This morning I was awakened by Jake hacking up a hairball on the bed. He's been sleeping with me most every night, usually passing out at the blanket I have folded at the foot of the bed. All I could do was say "Good bear, you're puking on the bedding on bedding wash day!"
After wiping up the hairball and stripping the bed to toss everything in the washer, feeding the cats breakfast, and heading back up to get some work done, it started pouring down rain. This caused Jenny to run into the closet to hide, and Jake to hop up on the bed to snuggle up next to me...
And, oh yeah, now that it's colder out I unpacked the warming pads...
This makes them two very happy cats, even though you can't really see it on Jenny with her adorable resting bitch face.
Jake doesn't have a resting bitch face. But he does have a snaggletooth. Some of the time. But lately I've noticed that it's out of his mouth more and more... looking longer than it has in the past...
Weirdly adorable, I think.
Thanks to the absolute madness that is Daylight Saving Time, I get a week of cat anger as they adapt to the time change, but I'm not in a panic yet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• NEWSFLASH: Lay’s Rebrands Because Customers Apparently Didn’t Know Chips Were Made With ‘Real Potatoes’. Because of course. They haven't had "Potato Chips" on the package since 2007... and I guess those potatoes on the package aren't a big enough clue. That being said, the Lay's rebrand is gorgeous. Kinda. The new logo typeface looks fresh while honoring what came before. The banner is so much better, looking like a design element instead of a weird merging with the sun(?) behind it. And, yep, it IS a sun, because now they have nice rays behind it. Perfect. And I love the wood table look of the background...
BUT THEN... they just take random photo elements and glop everything to the logo unit? What a mess...
AND COULDN'T THEY HAVE STAGGERED THE POTATOES A LITTLE BIT??? OR RE-THINK THE PHOTO ELEMENTS COMPLETELY? WHAT DESIGNER JUST STICKS EVERYTHING TO THE LOGO LIKE IT'S A GAME OF KATAMARI DAMACY??? ACK! ACK! ACK!
Lay's created a gorgeous new logo then sabotaged it utterly. Those chips don't even look like chips (they look more like Pringles) and the potatoes are smaller than the chips they spawn? And because the taters are evenly placed, they look like a new design element which distracts the eye from the logo... they look like boobs on the bag or something? What were they thinking? This is a gorgeous treatment that is completely ruined by the photo elements being badly chosen and badly placed. Blergh. Such a missed opportunity.
• Property Brothers! BWAH HA HA HAAAAA. Things like this are when Saturday Night Live shines...
Biting satire that's funny because it's true. This is our reality.
• Precious Development?!? Parents are free to make decisions about their kid all they want. I mean, I draw the line when they are endangering the child but, for the most part, you do you when it comes to decisions about your own child. But this is abhorrent...
Fuck you and your Rainbow Bright face glitter shit. If you don't provide the teacher with alternative treats, what is the teacher supposed to do? Give everybody a treat EXCEPT your kid? How pissed off would you be then? It's entirely different if a kid has a peanut allergy and he was given peanuts. But a ring pop? To which she supplied no alternative? Like the teacher is supposed to go out and buy every alternative her class might require ON TOP OF the ring pops she already spent HER OWN MONEY on?!? Get fucked.
• Dear Deere! Another must watch video. "Why can't people repair the things they buy?" Because companies love money. iPhone broken? It can't be repaired by anybody but Apple or it gets bricked. McDonald's ice cream machine broken? Can't be repaired by anybody but the manufacturer or else you get sued (which is why they're always broken). Tractor broken? Can't get it repaired by anybody but John Deere because it's locked behind the software paywall. Spend a half-million dollars on a piece of John Deere equipment? You don't own it. They do. You're just paying for the right to license it. This is all kinds of fucked up, but corporations own the government, so they can do whatever the fuck they want to...
You don't own shit even if you pay for it. And lobbyists will keep spending billions to own politicians to keep it that way. God Bless 'Murica. But there is hope. "Right to Repair" laws are becoming a reality because politicians are being called out for their bullshit. More and more people need to speak out against this crap so that politicians will have no choice but to listen.
• Pepita Perfect! Last night I made one of my most favorite dishes: butternut squash ravioli in browned Kerrygold butter, crispy fried sage, toasted pepitas, and black peppercorns (which have been ground with a dash of nutmeg)...
I really need to buy a pasta roller so I can make my own though. Rana makes some good stuff, but I would prefer it without the orange color, as God intended, so it looks more appetizing instead of an orange blob. But anyway… a simple dish that’s also a bit complex in flavor.
• I HAVE TURBO PENIS! Yes, it happened to me! Lord how I love these debunk videos. Nobody does a takedown like Professor Dave. This should be mandatory viewing so that people understand how fucking stupid anti-vaxer "leaders" are...
The VAERS examination had me howling. How do people get duped by these idiots? It makes me crazy. We are losing herd immunity because people actually listen to these moronic douches.
• Men HATE This! GAG!!! I'm of the opinion that people should feel free to wear whatever the hell they want to wear. If you like it and it's comfortable and you can afford it... go for it. Nobody else has to approve. Nobody else's opinion matters. They aren't wearing it... you are. Which is why when I ran across this condescending gatekeeping asshole's YouTube channel, I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough. It's one thing to offer suggestions as to what people should consider wearing... it's quite another to pass judgement in the most immature and idiotic way possible. I mean, just look at these thumbnails...
She has very serious opinions as to what you're allowed to wear when you're over thirty. I'd argue that some could say that a woman over 35 shouldn't be wearing belly shirts as she's often seen doing... but I'm not a sanctimonious douche who spends my time gatekeeping clothing for views. Especially when you're acting like a fucking ten-year-old. An adult would realize that some people have to wear whatever they can afford... or whatever they're handed. So making fun of them or condemning them is a dick move. As it is when you make fun of people for wearing what they like.
• NEWSFLASH: RFK Jr. concedes administration lacks scientific evidence on Tylenol claims. OF COURSE THERE ISN'T ANY EVIDENCE, YOU STUPID FUCK! And yet you had the president announce to the world that Tylenol "causes autism." What kind of idiotic shit is running through your worm-riddled brain that you are so confident in spreading this crap misinformation? What kind of idiotic shit is running through President Trump's dementia-riddled brain that he believes your nonsense instead of ACTUAL FUCKING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?!? Christ, I hate living in the stupidest fucking timeline.
And now back to spending an extra hour of my Daylight Saving day.
I loves me some donuts. And, yes, I spell it "donut" because "doughnut" looks weird to me for some reason. Even though I think the the latter is the way most people seem to spell it.
But anyway... I was chatting with a friend and mentioned how thankful I was that my grocery delivery didn't substitute the box of chocolate-glazed old fashioneds I had ordered like they usually do because they're always sold out. That lead to a discussion about the best donuts we've ever eaten. After which I made a list.
It was actually pretty easy to toss out my ten favorite because they were my most memorable when I put "donuts" in my head...
AND NOW THE DONUT I EAT MORE THAN ANY OTHER... Chocolate-covered old-fashioned donuts from Franz Bakery Yes, these are mass-produced store-bought, but they are phenomenal... almost to the level of Donut Vault. Their old-fashioned donuts are already amazing, but with chocolate on them? Mind-blowing. The crispy glaze is still there giving them a bite and texture that is tough to beat. If you are in the Pacific Northwest and don't want to trek to a local bakery, this is the one to beat...
I can't be having loads of sugar, so I'm not downing the entire box in one sitting, of course.
But I'd like to.
Josh Johnson is fascinating to me.
The thing that's so brilliant about his comedy is that he can take these wild tangents that make you think he's losing his train of thought... and then BLAM! He brings it all back around to punctuate his point in a brutal cut...
Anybody can be observational of the absurd. Josh isn't telling you anything that anybody who paying attention could say. But it's what he does with the observations which makes him rise above.
This is a really great piece.
I've mentioned dozens of times how I love a really good ad. The problem is that most advertising is utter shit. Television ads are mostly done on the cheap and are so brain-dead annoying as to make me actively want to not purchase the product being shoved at me.
Last night I ran across the old commercial from 2015 which made me laugh. It's not like Fiat spent a ton of money on it... instead they were just really, really clever...
If you can't make an ad which gets some kind of reaction... ANY kind of reaction... then you've failed.
This Fiat commercial is going to stick with me a while. Meanwhile, I couldn't tell you what ads I watched today.
APPLE NEWS: Apple to use Google's AI model to run new Siri, Bloomberg News reports.
So... when I bought my Apple iPhone with the promise that they would make their stupid-as-shit Siri voice assistant smarter with it... this was a crock of bullshit all along? They NEVER had the ability to fix Siri. I've been waiting OVER A YEAR for something that was never coming.
And now they're going to have Google fix it for them? Why the fuck wouldn't I have just bought an Android phone if that's what I was going to get? That way I would have had a working voice assistant all this time.
Remember when Apple wouldn't talk about something until it was ready to release? Apple doesn't... BECAUSE NOW-A-DAYS THAT'S ALL THEY FUCKING DO! It's all lies. The company has billions of dollars and yet they still have to use OTHER COMPANY'S TECHNOLOGY to get shit done? How fucking embarrassing. I guess Apple's done.
This seems like a situation that's ripe for a lawsuit.
Because this was my morning with my iPod mini as I was going to take a shower...
ME: Hey Siri, play Opalite by Taylor Swift.
SIRI: Playing music by Taylor Swift.
ME: Hey Siri, STOP! — Hey Siri, play Opalite by Taylor Swift.
SIRI: Playing Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift.
And it's not like you can tell Siri that they're a flaming pile of shit that's terrible at their ONE job. They'll just say "I won't reposnd to that" and go back to doing whatever stupid shit they were doing.
Which should be Apple's slogan now-a-days.
On Facebook I learned that Morrissey had canceled the remainder of his US tour, including Salt Lake City and Seattle (on October 7th). It seems a perfect time to revisit my only time seeing him live, which was my third attempt (the first time I couldn't make it, the second time Morrissey canceled). But anyway...
As a massive fan of The Smiths, I had long wanted to see Morrissey in concert because it's the closest I was going to get to seeing the band play live. After the cancellation of the second concert I tried to see, I had given up because he always seemed to be canceling, and it's too expensive to book airfare, hotel, and tickets when he does.
But finally in 2014 I said "fuck it" and flew all the way across the country from Seattle, WA to St. Petersburg, FL and hoped for the best.
He actually showed up.
HOWEVER... After being disappointed in the crowd for not responding enthusiastically enough to his political rants, Morrissey declared the show "dead" and left the stage with only three songs left to go on his setlist. Ten days later Morrissey canceled all remaining dates in the tour due to illness (shocker). Apparently he caught a respiratory infection in Miami the day after the concert I attended.
The tour itself was wild. And although I'm disappointed I got shorted three songs (one of which is my very favorite: Everyday is Like Sunday)... I wouldn't trade the experience for the world, because now I have my own Morrissey story. And for that I'm grateful, because he's always been a bit of an ass, and he just gets worse as time goes on. I would never pay money to see the turd now.
Not that I could... he canceled Seattle, after all.
Whenever Jenny has had enough of me petting her or holding her feet or whatever... she just starts kicking at me to get away while she makes her escape. It's a hilariously cat-like. They manipulate you into getting what they want. And if they don't want you around, they leave.
I can't help but feel I should be learning from that.
In other news... Jake puked on the warming pads I had put on the bed. Both of them!
After I took the covers off the pads to toss them in the wash, I went back upstairs and Jake was sitting on the warm spot left by one of the pads. I crawled back into bed to work for a while, at which point he plopped down next to me and fell asleep...
I think I mentioned how my cats are "talking" a lot more as they get older.
I've decided to talk back.
Jenny was hanging off the cat tree looking at Jake running down the stairs. I was on the couch and started meowing at her. She turned her head to look...
I kept talking to her, at which point she shifted her body more towards me... still hanging off the cat tree...
She doesn't talk back like Jake does. Instead she just looks at me like I'm a moron.
Which is also hilariously cat-like.
It isn't even 8:00pm which means that it's actually 9:00pm when you remove Daylight Saving Time bullshit, which explains why I'm exhausted, but not to the point in giving up... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Translate This! "Do you love me?" =cat shakes head no=
When I was talking about my talking to my cats in yesterday's post, this is what I was doing... but without the translator.
• Galaxy Girl! Does anybody else consider it utterly bizarre that I can't remember what I did two days ago, but a Schoolhouse Rock video shows up on YouTube and I know every word?
Interplanet Janet is not the most memorable, but the song sure is a bop.
• Happy! I am digging the first two episodes of Plur1bus on Apple TV. It's a bit plodding, but you can just feel that it's going somewhere interesting...
The trailer does a pretty good job of letting you know what the show is about without spoiling anything...
I'm not exactly sure where the show will end up landing (though I have my suspicions), but I trust Vince Gilligan to have that figured out.
• In Love and War! I tuned in to Kim Kardashian's new legal drama All's Fair for two reasons: 1) The reviews were so bad I was wondering if the show was truly bad or just getting review-bombed... and 2) The cast has some phenomenal actors in it, like Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Teyana Taylor, and Sarah Paulson... plus Neicy Nash, whom I love.
And, yeah, it truly is that bad.
I could barely make it through the first episode. To see actors I enjoy in this horrific pile of shit with such awful dialogue was unbearable. I am fully willing to admit that my problem with the show may be on me because I don't understand the tone. But either way, it just... fails. If it's supposed to be camp, it doesn't go far enough and feels like serious matters are being trivialized. If it's meant to be serious with camp beats, it is completely sabotaged by moments so cringe that you can't take the show seriously. Which is to say that I honestly don't know what the fuck to make of it all. A show which is assumed to be a monument to women's empowerment feels an awful lot like mocking women's empowerment. But I'm a guy, so maybe I'm missing the point. Good Lord I hope I'm missing the point.
• MoonBase Alpha Revisited! Full episodes of SPACE: 1999 are on YouTube thanks to Shout! Studios. When I was a kid, I thought this show was so frickin' bizarre. Decades later, nothing has changed! Though I still think the special effect were darn good for the day and the costumes were some of the best ever made (Paramount must have thought so too, since Star Trek: The Motion Picture copied the general idea two years later)...
What's hilarious is that the excellent special effects shots we got must have been very expensive, because there are episodes where they have the characters stumbling around in the dark instead of inside an alien space ship or whatever. It definitely saved money! The writing in the first season was very smart. And one of the few episodes I remember in good detail was the fifth one (guest starring Christopher Lee!). What makes it so memorable is the ending, which is pretty brutal...
The show, which was always scientifically dicey, is ripe for a reboot. One day.
• NEWSFLASH: Teen Who Raped, Strangled and Brutalized 2 Girls Was Facing 7 Decades in Prison — Then a Judge Let Him Walk Free. "Violent criminals threatening American lives will be immediately deported! — Oh... he's white? And his dad was a beloved football coach? Never mind." — Amazing what passes for "justice" in this toxic shithole country. Between horrific bullshit like this and criminals being pardoned left and right not because they were wrongly imprisoned or their sentence was too harsh... but because they will be loyal to a politician... Justice is getting harder and harder to find. Read that headline again and tell me how even 70 years was enough time?
• Science Denial In Action. Just like Steve Jobs ignored science... at first... when it came to treating his cancer, so has Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams. And now that it's too late, he wants his buddy the president to intercede and get him the scientific treatment he needs, despite the reason he's likely being denied is because he wasted time thinking Ivermectin would cure him and now it's too late...
I don't get why people who reject science for curable diseases suddenly abandon all their "principles" when death is looming. I mean, you didn't think it would work then, but now you do? And when you've waited too long for science to work any more, then you're back to science being "bad." In the meanwhile, you've convinced other people who could have been cured to abandon science with you. That's incredibly shitty. Bad enough you let yourself die, worse you're taking others with you.
I guess that's all I got for the day. Good night.
Last night I was looking through my photos to send one to a friend who was asking for travel advice. While digging through the archives, I noticed something strange... before 2008, my photos were a lot less personal. Sure, I had photos of me and my friends when we're together, but so many things in my day-to-day life along more casual moments went undocumented.
It took me all of two seconds to figure out why.
The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. I got one a month later.
Before iPhone, I was usually using a digital SLR as a camera which was (mostly) only taken on trips. I was never hauling it around with me everywhere I went. I also had a pocket camera, of course, but it was just one more thing to carry around, so I mostly didn't. On top of that, a lot of places... like concerts, shows, and such... wouldn't allow you to take a camera in with you anyway. You had to be a professional photographer with a permission card to take photos.
Then iPhone came along, and I had a camera with me wherever I went. And everything changed. It wasn't a great camera, but it was good enough. Far better than the cameras on the phones I owned before (which I never used because they were so bad).
It took a few months before my brain was suitably programmed to remember that I had a camera in my pocket, but by 2008 I was very much in the habit of whipping out my iPhone to snap a photo when something fun or interesting happened.
I didn't have cats yet, but suddenly my iPhone was filled with photos of all the cats I met...
And occasional selfies, which I had never taken before (note I'm off-center because a front-facing camera wouldn't appear until iPhone 4)...
And mundane moments, like the food I was served on a plane...
And of course food in general. I rarely photographed food before... only when it was incredibly special... but now? From 2008 onwards, food photos were everywhere in my camera roll and on my blog...
Yeah, yeah... the photos I was getting were only ever decent when the lighting was perfect (I took seven photos of that cat trying to find the best angle and position to get the best detail in the fur), but even drab, low-res, blurry shots were cool at the time! Documenting the stuff I did and saw became second nature.
Back then, like now, people were telling me that I was spending too much time taking photos instead of enjoying the moment... but they were (and are) wrong. At least when it comes to me. Unlike traditional photos which required planning and camera choices, iPhone photography was just pressing a button on an object you already had in your hand. It was seconds of your life captured forever.
And I loved that.
Every one of the moments captured in photos above would have been easily forgotten if I didn't have photos. But instead I remember the cat that sat in my chair at a photo shoot I was at in Seattle... I remember everybody wearing cracker crowns at my sister's house for Christmas dinner... I remember how disappointed I was that I was in First Class on a flight and feeling Last Class because all they had was Pepsi instead of Coke... I remember loving Chicago-style veggie dogs so much that I didn't eat anything all morning so I would have room to eat two of them at lunch... I remember the Key Lime pie I got for lunch at Universal Studios Florida right before I rode the Incredible Hulk Coaster three times in a row... and I remember how my life changed when I ordered extra cashews on my cashew-caramel-frozen-custard sundae on a work trip to Wisconsin. Little moments preserved in time that I probably wouldn't have given a second thought if I wasn't able to scroll through them over and over whenever I want.
I'm sure as I get older and memories are more difficult to recall, I'll be very glad to have so many things digitally captured to help me remember the life I lived.
Including that time I had to chisel my car out of a hotel parking lot while working in Maine after an ice storm hit the night before...
Who wouldn't want to vividly remember that?
Yesterday my website was accessible. Today it's not. I cannot get to it via SFTP or login or nothing.
I played around with it for an hour before bed, got nowhere, then decided to just put it off until I have time. Which is basically never, but my hope is I can find some time this weekend or something.
In the meanwhile, I'm just going to keep writing entries with the expectation I will be able to post them one day.
UPDATE: Well... half the battle won. I can get to my blog. What I cannot do is get SFTP working, no matter what I try. Which means I can't post photos. I mean, I can attempt to post photos using my hosting company's "file manager." But it's so terrible because it mostly refuses to work. Want to upload a 32K file? It can take 15 minutes and even after it says that it was transferred, you can look at your files and not find it there. Blergh.
After dinner I was still hungry.
So I went through my refrigerator and my cupboards trying to figure out what I wanted to eat. Eventually I landed on a bowl of cereal. Except I was out of my all-time favorite for forever, Captain Crunch Peanut Butter, and had to grab the box I got on sale in my last grocery order, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. This is a cereal that I can eat, but it's never been the home run that other people tell me it should be. This is everybody's favorite breakfast cereal, but to me it's kinda just okay.
So I chowed down on my kinda just okay cereal while watching YouTube videos, where I ran across this gem...
Which lead to this gem...
Which lead to this gem...
And now I want an otter.
Or a pizza, because the kinda just okay cereal didn't do it for me.
Look, people can think whatever they want about how Zohran Mamdani is either going to save NYC or destroy it. It's not for me to say, because I don't live there.
Personally all I care about is that he wields his power with compassion, makes good choices, and doesn't give in to the temptation to take resources for himself and other powerful people at the expense of people who are struggling. I wish only the best for New Yorkers and hope they give Mamdani a chance and work with him to make their lives better. I hope we all win.
THAT. BEING. SAID.
I believe that to understand a language is to understand the people who speak it. It also gives you a better understanding of people whose languages you don't speak because you know that other peoples and other cultures exist, and they are all uniquely beautiful in their own way. Because Mamdani speaks seven languages (Arabic, Hindi, Kiswahili, Urdu, Luganda, Spanish, and English) I think it reflects very well on him, and gives us a big clue that he's going to to truly represent all the people of New York City. Not just the people who voted for him. Not just the party he runs in. Not just those who shares his faith. Everybody. New York City is everybody...
As a side note, dang do I love seeing the passion he puts in when talking TO people instead of THROUGH people or AT people, as so many politicians do. Best of luck to you sir. Best of luck to New York City.
The charity organization I volunteered with... along with the traveling I've been fortunate enough to experience... has shown me exactly what hunger looks like. I've seen starvation first-hand. And it was enough to have me confident enough to say that nobody with a shred of decency should wish that upon anybody.
If you've seen it yourself, you wouldn't even wish it on those you proclaim to hate.
At least I would hope to God that you wouldn't, because it's horrific.
The first time I met starving children I died inside. Until that moment, "starvation" was an abstract concept. People say they're "starving" when they skipped lunch or show up late to a dinner party. "Starvation" is a news headline about something that happens to Other People. Except it's actually neither of those things. It's a brutal condition which should never, ever be acceptable to anyone with a heartbeat. People should never starve anywhere. This planet has the resources, technology, and knowhow to make starvation a thing of the past.
If there's one thing... ONE THING... that humanity should come together and agree on, despite all our differences, it's that regardless of whatever other tragedy people are enduring... they will not have to worry about starvation.
It doesn't matter if you're at war with a people. They will not have to worry about starvation.
It doesn't matter if you don't have the resources to feed them yourself. They will not have to worry about starvation.
It doesn't matter if what god they pray to is different, what color their skin is, how they live their lives, who they love, or whether you love them or hate them personally. They will not have to worry about starvation.
It doesn't matter if you need political leverage and withholding food is on the table. They will not have to worry about starvation.
And to anybody... ANYWHERE, regardless of your politics, beliefs, or what-the-fuck-ever excuse you may have, disagrees, then fuck you.
Fuck you sideways.
You don't get to speak to me on a subject from which you are so obviously willfully ignorant. Because not one person who understood what real hunger looks like could possibly disagree. Unless they are a complete and total monster. Which means their "opinion" on any of this doesn't fucking matter in the first place.
I have a very long day ahead of me, so let's get to it!
I will invite Jenny to smell whatever she wants to, including any food I might be eating, because she's just being curious. She is picky about whatever stinky cat food I give her, and has zero interest in anything that doesn't stink like fish strongly enough.
Jake, on the other hand, is also curious... except he will eat just about anything. So the only food of mine he's allowed to smell are things I know he won't eat. Like applesauce. For everything else, I just move it away from him and say "Mine!" which he understands perfectly. Once he hears me say that, he stops seeing how close he can get to my food, and sits down and watches me eat it. Very carefully.
Sometimes I will set the plate down in front of him if there's a tiny piece of cheese or a small smear of mayonnaise on there he can eat which won't cause major problems. But it's a rare thing.
Not because I don't want him to have it... but because boy oh boy is he a beefy bear now. Over 17 pounds, because he's forever digging into Jenny's leftovers. It's starting to worry me enough that I've been hovering over the cats while they eat, then I'll jump in and remove Jenny's food when she's done eating it. I mean, just look at my chonky little bear when photographed from behind...
Still a handsome kitty though...
And because I've got another very long day ahead of me tomorrow, I think it's time for beddy-bye.
It's dreary and raining buckets here, but I'm not going to let that get me down... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Dating!
I know. I know. Playdate got savaged in the reviews and is generally considered a bad movie. But I loved it! Alan Ritchson's character is hilariously random...
This is the kind of off-the-wall stuff that makes Amazon Prime worth the price of admission.
• NEWSFLASH: Pasta at Twice the Price? Some Italian Producers Face Huge U.S. Tariffs. If I could find bronze-extruded, slow-dried pasta that was American made... then great. I'd buy it. Happy to purchase American if the quality is good. But I ain't going to buy shitty teflon-extruded, rapid-flash-dried crap that won't hold sauce and is just a slippery gawdaful mess. I'd eat half the pasta... but I'd gladly pay twice the price to get something good.
• FedExSNL! This morning I popped in my DVD of Feds, a film from the 1980's which is so much better than it had a right to be. Mostly because the leads were so flawlessly cast...
And I was like "I wonder what Mary Gross is up to now?" But could find nothing current until I found a podcast interview, which was quite a treat!
• Hand Me That Paperclip! ZOMG! MACGRUBER IS ON THE EPSTEIN LIST?? I was such a fan. But no more!
UPDATE: Somehow, something has gone terribly wrong with the Saturday Night Live YouTube Channel... videos from the past five months have disappeared? Bummer.
I lie. I still think MacGruber is one of the funniest SNL characters, and I loved his movie and limited series. I'd love to get more of that, but if Will Forte is going to pop by Saturday Night from time to time to keep the character alive, I can be happy with that.
• Death of a Penny! Does ANYBODY who's whining about the US Penny ending know how rounding even works? Amount ending in 1¢ or 2¢... round down. For example, you're paying out of your piggy bank and something costs 52¢ but neither you nor the store has any pennies, so you pay 50¢ — But for an amount ending in 3¢ or 4¢... round up. For example something costs 54¢ then you pay 55¢. In the end, the odds are 50/50 that something will go up or down and, given the value of a penny now-a-days, nobody is getting rich off rounding. BUT LISTEN TO PEOPLE GOING ABSOLUTELY MENTAL... "BUSINESSES WILL LOSE MONEY!" And it's like... yeah... 50% of the time they will lose 1 or 2 pennies. BUT THE REST OF THE TIME THEY'RE GAINING 1 or 2 PENNIES! And how many people are paying cash any more? Apparently it's enough that BUSINESSES WILL LOSE MILLIONS! Except to lose one million dollars, you'd have to come up short 100 million pennies in rounding transactions. Okay, boomer... I'll take not wasting money minting coins that are worth less than they cost to make. As for those states which "don't allow rounding"... guess they'll have to fix that. — As for me? I'M MORE UPSET THAT WE'RE LOSING THE HAVE A PENNY GIVE A PENNY, NEED A PENNY TAKE A PENNY TRAYS! BLASPHEMY! THE END OF DAYS ARE NIGH! TODAY NO MORE PENNIES... TOMORROW PAYING WITH THE MARK OF THE BEAST! BET! Guess we're just going to be another penniless third-world country. Like Canada.
• Edo! A video from nine years ago which I had never seen popped up this week. It was on the history of Japan, which fascinates me anyway, but this was by Bill Wurtz, whom I was a big fan of back in the day. Which is why I was so shocked that I had never seen it...
If you want a different take on Japanese history which is half as fun but twice as long, here you go...
• Ugly! I will not call anybody "ugly" based on their appearance. That's a pretty shitty thing to do. But I don't hesitate calling somebody "ugly" when it comes to what they show us that's on the inside. In that respect, Kim Davis is one of the most butt-ugly, awful excuses for a human I've ever seen. She wants to "preserve the sanctity of marriage" by refusing to do her job of granting marriage licenses... all while having been through multiple divorces and so-called scandalous behavior around those marriages herself...
It's like having a job at a steak house and refusing to serve meat because you're vegan in public, but you eat steak at home. Hypocrisy 101. If the job isn't suitable for you or your so-called beliefs, THEN FIND ANOTHER JOB... LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE DOES. But no. This repugnant pile of heinousness wanted the Supreme Court to give her license to shit on other people's happiness when the PURSUIT of happiness is SUPPOSED to be in this country's DNA. You did what made YOU happy when it comes to marriage(s), so let other people have that too. Or get fucked and go away. That works too.
And on that shiny note of perspective... enjoy the last of your weekend.
You know you're well past your prime when you see an ad which says "How to last longer in bed" and you're like... "I could use more sleep"... then continue reading and be like "Oh. Oh yeah."
Over the weekend I had a trip across the basin to Spokane. The drive is tantamount to torture because it's just hundreds of miles of mostly nothing. But in all honesty I don't really mind all that much. I can listen to music and think about stuff. A rare luxury in my crazy day-to-day life.
Where things took a very, very bad turn for me was about 50 minutes outside of Spokane when my iPhone stopped having data access. Thinking that, yet again, Verizon's shitty service was to blame, I shut down my iPhone and restarted it. Sometimes Verizon botches the cell tower hand-off, and this is the only way to get data working again.
Except it didn't fix anything.
Another power-down and restart. Then another. Then another. Still nothing.
This put me into a bit of a panic because I didn't know which hotel I was staying at. Unlike the good ol' days when I would print out my reservation before travel, now-a-days I rely on the fact that Apple Maps would see I had a hotel reservation from the email confirmation I received and ask me if I wanted to go there when I blew into town.
Not this time.
When I say "I didn't know which hotel I was staying at," that's not 100% the truth. But it might as well have been. I knew I was staying at "The Davenport" but considering there's like... I dunno... ten of the fuckers in Spokane, and all of them are named "The Davenport Autograph Collection" (or what-the-hell ever), I had no idea where I was going.
And so I drove to the one I stayed at the last couple times. I hadn't a clue if it was the correct one, but I assumed they could tell me where to go if I was at the wrong property. But I didn't have to go to that much trouble, because my phone connected to WiFi after I parked. Turns out, yes indeed, I was at the wrong hotel. So I left to drive to the correct one. Except the ticket machine at the garage wanted to make me pay $7.95 for the 5 minutes I was there. Fortunately I was able to explain my predicament to the valet who let me go.
But fate wasn't done with me yet!
Somehow Apple Maps didn't load everything off the internet while I was at the parking garage. Which meant I was, once again, not knowing where to go. Fortunately I've been to Spokane many times and was able to figure it all out, but not after I had to drive around the block to look for the self-park garage entrance.
le sigh
Must have been time for a beer and my favorite pizza on earth...
Don't worry... half of it was road pizza for the drive home the next day
After my early dinner, I was wiped.
But it was only 5:30pm, and I knew better than going to bed so early that I'll be waking up at 2:00am. Not that this would be anything unusual in my declining years, but this time it wouldn't be waking up to go to the bathroom. Probably.
I left Spokane on Sunday around 3:30. That gave me an hour of daylight before the sunlight was fading into darkness. Fading into the abyss.
Now, for the longest time, I loved night driving. It was calming and peaceful and, when I was younger, I did it a lot. Mostly while traveling around the United States because I didn't want to waste daylight driving when I could be seeing stuff.
Or maybe I liked it because the first driving I ever did was on my Atari 2600 with Night Driver...
But then... things started to change.
I was bordering on night blindness, where headlights (or any lights) would become a massive blight in my field of vision. I couldn't see. The amount of concentration required to drive safely was headache-inducing and I was genuinely worried I was becoming a danger on the road. And so I stopped driving at night. Completely. I couldn't justify the risk... not necessarily for myself, but for other people.
And it was fine. I could always get a ride with somebody else or pay for an Über or whatever.
Then, as I was having another surgery for my ongoing injury problems, I ended up getting my lenses replaced with cataract surgery (something I documented here). And even though I was told my cataracts weren't terrible and wouldn't need to be addressed for five years or so... I could suddenly see at night again! Night drivin' here I come, baby!
So I went ahead and drove home in the dark, it was perfectly fine, I could see great, there were zero issues.
At least when it comes to my vision.
Because there will always be assholes on the road, and that's something you can get fixed with cataract surgery.
Maybe a lobotomy, but not cataract surgery.
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