% invested from the minute it started...

Jenny is not a lap cat at all. But she'll still sit next to me and insist on attention just the same...

To each their own. Even for cats, I guess.

Blogcation, all I ever wanted.

Blogcation, had to get away.

Blogocation, meant to be spent not blogging...

See ya in a week, y'all.

Long story short... I was offered a trip to Disneyland when a friend couldn't go, so another friend and I took them up on it. Like my trip to Walt Disney World in August, I'll be posting the good, the bad, and the ugly this week.

I haven't been to Disneyland since 2017. My work took me to Disney East far more often than Disney West. But I've still been to the parks many, many times.

Usually when going to The Happiest Place on Earth, I stay at the Grand Californian hotel. It was designed by the same architect that designed two of my favorite hotels, the Wilderness Lodge and Animal Kingdom Lodge at Disney World, Peter Dominick. This trip's lodging was at the new Pixar Place hotel, which I had stayed at when Disney called it "Paradise Pier." It's fresh and fun and probably a better fit now that Pixar franchises are taking over California Adventure...

The lobby is quite nice. They have a big Luxo Jr. lamp on the famous Pixar Ball statue welcoming you as you walk in. When we arrived, Dug (from the Pixar movie Up) was also there to greet guests, sign autographs, and pose for photos...

Above the lobby is a beautiful chandalier with stylized icons of characters from Pixar films...

When we checked in, we got a tip sheet for the hotel which advertised a limited edition Pixar Putt mini-golf course set up in their ballroom through June 1st. At $28 per person ($33 Friday-Sunday), it ain't cheap, but five days at the parks guarantees you'll be riding the same rides multiple times each so it was nice to have something else to do...

The course has holes inspired by Pixar movies. And I'm just going to get this out of the way... the course looks incredible... but it plays for shit. This is an incredibly difficult and frustrating game that posts pars which are hilariously unrealistic. Neither of us were new to mini golf and had a very hard time of it. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for little kids trying to play it.

Take for example Hole #3, which is based on WALL-E. It's adorable and has a par of 3 strokes. You can get it in one stroke if you can manage to hug the rail on the outside edge just right and have it loop into the upper cup with EVE's plant, where it will drop down and roll into the hole...

Except there's numerous problems here. First of all, in order to have the power to get up the ramp in the first place, you have to hit the ball pretty hard. Which almost always flies it off the course because the rail you have to hug is way too short. But even if you manage to do it, getting the ball to go down the upper cup is nigh-impossible. The loop isn't angled right in the EVE loop for a consistent play but, even worse, THE PLANT SHE'S HOLDING OBSTRUCTS THE HOLE! AND IT'S METAL, SO EVEN IF YOU DO EVERYTHING JUST RIGHT IT WILL JUST BOUNCE OFF THE CUP IN A WAY THAT DOESN'T EVEN PUT YOU IN PLAY TO GET THE HOLE IN A SECOND STROKE!

Nope. You have to go up the ramp... again and again and again. And, if you're lucky you'll eventually get the ball in the region of the hole. Except odds are it will get hung up behind WALL-E, adding another two strokes to the hole. OR THREE OR FOUR STROKES BECAUSE MOST OF THE HOLES DON'T HAVE FLAT SURFACES! They're warped so you can't hit to get a specific placement to line up the next shot.

It was so incredibly frustrating to play this course that we weren't even trying by about hole 5 (of 18). We were giving each hole a couple tries until giving up and cheating our way to the hole. WHICH, AGAIN, HAS A THICK METAL POLE WELDED IN EACH CUP, AND YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO BOUNCE OFF OF IT THAT EVER GET THE BALL IN THE CUP!

I think we managed to get par on a couple holes. Including The Incredibles which not only had a doable par, but looked really cool...

So, yeah... if you're looking for something to do at Disneyland, this probably isn't it. They needed to do a lot more play-testing and gear the game towards playing mini golf instead of gearing it towards just looking cool.

The Pixar Place hotel itself is pretty cool. Like all the Disney hotels around the world, I recommend it if you can afford the absurd cost. The location is perfect... across the street from California Adventure with a private entrance to the park (for Disneyland you have to go through Downtown Disney). It's also well-maintained, clean, comfortable, and beautifully-themed.

Continuing my posts about the five days I spent at Disneyland, today let's talk about the events that were happening at the parks while I was there.

Disney After Dark: Sweetheart's Night ($180)

This is a special event where you could pay $180 for the privilege of staying at the park until 1:00am and ride the attractions with lower wait times. That alone isn't worth the cost to me. It's yet another Disney cash-grab for people who are already paying crazy amounts of money for a Disneyland vacation. What does make it worth the money to me are the specialty foods they offer. They're only available to you if you have the magic wristband that says you've paid to be there.

The food at these things is always pretty darn good. Here are some of my favorites. Forgive the bad photos, but it was after dark, after all.

Hands-down the best thing I had that night was Deep-Fried Cheese Ravioli with Spicy Red Sauce at Café Daisy. I fell in love with "Toasted Ravioli" when visiting St. Louis (where it's the city's official dish, I think). Problem is that it was really tough to find fried cheese ravioli. Most of the times it was some kind of meat. Not only was this cheese ravioli, it was exceptional cheese ravioli. Loved it. Wish it was permanently on the menu...

The dessert at Café Daisy was also incredible... Tunnel of Love Donuts, which is sugar donuts with a strawberry cream. I could have camped at Café Daisy and ate ravioli and donuts for five hours...

The drink of the night was a Strawberry-Passion Fruit Lemonade at Galactic Grill. It's perfectly balanced and has very good flavor...

While the Tunnel of Love Donuts were good, the dessert of the night was Sour Cherry Churro Bites, also at Galactic Grill. The churro pieces were perfectly fried and the sour cherry was actually a kind of popping candy, which was fantastic...

In addition to the exclusive food items, you also get a special parade. My friend's favorite Disney animated film is Hercules, and he was really hoping to get a photo with Herc and Meg because we had read that they were at Sweetheart's Night last year. But, alas, the only place you got to see them was on the back of the last float in the Valentine Parade...

This is kinda crappy. All of those famous Disney couples should have been making appearances throughout the park all night long as another perk for that $180 ticket cost. That's what they do at Walt Disney World with their After Dark events.

California Adventure: Lunar New Year Celebration (Free!)

This event doesn't cost anything additional. If you have a ticket for the resort and have a reservation for California Adventure, you're in. There's not a lot to it. Food booths are selling Asian specialties. The character appearances are dressed or themed around what precious few Asian-themed movies Disney has. Here's Mickey and Minnie in Korean costumes...

And here's a photo opportunity with Mushu from Mulan...

I actually like it when the events are a part of the cost of admission to the parks. Lunar New Year is like an added bonus on top of everything else they already offer. This is a lot like the many festivals at Epcot at Disney World. Just another reason to plan a Disney vacation.

California Adventure: World of Color ONE Dessert Party ($80)

When I was a kid, there was a show called Dancing Waters which played at SeaWorld in San Diego. Since my family lived in the city when I was a kid, I have vague memories of watching the water jets spray water with colored lights shining on things while music was playing. California Adventure has their own version of Dancing Waters in a big production in their lagoon called World of Color. The original (non-"ONE") version I've seen many times because when my mom came with me to work she loved the show so we would always stay and watch it.

During the Lunar New Year celebration, they have a short pre-show the comes before the main event. It's the story of a little red lantern using its heart to find a way home. Or something. I didn't totally get it. After that was spraying water with colored lights and music... and an occasional projection of Disney animated scenes on a water mist curtain. It's a pretty good show...

Now, here's where things were different than the other shows I've attended.

Previously, you could purchase a World of Color Dining Package. You'd have a prix fixe lunch or dinner at one of the restaurants offered, then get to stand in the premium viewing area for the show. I always paid for it because my mom was short and I wanted her to have a front-row standing spot. But now... they have a "World of Color Dessert Party" where you can pay for actual table seating for the show, while getting a tray of various desserts, cheeses, and grapes (along with various beverages, including specialty cocktails). The weather was a bit misty, but not fully-raining like earlier in the day...

I would have loved to have had seating available when my mom was traveling with me. Sure it costs $80 each, but it would have been so much more comfortable for her. And for me. Though "comfortable" was relative this time around. Despite being in Southern California, it was very cold. So cold I bought a sweatshirt so I wouldn't freeze.

And that was the last of the special events available while I was at Disneyland Resort.

Continuing my posts about the five days I spent at Disneyland, today let's talk about some of the food I ate while I was there.

When you have work which takes you to the Disney Parks for years and years, you get to the point where you've ridden the attractions dozens and dozens of times. They kinda lose their appeal after a while. What doesn't lose its appeal is eating. It's my favorite thing to do at Walt Disney World and Disneyland, and I make a point of stacking up my reservations so I can eat at all the places I love while also trying the new places that have popped up (I already covered my favorite foods from Disneyland's Sweetheart's Night here). Here are the most notable places this visit.

Oga's Cantina

I skipped going to Star Wars Land (AKA Galaxy's Edge) when it opened because it was new and I hate crowds (and I was only going to the park to eat at that point because after my 20th trip to Disney World for work, I had ridden all the rides). I always thought I'd go later but then... COVID... and I never did. Back in August I went to the one in Orlando, but couldn't get into Oga's Cantina because I didn't have reservations and the line was always a mile long. So for this trip I made reservations (and went a second time one night because the line was short). Loved the place. It looks like it came right out of a Star Wars movie...

A few things... First of all, this is a bar. Not a restaurant. Very expensive drinks and snacks only. The second time we were there we shared a standing table where four sets of people came and went without ordering anything because it was either too expensive or didn't have meals. Second of all, if you want to sit at a shared table you have to make reservations. Otherwise you end up at a shared standing table. Third of all, there is a two-drink-maximum and you can't stay longer than 45 minutes. They don't want drunk people in Disneyland and they want to make sure as many people as possible can visit.

The food here is interesting and the custom cocktails are fantastic. My favorite drink was the "Jet Juice" that my friend had (Maker's Mark Bourbon, Ancho Reyes Chile Liqueur, Stirrings Pomegranate Liqueur, White Grape Juice, and Lemon Juice), but the "Fuzzy Tauntaun" I had (Ketel One Botanical Peach & Orange Vodka, Bols Peach Schnapps Liqueur, Orange Juice with Tangerine, Pure Cane Sugar, and 'Buzz Button Tingling' Foam) gets honorable mention because it has a foam that numbs your tongue while it causes it to tingle. Bizarre, but fun...

We had Garlic-Cheese Five Blossom Bread with Spicy Cheese Sauce and also the Reythan Crackers with Moss Mousse. Both were tasty, with the Reythan Crackers being particularly cool to look at...

The good news is that I managed to complete my Grinning Loth-Cat Tiki Mug collection. I now have one from Batuu-West (wood) and Batuu-East (stone). To get one, you have to purchase your choice of a non-alcoholic drink with the mug for $28...

The Lamplight Lounge

I had liked eating at Ariel's Grotto and Cove Bar in California Adventure, so I was excited to get reservations for its replacement The Lamplight Lounge. It ended up being my favorite sit-down meal of all those we had. Their "Double Impossible Cheese Burger" was mind-blowing good. I had to restrain myself from ordering a second one after I finished the first! My friend had a "Vietnamese BBQ Pork Chop" served with garlic noodles that he loved. I wish that Disneyland put such care into all their restaurants, because half of them are not memorable for their food like Lamplight is. As if that wasn't enough, their drink menu was on-point as well. Highly recommended if you're doing the Disneyland thing...

Blue Bayou

My friend had never eaten at the Blue Bayou restaurant... a famous Disneyland eatery that's inside The Pirates of The Caribbean ride, so we decided to go. I had always gone on a friend's reservation and had no idea how incredibly difficult it is to get a table reserved. I was on the website every day the minute the reservations went live and only managed to even see an availability after the fourth day of trying... and only one time (3:40) out of the three left would register, so naturally I wasn't picky and grabbed it.

The service is impeccable. They have a Hurricane as the specialty cocktail, so the drinks are on-point. But, as with my previous visits, the experience of dining here is better than the actual food (especially since we ended up with a table right near the water so we could watch the boats go by). The plant-based option was "Pistachio Lemon Basil Pasta" that was okay, but not great. My friend had the Filet Mignon and liked it... but it was his first time eating Filet Mignon so I don't know what kind of an endorsement that is! As you can probably guess, the cost to eat here is massively expensive...

Dessert, as usual, was fantastic. Their "Brown Butter Banana Upside-down Cake" is right out of New Orleans and, since I love Bananas Foster, I loved this...

Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar

This place (located on the Disneyland Hotel campus) is kinda a tough "get" because locals like to grab a drink here as well. To get a table inside you have to make a reservation because it's quite small. But it's also well worth the effort to come. The bartenders and staff are always entertaining, and ordering certain drinks get you certain "experiences" that you have to be there to really understand...

The menu is kinda what I'd describe as "elevated basic" and quite good. We were already full, so we just had a couple sides that I enjoyed before... Tempura Green Beans and Sweet Potato Fries...

I used to have a Trader Sam's mai-tai mug that was a nice transparent blue glass color. I lost it in the move. I wasn't planning on buying a replacement until I saw the beautiful opaque orange colorway that they currently had...

The only place I didn't get to that I wish I could have are the restaurants at Disney's Grand Californian Restaurant. But the menus have changed since I was last there and the vegetarian options weren't something I was dying to have given the cost. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Continuing my posts about the five days I spent at Disneyland, today let's talk about a new "land" to me... Avengers Campus at California Adventure.

Because it's kinda... bad. The only thing it has going for it are one ride and a bunch of character appearances by Marvel super-heroes. The rest is kinda meh. The other ride is meh. The shops are meh. The restaurants are meh. I have no idea what in the heck Disney was thinking, but they really should have put more thought into what they were doing.

Sure the Hollywood Tower of Terror conversion to Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout went better than it really should have (indeed, given that the ride was originally a stripped-down version of the superior Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney World, I actually think it's better now), but everything else is underwhelming.

The other attraction of the land, WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure, is not that great at all despite a fun concept and a great pre-show that Tom Holland was kind enough to appear in...

But the ride itself is a bit tedious. It's also uncomfortable because you're costantly "shooting webs" to destroy spider-bots that have run amok. Plus it's inferior to the Universal Studios Orlando The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride from a quarter century ago. I guess they were excited about having a motion-tracking ride and didn't care that it wasn't the best experience?

But anyway...

They're soon expanding Avenger's Campus so they can cram in two new rides: Avengers: Infinity Defense and Stark Flight Lab. In order to do this, they will have to rip out The Red Trolley because the barn where it parks is in the way. This is probably for the best since it made zero sense to have a trolley car running along "Sunset Blvd." through Avengersland, but it's kinda sad too. I would have ridden it one last time, but the "attraction" had already been shuttered. Only the signs for it remain...

Since one of my favorite things to do is speculate on Disney parks construction, I've worked up a little map as to how the expansion might go. The green area is what comprises Avenger's Campus right now. The pink area (with the trolley barn in red) is a parking lot which is most definitely getting razed to make room for the new rides. The blue area has buildings, but is probably getting ripped out as well, because Infinity Defense is supposed to be on-par with Rise of the Resistance and will have to be in a very big building to get there. The yellow area is probably not going to get ripped out (for now) because it looks like there are some important buildings there...

If you take a look at the above possibilities when overlaid over a map of both parks at Disneyland Resort, you can see that this is a big chunk of land no matter how far they go with it...

Looking at this map, I cannot help but once again glance to that massively huge chunk of land occupied by Autopia and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. Autopia is just plain stupid in the Year of Our Lord 2025. Adults can drive actual cars. Kids can drive battery-powered vehicles you can pick up at Costco for less than a park ticket costs. Get rid of it. And the Submarine Voyage, which has never been all that good, attempted to gain relevance by putting in screens with a Finding Nemo overlay that's just so tired. Get rid of it. Some truly great attractions could go in this massive space. Heck... an entirely new land could go in this massive space! Rip all of it out and build Arendelle from the wildly-popular Frozen movies! Or something. Or anything. I mean, just look at how absolutely huge this area is (marked in red)...

And, yes, I realize that the Disneyland Forward project is planned to add a bunch of space to the Disneyland Resort, but that still doesn't excuse this massive waste of space that could give us far better experiences than what we're getting from it now.

Continuing my posts about the five days I spent at Disneyland, today let's talk about the dark side of what's going on there. The things that contribute towards making it a bad experience for their guests.

I did not have a terrible time. It was an overall fun trip that was a nice distraction from the horrors of the day. But it could have been so much better.

It would be very, very easy to lay blame for the bad things on the former CEO of Disney, Bob Chapek. He was intent on wringing all the possible profit out of the Disney parks, even though the cost came at seriously screwing over their guests. Many of the things he did made the parks become everything Walt Disney was fighting against to differentiate his parks from all the others at the time.

Except you can't hang it all on Chapek because he's been gone for two years now and nothing has changed. Disney is still ruining the parks.

Park Hopping. Even though the Disneyland Resort is billed as a singular experience that contains both Disneyland and California Adventure, it really isn't. Unless you pay for it. To hop from park-to-park, you have to purchase a ticket add-on called "Park Hopper" which allows you to jump between the parks after 11am as often as you want. And you'll want to, because that's the only way you're making the best use of your time there since the parks are so small (and many rides are broken, but I'll get to that). On top of this, your first park of the day has to be reserved (hotel guest or not, Park Hopper or not) or else they won't let you in, so make the reservations the minute you get your tickets.

Struck by Lightning. The paid replacement for the once-free "FastPass" is (currently) "Lightning Lane," which gives you a time window to stand in a line that's much shorter than the regular line. The Disney World version is actually kinda cool and worth the money because you can pre-reserve your first three Lightning Lanes of the day before you even go there. Disneyland doesn't have anything like that. If you pay for the "Multi-Pass Lightning Lane" you get to make one reservation after you enter the park. Then once you use it you can make another. Or, if the park is really busy, you can make another reservation 2 hours after your first one. Of course you also have the option to spend something like $400 each to have a Lightning Lane for all the rides which have them. It's an expense that might be worth it if you're visiting on a busy day or have a single day to visit. But the regular version should be included with your ticket. And don't get me started about the insanely popular rides (like Radiator Springs Racers and Rise of the Resistance) which you have to pay big dollars to get Individual Lightning Lanes for because your regular Lightning Lane won't work. Price gouging at its finest (as an example... for both of us to get a spot for Rise of the Resistance would cost an additional $58 on top of the Lightning Lane Multi-Pass we already got).

Character Madness. A big, big part of a visit for many people going to Disney parks is meeting the various characters to get their picture taken with them or get their autograph or say "hi" or whatever. Fortunately, the Disneyland App lists character appearances so you can find the ones you want to see. Unfortunately, the app is wrong a shockingly huge number of times. An example: My friend is a massively huge fan of Ahsoka Tano (aren't we all though?). He wanted to get his picture taken with her. So we looked at the app for the place and time and did that. She wasn't there. We went to the next appearance. She wasn't there. We went to another. She wasn't there again so we decided to ask what was going on. After a bunch of cast members told us "Not my department" we finally found somebody who made a call. Turns out she wasn't appearing AT ALL that day. And yet she was listed on the app as appearing more times that afternoon. WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK?!? If a character actor is sick or whatever, then fine. It happens. By why don't they remove their appearances so we weren't dragging our asses from one end of the park to the other to try and meet Ahsoka? The next day we tried again. First appearance? Wasn't there again. This time we wasted no time asking a bunch of employees if she would be appearing there or not, at which point we were told by one "I think so because I saw the back of her head." So we waited and finally got to see her (whomever the cast member is behind that makeup was absolutely brilliant, by the way)...

This is bonkers. And it doesn't end there. The app was consistently wrong on many, many character appearances (especially over at Avenger's Campus). How difficult is it to stay on top of this so you aren't repeatedly disappointing your guests and wasting their time? Update your damn app because people are counting on it to plan their day. And give your employees more information (or a way to get it) so they're not constantly being all "Not my department," which is plain rude.

Don't Stand in Line. At Walt Disney World, characters appear at a specific venue at a specific time and you can (mostly) count on them being there. Disneyland has a lot "wandering characters" which aren't at a specific place, so you have to kind of wander yourself until you spot them then walk along with them as they dash to try and get your autograph or photo. This is categorically stupid, and I don't get why they do this when they already have a system that works. But even when they do have a place for characters to appear, they handle it badly. First of all, you can't stand in line to wait for a character appearance. Nope, a cast member will march right up and tell you to "disperse" which means you have to hang out in the area and not in line. Which is insane. THE ROPES FOR A LINE ARE RIGHT THERE!!! So instead you get there early to see somebody, can't stand in line, then a bunch of people just randomly walking by at the right time could hop in line in front of you and you may not get to see the character before they leave. How does that make sense? The one place that does it like Disney World was in California Adventure where Mushu appeared. You get in line. The cast member working the line warns people coming up late that the characters will be changing soon so who's there now may not be there when they get to the front of the line, and then you get to choose whether to stay or not. And that's the way it should be. The whole "Hang out in this area but don't get in line" is one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever seen at any theme park anywhere in the entire world. And I've been to my share.

Attractionless Attractions. While I was at the parks a lot of attractions were closed. The Disneyland Railroad, closed. The Monorail, closed. Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, closed. Pixie Hollow, closed. It's a Small World, closed. Grizzly River Run, closed. And in March even more rides are closing, including Indiana Jones and Guardians of the Galaxy?!? Which begs the question... what the fuck will actually be open? Who knows? Because on top of the planned closures, other rides were "temporarily closed" all the damn time (the biggest culprits being Pirates of The Caribbean, Radiator Springs Racers, Guardians of the Galaxy and, of course, Rise of the Resistance). Disney is cheaping out on ride maintenance despite charging a shit-ton of money and raking in huge profits from their guests... which means they have to close a bunch of stuff down at the same time because it's not properly maintained, giving people less to do and making the remaining rides more crowded. It's ridiculous, unfair, and makes a Disney vacation a lot less appealing.

You Busted. I don't know another way to say it, but the parks are in a sad state. They are not maintained. They are dirty. They are broken. After a while I started taking photos of the massive number of things that were busted because I just couldn't believe it. Did Chapek fire absolutely everybody on maintenance? Because people shouldn't have to pay to see bullshit like this over and over and over and, in the grand scheme of things, hiring people to fix stuff is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the cost of doing business, so why not have a crew for that?

Rained Out. I fully realize that Southern California doesn't get a lot of rain. I do. But the fact that Disney isn't at all prepared for any rain is absurd. Disney World in Orlando can be in the middle of a hurricane and rides are still running and characters are still appearing. When there's even a little rain at Disneyland rides go down and characters never appear (and you will never know if they're coming later because of the useless Disneyland App, as noted above). And when you try to get any information at all, nobody can help you in any way no matter how many cast members are there. And, no, I'm not kidding. Here's me not standing in line out in the rain, as instructed, because a character didn't show up and I didn't want to get jumped by the eight employees hanging out doing nothing except telling people to not stand in line (I'm not showing their faces because its not their fault management doesn't know how to run a theme park and they're just doing what they've been told)...

For the love of God... do better. Have covered areas for characters. Spray some water-proofing on their costumes so the show can go on. Or have alternate costumes that are waterproof. Do something so guests that are going into debt to visit don't completely lose out because you aren't prepared for a rainy day.

Photo Passed. Like Disney World, Disneyland has a "Photo Pass" you can buy to get your photo taken with characters and important landmarks and such. But unlike Disney World, Disneyland has a woefully inadequate number of photographers. We got the add-on included free with our Park Hopper somehow, but got only a few photos (all of them were at the Avenger's Campus character spot, because the only other places I remember seeing a photographer is at the front of Disneyland in front of the Mickey flower art and again in front of the castle). Who would pay for something this worthless? Either do it right or don't do it at all.

Pin Trading... or Not. Disney World is a pin-trading utopia. Most all the shops have pin-trading boards and they're packed (and pins are swapped out regularly at the start of each day). Many employees have pins on them to trade. But at Disneyland? Oh heck no. They are pushing pins for sale absolutely everywhere, but pin-trading is almost non-existent. The very few shops that have boards have a tiny number of pins that are the exact same day after day after day. Here's a board in Tomorrowland with a whopping 12 pins on it, and it was mostly the same pins every day. And 12 is actually pretty good, because we saw a board that had a measly six on it every day. SIX!!! Why even bother?

But it gets worse. See how this shop has a sign that literally says "WANTED: PIN TRADERS"? Would you believe that the pin shop inside said "We don't have our board out today" when we asked where the pin trading was?

Well, believe it, because we checked multiple times on multiple days. Madness. How can people get into pin trading WHEN YOU DON'T PROVIDE A WAY FOR THEM TO TRADE PINS?!? Your best hope is to visit with fellow pin traders that sometimes hang out next to pin shops, but they're usually way too serious for people like me who just want to find an Orange Bird or Oswald pin to add to their collection.

   
What drives me crazy is that everything I'm complaining about here is fixable. Not just fixable, but easily fixable. Sure a (relatively) minor amount of money will have to be invested, but how can that be a barrier when these are serious problems that are going to have people never wanting to visit your parks again? Hire some maintenance people. Fill those pin boards. Waterproof those costumes. Let people stand in lines. This is not rocket science... and if the people in charge don't see that, Disney needs to hire people who can. Because I tell you what, I'm in no hurry to go back to Disneyland any time soon. And since I was gifted most of the cost of the hotel and tickets, that speaks volumes.

Finishing up my posts about the five days I spent at Disneyland, today I'm going to talk about the best thing about the place... the attractions (though the food is a close second).

For the longest time, my favorite ride at the park bounced between Star Tours and Pirates of the Caribbean. Except it really didn't. It's just that I'm such a massive Star Wars fan that it seemed that way. Not that Star Tours isn't a great ride that still holds up to this day, it absolutely does, it's just that the Disneyland version of Pirates is the absolute benchmark of how to build an attraction. First of all, it's fifteen-and-one-half minutes long! Which is crazy. So many of the attractions being built now-a-days are lucky to last two minutes (though Rise of the Resistance is kinda-sorta 18 minutes long, when it's running, so there's that). There's a lot of immersion and build-up to the (multiple) money-shots you get, yet Pirates never seems boring.

Pirates of The Caribbean is part of the original E-Ticket Attraction Pantheon that remains... along with Jungle Cruise, Disneyland Monorail, Matterhorn Bobsleds, it’s a small world, Enchanted Tiki Room, Submarine Voyage, Country Bear Jamboree, and Haunted Mansion (another ride that totally holds up, and it nearly nine minutes long).

But anyway...

Before eating at Blue Bayou, the restaurant inside of Pirates of the Caribbean, we rode it for a second time. It's really the only way to do the restaurant because then the experience is fresh in your head (though it almost didn't happen because the ride was closed all morning for repairs). And it reminded me how I am both okay/not-okay with the addition of the movie franchise that's based on the ride being added to the attraction. Okay, because it's very well-done, Johnny Depp's presence is adding to the attraction instead of overwhelming it, and it gave the ride some love to keep it relevant... and not-okay because the ride was perfect just how it was.

The biggest surprise out of all the attractions I went on was that I heard a spiel from the boat skipper on Jungle Cruise that I had never heard before...
        SKIPPER: Now I'm going to scare off these hippos the same way I scared off my last girlfriend...
        ME (as the skipper reaches for his gun): Oh my God!
        SKIPPER (not touching his gun): LET’S GET A MORTGAGE AND BUY A HOUSE... AND HAVE 3 KIDS... AND TWO CATS NAMED OSCAR AND ISAAC!

I still don't know if I should find that funny or not, but it was sure hysterical to me at the time!

Something else that was new? After years of trying to see a hidden Easter Egg in Indiana Jones Adventure without success, I finally asked a cast member to help me out. For those of you who don't know, this attraction is not within the original boundary of Disneyland. No, it was built out in the old "Eeyore" parking lot (which explains why the queue is so long to get there...

Original Disneyland in Yellow... Indiana Jones Adventure in pink at the lower-left.

After Disney demolished the Eeyore parking lot, they hid one of the signs for it in the Indiana Jones ride. I knew that you had to look back when you reached the front of the main queue before Dr. Jones's office, but that never did me any good. I was starting to believe it didn't exist. So I asked. And the cast member pulled out a flashlight, shined it way, way back into a dark corner and... there it was. I don't know how I could have ever seen it on my own.

Something else I've meant to do but never did? Snap a photo of John Rhys-Davies as Sallah during my favorite part of the intro film...

And speaking of Indiana Jones Adventure... I rode it very soon after it had opened in 1995, and it's a different ride now than when it debuted...

   
And now a dozen random musings...

Random Musing #1: The day after I got back from Disneyland, I had kidney stone pain. It wasn't horribly bad, but it did make it so I couldn't keep anything down Saturday evening through Monday afternoon when it passed. Just yesterday I read an article where it said that there's a scientific paper saying that riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad dislodges kidney stones! So... maybe the attraction saved me from an even worse agony than if I hadn't ridden it while I was at the park? Weird!

Random Musing #2: Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway is the exact same as the one in Walt Disney World. Except you leave Daisy's dance studio in the opposite direction. This freaked me out... and freaked me out again the second time, even though I was prepared for it.

Random Musing #3: Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin has changed Jessica Rabbit. She's no longer in her sexy red sparkle dress, they covered her in a trench-coat. And it's like... yeah... I know why. Gotta be PC and all that. But it looks ridiculous. I think it's actually less PC to think that she should be forced to cover herself (come on, it's not like she was showing nipple or anything).

Random Musing #4: Does anybody else find it odd that Jessica Rabbit has to wear a trench-coat, but at the end of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride you get sent to hell? Anybody? Anybody?

Random Musing #5: I elected not to climb up Adventureland Treehouse because they tore out the Tarzan re-theming from 1999. They re-themed to promote the animated Tarzan film of the day, but it was actually really cool because modern audiences could get more invested in the attraction than the old Swiss Family Robinson movie theme it started with.

Random Musing #6: The other ride that I took a pass on this time (other than the multitude of rides that were closed) was Matterhorn Bobsleds. The last time I rode it the track was so rough that I was wrecked after I unfolded myself from the bobsled. That is one roller coaster that desperately needs to be re-tracked. I honestly don't understand why it hasn't happened yet. Heaven only knows they have zero problem shutting down rides at Disneyland.

Random Musing #7: One ride that I have ridden exactly once and never again is the Mad Tea Party. I have never understood how people manage to survive that ride. I didn't get sick the first time, but I did walk off of it wishing that I had never gotten on it.

Random Musing #8: It still amazes me how all the Fantasyland dark rides made such incredible use of the small amount of space they were given. All those twists and turns really extend the length of the attraction! My favorite of these is Peter Pan's Flight where they use the sail on Captain Hook's ship to divide one room into two scenes in a way that's beyond brilliant.

Random Musing #9: While I still think that Tiana's Bayou Adventure is a serious downgrade from Splash Mountain, I will say that the Disneyland version is better than its Walt Disney World counterpart. It's got less dead space making it feel not so empty. That being said, the ride still makes no sense. Plus the final Tiana animatronic was busted to shit... she was totally frozen except her mouth, looking like she was wearing a straightjacket under her dress.

Random Musing #10: Just for the record... I still think that Soarin' Around the World is not as good of an experience as the original Soarin' was. I hear they bring it back during the "Food & Wine Festival," so maybe I'll have to head back down one of these years.

Random Musing #11: One of the best rollercoasters in the Disneyland Resort (after Big Thunder and Space Mountain, of course) was California Screamin'. And while I didn't mind them re-theming it for more of a Disney-branded experience, I am mad that they did such a cheap-ass, ugly job of it. I had seen it in photos and thought "Well, maybe it's not so bad when you're riding it at top speed..." but it is. Whether it's the stupid "babies on sticks" or the horrific way that characters are cut off to fit spaces, everything about this is pathetic. Re-theming is fine when it makes sense, but at least put the money into it to do it right. You're Disney.

Random Musing #12: Since California Adventure is pretty much turning into a Pixar theme park, they've made some changes since I was last there. The biggest being the 2023 changing of "Pacific Wharf" to "San Fransokyo Square" out of the movie Big Hero 6. I have zero complaints, because I still don't understand why you would want to go to a California theme park when you're already in California. But anyway... I was quite happy that it wasn't done shoddily, like Incredicoaster was. It actually looks really good...

And there it is. My trip to Disneyland is over for you just like it is for me!

It's a rainy post-vacation weekend, but we're all good... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Jack is Back! God how I love Reacher. The third season just started on Amazon Prime. Alan Ritchson was born to play the part. And the fact that Amazon.com Prime Video puts the money into adapting the stories, and casting good actors, and making it look like a million bucks... well... the show is perfect. If you like action serials, you need to be checking it out...

I am beyond elated that they've already renewed the show for a fourth season. I really wish that they would shoot two series back-to-back each year and get them backlogged so we could get as many of the books shot as possible before Ritchson wants to reture from such a punishing role. Heaven only knows that Amazon can afford it. They're blowing a billion dollars on the gut-wrenchingly awful prequel series to Lord of the Rings travesty.

   
• Short Round! If you don't adore Ke Huy Quan and find joy in his renewed success after watching this, then I don't know what to say to you...

The guy just released a new movie and has four more coming up, so I guess everybody does adore him.

   
• LIES! If you know me, you know I LOVE a good advertisement. This one featuring the main three characters from The Californians (Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, andFred Armisen) from SNL is absolutely perfect...

But it gets better... the leading comment on the video is "STOP SPREADING LIES SNL! The PCH is closed at Santa Monica due to the fires. Stuart would need to take the 5 to the 405 to the 101 then exit Kanan to reconnect to the PCH to get to Point Dume where this is filmed. WUUUUHT ERRRRR YOUUUUU DOOOING?" — Priceless. I still think the Betty White appearance at the SNL 40th Anniversary is my favorite The Californians sketches with its stacked cameos...

How awesome would it be if this was an actual limited series? Peacock needs to make it happen.

   
• Death to Pennies! President Trump has been doing a lot of heinous shit (I mean, my God), but amongst all that he said we're going to stop making pennies, which is something that should have happened over a decade ago, so okay then...

Here's CGP Grey's original video from 13 years ago on the subject, which brought me onboard killing the penny...

Now if he can do away with changing the fucking clocks twice a year and either make Daylight Saving Time permanent or, ideally, split the difference and have us Spring Forward or Fall Back a half hour... that would be great.

   
• Good Bye Miss Yvonne! Lynne Marie Stewart, best known for her role as "Miss Yvonne" on Pee-Wee's Playhouse and "Bonnie" on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has died...

My favorite thing she's done, however, is this hilarious guest appearance on SNL writer Jimmy Fowlie's series Go-Go Boy Interrupted...

Rest in Peace... you made us laugh, and that's a gift that will never pass.

   
• Carr Ride! Look, I know that Jimmy Carr is highly problematic. That's his entire brand. You know what you're getting into when you tune in because he's never not offensive to somebody. He works hard to be offensive! That being said, the guy is a brilliant comedian if you get what he's trying to do. His latest "Heckle Amnesty" video is amazing...

What gets me is that Jimmy isn't just finding comedy at the expense others... he goes out of his way to find comedy at the expense of himself. Which is why I find him funny. No, I don't think he's as talented as people who are able to find comedy without punching down on anybody at all (Nate Bargatze is the current king in my book). But this kid is doing alright...

I gotta say... with all the punching down on the trans community by comedians, it's refreshing to find those doing the work to be inclusive. This is what laughing with a person instead of at a person looks like. Yeah, he struggles a bit to get those jokes formed because it's a new situation for him... but he's trying his best to adapt without bigotry and, to me, it seems as though he's succeeding.

   
• TransAmerican! I am trying my best to take a seat and renew my efforts to listen to what marginalized communities are facing day-to-day. I have a couple trans friends who mean a lot to me, so I've been subscribing to some trans video channels to help me to understand their lives better. In the Year of Our Lord 2025 in these United States of America, I don't get why people who contribute to society, pay their taxes, and live their life the best they can with the cards they were dealt, are actively persecuted just for existing. A lot of lies and misinformation gets peddled against trans persons, and it makes no sense to me. I guess sending unwarranted hate to others makes a good distraction to keep people from looking at what you're doing? I dunno. In any event, this is a good video to watch if you're wondering what a small group of your fellow Americans are dealing with right now...

I wish I understood how we got to where we're at.

   
Onwards and upwards...

I needed something good today.

And it doesn't get more better gooder than the new trailer for Andor Season 02. No joke. The first season is not just some of the best Star Wars ever made... it's actually some of the best television ever made. Period.

It's dropping April 22, and here's the trailer...

This series is such a gift. That it will end this final season by leading directly into Star Wars: Rogue One (another favorite Star Wars thing I love) is just the icing on the cake.

I was very sad to hear that Roberta Flack died.

She was a phenomenal talent, and her impressive number of beloved hits backs that up. And while people may think of tracks like Feel Like Makin' Love and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and Killing Me Softly With His Song... my favorite songs of hers are the duets. Set the Night to Music (from Starship) and Back Together Again are at the top of that list. They hit you in all the right ways...

She had other duets that are great too (Where is the Love and Tonight I Celebrate My Love and The Closer I Get to You come to mind). She just had the ability to mesh with other artists in a way that made her a queen.

The older I get, the more I find myself appreciating the little things that make life worth living.

The other day I was taking a break from the horrors of existence and scrolling through Instagram. Their algorithm is crap (repeating stuff way, way too often that I've already seen many times), but every once in a while something new pops up that makes a visit worthwhile.

Yesterday it was this...

I want a snow duck mold! Can you imagine running across something like this on a snowy day?

A couple weeks ago, I started blogging 4-5 posts ahead, scheduling everything in advance to post at 7:00am each morning. The reason I did this was because I had a work project I was trying to finish, and knew I might have to skip a day or two here and there. I care like that.

On the 27th of February I re-scheduled the post that was due to publish so I could recognize Gene Hackman dying, and my blog apparently did not like this. My post never published. No subsequent posts published. Everything was broken somehow.

Now, over a week later, I finally had the time to re-install WordPress, copy my database from backup, and verify that everything is working again.

Except I lost all the posts I wrote in advance, because they weren't in the backup I had.

Lovely.

Rather than going back and trying to remember what I was talking about in those posts, I decided to just start over again from today.

By recognizing the passing of Gene Hackman.

The guy is one of my all-time favorite actors. I had likely seen him before he played Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie (probably in The Poseidon Adventure) but it was his Lex Luthor that made me remember his name...

He was absolutely brilliant in the role. Menacing but not overly-scary for a comic book villain. His delivery of his every line was crafted to push his character forward, and I loved him for it. In the sequel he was no longer the main villain, but managed to steal absolutely every scene he was in.

But that was true for most all his movies. He was so compelling an actor that playing opposite him was a daunting prospect. You knew you were getting eclipsed.

The first headlining role I recall him having was in Hoosiers, which I've seen a ridiculous number of times because it's such a great movie and he's great in it. But the film that made me most appreciate his flexibility is the Kevin Costner classic No Way Out. He has a critical, but relatively small role that cemented him as one of my all-time favorite actors. From there he just kept rolling through all these memorable roles where he killed it every time... Unforgiven, The Firm, Wyatt Earp, and Crimson Tide.

And then came the back-to-back brilliance of his finest comedic works... Get Shorty and The Birdcage. He played a lot of villains, but his comedy chops never faltered (the movie Heartbreakers, which isn't a great film, had his most hysterical role).

Mr. Hackman's final film was Welcome to Mooseport from 20 years ago, which I didn't care for... but before that he worked with one of my heroes, director Wes Anderson, on The Royal Tenenbaums and had a great part in the very good adaptation of John Grisham's Runaway Jury. Not a bad way to end a prestigious career.

When it comes to actors, Gene Hackman will very much be missed. Rest in Peace, sir.

My cats are fairly well-behaved. They scratch where they're supposed to (scratching posts, not furniture), they (mostly) stay off the counters, they (mostly) don't puke all over the place, and they (generally) don't give me any grief. They have gotten considerably more clingy as they age, but that's not a bad thing.

Jenny wants attention on her terms. Pet her when she wants you to, where she wants you to, and how she wants you to.

Jake, on the other hand, wants attention. Period.

When I get home from work, he comes running to get petted. When I sit down, he comes running to sit on my lap. When I sleep, he usually sleeps on the bed somewhere with me (Jenny will scamper away once I turn off the lights). He's not annoying about it... he leaves me after he's reached his limit... but he's persistent.

As I've mentioned many times, Jenny loves television. Jake has zero interest.

But before I left for vacation, I did run a "video for cats" on YouTube that had a non-stop parade of birds eating seed off a picnic table. Jake was on my lap and I thought he might find it entertaining...

The stereo sound on my laptop confused him because he kept looking around, but once he figured things out... he was completely obsessed...

Still from the video 8 Hour Birds Bonanza

The video goes on for 8 hours. Jake was good for about 15 minutes.

Maybe if they had included some lizards or something he could have made it to 20.

I may be feeling nauseous and very close to puking on my keyboard, but the internet must go on... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Deli Bro! I think the reason I'm sick is because working non-stop has finally caught up to me. And so... instead of cleaning my pit of a house, I spent yesterday laying on the couch watching Deli Boys on Hulu. The first episode is available on YouTube, but I don't know for how long...

I loved the show. Which means it'll get canceled. Don't know why I bother getting invested in television any more. None of them seem to be given a chance to find an audience and grow. Like Amazon just canceling The Recruit.

   
• Hot Bill! =sigh= Bill Murray always fires on all cylinders. And he's in true form on Hot Ones... a show I'm flabbergasted he wanted to appear on. But I'm so glad he did...

Is the guy ever not funny? I doubt it.

   
• Fraud! I am begging y'all to freeze your credit reports at the Big Three: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It may be a pain (especially at Equifax, may they burn in hell for all eternity) but it is a vital protection. I just received an email from BECU telling me that they were "unable to approve your application"... and the email headers say it's from the actual BECU, not a scammer. This is the third time this year somebody has tried to credit fraud me. By having your reports frozen at all three places, new credit can't be established in your name. You will, however, have to un-freeze if you decide to open a new credit card or get a loan. You can read about how to do it here at USA.gov.

   
• Goin' with the Moen Flo! When I had to get my water shut off valve replaced, I went for a “smart” valve that would allow me to remotely shut off my water when I’m away and automatically shut off my water if a pipe bursts. But it also monitors water usage. And it’s pretty good. It can distinguish between a short flush and long flush for the toilet. It can tell me how much water is spent washing clothes and dishes (my dishwasher uses a ridiculously low amount of water). But it’s also misreading stuff, because I’ve not turned on my irrigation or my hose, don’t take baths, and I have a quick shower every morning but it’s not seeing it always...

Guess it’s still learning? Apparently it keeps getting smarter over time. Unlike "Apple Intelligence."

   
• Silly Goose! On one hand, it's nice to know that geese care more about the people in their life than my cats do. On the other hand, this is kinda a cruel trick to play on the poor things...

Jake would just crawl on top of me and go to sleep. Jenny would start meowing at me for food.

   
• What a Drag! I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons for decades. But I still like to watch play from time to time, usually on YouTube. And YouTube knows this, which is why it recommended a show called Dungeons and Drag Queens...

And these aren't any random unknown queens either. Bob, Monét X Change, Jujubee, and Alaska(!) are all top-tier queens! Very cool. And this is season two! I missed the whole first season.

   
• YOU GET LESS MONEY AND YOU GET LESS MONEY... EVERYBODY GETS LESS MONEY! I just finished my taxes! And despite the fact that I had to pay out thousands upon thousands of dollars for eye surgeries, I'm getting less money back than last year. But surely that will change now, won't it? It's hard to tell. Back in October the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan and it comes out looking like this...

And I was like "Oh thank God!" I was worried for a minute that my taxes wouldn't increase so that millionaires and billionaires can have more money. Turns out I was worrying for no reason, because it looks like more taxes for the majority of Americans is totally what's going to happen! Maybe. This could all change, just like the tariffs have been. But if it does end up being true, hey, at least groceries are cheaper! Oh... wait a minute...

   
And now I need a nap. Blogging really takes it out of you.

Soooo... my retirement account is crashing in real-time... I'm going to be paying more taxes so billionaires pay less taxes... tariffs are driving up prices of imports... retaliatory tariffs are killing our export markets... our closest allies are quickly becoming our enemies... our critical imports like energy and lumber are skyrocketing in price... unemployment is escalating at an alarming rate... government services we rely on are being burned to the ground... groceries are more expensive than ever... and we're heading into a recession and possible depression.

But a dozen trans persons can't play sports and we've changed the name to Gulf of America, so it was all worth it! We've done it! We're great again!

If you've read this blog for even a short amount of time, you know I love maps. Especially maps that present their information in a unique or clever way.

Simon shows you maps (which is an essential follow for map nerds) shared this incredible old map poster from Quantas Empire Airways, which puts their hub at Sydney in the center, then unfolds the world around it with mile-markers so you can know how far away they fly...

On top of being unique and clever... it's also gorgeous. Truly top-notch map-making and design.

If you want to see the poster in all its hi-res glory, you can go right here.

This has been my second day of working 14 hour days. I used to do that all the time. Heck, back in 2019 I would put in 8-10 hours at the office, then go home and put in 3-5 hours doing work for the charity I volunteered with. But something has happened in the last five years that's making it a lot harder.

And, yeah, I know that part of the problem is that I'm getting older. But not really.

The problem is that the stress of everyday living has ramped up to 11, and it's been wearing me down. I spend so much energy dealing with the horrors of This American Existence that I've got precious little left to get me past a regular 8-hour work day. And believe me... I know that it's a lot worse for a lot of people, but still...

And then there's the very real possibility that Social Security is going to be gutted, which means this will never, ever end. I've been paying a huge amount of money into the system for the vast majority of my life. It's my money for my retirement. And yet I might not see a penny of it because I'm being told that it's not my money after all. It's government waste, and I'm better off working myself to death.

So great. So great.

Which is to say that even once I've got everything caught up at work, I'll likely end up working 16 hour days eventually anyway because I'll need two jobs just to get by.

NEWSFLASH: Texas megachurch founder and ex-spiritual adviser to Trump indicted in child sex abuse case.

Ugh! Yet another drag queen assaulting our children!

What? What did you say? It's NOT a drag queen, but YET ANOTHER CHURCH PASTOR? Oh... AND he was President Trump's "spiritual advisor?" Somebody Trump said was "...great people. Great people with a great reputation. I have to say that. Great reputation." (read it while you can... this link goes to trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov, so it will likely be scrubbed any minute now because revisionist history is our new normal).

Shocking. I am just so shocked!

Holding my breath for all the Christian outrage.

Holding it in vain.

Because they will just renew their assault on drag queens and the LGBTQ Community as a distraction from the real threat WHEN THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE FUCKING HOUSE!

While I was taking a minute to scarf a mini pizza down for lunch, I received an unknown caller. Used to be I could just ignore them and have them leave a voicemail, but I can no longer do that because of my job. I have to answer every call because it could be something vitally important for my work.

When I answered the call, it was some piece of fucking shit scammer asking for my mother!

Absolutely nothing brings me quicker to anger than this bullshit, and that's saying a lot given how much there is to be mad about in this sick, sad world.

After screaming "SHE'S DEAD! DON'T CALL HERE AGAIN!" people usually hang up. But this woman? She asked who I was. I screamed "I'M HER SON, NOW FUCK OFF!" Though I think she hung up before I got to the good part.

Odds are it was some assholes wanting to sell her an extended warranty for her car or some such crap. Because preying on older people who don't know any better is what these repugnant grifters love to do. And, hey, there's absolutely no consequences... so can you really blame them?

It took me over an hour to bleed out my rage.

Between crap like this and weekly texts telling me "YOU HAVE UNPAID TOLLS!" from scammers, I am at my absolute limit. This story from CNBC has the headline "Why the toll road text scam is out of control across the U.S., and Apple, Android can’t do anything to stop it" is such a pile of stupid as to be laughable.

I have an iPhone and Apple offers nothing to help combat text spam. Apple could provide one-touch spam reporting & blocking across devices instead of burying it. Apple could allow keyword filtering across devices. Apple could do a lot of things to make dealing with this horrendous shit easier... but they won't. Because they're focused on AI that nobody wants for some stupid reason. And then news organizations like CNBC are letting Apple off the hook by telling everybody nothing can be done when it's just not true. Why is that?

Talk about "fake news." Jesus.

Maybe I've watched The Beekeeper too many times... but it's only a matter of time before somebody goes hunting for these spammers... no matter where they're from. Somebody is going to lose all their money or have a loved one lose all their money and make it their mission in life to hunt the people responsible. I cannot condone this violence, of course. But I would understand it...

Dang that was a good movie. No idea why I love it so much. I seriously need to watch it yet again.

For the most part, my cats leave me alone while I'm sleeping. I've left my bedroom security camera on a couple times to see if my cats wander in at night, and they definitely do. But if they see I'm sleeping, they turn around and leave. Especially Jake. Jenny will sometimes wake me up, but when I investigate on the downstairs cameras I find that it's because Jake has taken her spot on a warming pad... or he's sat on her... or she's had a bad dream (this has always happened since I first brought her home, and she will start kicking so hard that she'll waker herself up and be upset) or whatever.

But when I'm awake? Yeah, they are going to want attention.

Usually, Jenny is first to hop on the bed in the morning. But today it was Jake, and Jenny came later...

At which point Jake promptly stood up, then hacked up a hairball all over the blankets, then looked at me like it was my fault. After carefully stripping the bed so the cats could get out of the way, they both fell asleep...

After checking my email and all that, I went downstairs to work on the couch so I could watch television. Jake followed me so he could lay across my legs...

Fortunately he didn't puke up a hairball on me.

Yet.

I am about as angry and disgusted as I've ever been... so let's get to an all new, very special Bullet Sunday which starts... now...

   
• Background. I'm going to give you a bit of background to explain why I'm so fucking outraged today. And it starts with my support of America's soldiers. Not necessarily what they do... because our government can't seem to help abusing and misusing our military... and not all of our soldiers because there have been too many who have done horrific things while wearing a uniform... but generally speaking. A lot of American citizens become soldiers because they don't have many options. They don't have wealthy parents and a trust fund. A lot of them join the military in the hopes of escaping poverty or abuse. A lot of them join the military with aspirations to serve their country and do something important with their life. So, yeah, I respect (most of) our soldiers. My parents were both in the Navy. People I admire were in the service. And so I've tried to do my part for our soldiers... like sending care packages (a great place to start is AnySolder.com)... and promoting and donating to support organizations (like StopSoldierSuicide.org)... and it's why I promote and support organizations for our abandoned and forgotten soldiers (like the National POW/MIA Memorial & Museum). I haven't served, so I try to support those who do.

   
• Our Government at Work. I'm just going to get right to it... the official government website for the Department of Defense (defense.gov) has done something so horrific that, even with all the crazy shit going on, I still have a hard time believing it. Whether or not the current administration will scrub all evidence of this abhorrent act doesn't matter, because I've brought the receipts. As I am typing this, if you search on defense.gov for "Charles C Rogers" (as in Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers) the top result is recognizing him as a Medal of Honor recipient. If you don't know, that's the highest military decoration available.

The link: https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/

Which I have screen-shot here...

And, yes, this is official, even though the search is made through USA.gov...

But when you click on that, it redirects to: https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/

Look carefully. "Medal of Honor Monday" is now "DEI Medal of Honor Monday"...

But it gets worse. His page has been scrubbed...

So not only is our current administration firing veterans, cutting staff for the Veterans Administration, firing veterans, and generally making life worse for the people who serve this country... THEY ARE FUCKING DISRESPECTING AND ERASING VETERANS ON OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT WEBSITES.

   
• Military of the (Right) People. Before I continue on with Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, a quick aside. Soldiers are soldiers. It doesn't matter their sex, their orientation, their faith, their race, their social status, or how they choose to identify. They are serving their country, and that's what matters. And it's not up for debate. However... recognizing that people have intrinsic traits which sets them apart from the historically white, male, Christian, straight hero soldier trope that has inundated society (like our "war movies" since the dawn of time), is important. Which is why the official website for the Arlington National Cemetery has added categories under their "notable graves" section to recognize Women's History, African American History, and Hispanic American History (and there should be more categories, in my opinion... where are the LGBTQ+ soldiers?). Well, the site did have these categories. But now? Scrubbed (as reported by Task & Purpose). They still have a section for FOREIGN NATIONALS, but American minorities in service? Nope.

   
• An All-American Hero. If you've got Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers's name in your mouth, you had better put some respect on it. Via Wikipedia, here is the Medal of Honor citation he received...

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Lt. Col. Rogers, Field Artillery, distinguished himself in action while serving as commanding officer, 1st Battalion, during the defense of a forward fire support base. In the early morning hours, the fire support base was subjected to a concentrated bombardment of heavy mortar, rocket and rocket propelled grenade fire. Simultaneously the position was struck by a human wave ground assault, led by sappers who breached the defensive barriers with bangalore torpedoes and penetrated the defensive perimeter. Lt. Col. Rogers with complete disregard for his safety moved through the hail of fragments from bursting enemy rounds to the embattled area. He aggressively rallied the dazed artillery crewmen to man their howitzers and he directed their fire on the assaulting enemy. Although knocked to the ground and wounded by an exploding round, Lt. Col. Rogers sprang to his feet and led a small counterattack force against an enemy element that had penetrated the howitzer positions. Although painfully wounded a second time during the assault, Lt. Col. Rogers pressed the attack killing several of the enemy and driving the remainder from the positions. Refusing medical treatment, Lt. Col. Rogers reestablished and reinforced the defensive positions. As a second human wave attack was launched against another sector of the perimeter, Lt. Col. Rogers directed artillery fire on the assaulting enemy and led a second counterattack against the charging forces. His valorous example rallied the beleaguered defenders to repulse and defeat the enemy onslaught. Lt. Col. Rogers moved from position to position through the heavy enemy fire, giving encouragement and direction to his men. At dawn the determined enemy launched a third assault against the fire base in an attempt to overrun the position. Lt. Col. Rogers moved to the threatened area and directed lethal fire on the enemy forces. Seeing a howitzer inoperative due to casualties, Lt. Col. Rogers joined the surviving members of the crew to return the howitzer to action. While directing the position defense, Lt. Col. Rogers was seriously wounded by fragments from a heavy mortar round which exploded on the parapet of the gun position. Although too severely wounded to physically lead the defenders, Lt. Col. Rogers continued to give encouragement and direction to his men in the defeating and repelling of the enemy attack. Lt. Col. Rogers' dauntless courage and heroism inspired the defenders of the fire support base to the heights of valor to defeat a determined and numerically superior enemy force. His relentless spirit of aggressiveness in action are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

Now... you tell me. Does his Medal of Honor sound like it was awarded because of DEI? If it does, let me fucking remind you that he received this honor in 1968. The Civil Rights Act only came about four years earlier in 1964. And 1968 was time when racism was so rampant that they had to start adding things like the Fair Housing Act (also in 1968) to help curb just how bad it was (or continues to be, if you're paying attention).

   
• Charles Calvin Rogers. Also via Wikipedia, I feel it's important to mention that Maj. Gen. Rogers didn't stop his service after he recovered and got a college degree...

After recovering Rogers attended the US Army War College and received an M.S. degree from Shippensburg State College. He rose to the rank of major general before he left the army in 1984. He later became a Baptist minister, serving U.S. troops stationed in Germany. After a brief battle with prostate cancer, he died in Munich, Germany, at 61 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, United States.

He served right up until he died, far from home while ministering to the needs of his fellow soldiers. That kind of dedication should be celebrated, but instead his page gets scrubbed from the Department of Defense.

   
• Fuck. This. Bullshit. The purpose of this post is to draw attention to something that's incredibly fucked up and wrong. The level of disrespect that has been heaped upon a literal American hero needs attention. And while I don't really want to drag this post into dirty politics, it's pretty hard not to. Because it's not just Maj. Gen. Rogers being slighted by the current administration. Even a cursory look at the headlines shows that the military (in general) and veterans (specifically) are getting fucked (and this is after polling showed that veterans supported them to the tune of 61%).

   
• Veterans Haven't Left the Fight. Protesting is still technically legal in this country. Although that seems to be changing... you can't even protest a fucking car without being labeled a domestic terrorist by the President now-a-days (which is apt because the President Himself has turned into a car salesman). Perhaps in short order all forms of protest, an American right since the country was formed, will be banned and protesters shipped to prison camps. And if you think that's impossible then you haven't been paying attention (nor do you know your history). Thankfully, veterans just don't give a fuck and are taking the fight to politicians directly...

And so it goes.

   
Here's hoping that next Bullet Sunday I can get back to my regular nonsense.

My latest YouTube obsession is Ethan Chlebowski.

The guy does these deep, deep dives into food in a way that's informative and entertaining.

His latest video is on rice... a staple of my diet. And it's fascinating. I just use a rice cooker and always wash my rice. It turns out perfect every time. But there's an interesting take here that made me do a double-take...

His video on onions has me re-thinking how I use them...

Then there's garlic. One of my favorite ingredients...

But my all-time favorite? Potatoes...

If you enjoy learning about food, I can't recommend this channel strongly enough.

I love map books and books on foreign cultures.

McAtlas has both.

©2024 by Gary He and McAtlas

...which takes a fascinating look at some interesting McDonald's from around the world. In addition to gorgeous photos of some of the restaurants, there's also pages dedicated to unique food items that are available in other countries.

©2024 by Gary He and McAtlas

©2024 by Gary He and McAtlas

©2024 by Gary He and McAtlas

©2024 by Gary He and McAtlas

   
This will be a candidate for my favorite book purchase of 2025. I just got it yesterday and am already half-way through! I got it direct from the website, and they're currently offering free domestic shipping.

First this appears in my newsfeed...
GOP state Sen. Justin Eichorn arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with a 17-year-old girl.

21 hours later, this appeared...
Christian School Teacher and Conservative Writer Who Accused LGBTQ People of 'Grooming' Kids Charged with Molesting Student.

Know what they have in common? Both are "family value" Conservative Christians who railed against the LGBTQ+ Community and accused them of abusing kids.

Know what else they have in common? Neither of them are drag queens.

Or so I'm guessing.

When are people going to wake the fuck up and see that it's the Conservative Christians who are yelling the loudest about LGBTQ+ persons and drag queens "grooming" kids THAT ARE THE ONES DOING THE ACTUAL ASSAULT OF KIDS?

Stop persecuting the groups who are the tiniest possible fraction of perpetrators and start looking into the groups who are actually doing it. "LOOK.. OVER THERE! — DON'T LOOK AT ME MOLESTING YOUR KIDS... LOOK AT THAT DRAG QUEEN READING A BOOK!" This is fucking exhausting. How much longer before something is done to actually protect children by going after those most likely to assault them?

You can start by investigating those who are pointing fingers at everybody else.

Tonight I'm packing for a trip over the mountains tomorrow.

Of course the cats know what's happening. The minute they hear the suitcase rolling out of the closet they know. And they're all over me wanting attention, which I'm guessing is a way to keep me from packing so I don't leave. Or maybe they just realize that the automated cat feeders can't dispense wet food, so they're upset that I won't be here to give them the good stuff?

Either way, I will miss the knuckleheads while I'm away.

The thing about traveling over the mountains this time of year is that the weather is unpredictable. There have been years that late March is worse for winter storms than the dead of winter.

When I left this morning, my preferred mountain pass was "Snowing with Traction Tires Required" which was good enough for me because my winter tires are still on and I always have chains. But before I even got to the road that goes up to the pass, I was re-routed over an entirely different pass. This one ended up being "Bare and Wet with No Restrictions" which was even better (despite adding 15 minutes to my travel time).

And so I backtracked to the highway so I could be on my merry way.

The drive was far from incident-free due to heavy rains and fog.

At the base of the pass there was a bad accident in the opposite direction which had traffic backed-up for miles and miles and miles.

Then a couple miles from the top, an asshole driver was eating my bumper (even though there was nowhere for me to go), so I pulled over and let him grind on the person ahead of me. That wasn't good enough, so he cut in front of me (with very poor visibility on wet roads, I remind you) and went surging past the car that was in his way.

I didn't see the accident because I couldn't see more than a car-length ahead of me.

But I heard it.

Which meant traffic had to halt while the asshole (and the car he cut in front of that couldn't stop like I did) made their way off the road.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

The asshole was in such a massive hurry that he was driving recklessly in terrible conditions... instead of just leaving ten minutes early. So was it really worth it?

At least nobody ended up dead.

This time.

On Friday morning I drove over the mountains.

On Thursday I had to pack. And deal with my cats, who do not like the idea of me leaving. At all.

When I woke up in the morning and rolled my suitcase into the room, my cats were riveted to my activities. When I looked on the bed, there they were staring at me...

Jake, as usual, was on top of me when I got back from work. Sometimes literally. As you can see here when he was playing "foot warmer" and fell asleep on me...

And so now I'm feeling bad that my cats are back home wondering where I am.

Or taking a dump in my shoes.

One of those things.

I may not be at home, but I'm still tossing bullets aplenty... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Cinematic Apathy! Simon Stålenhag is a brilliant, brilliant writer/artist who has crafted some of the most amazing books you'll ever see. The Electric State is a beautifully dark and haunting tale where every illustration looks like it belongs in a museum. The Russo Brothers, whose Avengers movies are genius, made a boring, safe adaptation that completely misses the point (on Netflix). It's awful, even though the source material is phenomenal still...

Even if it were a completely new movie that was an original work it would be awful.

   
• Qualls! This is easily one of the best Hollywood interviews I’ve ever seen...

What a fascinating guy.

   
• Port of Seattle! I’ve been saying for decades that SeaTac Airport (AKA Seattle-Tacoma Airport) is one of the shittiest airports in the world, even on the Federal level at Border Control. As you can see here. The airport is busted, nonsensical, inconvenient, and prioritizes space for businesses over space and comfort for passengers. I am filled with dread every time I fly out of the shithole. And I’m filled with embarrassment whenever visitors have to use it.

   
• Found On The Internet Part 7,365,411! I could use this award almost daily...

And so could you if you read this blog daily!

   
• Reagan?! I'll just put these videos here for no particular reason...

No reason at all.

   
• Lumon Terminal Pro! BWAH HA HA HAAAA! If you're watching Severance on AppleTV+, then Apple's latest computer may interest you...

   
• Vaccinate! I feel bad that anybody suffers the consequences of science-denial... it's all programming and ignorance... but I feel even more terrible that their children have to suffer with them. Because Jesus Christ...

Your God gave us vaccines, but here you are... wanting your child to die instead of accepting a literal miracle that was handed to you.

   
See you on the other side of the mountains. One of these days.

Today's my birthday!

Except I'm writing it two days later because I am (was) drunk in a casino for my birthday.

I'd say I'm one year closer to retirement, but it's looking doubtful that I'll ever be able to retire given the current plans for Social Security and the dire state of my 401K. So I guess I'll just be happy I'm one year closer to death? That sounds about right.

Happy belated birthday to me.

You know how when the end of your vacation is pending and you try to enjoy those last precious moments of your time off... but can't help but think about all the stuff that's waiting for you back at the office? That's where I'm at now. And I can't drink myself into forgetting, because driving responsibly is more important than ever given how idiots on the road are looking at their phones all the time. OR READING A BOOK... WHICH, I SHIT YOU NOT... IS SOMETHING I SAW ON SUNDAY! I was a passenger, so I could see that a woman had a literal book on top of her steering wheel. And the reason I noticed WAS BECAUSE I SAW HER TURNING THE PAGE! Gotta be super-sober when assholes like that are on the road. Which is infuriating, because I'd argue somebody who's reading is more dangerous than somebody who's had a few drinks. I wonder if she knows about audiobooks?

Anyway...

Yesterday for my birthday we left the casino to eat at a bar. It was Monday, which is apparently "Crab Night" where you can blow through as much crab as you can eat for just $39.99... and, let me tell you, there were people eating serious amounts of crab.

Being vegetarian, that wasn't for me... but I did get a kick out of the sign for it...

I think poor SpongeBob's leg got accidentally erased while they were hanging the sign. But Patrick came through with all limbs attached...

Poor Mr. Krabs!

Though if you like eating that gross stuff, I'm sure he was delicious.

Suppose I should pack my suitcase.

WAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Up is down. Blue is red. Bananas are apples.

I swear at this point nothing can surprise me. Except... what does continue to surprise me... even though I am fully aware that it shouldn't... is the fact that there are people so indoctrinated into a narrative that they question nothing and believe absolutely everything they're told, no matter how outlandishly stupid.

So long as what they're told fits into what they want to believe, there's no need for any other perspective. And sure as fuck no need for facts.

I should have never stopped drinking on my birthday.

Meh. Just ignore me today. I'm catching up on the news and am probably just jealous that I'm not included in all the cool group chats.

However...

Remember when a government employee sending emails on a personal server was considered such a reckless breach of security that it resulted in two FBI investigations? I do. Political opponents wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, even after the employee was cleared by the investigations. But now those same people have ZERO problem with how top-secret information is transmitted (hell, they don't even give a shit who is receiving it), and think there should be ZERO consequences for a massive security breach.

And of course the same sycophants who were screaming about the emails are falling for the banana in the tailpipe because they're being told there's no banana in the tailpipe.

Like I said, I am fully aware that this shouldn't surprise me even a little bit. Maybe it's because I want so badly to believe that people can finally wake up to reality that I have no choice but to be surprised. But in a world of "alternative facts" maybe I'm being too hopeful.

I should stop.

But without hope, what else is there?

What the hell is wrong with app developers now-a-days? Do they just not give a shit? Do they not beta test? Do they not use their own software? Because I've been trying my best to understand why 90% of the apps I use are total crap, and I am at a complete loss.

Apple HomeKit HomeShit's app is the obvious contender for worst of the worst. It's so insanely bad that I automatically assume it will fail at what I want it to do. We were promised that Siri with Apple Intelligence would fix how utterly brain-dead their tech is at implementing even the most basic commands, but now Apple is delaying the rollout... despite the fact that they sold me my new iPhone based on smarter Siri coming soon! They had commercials with Bella Ramsey advertising it and everything! So now there are lawsuits by people who feel misled. And I want to join up because I'm definitely feeling like Apple has taken a giant shit on me yet again. I don't give a fuck about "Apple Intelligence"... just make it so I can get an automation to work for more than a day and let me control my home on my Mac without having to constantly restart the Home app. And, while you're at it, stop having your iPod mini tell me to switch to my iPhone app to open a damn door WHEN I AM TALKING INTO MY iPHONE AND SIRI HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THAT I'M SPEAKING TO IT THERE!

But the thing that happened today which compelled me to write this post?

Microsoft.

Who else? They have a long, long legacy of bullshit.

So there I was logging in to a shared drive on Microsoft servers when I get a message that I need to authorize access with the Microsoft Authenticator app. Authenticating is normal now, alas, and many companies are doing it to curb piracy. Adobe apps are all authenticated with their app, for example.

But unlike Adobe, where my Apple Watch will display buttons to allow or reject access... Microsoft has only ONE button after asking you to approve sign-in: Dismiss.

What the entire fuck?

Why even bother to have Apple Watch services if they aren't worth a shit? If I am going to have to open my iPhone to authenticate, fine, but leave my watch the hell out of it. Why pester me with a question that's impossible to answer?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

How are Microsoft developers, who obviously know what they coded into the app, looking at this stupid bullshit and saying "Yep! That's the way we want it to work!"

The future may be now, but the technology of the future sucks.

   
UPDATE: Right on queue, Marques has some thoughts...

It's beyond shitty how Apple has degenerated to its current state. I can't fathom this kind of bullshit happening when Steve Jobs was running the company.

I watch a shit-ton of YouTube. It's 90% of my entertainment because the content is just so wildly diverse... and you can run across some real gems that rival anything you'll find on any network or streaming service. It's the very first app on my television Home Screen. And this is why I pay for YouTube Premium so I don't have to watch ads in everything (well, except when the video has a sponsor, which I categorically loathe, but can fast-forward through easily enough).

I'm going to start sharing my favorite YouTube channels here. Again. I used to do that, but stopped for some reason. Earlier in the month I shared Food Explained and, since I'm in a cooking channel rabbit hole at the moment, today I'm sharing Chef Saúl Montiel. He is, by far, my favorite celebrity chef. No contest. He's incredibly talented, very funny, and is the type of guy you wish was in your local restaurant down the street.

I first found him on Pro Chef and Home Cook Swap Ingredients videos from Epicurious...

I mean, come on... the guy is a genius in the kitchen.

Chef also has his own YouTube channel where he shares essential life skills, like making guacamole (which is my heaven on earth)...

His family is adorable overdrive...

One of my goals in life is to eat at his restaurant, Cantina Rooftop. Just look at their breakfasts...

If you love cooking (or just love food) Chef Saúl should be on the top of your YouTube list.

Before I get to it... this Facebook video of a cat getting its butt wiped at a cat show is about as cat as it get.

Most every morning I have some kind of video conference call. Jenny avoids them like the plague. At most she will go running behind my desk at top speed to get back to my bedroom. Jake, on the other hand, is one of those cats that end up in viral TikTok videos because he has absolutely zero problem asking for attention during a call. He will walk across the desk and put his butt in my face. He will flick his tail while walking back-and-forth. And he will sometimes start squawking because he's still hungry after breakfast.

But most of the time?

He just sits on the shelf I built on top of the stairwell (the one I made after Jake had fallen off and hurt his foot) and... stares at me.

Sometimes in a more entertaining way than others...

The reason I have this photo is because I took it in order to show it to the other person on my call.

I fully realize that the crazy things my cats do sound unbelievable, so I always make sure I have the receipts.

As I'm writing this, my cats have once again taken over the bed. I have about 1/4 at the very edge. I took a photo before Jake spread himself out to full length and kept pushing on my right leg until I moved it...

15 minutes later, the automated feeders triggered to dispense their 9:00pm snack and the bed was mine again.

For a while, anyway.

Ooh! Spring is finally here! But am I going outside to enjoy it? No... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Stuck on You! Betty White's social media advertised that the US Postal Service tribute stamp to her was finally released. As my favorite celebrity of all time, of course I wasted no time heading to the USPS website to buy a sheet and also get the cancelation release...

Note the paw print earring. I also picked up some of the Keith Harring "Love" stamps which I had no idea existed.

   
• Close to You! Okay. First of all... how could you have never heard Karen Carpenter before? Second of all... I wish I could erase my memories of Karen Carpenter's phenomenal voice so I was able to hear her for the first time again...

What's interesting is searching YouTube for this topic. There are a LOT of reaction videos. And all of them go about how you think they would. If you've never heard Karen Carpenter with the music stripped away... you need to do that.

   
• Tariffs, Anyone? Aerogarden is shutting down, so their hydroponic systems are on sale for half price in a variety of places. I had one at my old place and loved being able to have fresh herbs available... but it broke when I moved.

So I just bought two of them (they only seem to have the small 6-pod units left @ $60, though I'm told they can be had for $50)...

I also bought a boat-load of seed pods (third party, because the Aerogarden has always been crazy expensive). Given how groceries aren't going to get cheaper any time soon... or ever, given how much of our food is grown in Mexico or harvested in the US by migrant workers who are getting deported... I need to do what I can to afford to make meals I love more affordable. Cilantro, which I eat a ton of, has reached $1.70 a bunch. Parsley $2 a bunch. Basil $3 a package. Thyme $3 a package. Jalapeños are 50¢ each. Butter lettuce is $4 a head. It goes on and on.

My $120 Aerogarden investment plus cheap seed pods will end up paying for itself in under a year. Now I'm considering growing my own tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, and peppers outside to save money. The problem is that I work so much I won't be able to tend to them as they need. I dunno. I should try and find a way, because holy shit is eating expensive.

   
• Nice Beaver! Yeah, baby beavers are about as cute as it gets. Around the 90-second mark you can really hear them crying and squeaking. My heart. The total video is 10-1/2 minutes long, and the babies are just in the first two minutes, but you'll want to watch it all...

Half the video was a beaver eating avocado and beaver chow. I couldn't stop watching.

   
• License to Kill... A Studio! So I don't get accused of misogyny by hammering away at another incompetent female movie exec (the first being LucasFilm's Kathleen Kennedy) I'm going to let a woman do it in this video (oh man how I love Nerd Cookies!)...

But I am going to chime in and say "Amazon Prime Video... WHAT. THE. FUCK. TOOK. YOU. SO. LONG?!?" Jennifer Salke made so many moronic and expensive mistakes that it's beyond shocking she lasted this long. Usually you have to be a straight white man to get a pass on being this bad at your job. Hopefully Amazon will get their shit together and hire somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing and take advantage of their many amazing IPs. Because MGM deserves better.

   
• M'Baku to the Future! The Avengers: Doomsday cast announcement video was fun, I guess. But the only addition that truly made me want to happy-dance was Winston Duke as M'Baku. Don't care about the X-Men, but I've wanted a Disney+ M'Baku series since we've had Disney+, and it boggles my mind we haven't gotten one yet...

No Daredevil. No Moon Knight. No Blade. No Eternals. No Marvels. No Spider-Man?!? Strange. Oh... and no Doctor Strange?!?

   
• U-S-A! U-S-A! Thank heavens anti-vaxers and RFK are intent on bringing back preventable diseases by presenting misinformation about vaccines! The companies who makes iron lungs could use the business after the polio vaccine was developed and wiped out a need for their product. To get a look at what future generations of Americans may be in for, here's an interesting (but sad) look...

I remain absolutely floored at how anti-science rhetoric and "alternate facts" are fucking up this country. And I'm mortified that kids who have no say in getting vaccinated are going to pay the price for it.

   
And, on that happy note, I'm going to go enjoy this fine (albeit a bit overcast) Spring day... by cleaning my house.

If you aren't old enough to remember what it was like to exist before smart phones, then you have no idea how utterly bizarre the world was back then. Comparatively speaking.

I, of course, am not only familiar with the world before smart phones, I'm familiar with a world before personal computers! Yes. I am that old. And the weird thing is that I do not think about The Before Times. Like at all. I never call up Google Maps or answer a text on my iPhone and think "Gee... remember what it was life before Steve Jobs blessed humanity with this thing? As far as I'm concerned, smart phones feel like they've always existed.

No, what got me to thinking about The Before Times was this video by Eddy Burback where he gave up his mobile phone. And even then, I didn't really think about it UNTIL he got to the part where he was watching old episodes of Sex and The City at the 15-minute mark. THEN I was like "Holy crap..."

I am not to the point where I want to give up my iPhone.

Not even a little bit.

That being said, I am very, very glad that I got to experience life without smart phones. It was a very different time. And not really in a bad way.

I am a bit more mixed when it comes to personal computers. On one hand, being there at the beginning of it all was a super-exciting time to be alive. But on the other hand, it would have been nice if personal computing was a bit further along when I was younger. Particularly in high school.

Though given the horrific state of cyber-bullying, maybe I should be glad it was still in its infancy.

I likely wouldn't have survived it.

Today's post was supposed to be shitty companies who use AI photos for their products who then ship you crap that doesn't match the image of what they sold you... but I just finished watching The Residence on Netflix, and cannot shut up about it.

I cannot fathom this series dropping out of my top five favorite shows of 2025. And I'm dying to see more of "The World's Greatest Detective," Cordelia Cupp, and hope we get a second season. And a third. And a tenth...

They apparently built the largest, most accurate set of The White House ever constructed, but it's more than that. They did some incredible doll-house shots that I found myself rewinding and re-watching again and again. These scenes are alive with people moving through it, and are incredible to behold...

And while I adore absolutely every last person in this phenomenal cast, the dynamic between Uzo Aduba and Randall Park is mind-blowing. How? How did they manage to figure this out when casting? And while I am profoundly sad that the amazing Andre Braugher died and had to be replaced in a major role, I have to say Giancarlo Esposito did such a remarkable job. Different than his usual characters. A beautiful performance really. I love, love, love this show.

WELL WORTH YOUR VALUABLE TIME! Thank you Shondaland for this exceptional show!

DEPORT HIM!!! DEPORT THE DRAG QUEEN CRIMINALS ASSAULTING OUR KIDS!

Oh...

Wait a second...

Not a drag queen?

YET AGAIN?

It's a drug smuggler who was pardoned by President Trump?

Never mind.

LOOK! OVER THERE!

A trans girl wants to play sports! UNLEASH RELENTLESS ATTACKS ON HER, AND HER PARENTS, AND ANYBODY WHO WOULD DARE SUPPORT HER! PERSECUTE HER 13-YEAR-OLD ASS! THIS HORRIBLE SITUATION CANNOT THREATEN OUR DEMOCRACY! BECAUSE LOOK! LOOK OVER THERE! DON'T LOOK HERE! LOOK OVER THERE! IT'S A TRANS CHILD!!!

Trying to think of the last time I was excited to see a DC Comics movie.

I'm just putting it out there... After seeing the extended First look trailer for Superman, I want Krypto everything. Krypto plushies. Krypto toys. Krypto stickers. Krypto apparel. ALL THE KRYPTO MERCH!

James Gunn sure knows how to deliver what people want to see. Krypto acts and feels like a dog. A super dog, but a dog...

Congrats DC and Warner Bros. for convincing me that I need to go to a theater to see this amazing-looking film.

Something I won't see in a theater but do want to see is the reboot for The Naked Gun...

There is no replacing Leslie Nielsen. I'm glad they didn't try, but instead had Liam Neeson play his son. And it looks like he is 100% fearless in the role, which is what has to happen. The trailer looks hilarious, for which I'm grateful. You shouldn't do a reboot/revival unless you can do it as well or better.

You know what the world needs now? A total video game crash like what happened in 1983.

Back then studios got greedy and lazy. They were dumping out as many shitty, overpriced games as they could that were (mostly) lacking in quality and innovation. All so they could make more money at the expense of the gamers that built them. On top of all that, the game system manufacturers had become pieces of shit who went all-in on anti-consumer practices so they could wring out every last cent from their customers.

Gamers, not willing to put up with this bullshit, turned away from video game systems en masse. They played games on their computers that were cheaper, more fun, and gave a quality experience for the money.

And thus the Great North American Video Game Crash of 1983.

It was an interesting time to be alive and be a gamer.

Then a miracle happened.

Nintendo came out with the NES in 1985. The Nintendo Entertainment System was affordable. It had innovative games that were high-quality and a blast to play. There were memorable characters that got you invested in the stories. Everything Nintendo touched was magic. They completely turned around gaming. Not just for North America, but the world. Gaming exploded in popularity again. Everybody thought "This is how gaming should be, and we're never turning back!"

And yet... here we are again.

Except instead of being gaming's savior... Nintendo is now everything that's wrong with the industry.

It's-a me... a greedy fucking piece of shit! © Nintendo

When Nintendo's Switch 2 system was teased, I was thrilled. I loved the original Switch because it had fixed all the issues I had with Wii-U, and surely the Switch 2 would be fixing all the issues I had with Switch, right?

Spoiler Alert: Not even close.

When the latest Nintendo Direct event dropped all the details about the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 gaming system, I immediately ran to Nintendo's site so I could sign up for the option to sign up for a pre-sale of the console system.

Even though I have absolutely no intention of actually buying one.

And let me tell you why...

• Price. The console price is $450 ($500 if you want a copy of the latest Mario Cart game to play on it). This is a horribly bad value for the hardware you get (see next bullet) but it's not the dealbreaker for me. That would be the price of the games. $80 a pop is an outrageous amount of money to pay. AND THAT'S FOR DIGITAL! If you want to buy a cartridge, that'll cost you $90! And these aren't even special editions which includes future DLC! There are precious few games I would pay this much to have. Especially when Nintendo just keeps releasing the same old shit over and over. Absolutely nothing in Nintendo's entire exclusive lineup is worth that to me. I've played it all before. Sure it looks prettier and has more stuff, but it's essentially the same old shit.
• Specs. Nintendo has always had lackluster specs compared to other consoles on the market. They care less about the hardware and more about the gaming experience. When they do innovate in hardware, it's usually a new controller or configuration that makes the system compelling. Which is fine. That's their thing. Nintendo games may look like technology from ten years ago, but they play beautifully, are well-crafted, and are fun. And yet... Nintendo has now become the greedy, lazy assholes that they were fighting against in 1985. For example... they finally have 4K, but to play at that resolution you only get 60 FPS? And you only get 256GB of storage? Seriously? The price is within spitting distance of Sony and Microsoft, yet you're getting these ancient specs that don't come close to measuring up. And this time there's no innovative feature to compensate you for all their shortcomings.
• Cards Aren't Cards. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but apparently some Nintendo games sold on physical cards have no actual game on the card? You still have to download the game. The card is just a license of some kind. This is astronomically shitty because you have to take up what precious little storage space they give you to store a game that should be on the card you're paying $10 extra to own. For this reason alone Nintendo can go fuck themselves and shove the Switch 2 up their asses.
• Cards Aren't Virtually Cards. We never really own the games we buy. It's more like a lease with conditions attached. That alone makes me detest every fucking asshole gaming company on the planet. But it gets worse. Remember when you could share your game cartridges? Remember when you could trade your game cartridges? Remember when you could sell your game cartridges? You bought the game, you can do with it whatever the fuck you want. Set it on fire if that's your thing. But now there's "Virtual Game Cards" that allow none of that. Nintendo has "virtual cards" that you must "virtually eject" so they can be "virtually downloaded" on another system... but only if that other system is in your Account Family Group! This is a laughably evil cash-grab to sell more copies of their games. But if you want to side-step this idiocy... BLAM! $90 instead of $80, please! And, because I wouldn't put it past Nintendo, it could be that even if you do pay for the cartridge it gets permanently linked to your account and can't be shared, traded, or sold. Each card has a serial number embedded... so even if it doesn't arrive with Switch 2, it's still coming.
• Switch 2 Edition. One of the great features of gaming consoles is the ability to be backwards compatible. Meaning all the games you bought for the previous generation system can be played on the newest generation system. Hopefully at a higher resolution and frame rate. Maybe with smoother gameplay. But fuck that! Let's get more money out of the gamers for the games they already bought! Yes, you can play Switch games on the Switch 2, but in order to see any benefit from the Switch 2's improved hardware (such as it is), you have to pay $20 to Nintendo for a Switch 2 Edition. My God how I hate these fucking assholes.
• Not Included. In the good old days, you'd get a simple piece of software included to introduce you to the system. The most famous being Wii Sports. A freebie to show you how things work with your new console in a fun way. But now? Not so much. There's a simple app which introduces you to the system that's called Welcome Tour, but you have to pay for it. Oh fuck no.
• Non-Chat. Nintendo made a big deal about the new in-game chat button (the "C Button"). But it won't work in all games. Even worse, your ability to chat depends on whether or not you have an online membership? The thing that bothers me about this so much is that open peer to peer protocols exist. Nintendo doesn't have to host shit. But they want to host it because that way they can charge money for it. I am not opposed to an online membership unlocking extra features for subscribers. Everybody does that. But if you have a dedicated fucking button on your console that is utterly fucking useless unless you pay to use it? What kind of dystopian bullshit is that? Cannot tell Nintendo to go fuck themselves enough.
• Tariff Fake-Out. It's surprising how many people are saying that the high price is justified in the USA because of tariffs. Except that's Nintendo boot-licking at its finest because A) The system costs the same world-wide, except for a cheaper language-locked Japan-only version they'll be selling in Japan, and B) Nintendo announced today that pre-sales for the USA have been paused because of the uncertainty of the tariff situation... meaning the high price of Switch 2 had nothing to do with tariffs, and the price will likely go even higher once they slap on a tariff surcharge (or whatever) on top. There's no defending this bullshit. Nintendo has taken corporate greed to another level entirely, and I'd play games on my iPhone before I would reward the assholes.

To put all this another way... if Nintendo started making toilets, they would find a way to charge you a convenience fee if you want to wipe your ass after you shit. That's where we're at now. In 1985 they were crowned a savior. But now Nintendo has lived long enough to become the enemy. Nintendo 2025 is everything Nintendo 1985 was trying to destroy.

And this is why we need another video game crash like we had in 1983.

Look, I know that the video game business is a business. And it's a business that's competitive and tough. And maybe Nintendo is being smart about how they launch a Switch 2. Instead of letting the secondary market buy their gaming system for $300 and re-sell it for $500... they're just going to initially sell it for $500 themselves so they get the money for their efforts instead of re-sellers. Then, once their system has distribution in-depth, they'll "listen to the people" and lower the price back down to $300. I dunno. It seems like a pretty good strategy, if I'm being honest. Helps curb inflation taking a bite out of selling the system at a loss so they can make their money on the games.

And that's where my grace towards Nintendo stops.

Because the shitty fucking way that they've come up with to sell their games is fucking abhorrent. Astronomical prices for games you aren't even allowed to fully own. Deviously cutting out companies like GameStop by charging $10 additional for the game card version that's sold in stores. Re-making the same fucking games over and over and over (sometimes by literally just doing a conversion of an old game you already bought). Not to mention making you pay for the privilege of using a fucking button that only a few games will even use. It goes on and on and on.

Abso-fucking-lutely not.

Maybe if enough people stop rewarding Nintendo for being evil bastards, they'll stop being evil bastards.

Except who am I fooling? People will buy into this abomination simply because it's something new from Nintendo, and Nintendo is going to make billions off of Switch 2. I know it. You know it. And Nintendo absolutely knows it.

And coming soon to a bathroom near you? Nintendo is going to make that fucking toilet. I can feel it.

Twice each year my allergies return to plague me.

Once in the Fall, when everything is dying and vegetation starts to rot. Then again in the Spring, when I'm the one that's dying because the grasses and flowers return to life. It could be worse. When I was a kid that suffered year 'round and had to get three shots a week.

Spring, while being my favorite season, is also the time of year I'm my most miserable. I dope up of allergy drugs to try and push through while my body adjusts, but as I get older and older it's harder and harder for me to adapt. I used to have a runny nose, itchy eyes, and a sore throat for three days or so. Then it was a week. Then two weeks. Now it's at least three weeks. And my symptoms get worse every year as well.

On Saturday I woke up and could barely see. It felt like my eyes were swollen shot. And maybe they were. That made it real fun to crawl downstairs to feed my cats. Sunday was even worse, but I was prepared. I brought a can of cat food with me the night before so I could dish out breakfast without breaking my next.

I gave up on blogging over the weekend, and decided to try again on Monday. Then Tuesday. I was going to pass again tonight, but decided to just take a Benadryl early and see what happens. I don't know that it did a ton of good but I was able to see to type, which was good enough for me.

Siri, the Apple digital "assistant," made me totally lose my shit today.

I needed to sweep out the garage, so I told Siri to unlock the front door instead of opening the garage door, as I'd be parking in the driveway for a while. Siri responded with "Your front door can't do that."

And I lost it. Totally and completely lost it.

I was screaming in my car... "CAN'T DO THAT? MY FRONT DOOR CAN'T UNLOCK? WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT?!? YOU'VE UNLOCKED IT BEFORE, SO WHAT'S CHANGED? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE THE MOST WORTHLESS FUCKING PILE OF TECH TRASH SINCE MICROSOFT BOB! HOW THE FUCK DOES APPLE CONSIDER YOU TO BE A SMART ASSISTANT? YOU'RE THE DUMBEST ASSISTANT IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE! EVEN THOMAS MIDGLEY JR. WAS JUST EVIL AND NOT INCOMPETENT LIKE THIS. FUCK OFF... FUCK YOU... AND DEFINITELY FUCK APPLE!!!"

I would have kept going, but I was home already.

And here's the thing. Siri was listening to my rant the entire time. The rainbow glow was circling my CarPlay screen, so it was all recorded. Then it was assumably sent to Apple. And I hope they listen to it, because they've earned every fucking word.

There was good news to be had, however.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are back with another season of their Long Way... series on AppleTV+ where they take a big motorcycle trip together. It's always a wonderful adventure, and this time looks like no exception...

The thing that strikes me when watching the show is just how incredibly nice Ewan McGregor is to the people he meets. Never has an unkind word. Always willing to engage with fans. Never gets tired of chatting about Star Wars. All too often, big Hollywood stars end up being such assholes. It's so refreshing to see the opposite of that.

Especially on a show this good.

Which is well worth your time whether you like motorcycles or not.

Today I had to drive over the mountains and back for work. When I was younger, these day trips were my normal. My friends and I would drive to Seattle and back to see a movie because the theaters are better there. But now? Yeah. I do not want to be doing this. I mean, it's no problem at all, five hours driving isn't very long. I think it's more psychological maybe?

But anyway...

I had three Coke Zeroes at Bahama Breeze with lunch, so I decided to make a stop once I was over the mountains at a mini mart to use the bathroom and get another Coke Zero and some cookies.

I am please to present a new feature here at Blogography...

I've been in my share of gas station bathrooms and am not scared easily. This one was pretty bad.

I didn't touch a damn thing. I peed, used the bottom of my foot on the handle to flush, then opened my trunk and used half a package of sanitizing wipes. Then wiped down my key fob and iPhone. Good Lord. I had to pee bad or else I would have backed right the fuck out of there. Thank God I can pee standing up!

Still... grateful to have had access to a bathroom.

If, in fact, that was where I was at.

As I mentioned a bunch of Caturdays ago, Jake has been acting like he's got a bit of arthritis or something that has him looking like he's having a tougher time moving around. I'll be discussing it with his vet, but in the meanwhile I'm building some things to help him out. Now that Spring is here, I can park outside and set up my garage wood shop.

I'm starting with stairs. The first of which will be to get up to my bed so he might have an easier time getting in and out. I've already built the stair frames and painted them. All that's left is to add the steps and screw in the rubber feet...

After this I've got a long list of "Cat Accessibility Measures" that I'll be working on. Mostly constructing small staircases for places that Jake likes to frequent. Like my desk, the stairwell shelf I built, and small storage room that he and Jenny hide in when people are here.

I am not, however, building stairs up to the kitchen counters. That can stay off-limits.

Spring cleaning may be in full effect, but I'm not letting that be my entire day... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Genius! Hearing that Val Kilmer has died was a real hit. I know that he's most famous for his roles in Tombstone, Batman Forever, and Top Gun and the like, but it's his earliest work in Top Secret! and Real Genius that I loved the guy for. Especially in Real Genius, because that role was a terribly fine line to walk. Had to be deadpan-serious while being hilarious. Had to be a genius while being relatable. Had to be aloof without being a fool. And he had to have enough emotional depth for a serious conversation that the entire movie hinged on. He made it look effortless. WARNING: This trailer inexplicably summarizes the entire film and spoils absolutely everything. If you haven't seen Real Genius I am begging you to watch the film before watching this...

I can't even guess how many times I've watched this movie. It is one of my favorites of all time. And it lead to my becoming a massive Val Kilmer fan. Rest in Peace, sir.

   
• DEATH TO NICKELS! Politicians who actually want to save money, instead of just pretending they are by lying about it, may want to ake a look at this video...

Look, I'm not advocating for a cashless society. I think that cash needs to exist because it takes money away from credit card companies and banks and puts it back into the cash registers of the retailers. It also ensures that people who can't get credit are able to make purchases. What I am saying is that cash needs to make some fucking sense. The system we have now absolutely does not. Kill the penny and the nickel and round to the nearest 10 cents. It'll all even out in the end.

   
• Not Your Average Television Series! I'm late to the party on Netflix's Adolescence, but holy crap is it riveting television. I am so accustomed to most child actors being pretty bad (with many being truly awful) that I never know how to react when there's one who is this exceptional in the role. The young actor playing the lead, Owen Cooper, is mind-blowingly good. How did they find him? Every episode is shot in just one take. And if that's the case... they not only had to find a kid who can carry the emotional weight of a very difficult part, but he had to be able to memorize all his dialog? HE WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD WHEN THIS WAS SHOT! THERE ARE ADULTS WHO CAN'T DO THIS!

Highest possible recommendation if you haven't seen it yet. Even the poster is frickin' perfect...

I'm now obsessed with how they managed to make this series. How long did the actors have to work on memorizing their dialogue? How much rehearsal was there? How did they map out these insanely complex shots? This is more orchestrated than a ballet! I can only imagine that there HAD to be some kind of improvisation going on that allowed the actors to inhabit their roles so if there was a bit of a screwup it wouldn't ruin a take. I've got one last episode left and am afraid of spoilers or else I would be Googling all these questions.

UPDATE: The final episode was not what I thought it would be, but one of the most important parts of the story. This will easily make my best television series of 2025 and should seriously be mandatory viewing for kids to watch with their parents. Mostly as a warning. But partly to show consequences for your actions extend beyond you.

   
• More Television to Love? THEY MADE A SERIES OUT OF THE MURDERBOT DIARIES?!??? ZOMG!

Thank you, AppleTV+!

   
• Three for Three? To me Star Trek, as a franchise, has been in the toilet for ages. The only thing I've really liked after The Original Series were a few Original Series movies, Lower Decks, and the first season of Discovery (which was phenomenal before turning to total shit). And then came Strange New Worlds, which I've been enjoying even more than The Original Series, which is unreal. And now we're at Season 03, which is looking every bit as good as the previous two...

It is boldly refreshing that the people currently in charge of Star Trek actually know what makes the concept work... but aren't afraid to push it into new directions.

   
• Still Standing! Need a distraction from the horrors of reality? This is a lovely little story...

In a day and age when small businesses are struggling, it's nice to see stories of some that are managing to push through.

   
• It's really difficult to not be a fan of Giancarlo Esposito. He seems like an incredibly nice guy that just happens to also be an amazingly talented actor. I'm really glad that he's being given such a wide variety of acting roles because if you saw him in The Residence, you know that he's more than the villains he's played...

I haven't seen Captain America: Brave New World yet, but I'm sure he was good in that as well.

   
• Lying for Dollars! I absolutely loathe these "food health experts" who have no idea what they're talking about. Or, even worse, they know, but tell lies anyway. Just look at this ignorant asshole spreading misinformation and bullshit about fucking teabags for clicks...

If all food everywhere is so terrible, then just eat shit! Eat your own shit! Because at least then you'd know it's "organic and healthy" and will fit your idiotic narrative of bullshit and lies.

   
And now for that final episode of Adolescence. Until next Bullet Sunday then.

I have purchased so many scrub brushes, grout brushes, and an untold number of cleaners trying to get my kitchen tile and grout clean. All have been a waste of money. My kitchen floor looks filthy despite the fact that I'm always cleaning it.

I've been saving for a heavy-duty, Commercial Oreck Orbital Scrubber as a last resort. I was up to almost $100 when I decided to just put the balance on my credit card because it's hard to know if it will blow up in price due to tariffs or whatever. It could jump from $320 to $600 so better to just get it over with...

AND... boom goes the dynamite. Immediately noticed a difference. A few more scrubbings and my kitchen tile will look like new. But here's the real shocker... I bought a softer scrubber for my hardwood floors and it's amazing how good everything looks.

One of the best purchases I've made!

Cannot believe that I'm writing a blog post about a cleaning appliance. But that's my life now, apparently.

As I previously mentioned, I bought a couple Aerogardens because I wanted to grow my own herbs. The cost to have fresh herbs has escalated to unaffordability, so when Aerogarden when out of business, I bought two 6-pod units. Mostly for cilantro, rosemary, and thyme, but for fun I went ahead and planted some lettuce, tomatoes, and parsley.

Can you guess which seeds sprouted and which havent?

Here's hint one... LETTUCE...

Here's hint two... TOMATOES AND PARSLEY...

Sigh.

No cilantro. No rosemary. No thyme.

Oh... and I planted some spinach too. That also hasn't sprouted.

Guess I'll try again with the cilantro, but this time I'll soak the seeds for a few days to see if I can get them to sprout before planting.

In other news... I'll bet that butter lettuce ends up tasting delicious!

I am warning you... do not ever sign up for a free trial of SiriusXM (it came with my car). They will never, EVER stop fucking calling you no matter how many times you tell them to stop. No matter how many times you block their numbers.

It doesn't matter if you have been working since 3:30am and are trying to catch up on sleep. They'll call. It doesn't matter if you're having dinner with friends. They'll call. It doesn't matter if you are in the fucking hospital visiting a co-worker THEY WILL STILL CALL AND NEVER STOP.

The other day I answered another fucking call from SiriusXM and just kept screaming "STOP CALLING ME! STOP CALLING ME! STOP CALLING ME!"

And I'll bet you money they will keep calling. This is one of the most repugnant fucking companies on the face of the earth. I hate SiriusXM with a passion that I usually reserve for people who kick puppies. Their non-stop harassment should be ILLEGAL. And if they will come back and say "It's not us, it's third parties selling our subscriptions!"

Fuck you.

STOP GIVING MONEY TO THIRD PARTIES TO HARASS PEOPLE. YOU ARE ENABLING THIS BULLSHIT JUST AS MUCH AS IF IT WERE YOU CALLING YOURSELF!

If I ever get any political power, I will devote my life to shutting down unsolicited calls of any kind. Companies doing this will be fined into oblivion and their CEOs publicly executed. Life is hard enough without these piece of shit assholes intruding on our lives no matter how many times we ask them to stop.

Well, after I split the difference between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time so we don't have to fuck with our clocks twice a year. Priorities, and all that.

Spectacular. IT'S SPECTACULAR!

Or should I say "It's fantastic?"

Not only should The Fantastic Four be one of the easiest comics to adapt to the screen, it should be a frickin' home run every time because the fundamentals of what makes the comic work are so grounded despite the crazy reality they live in. That's why the stories are so beloved.

The new Marvel Studios film finally... finally... starts with the concept of a familiy of adventurers who just happen to be thrust into the limelight as super-heroes once they get super-powers...

And perfectly cast, too.

Now was that really so difficult?

Apparently it was, because this is the fourth iteration of trying to make movies out of the franchise.

For Fantastic Four I guess fourth time's a charm.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is celebrated on Easter Sunday, and the day of His crucifixion, which is celebrated on this day (oddly called "Good Friday"), are seen as the two holiest days in Christianity. Or at least they were. In modern times the holiest days are more likely to be seen as the day some politician won an election or the day a group of God's children lose their rights or freedoms.

As the years go on and I see more and more "Christians" promoting hatred all the while selectively preaching Scripture... well... it has me wondering Where has the Christ gone in Christianity? On the day we're to recognize His sacrifice, it seems fitting to ask ourselves "Did Jesus die in vain?" Because, Jesus Christ, a lot of people who profess to live by His teachings have abandoned His teachings.

If they ever truly followed them in the first place.

Rewriting a Bible you don't read to fit a narrative you choose to believe in more than you ever did a Savior feels more like sacrilege than faith, but this is hardly anything new for the New Testament.

A couple nights ago I was laying in bed working while Jenny was sitting next to me watching television.

Jake hopped up on the bed. And looked confused for a second. He just stood there staring at us.

Eventually he walked to the other side where Jenny way laying, sat down against her like she was a back-stop, then started cleaning his butt. Jenny, like the trooper she is, seemed unbothered and just kept laying there watching TV. I was worried if I reached for my phone to get a photo that I might startle them, but nope...

Turns out he wasn't confused, he was just scoping out the best spot to do his business.

At least he wasn't leaning against me this time.

Hold onto your Easter bonnet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Home Video! I was going to buy Captain America: Brave New World because I haven't seen it. But the price is THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS? Are Disney and Marvel Studios out of their damn minds? THIRTY?!? Well, guess I'm waiting until a sale to watch it. Wonder if Disney+ will stream it for free before then or before I remember? I swear... the clueless morons in charge of these studios bitch about how they didn't make enough money in the theater for whatever reason... then charge an amount nobody will pay so they will instead stream it for free so then they can bitch about how they didn't make any money from home video sales? Get fucked, dumbasses. THIRTY DOLLARS?!?

   
• Baby Shark! I love videos of people taking time to be kind to creatures of this earth...

And now Baby Shark is going through my head. Not fair.

   
• Potato! Poppy Cooks finally released The Potato Book. As a vegetarian, the potato is an invaluable part of my diet and finding new ways to cook them is always a plus...

There's plenty of recipes with meat, but enough meat-free options and idea to make it worthwhile.

   
• In Today's News! ISPs and robocallers love the FCC plan to “delete” as many rules as possible — Oh yay! I think what we're all hoping for is more text spam and robocall spam! Thank God we now have an FCC giving Americans exactly what they dream of! Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea?

   
• Here Comes Kayla! I loved the first season of Hacks at HBO Max. Hated the second season. It was a meandering mess that felt like absolutely nobody knew what the heck they were doing or where they were going. Then the third season recovered nicely. I loved it more than the first. They had a clear direction and each episode moved towards it beautifully. And now the fourth season just started. It's delicious. I hope they don't drag everything back to the status quo too quickly so it can marinate for a while. I mean, yeah, I know that a common foe will have to manifest to return to where we were because that's how these things go... but how brave would the show be if the conflict ran the whole season? That might be interesting!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I will go back to praying for Kayla to get run over by a fucking bus. Her character isn't funny. It's a never-ending distraction that goes too far over the top in every damn scene and any time she's doing her stupid shit I marvel that every other character seems to be handled with care to make sure there's some grounding to be had, but Kayla's just in outer space being an idiot 24/7. How does that help the show? Nobody in the history of the world would hire this fucking zero, let alone make her a partner. Every time I think something genius is going on in the writer's room... HERE COMES KAYLA! Lord.

   
• Six Days And Counting! If you've been eyeing Plex as you home media server, you may want to buy their lifetime pass at $120 before it over doubles in price...

This is what I use and have had a lifetime pass for many years. Just be sure the features of the lifetime pass are something you really need before investing the cash.

   
• Always Take a Screenshot! I have wanted a Le Creuset Dutch Oven for decades. But they're always so incredibly expensive (even on sale) that I just can't afford it. The price has gone from $340 to $390 over the years. I have no idea what the tariffs will be for France in 90 days, so when I saw the 4.5-quart of my dreams for $276 total including tax and free shipping (it's even the red one to match my kitchen!) I pounced on it. I don't have the money, but it's the cheapest I've ever seen it. Placed my order at Bed Bath & Beyond. Their order screen with free shipping said $275.94... their ApplePay screen weirdly said $253.79 (that's the price not including tax). So I foolishly assumed I would be charged $275.94. Silly me... I was actually charged $300.36! AND... there's NO WAY TO GET MY ORDER DETAILS TO KNOW WHY! Clicking on "Order Details" doesn't tell you anything. So... that's what... $24? $25? difference? Yes. That's $90 less than the usual cost, but I want to pay what I was told it would cost me!

I screenshot absolutely everything when I order stuff now-a-days, because this seems to happen a lot. Everybody should screenshot their order process because you pretty much have to.

So anyway... a half hour on the phone with Bed Bath & Beyond Customer Service and I'm offered store credit?!? Oh hell no. I WANT TO PAY THE PRICE I WAS TOLD I'D BE PAYING... CREDIT THAT OVERCHARGE BACK TO MY CREDIT CARD, BECAUSE I DOUBT I WILL EVER SHOP WITH THIS SCAM COMPANY EVER AGAIN. I honest-to-God do not understand how this is even remotely legal. Charging more money than you say you're charging? How does that even happen? Isn't that theft? I don't give a crap about why something went wrong. I don't. It should not take A HALF HOUR to get this resolved. I HAVE THE RECEIPTS! And what would have happened if I hadn't taken screenshots to prove this was a scam? What if I hadn't noticed I was overcharged? I guess I could have canceled the order... but come on. Just charge the price I was told. This is not rocket science.

Is this an issue for the Better Business Bureau? No idea. But I tell you what... I should receive compensation for the time I wasted trying to resolve their mistake. This call should have been me saying "I was overcharged and have the receipts to prove it." And them saying "Sorry to hear that, I will credit the overcharge back to your card immediately, then I will insist that this gets looked into, because we don't want to charge people more money that we say we're charging them... that would be illegal."

   
You may now resume eating eggs.

I feel so terrible harvesting lettuce to eat.

I raised them from baby seeds! But it's delicious and a lot less expensive (when excluding the hydroponics stuff, at the start). I think by the end of the year I'll be breaking even on my investment, then paying pennies on the dollar compared to buying at the store with today's prices...

And is it weird that even when I'm eating burgers at home I put them in a waxed paper pocket? I just like eating burgers that way for some reason. Keeps me from making a mess!

My tomato plants are coming along nicely. Hopefully I'll be able to make a salad soon!

Star Wars, as a franchise, is something I love... even when it's bad. Though there's precious few things that I actually consider "bad," because there's always something cool or interesting to be found. I positively loathe The Phantom Menace, but loved the pod racing and ship designs. I also loathed Attack of the Clones, but loved the chase of Sam Wessell in the opening and everything to do with Obi-Wan's story. I thought Return of the Jedi was a massive step down from The Empire Strikes Back, but the big space battle and duel between Luke and Vader were amazing.

Things get more complicated after that, especially with the television series.

The Obi-Wan series should have been a home run. It stars one of my favorite actors, Ewan McGregor, and he is indeed phenomenal in the lead role. And Darth Vader too? Sign me up! But the story was so weak. Not deserving of the character that McGregor made me care about so much.

Ahsoka began as one of my most-hated characters, but once they had her start growing up and getting rid of the annoying sidekick idiocy with "Sky Guy" (Anakin Skywalker) she quickly became on of the best characters in the entirety of Star Wars. And then... then... they cast Rosario Dawson in the role! Her guest appearances in The Mandalorian were too good to be true. So how excited was I for her own self-titled series, Ahsoka? Very. And while the casting and performance and effects were all great, they saddled her with a story which wasn't really her own. It was so jam-packed with other characters that it felt as if she was a guest-star in her own show. Why not just call it Rebels? And then there were positively silly moments that sank it for me... like that crazy spacewalk scene where she battled star fighters. JUST SHOOT THE SHIP!

But oh well. I still enjoyed Ahsoka... it just could have been so much better.

Then, at the other end of the spectrum is the Star Wars television shows I love. The first two seasons of The Mandalorian were good to great. I loved Skeleton Crew, even though I was pre-disposed to hating it because I thought it was just going to be a bunch of bratty kids hanging around Jude Law. Nope! Brilliant Star Wars.

But the pinnacle for me is Andor. The first season was not just some of the best Star Wars ever made... it was one of the best television shows ever made. Period. Very close to one of my favorite things ever, The Empire Strikes Back.

And here comes the second (and sadly, last) season...

Based on the first three episodes alone, I'm guessing that it will end up overtaking Empire for me. It's THAT good...

There's a single line delivered near the end of the third episode which will haunt me for a long, long time. You can't say that about a lot of the stuff you see.

I'll withold my comments until a while after the series airs because I don't want to ruin it for anybody. But, dang... if you're not watching, you should be. Even if you don't care much for Star Wars.

Pope Francis has died at 88 years old.

My feelings (as somebody who was in the Catholic Church as a child) are rather complex when it comes to the Pontiff of the Catholic Church. On one hand, I appreciate that the Pope tries to foster compassion and understanding. I remember thinking quite fondly of Pope John Paul II because he traveled extensively and seemed to be intent on making things better for all peoples and not just Catholics.

On the other hand, more and more the only thing I want from a Pope is to step up and say "The Catholic Church will work tirelessly to bring priests who are guilty of crimes, particularly sexual assault of children, to justice. No exceptions. My mandate is to no longer have The Church be made a refuge for these criminals." But it never quite works like that. Pope Francis kinda skirted around the issue whenever possible. Sure he was better than some, but it always felt as though he was doing the bare minimum, even as child assault cases mounted around him. That being said... at least he publicly acknowledged that priests and nuns are guilty of the assault. That ain't nothing. But it's hard to look at it as a magnanimous act when we have no idea how much we don't know. And what we do know.

All I know is that he could have done more. Should have done more.

UPDATE: As if to put a point on this post, this story just appeared in my news feed: US cardinal accused of covering up sex abuse scandal will help close Pope Francis’ coffin.

It's hard to look at that headline and see it as a reflection on the Pope's legacy.

And so I downloaded Microsoft Outlook today.

Apple Mail has been a useless pile of garbage from the beginning yet Apple does not give a single shit. It's tied to absolutely everything else in MacOS, so you pretty much have to use it, but Apple doesn't care if it sucks.

But it gets so much worse the more you use it.

Searching for a word? Fine. Here's a list of emails that word appears in. But then you have to search within the search results to find out where the word actually occurs.

But it gets so much worse than just that.

The thing that sent me into a rage this morning that made me go running to download Microsoft Outlook? Something so outrageously stupid that I cannot wrap my head around it... SEARCH RESULTS IN APPLE MAIL ARE FUCKING CASE SENSITIVE?!? Jesus. Who the fuck does that? This is absolute insanity. Especially for names which have multiple capitalization options, meaning you have to search 3 or 4 times before you get anywhere. Madness. Absolute fucking madness.

But it gets so much worse than just that.

Most of the time when trying to actually get results out of Apple Mail search... the app crashes. MacOS gives you a full-on crash report and everything!

But anyway...

I know that other email programs make search much, much easier. For one thing, they don't immediately crash. For another, search results are only case-sensitive if you want them to be. For yet another, you search once for a word or phrase and the word or phrase is highlighted in all the emails where the app found results. You don't have to re-search or scroll forever (since re-searches crash the app).

And, yep, sure enough... Microsoft Outlook is a frickin' dream to use. Not just for search but for everything. It's not as integrated into MacOS X as I'd like, but it's so much easier to use and so much more capable that I just don't give a shit. I'll start up Apple Mail if it turns out I have to.

Way to go, Apple.

How long is it before I give up on MacOS X and Mac and start using Windows PCs? No idea, but it will be all your fault if it happens.

My favorite color is blue... periwinkle blue, which has a touch of purple in it.

But my mom's favorite color was red, so my kitchen appliances, tools, and cookware are all red.

My beautiful new red Le Creuset Dutch oven, which I have been dreaming of owning for decades but could never afford, is finally here. Even though I couldn't really afford it now, the price is always going up (and won't be going down any time soon if tariffs have anything to say about it), so when I saw it at a good price I just went ahead and bought it...

The first thing I'll be making in it this weekend is some SourJo bread. My (red!) potato baker doesn't get as hot as a cast-iron Dutch oven, so I haven't yet made a loaf of sourdough in real cast iron yet. But I've always wanted to, because I'm told it really improves everything.

Wish me luck.

Fur everywhere is always a problem with my cats, but in Spring when they're shedding their winter coats in bulk, it's a serious issue from which I cannot escape.

Fortunately, for Jenny at least, the solution is to brush her with the Furminator®. This thing is remarkable for being to pull so much fur off a cat that you'll have enough to build a second cat. And Jenny loves the thing. She wants to be brushed down with it as rough as you dare go, and doesn't want you to stop. I think she'd be happy to be brushed until all her fur is gone.

Jake on the other hand? He hates the thing. Even the gentlest of brushing will have him snapping at me. And so I do the best I can to claw at him with my hands so I can get as much loose fur off of him as I can. Which isn't much. Which means there's Jake fur rolling around the house in all directions.

Oh well. 50/50 is better than nothing.

One thing my cats seem to enjoy equally well is chomping on my lettuce.

This past week I saw lettuce puked up in two places and went rushing to the security cameras to see which of the little monsters was responsible...

The answer may not surprise you.

It was both of them!

So I guess I have to move my vegetable & herb garden to the garage?

This may be the 900th installment of Bullet Sunday, but the bullets are as fresh as ever... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• The Devil of Hell's Kitchen! I've been ridiculously busy and didn't manage to get past Episode 02 of Daredevil: Born Again until today. When I binged the entire rest of the series. It was better than I had even hoped. Came very close to eclipsing Hawkeye as my favorite Marvel Studios television series. What's surprising is how they managed to keep it as dark and edgy and its Netflix beginnings while toning it down just enough to fit under the Disney+ banner. I thought they would ruin what they had, but they pulled it off...

Highest possible recommendation. Like Hawkeye, they were beautifully source-material accurate. And between Charlie Cox's pained portrayal of Matt Murdock and Vincent D'Onofrio's intense take on Wilson Fisk, the series couldn't help but be good (and lest we forget Ayelet Zurer's deliciously cold and ruthless turn as Vanessa Fisk!). The great story just sealed the deal. I'm betting the second half in the second season (currently in production) will tie things up with a heck of a bang. Here's hoping that Disney has a plan for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen after that.

   
• Papal! Just throwing this out there...

I was baptized in the Catholic Church. And I am a man. Apparently that's all the qualification I need...

One thing's for certain. If I were Pope, priests and nuns who assault people, particularly children, would have no place to hide.

   
• Niamos! The Official Star Wars YouTube Channel has officially released a one hour video of Mon Mothma dancing to that absolute banger of a track from the end of Andor Season 02E03...

Now... if you haven't seen the episode, you have no idea what's happening, why she's dancing, or just how brilliant this series is. What happened just before the dance started will haunt me for a very long time. If you're not watching Andor, you are missing one of the best TV shows of all time... Star Wars or no Star Wars.

   
• Worth Fighting For! It's one thing to have read the infamous NSFW South Park letter. It's quite another to have the incomparable Matt Berry read it live...

I will never be able to see Matt Berry and not be mad that What We Do In The Shadows was canceled.

   
• Industry! Earlier this week Variety, whose bread and butter is covering the entertainment industry, had a headline of this: "Sinners" has amassed $61 million in its global debut. It's a great result for an original, R-rated horror film, yet the Warner Bros. release has a $90 million price tag before global marketing expenses, so profitability remains a ways away. This headline this early is blatantly manipulative and an obvious attempt to define a narrative which supports big budgets exclusively for IP-based films. Fortunately, Variety was immediately and rightfully called out on it. And one particular source caught my eye...

Bravo. And, just an FYI, as of this writing Sinners has a global box office of $121,726,427. With stellar reviews, great press, Ryan Coogler's fan following, and some serious momentum, The movie will, at the very least, break even at the box office. Then any home-video sales and streaming rights will be gravy. This movie will very obviously hit profitability, and the fact that Variety's shitty headline didn't bother to wait before questioning it's ability to get there is very, very telling. They aren't covering the entertainment industry... they're attempting to influence the entertainment industry. The question becomes why? Conclusions are pretty easy to draw, but the important take-away from all this is that no media is safe from having an agenda. Never have been. The difference is that now they're blatantly obvious about it.

   
• DOOM! Just an FYI... Avengers: Doomsday starts filming tomorrow.

   
See you at Bullet Sunday No. 901.

In the 9 years I've been at my place, I've had two wasp nests.

The first one was on Year Two under the eaves of the upstairs roof outside my bedroom. The wasps weren't bothering anybody so I just left it alone. The only reason I even knew they were there was because the cats were going bananas watching them out the window. Harmless entertainment.

The second one was Year Five under the front porch. I always enter my home through the garage pass-door, so I didn't know it was there until somebody selling something mentioned it when I had to answer the door. I was so very tempted to say "Yes. I asked them to come so they can keep uninvited solicitors away from me" but held my tongue. This was clearly a problem for visitors who were invited, so I reluctantly went and bought a can of RAID wasp nest killer because there's not much else you can do. If it were bees, I could probably find some help in relocating them. But wasps? Nobody in their right mind is going to move a wasp's nest. I put on a ridiculous amount of clothing to cover every square inch of skin and some swim goggles... cracked the screen door... then unloaded the can into the nest. It was like something out of a horror movie. And, despite wasps being total bastards, I felt guilty for weeks.

Today I've been getting alerts all day that there's "somebody at my front door." But when I look...

So I guess they're back and making another nest.

Fortunately I know about it early enough that I can (hopefully) encourage them to move to another location without massive loss of life.

After the second nest I was told that peppermint oil will discourage wasps from building on your house. But the idea of my property smelling like a Christmas mint was not something I thought I could live with. Which is okay, because I'm the one paying the mortgage.

If I were to ever get COVID I have a better chance than usual of getting totally fucked, thanks to respiratory problems I have. Because of this, it's recommended that I get a COVID vaccine booster every six months instead of once a year. And so I do that. I can't say whether or not I've ever had COVID... if I did, it must have been mild enough for me not to notice (and perhaps the vaccinations had something to do with that)... so, yeah, I'll just keep on doing what I've been doing because I'm still alive to do it.

Today I received my 10th vaccination for COVID which contains all the latest strain information to teach my body how to better fight it off should I ever get exposed to it. I didn't know how many jabs it was off the top of my head, I had to count it...

1. March 2021 #1
2. April 2021 #2
3. October 2021 #3
4. April 2022 #4
5. October 2022 #5
6. April 2023 #6
7. October 2023 #7
8. April 2024 #8
9. October 2024 #9
10. April 2025 #10

And, just like every other time I get boosted and people find out about it, I'll be told that this time I'm definitely going to die. The reason for my demise seems to change every time. First it was myocarditis and pericarditis. Then it was blood clots. Then it was my DNA breaking down. Then it was cancer. Last time it was stroke. This time I'm sure it will be death by something entirely more interesting. Because they heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy they know that is a doctor or a mortician or whatever.

To which I can only say... okay. If I die in my sleep tonight, then so be it. Nothing is without risk but, for me at least, the risk is very much worth it. Yes, shit happens. Even with a vaccine that's overwhelmingly been proven safe and to help minimize how badly COVID can affect you. Smoking is far, far more dangerous, yet smokers don't seem to have to put up with as much bullshit as somebody trusting the God-given scientific miracle of RNA vaccines.

Now, my attitude towards the vaccines is my own. If somebody wants to believe misinformation, or even what their gut is telling them, then fine. I'll do what's best for me. You do what's best for you.

Except...

What if I can't do what's best for me?

As massive cuts to American health research and services continue, very soon there won't be the research to determine which strains should be targeted (let alone develop a formulation for it). So maybe I won't get to decide. Instead RFK and his brain worm get to decide for me.

Which is beyond batshit crazy because RFK Jr. doesn't know what the fuck he is doing. Some things, like restricting food additives which are so questionable that European agencies have already restricted them, I have no problem with. Yeah. That's probably a good move. But that's such a small part of what he's into as to be laughable.

Whether you like John Oliver or not, he's got an interesting rundown on it all...

The more I hear about the current administration's plans for American health, the more convinced I am that people are going to die because of it.

Maybe a lot of people.

I fell down a rabbit hole of nurse abuse and had a really tough time getting out of it.

It's a raging epedemic that just gets more shocking the deeper you go.

Nurses, who provide a shocking percentage of the care that patients receive, are all too often treated like shit. And many of the stories I've read reveal that a lot of times the abuses happen while they're advocating for the care of people in their charge.

My journey started with this video...

A few thoughts...

• In what fucking universe should this asshole be allowed to practice medicine? If he treats nurses like this, how is he treating his patients?
• This hospital has a lot of explaining to do. I hope they respond appropriately and, if they don't, they deserve to have their reputation absolutely trashed.
• If this doctor hates this country so fucking much, go to another country then, you psychotic bitch. Your feelings about the USA are no excuse to treat this woman like this. Yelling at a nurse in such an unhinged manor is beyond disrespectful... it's abusive and dangerous.
• Fuck off, asshole.

And it doesn't stop there. So many articles and videos about nurses getting verbally assaulted by enraged doctors. And while, sure, some of it is could be a reaction to something, it's still no excuse. Whether because of a god-complex or just the profession attracting a certain personality type, it's mind-boggling to me. I cannot fathom in my wildest imagination my doctor acting like this! And if he ever did, he wouldn't be my doctor.

Until now I thought that nurses getting abused was due to patients... but doctors?!?

I'd like to blame it on stress, but I have a difficult time imagining that nurses have it any easier.

UPDATE: Annnnnnd... she was fired. Why am I not surprised.

To decompress from the horrors of the day, I've been playing Torchlight II, which is one of my favorite Diablo video game clones.

On regular difficulty, my pet is an orange cat named Jenny, and she's just a normal companion that helps when she can...

When playing on casual difficulty (where I don't want to stress so much) my pet is a gray cat named Jake. Because it's so easy to play, I prefer to just use my abilities and not any spells, so I give all my spells to Jake.

And he's gone all psychotic. CONSTANTLY summoning zombies or skeleton archers to help with a fight, even if it's not needed. CONSTANTLY casting all kinds of spells just because he can, not because it's helping.

It's both funny and upsetting. All I can say from my experience is that I would never give a cat magic spells in Real Life.

Spending money is something that I try to avoid whenever possible. I'd much rather save it for a rainy day when something goes wrong and I really need it. Which is to say I don't have to have a bunch of luxuries because I'm a lot happier knowing that I have some savings in the bank. Which, when you think about it, is the ultimate luxury anyway. Rare though it may be.

After you get past the true luxuries needed to survive in the modern world (at least to me)... your health, clothing, a place to live, food to eat, a job, health insurance, a car, a phone, a computer, internet, a television, music, and books... most everything else is gravy. Here are my top ten unnecessary luxuries once the basic necessities have been covered...

1. Central Air — When you live in the middle of hell during the Summer, this is the very definition of luxury. Going from window or wall air conditioning to an HVAC system seems very much like magic. Cool air in every room of the house... all at the same time?
2. Washer & Dryer — Not having to go to the laundromat to wash your clothes? Being able to wash whenever you need to? Does luxury get much better than that? Like a garage, you never realize how nice it is until you have it. Could I go back to doing my laundry away from home? Sure. Would I want to? Not really.
3. A Garage — The winters can be brutal here. The Summers are brutal here. Yet I never had a garage until I moved to the home I'm in now. I never even had covered parking. Which means I've scraped a lot of snow and ice off my automobile. And I've climbed into a blistering hot car more times than I can count. But that's not even the most luxurious part of having a garage... it's the storage! And if you're a woodworking fan who has a lot of power tools, that's about as good as it gets. As is being able to park outside and use the garage as a wood shop.
4. Lawn Sprinkler System — I don't need a yard. I'd honestly rather not have one. But if I do have one, watering it is something I dread. Having to set a timer to move a sprinkler around your yard, then having to get up and actually do it isn't a horrific task. It's just a really inconvenient one. But the best part of having a sprinkler system isn't even that... it's luxury of being able to water at 2am when the sun won't evaporate it off your lawn and waste expensive water! And even better than that? Not having to find somebody to water your yard while you're away. That's brutal.
5. Garage Freezer — I've never had any freezer except the one that was in my refrigerator. And it's never enough space. Whenever there's a big sale going on for frozen goods, I find myself playing freezer Jenga to try and make as much room as possible for cheap food. Except that's never all that much space because there's barely any to begin with. As food prices were reaching all-time highs early this year, I saw a sale on a garage freezer and slapped down my credit card. And, let me tell you, it's a luxury of luxuries for me. I've cashed in on so many sales that have saved me a ton of money on things I am eating anyway. It makes me wish I had spent a bit more money and bought a bigger one. I didn't because I thought I'd never fill it up waste electricity freezing nothing. I was so wrong. But still... I now have triple the freezing capacity, and that's not nothing.
6. Power Tools — Being able to fix stuff that breaks so you don't have to hire somebody... or being able to make something more cheaply than having to buy it... is a critical necessity to me. Never mind that I've likely spent as much money on tools as I've ultimately saved, but having a hobby you enjoy is the real luxury here.
7. Automated Litter Box — It's not that I care about having to clean a litter box, it's that I am not available to clean it constantly and Jenny doesn't like to use a litter box that's too dirty. That's a serious problem when I have to travel or go to work. Not having to clean cat poop up off the floor or using an odor removal spray when cleaning up urine is pretty great. The problem is that most automated litter boxes make a worse mess or are unsafe. Getting an actual Litter-Robot to keep things clean and safe for my cats is a luxury on many levels.
8. Air Fryer Multi-Oven — When appliances drop in price to be so cheap as to be ubiquitous, the least expensive models usually having the least amount of features. Air fryers can be found really cheap, but all they can do is air-fry foods. Which means that you end up with four different appliances doing slightly different cooking things. But when my fryer died, I ended up spending a bit more money to try and consolidate appliances and free up some room in my kitchen. My air fryer (which is bigger than my old one) also doubles as an oven, a grill, a rotisserie basket cooker, and has a dozen other modes for all kinds of cooking. It's quickly become my go-to way to cook. The only thing I don't use it for is baking bread. It's so remarkably handy and energy efficient as to be considered a luxury to me.
9. Backup Cam — Where I live, a car is more a necessity than a luxury. The real luxury for me was paying off my car and not having to make that payment every month. Until last December when the used car I've had forever finally died and the cost to repair it was more than it was worth. Not caring about having an expensive car, I walked into the showroom and asked what was the cheapest new-ish car they had on the lot. I was expecting a car that was 2 or 3 years old used. Instead I ended up with a new car because it was only slightly more expensive than an older car with a lot more miles and far less warranty. I was pretty raw about the fact that I was paying for a bunch of features I didn't want and didn't need. Including a backup camera. Except... once you have a backup cam, it's very hard to go back. It's a luxury that you get accustomed to very quickly.
10. Floor Scrubber — I spent countless hours with a scrub brush trying to get my kitchen grout clean. And almost as much time trying to get my hardwood floors looking clean. Never worked. Getting an Oreck Commercial Orbiter Scrubber changed everything. Scrubbing floors has never been so effortless and effective, and that's a luxury that I'm increasingly grateful to have.

HONERABLE MENTION: Ninja Creami — I don't eat a ton of ice cream, which means whenever I buy some means it goes bad before I can eat even a quarter of it. And the smaller containers are way too expensive. Being able to "creamify" ice cream or other frozen treats from just about anything on a small scale at any time at all is a dessert luxury! The good news is that you can often find them at a good discount. The bad news is that they release new models with added features (the latest of which can dispense soft serve!).

Not on the list as it currently stands is travel which, for most of my years, was a priority to me. Couldn't really afford to do a lot of it, and so I did volunteer work that had travel attached so I could add a few days for myself once I was sent somewhere. It's a lot cheaper to pay for a couple nights of hotel and food after the flight was covered by work! But now that I've been lucky enough to have seen a lot of the world? Not such a priority. Very happy to stay home with the cats.

Oh yeah...

I was going to say that having a voice-controlled "smart assistant" is a luxury, but here's a conversation I had with Apple's fucking useless Siri "assistant" tonight...

At which point I had to go back upstairs and get my laptop so I could open the Find My app, locate my iPhone, tell it to play a sound, then run to back downstairs to find it before my cats freak out.

Such a luxury.

This past Sunday I was sitting in the living room working while the television was on. I catch a blur in the catio, look ourside, and Jake is climbing towards the ceiling. Usually this means a bird is around, but it ended up being a bee.

I tapped the window and said "JAKE! JAKE... LEAVE THE BIG FUZZY BEE ALONE!"

Which got his attention...

The bee was oblivious and eventually flew out without becoming a chew toy for Jake...

Jenny hasn't been going out into the catio as often as she used to. She's far more interested in lounging on the couch.

Which would be fine except she like to have her feet held while she sleeps for some reason.

So there I was, rewatching Andor Season 02, Episode 03 to get ready for Episode 04, while composing an email when Jenny came up and plopped down next to me. She meowed to get my attention, and that went like this...

She always gets what she wants. Always.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm taking time to fire off some bullets given how much stuff I have to get done today, but here we are... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• The Hawk! I had just finished rewatching Hawkeye, easily my favorite Disney+ Marvel Studios series, and was commenting how I wanted a second season so badly. Then this happened...

Well, shit. The guy was literally a part of billions of dollars in profit for Disney, and they want to pay him half of what he got for the first season? It's beyond shitty that this is how he was treated. Especially given how brilliant his series was.

   
• Unkerned! What is it with all these letter kerning crimes against humanity? This is atrocious. The Catholics couldn't get a designer for a tomb THIS important to them?

Literally "FR A NCISC VS" on that marker.

   
• Use The Force! Oh yeah, before I forget... May The 4th Be With You today!

Every once in a while I wonder what the world would be like if Star Wars never happened. It's honestly impossible to imagine. So much of sci-fi hinges on this one film. Sure there was the Star Trek TV series that came before it, but that was seen as a failure at the time (kept alive only by force of will from Lucille Ball and Desilu Studios). It was Star Wars that redefined what it means to be a blockbuster, and paved the way for so much of the science fiction we ended up getting. Sure, there might have been some other sci-fi movie that filled the void that the absence of Star Wars would have left... but I cannot even fathom what it might have looked like.

   
• Five Year Mission! And speaking of Star Trek... whenever I find an ad that I willingly want to watch, it makes me loathe bad ads even more. This ad is gold, and I love that the actors were game to do it...

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the show that basically sells itself with its genius (and I cannot wait for the upcoming season), but it's nice to know that when they have to sell it they're trying to be interesting about it.

   
• Construction! Oh man. If you like carpentry, watching an American-style house get built by a Japanese carpenter is your new bliss...

I'm not saying that the final result is the design direction I would have taken... but the artistry that was involved in creating this incredible structure can't be denied. What a cool video.

   
• Elevation! Here's what's possible when you don't hand over the bulk of your country's GDP to the industrial complex that supplies your war machine...

It's proposed that the 2026 Military budget will be increased to $1 TRILLION DOLLARS. It's so absurd how modern warfare has changed so radically when it comes to how battles are fought, yet we're still throwing money into building this vast military force like it's the 1980's. I don't get it. I really don't. A trillion dollars?!? And we've got $92 million going to go into a fucking military parade on the president's birthday? What the fuck?

I mean, when you think about it, this is hardly surprising. But we're cutting NPR and PBS funding for this senseless crap? Seriously? We're cutting childhood cancer research for this shit? THIS?!?

   
• NEWS: CDC reports 216 children died this flu season, the most in 15 years — Congratulations anti-vaxers... things are looking up for you! Just think of how successful your campaign will be now that RFK is championing your cause! Maybe you'll go from hundreds of child deaths in 2025 to thousands in 2026! I mean, that's what you want, isn't it? That's the goal?

   
Not exactly sure how to wrap this up after delving into childhood cancer and easily avoidable child deaths. So... see you next week. I guess?

Every once in a while I run across a really cool question that makes me long for the good ol' days when blogging was still popular and memes were a Big Deal.

This time is was on BlueSky where somebody was asking a music question which, let's face it, is a darn good question because I had to really think about it...

I came up with...

• Pet Shop Boys released Yes 23 years after Please (And Yes is hands-down my favorite PSB album)
• Depeche Mode released Ultra 15 years after Speak and Spell
• Madonna released Ray of Light 15 years after Madonna
• OMD released History of Modern, English Electric, The Punishment of Luxury, and Bauhaus Staircase all 30 (THIRTY!) years and more after Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
• a-ha released Minor Earth Major Sky 15 years after Hunting High and Low (And Minor Earth Major Sky is hands-down my favorite a-ha album)
• Erasure released Nightbird almost 19 years after Wonderland
• Human League released Octopus 15 years after Reproduction
• Heart released Brigade and Desire Walks On 15 and 18 years after Dreamboat Annie
• Fleetwood Mac release Tango in the Night 19 years after Fleetwood Mac
• New Order released Waiting for the Sirens' Call 24 years after Movement
• Elton John released loads of great albums 15 years after Empty Sky

Jester came up with...

• Bonnie Raitt released Luck of the Draw 20 years after Bonnie Raitt
• Aerosmith released Permanent Vacation almost 15 years after Aerosmith
• Prince released Love Symbol almost 15 years after For You (how the heck did I miss frickin' Prince?!?)
• Paul Simon released Graceland 21 years after The Paul Simon Songbook
• Tina Turner released Private Dancer 23 years after The Soul of Ike & Tina Turner
• Genesis released Invisible Touch 17 years after From Genesis to Revelation

Marty (from Banal Leakage) came up with...

• Foo Fighters released But Here We Are 28 years after Foo Fighters
• Duran Duran released Astronaut 23 years after Duran Duran (along with All You Need is Now and Paper Gods, both of which I loved... how I missed Duran Duran on this list, one of my favorite bands, is impossible to comprehend)
• Steely Dan released Two Against Nature 28 years after Can't Buy a Thrill
• Crowded House released Time On Earth 21 years after Crowded House
• Tears For Fears released The Tipping Point 39 years after The Hurting
• Pearl Jam released Dark Matter 33 years after Ten
• The Cars released Move Like This 33 years after The Cars
• The Cure released Songs of a Lost World 45 years after Three Imaginary Boys
• David Bowie released Let’s Dance 16 years after David Bowie (really embarrassed I missed this one)

The biggest shock to me was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. All these albums I love by the band were released THIRTY YEARS after their first album? How often does that happen?

Well this is weird.

There I was reading through Kazza's blog feed, saw this meme about blogging, and read that Neil's blog was where she found it. It's weird because Neil is a long-time blogging friend, and I thought his blog had shuttered a while back because I noticed the feed hadn't updated in a long while. I went to his site, saw a bunch of social media icons, and assumed he stopped. I keep up with him on Facebook, so I didn't give it another thought.

He never stopped! So now I have subscribed to his feed again (which is working just fine for me now).

And now back to that meme...

Why did you start blogging in the first place?
Long story short? My own amusement. — I had a website back when the web was new, and everything was hand-coded in HTML. Just a half-dozen pages with fake news articles for my fictional existence as ruler of my own planet called Dave's World (and later DaveWorld). Then the Netscape Navigator web browser had a programming language added to it. I re-wrote my site to have the "news" of my world created on-the-fly via something I wrote in LiveScript (eventually called JavaScript). It assembled the front page "story" from randomly assembled snippets (taken from of a huge library of snippets I dreamed up). You could keep refreshing and get a new story. Eventually I started writing the fictional news articles myself because the generated articles were getting stale. It was just a way to be creative with my writing. Later on I had a kind of "Behind the Scenes of DaveWorld" section where I talked about my real interests instead of fake ones. This eventually got spun off into a hand-coded Online Dave Journal which lasted until blogging platforms became a thing. Then it was re-titled DaveBlog (using Blogger, I think?)... and ultimately renamed to Blogography when I was looking for my own domain, and here we are.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I switched to WordPress because it was free, and my previous platform was being moved in a more commercial direction.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?
My previous platform before WordPress was Movable Type. I was a hardcore fan, adopting it as soon as I found out it existed. I goofed around with other platforms from time to time on other projects (most notably Joomla, Blogger, and LiveJournal), but Blogography proper has only ever been Movable Type then WordPress.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?
I used the online interface for Movable Type, then moved it offline to a tool called "Kung-Log." That was eventually renamed "Ecto." When that stopped being developed, I started using "MarsEdit." I still use that to compose my entries, but I have to paste them into the WordPress "Classic Editor" because it can't use the security I had to adopt when my blog was getting hacked regularly.

When do you feel most inspired to write?
After I got up-and-running, I committed to 1000 entries of Blogography. To speed through that, I started blogging daily. I've been blogging daily (with a few breaks every now and again) ever since... way past the 1000 entries I was planning. What used to inspire me was technology. Then it was travel. Now it's just living my life. I write out of habit, and stuff that happens along the way is what inspires me to keep going.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
Depends. I usually let it sit until I have a chance to read it and fix mistakes the following day (meaning I'm always a day behind). Sometimes, if it's something like this meme that doesn't require much revision comes along, I'll just publish immediately afterwards (the entry I had ready for today will now be published tomorrow). Sometimes, if I'm really fired up, I will let it sit for days, reading it and revising it a few times, until I'm sure I want to publish it. More than a few posts have then ended up deleted once I've calmed down. Even if I'm busy, I still make sure to write something down every day... but don't have time to read them and can get behind, so they pile up to be read and get published all at once (but keeping the original date they were written).

What are you generally interested in writing about?
Absolutely anything. A lot of time it's strange stuff I notice or weird things that happen to me. It can also be me talking about an article I read, a TV show or movie I watched, or something else that crossed my path. I no longer write much political stuff (and have deleted some of my older political entries) because I don't see the point to it. People are so polarized now that nothing I say is going to matter, and all I seem to get is hate for my opinions. I do miss writing about travel, because that's one of the things I've been most passionate about in my life.

Who are you writing for?
I began blogging to let my friends and family know what I'm up to (because I was up to a lot of stuff back in the day!). Now that I'm mostly staying at home with my cats, I'm writing for myself. To be honest, I've probably always written for myself from the start. Everybody else is along for the ride if they want to be.

What's your favourite post on your blog?
Most all of my favorite entries are from a long, long time ago. Back when the blogging community was how people kept in touch, and blogging comments were our "social media." I have a section here for my favorite entries, but I haven't found reason to update it since 2012. The #1 entry on that list still makes me laugh because it was just so stupid. I brushed my teeth with baking soda. It was awful. I wrote about it because I thought it was funny. A lot of my early blogging days were like that.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
No plans at all. Maybe if it had a ton of regular traffic, I'd want to change things up (though I like this design as it is, and haven't changed it in decades)... but blogging is mostly dead now. Social media is where everybody is at. I do get a lot of traffic from strangers via Google simply because I've been doing this for so long and there's tons of random content here, but most of my regular interaction with people (including long-time friends made by blogging) is on Facebook now.

Who else do you want to tag?
So few of us are blogging that there's not much of a reason to do that. Those of us still around will see this eventually and take part if they want to.

Yesterday I watched the latest batch of Star Wars: Andor episodes and wondered for the millionth time how Tony Gilroy managed to get this series past Disney. Heck, how did he even manage to get it past the Lucasfilm division of Disney?

The 12-episode second (and final) season of Andor is being released in four 3-episode chunks, each taking place one year after the previous chunk as it leads directly into Star Wars: Rogue One (which is the prelude to the very first Star Wars movie, A New Hope).

And this latest chunk? The third of four chunks? No spoilers, but...

Unbelievably phenomenal. You'd be forgiven if you thought things couldn't get better than the previous chunk... because how could you possibly know? Then all this happens.

The first episode, Episode 07, starts out a bit slow. A surprisingly leisurely pace given that we're past the half-way point and should be escalating towards the finish line. But then Episode 08 grabs you by the throat and slaps you across the face. Hard. Then it ends. At which point Episode 09 slams into gear, not giving you a chance to catch your breath.

I'm going to restrain myself talking about the series until a few weeks after it's all over because I don't want to spoil it for anybody. All I will say are these three things...

1. Andor deserves to win all the Emmy Awards. All of them. Writing. Directing. Acting. Design. Effects. Costumes. Music. Whatever. There's no other show that's doing what Andor is doing and, even if they were, nobody is doing it like Andor is doing it. If the show isn't at least getting a nomination in all categories for which it's eligible, then the Emmys mean nothing.
2. The show's greatness is that you don't have to have seen any other Star Wars show to enjoy it. There's a complete story being told here. But if you're a massive Star Wars fan, you're seriously rewarded. If you've watched the cartoons and read the books and played the games and followed the stories, your mind will be reeling with every episode. The entire time I'm watching, my brain is thinking "Oh... while this is happening, this person is doing this and that person is doing that!" or even "Holy crap! This character is at the same location at the same time as that character!" And then "ZOMG! Right after this happened, THIS happens!" It goes on and on. For those into Star Wars, there are inconsistencies that pop up of course, but Andor is the gift that keeps on giving because it's all going on at the same time as so much is going on.
3. But it's more than that. This series makes you recontextualize everything you think you know about Star Wars. And it does so while making complex scenarios so beautifully accessible. I cannot fathom how they will manage to top this, but I seriously hope that somebody at Disney is filling a dump truck with cash to back up to Tony Gilroy's house and offering him whatever he wants to continue with more Star Wars projects.

And so, yeah, if you're not watching... what in the heck are you waiting for? These are the droids you're looking for.

This evening when I went to post something here at everybody's favorite blog, I found out I couldn't log in. Hardly anything new. It seems that half dozen times each year this is just something that happens. Either somebody hacked me or some plugin update takes down my entire WordPress install or some security issue causes my site to take a header. Because I'm so used to all this, I have a checklist in my head that I run through, and usually I can have it resolved in under an hour.

But not tonight.

It's currently just after 1:00am, and I only just now managed to get things running again. But the weirdest part? I have no idea what was wrong. After going through the things I knew to check for, I just started poking around and randomly restoring files from backup that looked important. I think the one that did it was a WordPress plugin configuration file. No idea which one, because I started from the newest file and just went back for about 4 or 5 others... checked to see if anything was working... and everything was working.

So I'm slapping this together before I pass out and will take a look tomorrow to see if I'm being remotely coherent.

SPOILER ALERT: No. No I was not. The third paragraph made no sense and I smooshed together two sentences in a weird way in the first.

And this boys, girls, and those identifying as neither or both, is why I usually don't post what I write until the following day.

UPDATE: Wasn't my plugins. I installed WordFence security, and it found that my template load page had been hacked and injected with code to spam Google... or something like that. Of course WordFence had to be told that on particular page in my site was not spam. Can you guess which one?

I've been eating more and more vegan than vegetarian... cutting the amount of dairy and eggs I'm eating by at least half. And most of that is eaten outside of my home, because I'm not buying much any more.

This morning I had to make an early run to the nearby Big City so I could pick up some things for work. On my way home I stopped by Wendy's for breakfast, which is always an egg and cheese biscuit. Sure you risk a scorching case of diarrhea and there's enough sodium to harden your arteries almost immediately... but I've got Imodium in my car and they're delicious enough to be worth the risk of heart disease.

What I love about Wendy's is, unlike xMcDonald's, you're not forced to pay for ham or bacon that they then remove from your order. Nope. They charge you for exactly what you're getting because it's a menu item.

Usually I get one chocolate milk and one regular milk with my breakfast. I mix them together to get choccy milk that's not too chocolatey.

But this morning I had a Coke Zero, because milk is not something I enjoy as much as I used to. At home I never buy it, and instead use soy or almond milk on my cereal. And because of that I seem to have lost my passion for the stuff. The cheese and egg on my biscuit sandwich is plenty.

I'll still eat ice cream, of course.

If you can call a Wendy's Frosty "ice cream."

I think it's more like "ice-cream-adjacent."

Another cat-day, another Caturday.

As shown (again) last week, Jenny likes me to hold her feet when she sleeps. She pretty much insists on it. What's funny is when she falls asleep, then decides to stretch out...

You'd think that once she's no longer getting her feet held, she wouldn't mind me taking my my hand away. Oh hell no. She wakes up immediately and meows until I hold her feet again.

I was looking through Facebook Memories the other day and ran across this photo of Jake sitting as Jake does while cleaning his front paw...

I thought it was funny so I said "Hey! Jake!" so he'd look at me.

And boy did he...

I'm surprised that I didn't have my spleen cut out while I slept.

I'm in the middle of cleaning my filthy house, but rushing through a few things I saw this week seems inevitable... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• New Old! The Old Guard (on Netflix) is one of the best comic book adaptations of all time. I was thrilled we were getting a sequel. Though I was really hoping to get back-to-back sequels, darnit...

Now if only we could get a sequel to Atomic Blonde.

   
• 97%! Has anybody seen the 2023 Hulu movie BlackBerry? It's insane. It's just insane! I knew quite a bit about the rise and fall of BlackBerry, but seeing it told like this is nuts. This movie has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 97%... NINETY-SEVEN-PERCENT... and I've never even heard of it!

First of all, Glenn Howerton is remarkable. Frickin' DENNIS from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is remarkable. I had no idea he was even capable of this kind of performance. Just watch it and marvel at a good story told exceptionally well.

   
• Shoot the Moon! I recently saw this image of the true distance from earth to the moon, as taken by the OSIRIS-REx probe at around 3,181,420 miles away from Earth...

This is very cool, because most people think that the moon is quite close to the earth. Good thing for us it isn't, or we'd be in a serious gravity-related nightmare.

   
• First Love! Wait. I've watched this video for a song I love by Father Tiger dozens of times. And I am just now noticing... IS THAT NOAH CENTINEO?!? (not in the thumbnail, in the video). Pretty sure it is...

I remain pissed that The Recruit was canceled. Centineo was exceptional in it.

   
• Money! If the government was actually interested in saving American taxpayer dollars instead of padding the wallet of its biggest doner...

We keep being told about all the billions of dollars that's being saved. So where is it? Where has that money gone? Anyone? Anyone?

   
• Science! Just in case, you know, the God-given miracle of mRNA vaccines is not yet understood, here you go.

   
• Renaissance! The only season of The White Lotus that I enjoyed was the first one. Everything since has just been a boring slog that doesn't have a worthwhile payoff. That being said, the opening credits and theme song are pretty great. This rendition of Renaissance is pretty great...

That vocalist just went for it, and it was a joy to watch.

   
Back to cleaning my home. Dangit.

Pre-social-media when blogging was the way that we kept in touch with each other, you could either check the blogs over and over until they updated... or you could subscribe to the blog's feed and have your feed reader let you know when it got updated.

In the beginning there were paid apps and services for feed reading, but then Google decided to enter the fray and give it away for free. This meant all the apps and services could no longer survive, so they started dropping like flies.

Then Google decided they didn't want to do feed reading any more (apparently they couldn't make enough money at it), and shut down Google Reader. Since most of the apps and services that were around were gone, Google ended up fucking things up for everybody.

Eventually apps and services went back into development. I was using NetNewsWire for ages, but eventually switched to Reeder. But as time went on, the only way to get all the latest features... such as feed filtering by keyword... was to switch to a new version which absolutely sucked because they introduced an entirely new way to read your feeds. I hated it, so I stayed with the older version, but missed out on the features I wanted.

Last week I couldn't take it any more and decided to take a look for something new.

I am not exaggerating... I have discovered Inoreader and I am very close to breaking down in tears from happiness.

It is exactly what I want in a feed reader. Instead of trying to reinvent how I read feeds and force some wacky methodology on me to get modern features, it just adds the cool things I've been dying to have on top of a familiar reading experience.

As I mentioned, I've been desperate for keyword filtering... AKA being able to NOT SEE articles that I want to avoid based on keywords. Are you sick to death of reading about Elon Musk and Tesla? No problem! Write a rule. Have them marked as read so they don't show up at all. Done! Prayers answered.

Plus it can create intelligent summaries for long articles that are ACTUALLY USEFUL. Take for example the entry I wrote on Unnecessary Luxuries. Here's an Inoreader summary of the rather long article...

The article "Unnecessary Luxuries" by Dave2 discusses the author's perspective on spending and the concept of luxury in everyday life. Here are the key points:
   
Frugality and Happiness: The author emphasizes a preference for saving money rather than indulging in luxuries, suggesting that having savings is the ultimate luxury.
   
Basic Necessities vs. Luxuries: The article distinguishes between essential needs (health, food, shelter, etc.) and luxuries, arguing that once basic needs are met, most additional items are unnecessary.
   
Top Ten Unnecessary Luxuries: The author lists ten luxuries that, while not essential, significantly enhance comfort and convenience:
   
Central Air: Provides comfort during extreme weather.
   
Washer & Dryer: Saves time and effort compared to laundromats.
   
Garage: Offers protection for vehicles and additional storage space.
   
Lawn Sprinkler System: Automates yard maintenance, saving time and effort.
   
Garage Freezer: Increases food storage capacity, allowing for bulk purchases.
   
Power Tools: Enable DIY repairs and projects, providing both utility and enjoyment.
   
Automated Litter Box: Simplifies pet care and maintenance.
   
Air Fryer Multi-Oven: Combines multiple cooking functions into one appliance.
   
Backup Cam: Enhances safety and convenience while driving.
   
Floor Scrubber: Makes cleaning floors easier and more effective.
   
Honorable Mention: The author mentions the Ninja Creami as a luxury for making small batches of ice cream, reflecting on its practicality and convenience.
   
Shift in Priorities: The author notes a change in personal priorities, indicating that travel, once a luxury, is no longer a focus now that they have experienced it.
   
Technology Frustration: The article concludes with a humorous anecdote about the author's frustrating experience with a voice-controlled smart assistant, highlighting that not all technology is beneficial.
   
Overall, the article presents a light-hearted take on how certain luxuries can enhance life, even if they are not strictly necessary, while advocating for a balanced approach to spending and saving.

It's amazing. And note that there's a one-click button that allowed me to copy this summary OUT of Inoreader... no gatekeeping here!

And you can get push notifications set for topics you're trying to keep on top of.

It's just amazing on top of amazing. After using it less than an hour I decided that I will be buying a pro subscription when my free 14 day trial runs out.

The only missing piece I've found is that there's no app for the Mac and you have to use a browser (there's only apps for iPhone and Android so far). Hopefully one day we'll see one for Mac. But still... worth it. Absolutely worth it. Worth using. Worth paying for. Worth your valuable time to look at. I have been looking for EXACTLY THIS for over a year. And here it is.

Thank you, Inoreader... you're doing God's work.

And we have a new pope.

Spoiler Alert... I didn't get it...

I pretty much said all I had to say about the papacy and The Church in this entry here.

Until His Holiness comes out and categorically condemns assaults by priests and nuns, refuses to shelter offenders regardless of whom they end up being or their role within The Church, and vows to fully cooperate with authorities as they investigate all claims by survivors, I'm just not interested in any of it.

That being said... I can say that this pope seems to act more like a follower of Christ and Christian principles than I've come to expect. Maybe, despite his pre-pope actions, he will be more aggressive about holding The Church accountable for the atrocities of its clergy and members. If that were to happen, I wouldn't feel so raw about him being a White Sox fan.

And if he won't do something, then maybe the states will.

When I was a kid, I was raised in the Catholic Church and had to make confession. So while I'm not Catholic any more, I do feel I have the right to say this... WAY TO GO WASHINGTON STATE!

New Law Requires Priests to Break Seal of Confession to Report Child Abuse...
"The secrecy of the confessional in the Roman Catholic Church is so sacrosanct that any priest who violates it is automatically excommunicated. — In Washington State, a new law requiring clergy to break the seal when child abuse has been revealed has kindled a heated battle involving the state, the Roman Catholic Church and the Justice Department."

Confession is a way to seek forgiveness for your sins. If your sin is that you're abusing a child, then you can get forgiven from God via a priest, sure. Go right ahead. Seek forgiveness as your faith dictates. BUT YOU ALSO NEED TO BE TAKEN OUT OF A SITUATION WHERE YOU CAN CONTINUE TO ABUSE A CHILD! A few Hail Marys as penance is not going to stop the abuse!

Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church is a pile of garbage if they honestly think that children should continue to be abused under their watch! What the actual fuck? The Catholic Church can't even police themselves when it comes to priests and nuns abusing kids!

This kind of shit makes me insane.

Peddling forgiveness for the eternal soul of your parishioners is one matter. Allowing child abuse to continue is an entirely different matter. That's tantamount to an endorsement of child abuse by The Church. And anybody thinking that's okay needs to beg forgiveness for being a piece of shit. Then should be denied.

I used to get to Honolulu fairly often for work. In many ways, it's just another big city. But it's a big city in Hawai‘i, which means it's more than that. And the island of O‘ahu is more than Honolulu. And over the years I've tried to reach as much of it as I can.

On Monday I flew into Honolulu again, but made a point to get as much vacation out of the trip as I could. Which wasn't much, but we do what we can.

I've been to the Disney Aulani Resort twice before. So far as too-big too-crowded too-commercial options go for a visit to "The Gathering Place" of Hawai‘i, it's quite nice. Assuming you can afford it. Like everything Disney, it's crazy-expensive and not for those without deep pockets. Which hardly describes myself, but if you get lucky and plan far enough in advance and stay only a few days, you can happen across deals which won't cost you a second mortgage.

Then Disney Magic™®© is just a flight away...

My first stay at Aulani was an early-access kind of thing with a room facing the heart of the resort, which would be nice except it was a lower floor and there was a big palm tree in the way. My second was a "partial ocean view" which was mostly a view of the Four Seasons Resort next door. This time I also had a "partial ocean view" which had the Four Seasons in it, but a considerably more "ocean" view than before...

Where I was at on the 14th Floor is high enough to have a great view of the resort every time you leave the elevator, which was nice...

This morning I did something I wanted to do on my previous visits but was too lazy to actually do... get up just as the sun rises at 5:30am and photograph the incredible architecture without annoying people around...

I wanted to get a photo of the moon setting on the beach at Aulani, and was surprised to see that it aligned perfectly between the reef break in the lagoon...

I walked out to the point of the lagoon that they carved out to look back at Aulani at sunrise, which was a nice walk and worth it...

Shooting into the sun was not easy, and there's only so much that an iPhone can do, but it's still pretty...

Disney does try to work in some history of Hawai‘i and its peoples in-between all the Disney IP, which was nice...

And... The End. I went back to get some sleep, which is the best part of vacation, really...

To be continued. Tomorrow I'll take a look at the Eats of Aulani.

Disney's Aulani Resort on Oahu has plenty of dining options, and there's always at least one "plant-based" option on the menus for vegans and vegetarians, so you won't starve if you share my dietary choices. Furthermore, service is impeccable everywhere you go. Even at the one bad food experience I had, the server was beyond great. Food, generally is pretty darn expensive, but worth the price. You're paying to stay inside the Disney Bubble here, but I think that they put in the effort to at least give you some value for the money.

Here are the restaurant options I saw while visiting for my all-too-brief stay.

‘AMA‘AMA — 5 course, $130 (not including drinks)
Insanely expensive, but some of the best food you'll eat with service and views to match (we had a beach-view table). I started with a Waipoli Greens Salad, substituted the Ginger Chickpea Spread for the mushroom appetizer I couldn't eat, had a Local Vegetable Fricassee for my entrée, then the Pineapple Tart for dessert. Everything was perfect except reservations. I booked through the app at the only date and time available... 8:00pm on Wednesday, then saw it in my future plans. Before I left for Hawai‘i, I got a "Robo-Caller" call that I didn't pick up. Once I listened to the voicemail from ‘AMA‘AMA wanting confirmation, I immediately called back and confirmed. At which point my reservation disappeared. I eventually confirmed at the desk that my reservation had been canceled with no explanation, but got them to re-activate it. Finally stopped by the concierge desk because the reservation never appeared after too many shenanigans, and they got me a new reservation at 6:00pm for the same day (out of pity, I'm guessing). This nonsense was unacceptable, even though it resulted in a better time. Phenomenal experience though. You may even get an adorable teeny-tiny gecko friend to join you...

Makahiki — 3 course, $80 (not including drinks)
The only disappointment during my stay. My starter of a Roasted Tomato Soup was excellent. My dessert of Warm Mickey Brownies was great. But my entrée of Vegan Sausage Pasta? Inedible. Not even joking. No idea if it was cooked wrong or what, but the vegan pasta was tough, bone-dry, and gummy like glue. The sausage was rubber. Horrific. Could not believe it was served to me. Furthermore, when it comes to the view you can't see much past the greenery, so it wasn't as nice as what you could get elsewhere. Maybe the Character Breakfasts are good, but I would only eat here if you're not vegetarian.

The ‘Ōlelo Room — Price Varies
Gorgeous, intimate bar off of neighboring Makahiki. The malasadas donuts at breakfast were the best on the island I've had outside of Leonard's. But it's the drinks that are out of this world. We put ourselves in the hands of master mixologist, Aukai, who started with a menu drink... then took us on a custom cocktail journey built around the alcohol we started with. Two nights of some of the best-crafted cocktails I've ever had. Highest possible recommendation, but prepared to keep coming back and spending way more money than you plan because it's that good.

Off the Hook — Price Varies
This is a poolside and ocean-view bar which serves elevated bar food. Lunches are great. Plant-Based Burger ($23) is much better than average. Drinks are tasty.

KA WA‘A, A Lū‘au — Buffet, $190 (general seating) or $219 (preferred seating)
The Polynesian Cultural Center has what's probably the best lū‘au on the island of Oahu, but it's produced by The Mormons, so no alcohol is served. The entire point for me is getting plowed on unlimited cocktails which, surprisingly, Disney has available at Aulani. What they also have is a beautiful show that feels respectful to the art of hula, albeit with a small amount of Mickey and Minnie injected, which is a little inappropriate(?). I've done this lū‘au before but, not surprisingly, I don't remember much about the food. This time I can confirm that the food was pretty darn good for a lū‘au! And there was enough vegetarian options to satisfy me too. The price is crazy-high, but the production values are top-notch and more kid-friendly.

Ulu Cafe — Price Varies
This is a "grab-and-go" cafe/market which also has pizzas that are surprisingly good quality. My 12-inch Cheese Pizza had tasty sauce and a great crust. Don't know that it's worth the $20 price tag, but it's one of the cheaper meals at the resort.

Little ‘Opihi's — Price Varies
This is a beach-side stand that serves Pineapple Dole Whip or Pineapple Dole Whip swirled with Vanilla Soft Serve ($8). What can I say, it's awesome.

Mama's Snack Shop and Pāpālua Shave Ice — Price Varies
Just cute little snack shops with fries ($8) or other fried snacks like fish or chicken ($20) or shave ice ($8) in the pool area. I wasn't here long enough to eat at either, unfortunately, but the shave ice is in the shape of Mickey Mouse, so how bad can it be?

One of my favorite things to do on vacation is eat. Disney's Aulani Resort makes it worth the trip if you don't look at the prices until you get back.

To be continued. Tomorrow I'll look at the entertainment at Aulani.

Aulani is a beautiful resort which strives to feel authentically Hawai‘ian in many ways. But because it is a Disney property, it is built with their movies and shows in mind to make it a destination that's uniquely theirs and worth a visit for their fans.

As you might guess, Lilo & Stitch is a big part of the intellectual property littered throughout the property. Stitch and Angel make regular appearances...

As does the title character from Moana, which is where you'll find the most stunningly authentic-looking film-to-screen representation of a cartoon character you'll ever see, because... holy crap...

Now here's where things get interesting.

Many people do not know about Mickey Mouse's teddy bear "Duffy." He was a gift from Minnie Mouse to keep Mickey from getting lonely when he's traveling the world. I know about Duffy because he's the signature character at Tokyo Disney Sea theme park (across from Tokyo Disneyland). I'm not kidding when I say that Duffy is at least as popular as Mickey Mouse there. Walking through the park it's all-Duffy all the time. He's everywhere.

My mom collected teddy bears and fell in love with Duffy after I brought her a small plush souvenir from one of my trips to Japan. He's never been very popular with Americans, but Duffy does appear at the USA parks anyway to appeal to visitors from Asia. My mom got to meet him a couple times when I took her along on work trips to Orlando and Los Angeles...

Because Hawai‘i is such a big tourist destination for Asia, Aulani has appearances by Duffy and ShellieMay (Minnie's teddy bear)...

But the signature Duffy character at Aulani is Olu Mel, the turtle. He was created specifically for Aulani, but can be found at the Disney parks in Asia too...

The line to visit him is long... packed with Duffy super-fans who may very well have come to Aulani just to see where Olu Mel came from...

A huge part of the entertainment for me came from the many art installations around the resort. There's a lot of it, and you could probably spend an entire day walking through every floor and the grounds trying to see it all...

Hey... Look at That! It's Maui's Magical Hook!

Other than the beach itself, the resort has plenty of water-based entertainment... pools, kiddie splash areas (including the terrific Menehune Bridge), and a lazy river, of course. Though too many people are hanging on a tube and practically running around the route. Which is kind of frustrating for people who just want to be lazy and float in the sun because you're constantly having to move out of their way...

There's also a couple water slides that go through lava tubes in the volcano that's in the middle of the resort. One for people and another for people on tubes...

Disney sells "MagicBands" at their parks and cruise ships that you can wear to open your room/cabin door, pay for purchases, and interact with stuff. You can also buy/use MagicBands at Aulani for the same purpose. Alas, there's not many interactive elements to be found and they are really difficult to activate. The biggest is the main lobby where a bird lights up on the floor and magical raindrops appear to hit the ground. Outside there's a hole in a rock where an owl lives... and a magical rock where a turtle appears when you wave a MagicBand over it...

It would be nice if Disney were to make these interactions work more easily and consistently, and had a lot more of them. Otherwise it's pretty tough to recommend buying a MagicBand except for the convenience of opening your hotel room door and paying for stuff.

Disney provides a bunch of free activities throughout the day. There's walking tours for art, wildlife, culture, and the resort design... fire pit storytelling... ‘ukulele lessons... etc. In addition, there's plenty of traditional free activities to be found. Ping pong, cornhole, crafts, boogie boards, and the like.

But there's also some "premium experiences" that are paid activities. Like yoga lessons on the beach. You can feed fish, snorkel, or even scuba dive at Rainbow Reef. You can take a painting classes. You can design your own Mickey ears. You can learn to mix cocktails. You can rent a cabana. You can go for a boat ride. And of course you can visit the pricey spa.

Overall there's plenty to do at the resort if relaxing on the beach is too boring for you (which was pretty much all I did, other than eat, during my first two stays). And, naturally, the rest of the island is there for you to explore... something I'd highly recommend. Just be warned that if you rent a car, parking is something like $40 a day at Aulani. If you're only running into Honolulu once or twice, it might be better to take a shuttle from the airport and use Über (the nearest bus stop is at least a mile from Aulani).

Ultimately, the high cost makes Aulani out of reach for most people. And I honestly don't know that I'd recommend it given the many, many other options on Oahu that are far cheaper. But if you're a Disney super-fan with money to burn, it's an experience that's tough to beat.

I was gone less than a week. Do you think when I walked through the door my cats acted like it was less than a week? Oh heck no. Jake wouldn't even let me set down my bags before crying to be petted.

And of course since it's prime shedding season, the house was covered in cat hair. Right now I'm vacuuming almost daily. And of course I wasn't here to Furminator the cats. Well, one of them anyway. Jake refuses to be Furminated, and will "bite" me if I attempt it... but, as I mentioned, Jenny loves it so much that she would happily let me brush all her hair off her body.

So when I called her to get brushed, she came running. Jake did too, but only to supervise...

And now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to terrorize my cats by firing up the vacuum cleaner. Again.

I may be back from a few days vacation and mentally preparing myself to return to work, but the bullets cannot be stopped... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Andor! The first thing I did after getting home from vacation was take a nap. I had been up for 23 hours and needed sleep. The second thing I did? Watch the final three episodes of Andor...

And, yes, this is officially the best thing to ever come out of Star Wars in my humble opinion. So as not to spoil anything, I'll wait a while before breaking down my thoughts (and I do have them). Suffice to say that you should watch this. Whether you're a Star Wars fan or not.

   
• Murdery Goodness! The second thing I watched? Murderbot on AppleTV+. I was surprised that they are deviating from the excellent source material like they are... but I don't hate it. The show is just a separate thing. Not always in a bad way. Especially with the opening credits, which looks like it was made with dolls...

I can see where some diehard fans of the books will not like it, but I still think it's worth a watch.

   
• Super! The final Superman trailer has dropped...

This looks so good. I may actually end up in the theater for this one.

   
• Blast From the Past! Something that got brought to my attention... somebody has an old Blogography Bad Monkey hat for sale on eBay...

Wasn't expecting that! And $25... I think I sold them for half that?

   
• Duke's! If you think that I went all the way to Honolulu, Hawai‘i and didn't have lunch at Duke's, just like the good ol' days, you don't know me at all...

That Falafel Sandwich was ever so dreamy!

   
• Puka Dog! If you think that I went all the way to Honolulu, Hawai‘i and didn't grab a Puka Dog, just like the good ol' days, you don't know me at all...

I mean, yeah, it's called "Hula Dog" outside of Kauai now, but it's still a delicious veggie Puka Dog.

   
• Maters! When I got home, I noticed that tomatoes were starting to grow on my AeroGarden. At last...

I'm still not convinced that AeroGarden is feasible for anything but herbs, but here we are.

   
And now? Back to my post-vacation blues.

HBO... also known as "Home Box Office" to people like me who grew up with it... started as a premium channel that you could add to your cable subscription package for an additional fee. It offered movies, specials, and other stuff at a time before VHS video tapes existed. The concept was hugely successful, and so other premium channels followed... Showtime... Cinemax... The Movie Channel... and more.

Over the years HBO has kept up with the times by having a streaming on-demand channel, which was originally called "HBO Now." They also had a version of this for their cable subscribers called "HBO Go." But, in the end, no matter where you went to consume their content, it was still HBO.

But then everything got rolled together and became "HBO Max."

And then something remarkable happened.

HBO, one of the most recognized brands in existence, decided to call themselves "Max."

I have no idea what dumbfuck came up with the idea to bury such a well-known brand by dropping the actual branding from the brand... but it was one of the stupidest advertising decisions I've ever seen. Companies would kill for the brand recognition that HBO had developed over the past 50+ years. They'd kill for it.

And HBO just threw it away.

When I got back from vacation on Saturday I saw a news story which said that "Max" was going to rebrand as "HBO Max" again, because people didn't seem to know what the fuck "Max" was. Which is why I never referred to it as "Max" ever. I always called it "HBO Max" because that way people actually know what the fuck I'm talking about.

I understand better than most that sometimes difficult decisions have to be made and the people in charge have to bite the bullet and make it for better or worse. But you'd think... you'd really think... that they would at least try to educate themselves about the decisions they make to keep from having a painfully obvious fuck-up. Especially when millions of dollars are at stake. "Brand recognition" is not some abstract concept. And anybody who's in charge of making decisions for a company at such a high level as HBO branding should fucking understand that concept.

But they didn't, and HBO paid the price.

Now they're trying to roll back this laughably catastrophic decision in an attempt to salvage the brand that they tossed in the trash.

Well, good luck with that.

Fortunately for them there were people like me who were ignoring their whole "Max" fiasco and keep the brand alive on their behalf (and I'm not alone... a lot of people and media outlets continued to call it "HBO" long after it had been rebranded). The problem for HBO (or, more accurately, their owner, Warner Bros. Discovery) are people during the past two years who don't know what the fuck "HBO" is because they've ever known the service as "Max."

And don't even get me started on the fifty buckets of stupid that is the name "Warner Bros. Discovery." Jesus. Who the fuck gives a shit about Discovery? Why rename your entire company to add something that has ridiculously poor brand recognition? The channel is still "Discovery" so what the fuck does that have to do with Warner Bros.?!? God... I just... HEY, DUMBASSES, I CAN CONSULT WITH YOUR BRANDING FOR FAR LESS MONEY THAT YOU'RE LOSING WITH ALL THESE SHITTY DECISIONS! CALL ME!