Happy New Year!

Or not.

I woke up this fine New Year only to find that Apple's HomeKit HomeShit had shit the bed... yet again. Most of my devices were non-responsive and half my Automations were missing. I'd say that this is a bad omen of how my 2026 is going to go... but this happens at least twice a year (it happened four times in 2025, I kept count)... which means this is likely just a coincidence. As always, no fucking clue why this happens or how to fix it without resetting everything. And rewriting all my automations, since Apple doesn't bother to back up anything despite these failures being a regular occurrence. Holy fucking shit I wish I hadn't moved to Apple for my smart home. But my previous gear was discontinued, so I did it. And should have gone with something else. Anything else.

In an inexplicable turn of events, a shocking number of fireworks went off last night. An insane number. They started at 7:30pm and ran constantly all night... traumatizing my cats. And I don't get it. We didn't get this many fireworks for the 4th of July. Perhaps people are so sick and tired of 2025 that it seemed appropriate?

Though why they think 2026 is going to be any better is a mystery.

There was no white Christmas where I live this year.

When my mom was a kid, the snow got so deep that they used to jump off the roof of a two-story house into it. When I was a kid, the snow got so deep that we used to tunnel under it from yard to yard. But this year? Nothing. No snow, last night it was just bitter, bitter cold. It was so cold last night that I double-bagged my feet with wool socks. Something I never felt the need to do when I was in Antarctica. I also asked Siri to "make it warmer" in my house, at which point I was told "Your thermostat is already set to 71°, and it may take some time to warm up." Very helpful. Thanks so much. Not a great night to have no working electric blanket.

But maybe I'm getting a white New Year?

As I type this, it's trying to snow. A light, loose powder, but enough to cover my back porch and that's something.

Not enough to stave off drought this Summer, but... something.

More tech drama. Have I mentioned how much I loathe Apple HomeKit HomeShit?

If I haven't (let's be real, I definitely have) then you should probably know that my hatred is very real, and has now reached such depths as to send me into a rage just thinking about it. As I wrote yesterday I awoke to find that on the first day in this Year of Our Lord, 2026, 3/4 of my "smart" home devices were offline and half my Automations were missing. Now, when this happens I can usually get most of those devices to come back online if I power-cycle all my hubs (nothing can be done to bring back the automations). It's for this reason that I have non-HomeShit power plugs on all my iPod minis and AppleTVs.

And so, before I left on an errand I had to run before work, I sat in my car to power off all the hubs. Then, when I finished my errand and made it to the office, I turned them all back on. Three hours later as I ate lunch, I pulled up Apple's HomeShit app on my iPhone... and... there were stil six devices which hadn't recovered. Which means I'm going to waste time removing them then resetting them so I can re-add them before re-writing the Automations that got trashed somehow.

Easy.

Just time-consuming.

And here's a new wrinkle... the re-written automations do not work!

No idea why. I can test them. They test as expected. But they don't work.

For exmaple... I have it so when one of the lights in the guest bathroom is turned on, the other light turns on too. Turn one off, they both turn off. It's incredibly basic, but important because otherwise it's not light enough in there.

Absolutely no idea what I do now. After dinner I'll delete them all and try re-writing one more time. If that doesn't work, I guess I have to try removing devices and re-adding them. If that doesn't work, then I guess I have to completely reset absolutely everything and start over from scratch.

If that ends up being the case, I can say goodbye to my weekend.

Which brings me to a decision I have to make...

1. Waste two days resetting everything and hope it works.
2. Give up on HomeShit and save my money to replace it with something that actually works.
3. Give up on having a "smart" home completely, and go back to the dark ages of having a dumb home.

I gotta tell you... Option #3 is looking very appealing to me. If I waste two days and the shit is still broken, I'm going to be angry and never get over it. If I trash HomeShit and start over with something else which ends up broken, I'm going to be angry and never get over it. If I just end up giving up completely on having a "smart" home, I'm totally going to be angry.

But I'll get over it.

I just have to go back to remembering where all the light switches are and figure out and possible have to re-think some lighting in a few places. Like the guest bathroom.

In other tech drama, I'm slowly getting all my data transfered from my QNAP NAS to my UGREEN NAS.

This is taking a while because I have a metric shit-ton of photos to copy. I always took a lot of photos when I traveled. Then when the charity closed and I wasn't traveling as much, I ended up with Jake and Jenny and started taking a metric shit-ton of cat photos. You know how it goes.

My problem is (and always has been) that I don't sort through photos after I take them. I snap! snap! snap! snap! take them with the intent of keeping the best images and tossing the rest. Except I never have time to do that. Maybe I'll commit to sorting through 50 photos every morning when I wake up and see if I can whittle down the number of photos in my archive by half. Or, if I get serious about it, whittle down to a quarter of what I'm sitting on. Which should be easy because there's just so many pictures that are practically identical. There's AI software which is supposed to make the task easier, but I've not looked into it. And maybe I should.

In the meanwhile, I guess I save my money for a new pair of hard drives, given the ones I have are all older and probably not very reliable. They will likely be giving up the ghost soon.

Like myself.

Or like my patience with HomeShit, which has now evaporated.

My cats saved my life this past week. Again. It's an annoying habit they have whenever I'm circling the drain of depression and despair.

But enough about me...

Sometimes when Jenny comes up to me to be petted, she's wet. Never smells like urine as if she's peed all over herself, so I just figured she's been rubbing against something wet out in the catio and dismissed it. But then... I was petting her, she left, went and got a drink of water, then came back wet. And there it was. Her tongue that's half paralyzed (which is why she makes such a mess when eating wet food) is somehow splashing water everywhere which then bounces off of whatever to land on her. Or maybe her tongue is throwing it on her back? Weird. One of these days, I'm going to have to run over to her while she's drinking so I can try and figure out exactly how it's happening. Because it seems physically impossible.

Jenny seems to alternate between being wary of me...

Or resentful of me...

Except when asleep, of course...

Or pretending to be asleep...

Or when I'm petting her. Wet fur and all.

Can you believe that I was actually considering ditching Bullet Sunday and Caturday in 2026? Madness! But fear ye not... because you got a Caturday yesterday and all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Muji! One of my favorite brands is not a brand at all. At least, not a brand like we normally think of brands. When I was going to Japan frequently, I happened across 無印良品... Mujirushi Ryōhin. Which literally translates to "No Brand Quality Products." And that's the long and short of it. There's no branding on any of the products and no logo... their goods have no paid endorsements and no advertising. They just exist simply and beautifully. And they are priced fairly. Back in those days, it was mostly a kind of stationery store. Now they sell just about everything, but the same philosophy permeates every item. Which is why I was so happy to see that one of my favorite YouTube Channels has taken a good look at the company.

Muji is very, very Japanese. To understand the brand is to understand a lot about the Japanese people. And the lovely host of The Science of Products does an amazing job of breaking it all down. Somewhere in the boxes out in my garage are the Muji notebook and pen I bought on my very first trip to the Land of the Rising Sun. I wanted to write down all the weird, wild, and wonderful stuff I was experiencing and came unprepared. My Japanese was terrible, but I could make myself understood. I popped into a hotel in the area I was at, said "Kami to pen wa doko des kamasu ka?," and was given a map with the location nearby. A few days later I found (and fell in love with) "Tokyu Hands," a massive, massive stationery store in Shinjuku. But there's a soft spot in my heart for Muji, a not-brand I still love. One of these days, I need to get to Portland, Oregon and visit the store there. Or, you know, go back to Japan and visit a few of them there.

   
• Akasaka Nooooo! And speaking of... I wanted to locate where I bought my notebook, found it, was curious how far away from my hotel it was, then saw on Google Maps that it was "permanently closed." So I ran to Google and got this: "Yes, the Akasaka Excel Hotel Tokyu permanently closed on August 31, 2023, due to the termination of its lease agreement, after serving Tokyo as a business and tourist hotel since 1969. The closure was announced by Tokyu Hotels (TOKYU HOTELS Co., Ltd.) as part of their company press releases." This is really sad to me, because I would have totally stayed there again if I ever make it back to Tokyo.

   
• Tubs! I needed this...

Aren't animals wonderful? Case in point...

I really need to get me a trash panda.

   
• Bugged! Finally rented Bugonia. I am not a Yorgos Lanthimos fan, but admit he kinda knocked it out of the park with this one. You get a true ending, thankfully, but I have so many questions about what transpired...

Watching the game develop between Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons relied entirely on them selling it as actors... and they did not falter.

   
• Hey Nancy! Good news, everyone! We're mere hours away from me starting to write my all-new all-SEXY version of Nancy Drew! She's solving mysteries by day and breaking hearts by night... and doing both SEXILY this time!

It's only a matter of time before I think of an idea for a new Mickey Mouse and Nancy Drew crossover novel.

   
• Zipf! If you have an interest in languages, then this 20 minute video is for you...

Surprising... but shouldn't really be surprising. If you know what I mean.

   
• Triangle of... Sadness? I wonder if I beseeched Beecher's Handmade Cheese to stop making their cheese in thick triangles and switch to triangle logs if it would do any good? Cutting up thick triangles results in inconsistent piece sizes.

I'd probably buy double the amount of my beloved Marco Polo if I knew I could cut it into consistent piece sizes that would fit on crackers.

   
• Smart Dumb Home! For anybody wondering what I ended up doing after I couldn't get Apple's HomeKit HomeShit to recover, I actually did end up deleting about seven devices so I could re-add them and then re-write my Automations. Apple bastards. Those devices wouldn't resolve no matter how many times I rebooted my hubs. Beyond shitty... but at least I didn't have to start over from scratch.

   
And there you go... the first Bullet Sunday of 2026 is in the can.

I've been seeing a crazy number of YouTube videos about "Disney Adults." Most always in negative terms... IT'S A CULT! and DISNEY ADULTS ARE STEALING THE DISNEY PARKS FROM CHILDREN! and THESE PEOPLE VOTE! or whatever. To support their thesis, content creators are forever churning out these "in-depth analysis" videos which tries to apply psychology and scientific concepts to the idea that adult fans of Disney are delusional cultish freaks who need to be put down for the good of society. Rude!

I don't mind being called a "Disney Adult." There's nothing wrong with being an adult Disney fan. There's fun Disney things to be had as an adult (and some things definitely not to be had).

What I do mind is being accused of being in a "cult." Something that recently happened in the comments on my cruise post. Which I didn't read until Christmas Day. So Merry fucking Christmas to me.

I'm a massive geek for architecture and design of public spaces. Theme parks are a great expression of both, and I had dreams of becoming a Disney "Imagineer" for ages because of it. Studying how the attractions are made is actually more interesting to me than the attractions themselves. This lead to me having a consulting job piggybacked on Disney in Orlando for several years, and I ended up with friends there. Which is why I end up at Disney World so often, and spend time at their parks, resorts, ships, and whatever. At first it was a place to meet up with friends after work. Then, once my work there ended, it was to hang out with friends I met there. — If I had worked with Betty Crocker, I'd have been in Minnesota all the time and posting about the cakes I was eating while working or hanging out with my friends. But it wasn't Betty Crocker, it was Disney... so I'm in a cult?

I'm a graphic designer who's a huge fan of art, in general, and animation, specifically (there was a time I wanted to be an animator before it all went computer graphics). So, naturally, I watch all the Disney animated movies. But I also watch a ton of other animated stuff. Disney is such a small piece of what I'm interested in... but it's an important one (the news that Disney is toying with the idea of returning to hand-draw animated features definitely has me excited). And because of that... I'm in a cult?

As a fan of art, I have a lot of it hanging in my home. A chunk of it is Disney-related because that's where I've been so many times. I was there for work. I was there for the charity I worked with. I was there to meet up with the friends I made who live in the area. I was there three to five times a year for 17 years. I was given Disney art as gifts. I eventually ended up collecting prints by Disney-related artists like Dave Perillo and Jerrod Maruyama to remind me of my trips. But I also collect non-Disney prints by artists like Chris Ware and original comic book art by artists like Amanda Conner and Curt Swan which also hang in my home. I've also got art I bought from my travels around the world, but because Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is on my wall... I'm in a cult?

Because Disney is such a huge part of my childhood (and the years of work I had), I have a lot of Disney memorabilia displayed in my home. But I also have numerous other pieces of memorabilia from my life which has nothing to do with Disney that's on display. Concert programs, signed records, old tin signs, movie posters... not to mention hundreds of photos of my family friends from over the years. But because I framed the Disneyland map I got as a kid... I'm in a cult?

Alrighty then. Pass me the Kool-Aid, I guess...

The above is most of the souvenirs I have from my very first visit to Disneyland when I was ten years old. I kept it all these decades because my parents bought it for me and I couldn't throw it out. Some of what I had was in pretty rough shape, so I managed to find replacements on eBay in better condition...

You can click the photo to embiggen it... or click on this link right here.

The map, for example, hung in my bedroom for my entire childhood, getting faded and having the corners ripped out from the thumbtacks. It took me years to find a replacement. There's loads and loads of old Disneyland maps out there, but I wanted the one with Mickey, Goofy, and Donald dressed in 1776 fife & drum Americana, because that's what I had as a kid. Eventually eBay listed one from an estate sale and, once I bought it, I decided to get everything framed up. It's fun to look at as I walk into my home and remember back to that visit with my family. And it's interesting too. Because boy Disneyland sure was a very different place back then.

Still don't understand how any of this puts me into a cult.

Maybe I should watch more clickbait videos to find out for sure...

That last video is particularly hilarious, because her fucking SurfShark advertisement is more cringe than anything she's presenting as "cringe" in her "takedown"...

But anyway...

Do I think Disney Adults exist which are problematic? Oh hell yes. I run across them every time I'm anywhere Disney-related. Usually they are "social media influencers" and that's what makes them problematic. It's not that they love Disney, it's that they intrude on other people who are just there to have fun. They hold up lines and block traffic to get a selfie or shoot a video. They take over spaces and experience just to get likes at the expense of other people who are trying to enjoy themselves. People who likely spent a considerable amount of money to be there. It's annoying as hell, and dunking on these assholes is justifiable.

And, sure, there actually are people who build their lives around all things Disney and their entire existence revolves around their next trip to Disney World (or Disney-wherever). And good for them. People should be allowed to follow their bliss, be happy, and escape from the horrors of the world doing whatever is going to make life bearable. You do you. It doesn't affect anybody else. Spend the money you have and the time you have however you want.

Because, I gotta say, there are people building their lives around far worse things than Mickey Mouse.

Like spending their time trashing people who are enjoying their best life at zero cost to others as an "influencer.".

Last night after work I went out to eat because it had been a very long day, I was too tired to cook, and I wanted breakfast. And it was wonderful. Perfectly cooked. Perfectly seasoned. I couldn't have made it better myself. It was so good that I was able to overlook the cost, which was expensive. But no more expensive than anything else out there now-a-days, which means it was actually a fair price.

Tonight when it was time to go home after another very long day, I was seriously wanting to go out for breakfast again, but didn't want it to get weird, and furthermore didn't have the money to be spending two nights in a row.

Instead I went home and had cereal with toast. Followed by apple sauce and crackers. Followed by freeze-dried strawberries and more crackers.

And I ate all that in the cold.

Can somebody please explain Apple's thinking when Siri's response to "Hey Siri, make it warmer" inevitably ends up being "It's 70° in here and could take a while to warm up. Are you sure you want to make it warmer?"

When I'm cold and want it warmer, what the fuck difference is telling me a number going to make? Is their thinking that I'm going to hear a number and think "Oh. I guess I'm not cold after all! Never mind, Siri!"... because what kind of stupid shit is that?

Likewise, what good does telling me that it could take a while to heat up going to do? Do they honestly believe that I'm going to hear that and say "Oh, if it's going to take a while, just forget it then!"... because that's even more stupid.

JUST MAKE IT FUCKING WARMER LIKE I ASKED! DON'T WASTE MY TIME WITH THIS NONSENSE THAT'S NOT GOING TO CHANGE MY BEING COLD!

This kind of idiotic shit drives me insane. But when it comes to Siri, about all you get is idiotic shit. Siri is 14 years old but, due to how smart everything else is getting smarter while it stays the same, Siri seems to be getting more and more stupid. We were supposed to get an update well over a year ago, but it still hasn't shown up.

What has shown up is a headache, so I guess I'll grab an aspirin and call it an early night.

Assuming my cats don't wake me up because they're cold.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
—Santayana

It's dangerous to make New Year resolutions in these horror-filled days... so instead I've been leaning into other traditions.

One that I adopted from a friend is the Great Expired Food Purge.

This is where you go through every food item in your house and toss things that are expired. Although in this economy, I don't throw out anything that's lightly expired. That stuff gets put on a USE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE shelf so I can try to figure out what to do with it. Which is to say that, preferrably, I eat it.

Most of the stuff getting thrown out this year is the "lightly expired" stuff that I didn't throw out last year.

But a rare subset are things that I bought because they sounded good at the time and were on a sale too good to resist. Then they sit in my cupboard for a few years until there's nothing left to do except reluctantly throwing it in the trash. This is usually things like soup, pasta sauces, and salad dressings. I'll buy into a "Buy One Get One Free" or "Get One Half Price" or whatever. Then eat one and hate it. Then hope that I forget how bad it is so I'll eat it before it expires.

But here's the thing... how often do you forget eating terrible food?

In my case, the answer is apparently "never."

And that's what filled the grocery bag I just walked out to the trash.

Will I ever learn?

Likely not.

Growing up in the 70's and 80's means that I remember things that a lot of people just... don't. Sometimes that's a good thing. I remember when personal computers started, and they were just fun. I mean, yeah, they would eventually turn into a work tool and ruin everything, but at the beginning they were just fun.

And sometimes that's a bad thing. Things that are treatale and survivable now weren't so much back then. Although, thanks to misinformation and dumbshits with a platform, we're back-sliding into inexplicable anti-science, anti-vax nonsense. So make of that what you will.

And sometimes? It's complicated.

When I was a kid, getting to go to a restaurant for a meal was a special treat. And my most favorite places to eat were as follows...

1. Pizza Inn. Their crispy crust and phenomenal sauce made for a special treat that I would beg for. They closed for years and years, then the son of the owners opened with the same pizza under a different name. I was thrilled. Then that closed. After a while it re-opened in a different location. I was thrilled. Then that closed. No more throwback pizza of my childhood. I have a copycat recipe which I've tried a few times, but without a pizza oven it doesn't taste the same.
2. A&W Drive-In. I loved how they brought your order out to your car and set the tray on your rolled-down window. I started with Baby Burger (small burger with ketchup only), moved to a Mama Burger (large burger with pickles, onion, ketchup, mustard, and sauce), occasionally graduated to a Papa Burger (double meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and sauce), but then they came out with Teen Burger (bacon cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, and sauce), and I never looked back. I loved a good bacon cheeseburger! I was very upset when they closed. To this day I occasionally search eBay for one of those old Teen Burger foil bags so I can frame it on my wall somewhere. A vegetarian version of this burger is a life goal.
3. Sambo's. And here's where it gets problematic. Suffice to say that my favorite breakfast was pancakes, and they were famous for their pancakes.

Sambo's was an old restaurant chain which got its name from the two founders... SAM Battistone Sr. and Newell BOhnett. And it's like... okay. Catchy.

Except... not really.

Because the restaurant leaned hard into a highly controversial children's book called Little Black Sambo. It had racist illustrations and it didn't help at all that "Sambo" would become a racial slur for Black persons...

In the book, Sambo gives tigers his clothes and they fight over them so ferociously that they turn into butter, which Sambo then puts on pancakes. The staple food of the restaurants.

When the restaurants began, they had murals of the story on their walls. But by the time my family was going to the local franchise, they had changed the story to a little Indian boy who ran around a tree until the tiger chasing him turned into butter that he could put on his pancakes. And that was the character in the murals that I remember...

In addition to racism, Sambo's was known for its low prices, as you can see in these commercials...

Eventually the restaurants couldn't outrun their racist connections and turned to butter. Or, in the case of our local restaurant, changed its name to "Season's." I don't remember anything about the re-brand except the name. But, alas, not enough people wanted to eat at the restaurant without the racism, and the chain folded. Ours eventually turned into a pizza restaurant.

I wish the local Big City had an IHOP, but the closest thing we had was a Denny's. Where the pancakes just aren't as good. Maybe they should try using tiger butter?

If you want to know more about Sambo's, here you go...

Don't miss the racist restaurants. Kinda miss the architecture and pancakes.

Though there are copycat recipes all over the internet, so maybe I only miss the architecture.

Remember how proud I was that my cats are so polite as to not wake me up when I'm sleeping? They come into my bedroom, and if I'm asleep they walk back out? Well that was good while it lasted. Jenny started waking me up after I went on vacation then went away for the holidays. She comes in, jumps on the bed and starts meowing until I pet her. Usually between 2am and 3am. Then, it's like she told Jake, so now he's doing it as well? The little shits! If I ignore Jake, he'll leave. But Jenny? Oh hell no! She will keep meowing until you give her the attention she wants.

But it's not all bad news.

I found out that Jenny likes my bomb-ass potato salad. She licked the bowl after I had finished...

And Jake still refuses to leave my side since I got home from Christmas vacation...

I wonder if this is an age thing?

Because I used to leave all the time when they were younger and never had them waking me up when I got back.

Oh well. There are worse problems to have.

I may be in desperate need of sleep, but don't you fear about your weekly smattering of bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Seek Shelter! This squirrel got lucky during a storm...

Adorable. But animals usually are.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Young Wisconsin man dies from asthma attack after price of inhaler skyrocketed nearly $500. BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD, PEOPLE!

   
• Fuzzy & Buttered! Am I the only one who freaks out over how sage is fuzzy before you cook it? Delicious delicious sage...

Can't beat it on butternut squash with browned butter poured over the top! Except now my home is going to smell like buttered popcorn for the next two days.

   
• Eight! Eight Dollar Foot Long! Subway is advertising their new "Sub Club" where you buy three foot-longs and get the fourth for free. So I go to the app to find out how much they’ve increased the prices to cover this promotion. A Veggie Delight is $10.69 now. With a free fourth sub, the price ends up being $8.00. This is for a veggie sandwich with extra cheese (because their cheese is whisper thin now, and they stopped putting double cheese on veggie subs years ago). A bun, cheese, and veggies is $8.00... but not now... eventually. — Remember $5.00 foot-longs, which you could get with pricey meat options if you wanted? I wonder how much those subs cost now? This kind of "deal" is such bullshit. I’d rather eat at a place that just gives me a fair price at the start rather than holding my money hostage until I buy enough to get a fourth sub. Yeah, I know a lot of places do this to encourage repeat visits, but $10.69? My burger meal card has initial lower prices which earns you a free meal after ten. That seems a smarter deal because you don’t face sticker shock every time you eat there. $10.69... for a cheese sandwich? Really?

   
• Techflation! This bullshit is getting out of hand...

And here it is in action...

I'd like to know how asshole corporations are justifying this. Assuming they feel the need to. It's all monopolies and collusion from here on out. We've got a government that doesn't give a fuck. On the contrary, the government is being paid to look the other way.

   
• Apple Macintosh Hot Take: It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons. And indeed it is very hard, because it's fucking sloppy. But that's Apple now... fucking sloppy.

   
• Cinematically Real! This is the video that nails it. This is why the Avatar movies work when others abusing technology in film fail...

These movies are pure cinematic spectacle. I cannot wait to see Fire & Ash.

   
And now back to your regularly-scheduled Sunday...

I've given myself permission to just not give a fuck any more.

Want to eat ice cream for breakfast every morning? Go for it. Want to have burgers after work every day? Go for it. Don't feel like cleaning the house for a month? Forget about it. Want to spend the extra money to get the name brand cereal instead of the cheaper store brand version? Whatever. I am just not giving a fuck about what I should be doing because the world is on fire and it just doesn't matter any more.

But it gets better.

I am not engaging with the dumbass boot-licking pieces of shit supporting this country sliding into a toxic shithole fascist state. If what they can easily see with their own eyes isn't enough to convince them to question what they're being told to believe... why waste my time and energy? It's not going to make a lick of difference. You can't compete with willful ignorance.

So I'm just... not... any more.

And I just don't give a fuck. Nor do I give a fuck what other people think about it.

Smartfood has come up with one of the most phenomenal popcorn flavors I've ever tasted.

I hope people are willing to try "Brown Butter with Sea Salt Kettle Corn" even though the photo of the flavor is a little scary. It looks like a slice of butter with sesame seeds hovering above a jar of gravy fat or something...

If you see it, you should give it a shot! Hopefully EVERYBODY will give it a shot so it won't get discontinued.

WHY?!?

WHY DIDN'T I BUY MICHELIN TIRES?

Because I would 100% do this...

Maybe I'll just draw the Michelin Man on my tires anyway!

There have been few people in the world of Star Wars which have been more divisive than Kathleen Kennedy, and today it was announced that she is stepping down as the head of LucasFilm. An event which has been a long time coming, because most of the stuff she oversaw didn't really give us anything truly worthy of the franchise.

Most but not all, which we'll get to in a minute.

I'm really hoping that new boss Dave Filoni finds ways of making Star Wars exciting and fresh again.

But anyway... Kennedy took over from George Lucas after his terrible prequel trilogy, and and I thought I'd take a look at all the projects that she was overseeing. Except The Madalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter, because they haven't come out yet.

THE PHENOMENAL

• Andor Season 01 - If there's anything that Kathleen Kennedy did to make her work at Lucasfilm notable, it was greenlighting one of the best television shows of all time. I don't know how much involvement she actually had (other than giving Tony Gilroy the space he needed to churn out this masterpiece in two parts), but I'm going to give her credit for standing behind the show (and renewing it). This is the best Star Wars to come out of Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back.
• Andor Season 02 - Ditto.

THE GOOD

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - This is the film which caught me by surprise. The fact that it works so well given the mess that was going on behind the scenes is some kind of miracle. Plus it gave us Andor.
• The Mandalorian Season 01 - I don't know if it was just that it came along at the right time or what, but everything about Mando is entertaining. Whether it's introducing one of the most meme-worthy, cutest, and all-around cool Grogu (aka "Baby Yoda"), or introducing lore to Star Wars which is actually worthy of remembering, this series gave me hope that the franchise was back.
• The Mandalorian Season 02 - The second season rarely lives up to the first. But this one does. And then we get Bo-Katan and a full-on Jedi Luke Skywalker as the cherry on top of the season.
• Ahsoka Season 01 - It may be because I grew to love the character so much that I was able to overlook some of the problems, but I was quite happy with how the series panned out. If you were a fan of the animated stuff (as I am), this was a no-brainer to watch, and the cast was perfect.
• Skeleton Crew Season 01 - Color me shocked. A Star Wars series built around CHILDREN that's actually GOOD?!? Yes. Yes indeed. I wish that it could have been a bit more imaginative in the settings (seemed very earth-like to me), but it had a cool shades-of-gray mentality about it that made me love it even more.

THE MEH

• Solo: A Star Wars Story - I don't think this movie was quite the disaster that many people made it out to be. Though it should have been. Phil Lord and Chris Miller departed, Ron Howard stepped in, and it still ended up being mostly coherent! Yes, things would have likely been stronger if either team had been given the entire project, but I enjoyed it enough to overlook the flaws. Especially since we got Daniel Glover as Lando, which is brilliant, brilliant casting.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 01 - I love Ewan McGregor's take on Obi-Wan. Unfortunately, he's been given nothing but terrible material and has had to make the best of it. When his mini-series arrived, I was so frickin' optimistic. And it turned out that the guy was having to elevate shallow material again! Even with the problems and nonsense, I still liked this show enough to keep watching. And I guess that's something.
• The Acolyte Season 01 - Despite having some killer fight scenes (seriously, some of the best in Star Wars lore), this show really fell short in the story department. And yet... I still enjoyed some of it. I liked that it was a darker take on the Jedi Order. I liked that the heroes and villains were shades of gray instead of black-and-white. The cast was great and everything was entertaining... until you get to the whole "Force Witches" angle, which was so badly done that it sabotaged everything. A lot of people review-bombed the show because it was female-forward. But this was a non-issue to me, and I thought there were far more critical things to be critical about. I am very sad that the show didn't do well enough to give Manny Jacinto's Qimir another series.
• The Mandalorian Season 03 - It's not that the third season was bad, it's just that it was a big drop from what I was expecting after the awesome first two seasons.

THE BAD

• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - Here it is. The last movie with the original Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones that there will ever be. Gotta make it a great story and an even greater film. Right? RIGHT? Nope. While marginally better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and possessing some good moments, this it still a bad film.
• The Book of Boba Fett Season 01 - Turns out there wasn't enough Boba Fett in his own show. Or maybe there was, it's just that his storyline was so boring, uninspired, and didn't give us anything interesting, so it just seemed that way. This should have just been another season of The Mandalorian. Maybe Season 2.5 or something. That way, they could have just focused on what they were good at and had Boba Fett guest-appear in an interesting way. Certainly more interesting than anything we got here.
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens - This probably deserves to be a "meh" rated movie, but I watched it again recently and it's just not that good. Though there are some really good moments. And I liked the actors who were cast as Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo... all of whom manage to build compelling characters. Where things fall apart is the story timing. How are Rey, who's not been trained as a Jedi, and Finn, who's not a Jedi, even remotely able to put up a fight against Kylo Ren? Senseless.
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi - As a massive Rian Johnson fan, I was thrilled when he got a Star Wars movie handed to him. But it turns out even a genius can't pick up the broken pieces of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and get greatness out of it. And he made some seriously bad choices here that kinda sabotaged his film. Primary among them would be "Space Leia," which was laughably stupid (and don't get me started on the entire Canto Bight crap). There were bright spots though. "The Holdo Maneuver" made zero sense logistically, but was a visual treat. More eye-candy like that and I probably wouldn't have minded the sub-par story so much? I dunno.

THE GUT-WRENCHINGLY AWFUL

• Willow Season 01 - I couldn't get past the first episode. No, I wasn't a huge Willow fan to begin with, but this was so badly conceived and implemented that I don't understand what Kennedy was thinking when she greenlit it. Who was it for? The script needed serious work, and allowing it to proceed without another couple of passes is a failing.
• Galaxy's Edge Disney Park Land - Out of all the bad decisions that can be left at Kathleen Kennedy's doorstep, this is the one that blows my mind. Disneyland and Walt Disney World are going to build huge new lands. Imagineers wanted them to be a celebration of the Star Wars that everybody loved. Apparently Kennedy shot that idea down and insisted that they be built around the sequel trilogy instead. No Darth Vader. No Luke Skywalker. No Princess Leia. No R2D2 & C3PO. Instead we get Rey, Kylo Ren, and who-the-fuck-ever. AND THEN... yesterday it was announces that Disney was bringing the original trilogy characters to Galaxy's Edge as they should have done in the first place. And it's about fucking time. I can only guess this was supposed to be announced after Kennedy's stepping-down was announced and somebody goofed. It's crazy that she thought ditching the characters that made Star Wars be Star Wars in favor of the new characters that she oversaw was a winning strategy. Yeah, the time-frames converge, but who cares? It's not like EVERY. OTHER. LAND. at the parks isn't merging different times and even worlds. So dumb. There's no excuse for this nonsense.
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - I honestly don't understand how this nonsense soup was put into production. It's just so dang stupid. It has absolutely nothing to say, doesn't progress Star Wars at all, wastes a golden opportunity for a proper send-off of the original trilogy, and is head-scratchingly awful with story beats that make absolutely no sense. Wayfinders? Really? There's not a lick of internal logic here. Ideas are half-baked. Dialogue is plain bad. As executive producer, was Kennedy asleep at the wheel... or did she just not care?

THE MISSING IN ACTION

• Rogue Squadron - After the hot fucking mess that came out of Patty Jenkins shitting the bed utterly in the awful, awful, Wonder Woman sequel, I can't say I'm upset that this movie was canceled. But it is fucking embarrassing that Kathleen Kennedy championed it to begin with only to have it disappear.
• Untitled Kevin Feige Film - When he was riding high on the incredible success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was kind of a no-brainer to let Feige helm a Star Wars project. Then the movies started tanking, the shows weren't memorable, and his movie had apparently vanished.
• Untitled Rian Johnson Trilogy - Did I love what Rian Johnson did with Star Wars: The Last Jedi? No. But did this deter my enthusiasm for him getting a new trilogy of Star Wars films? It did not. I would have loved to have seen what Johnson would have done if getting to start from scratch instead of inheriting something to work off of. Oh well.
• Untitled David Benioff and D.B. Weiss's Trilogy - Thank God this was canceled. These dumbasses fucked up an un-fuck-upable series with the final two seasons of Game of Thrones in order to rush it to a conclusion so they could do Star Wars. It should have been apparent to everybody... especially Kathleen Kennedy... that Benioff & Weiss were only good at adapting existing material and should have never been given an entire trilogy which would rely on them creating their own ideas. Again, I refer you to the final two seasons of Game of Thrones. Kennedy side-stepped an absolute landmine here, and had this trilogy of movies went forward, I'm almost certain that it would have resulted in her getting fired.
• Star Wars: Duel of the Fates - The original movie ending to the sequel trilogy, this Trevorrow script (which was leaked online) had problems and wasn't perfect... but it was better than the wet fart of an ending we got out of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and my guess is that Kathleen Kennedy is the bad decision that's responsible. Much like her shepherding of the entire sequel trilogy.

I fall down internet rabbit holes very, very easy.

Usually it's animals. I start looking at animal videos and it's so mentally soothing that I can't stop myself. It's the ultimate feel-good hit. But there's lots of other things that get me hooked. Woodworking. Travel. Animation. Art. The list goes on and on. And then there's tattooing.

If I had my way, I'd have minimum quadruple the tattoos I have now. I love tattoos. Even more than that, I love the art of tattoos. Which is why the Instagram algorithm has my number. It's filled with tattoo artists, because they know odds are that I'm going to click through.

And then this morning I ran across "TrippyCats" by Jiho Yoon. And while lots of the tattoos are indeed very trippy, I love the ones that are less trippy...

Has me very close to wanting to buy a ticket to Seoul and book an appointment!

There's a big trend on social media where people are posting photos of themselves from 2016... ten years ago.

I decided to go back to 2016 for Jake and Jenny, because I got them for my mom in 2016. Which means that they're over ten years old, which seems impossible. The Human Society didn't know exactly when the cats were born, but based on what they were able to find out, they were guessing the first week of December. Since they have to have a birthday to celebrate, I picked December 6th, 2015. We picked them up on February 16th, 2016.

Still one of the better days of my life...

It's so funny how they're so easily recognizable. They look the same. Except smaller.

In the case of Jake, a lot smaller.

Don't fear the reaper... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Cardio! For somebody whose on the internet way more than he would ever admit, it's genuinely shocking that I somehow missed this viral video from last year...

Poor thing. She nearly had a heart attack. And can you really blame her?

   
• Pet Heaven! Oh man. I need to get Jake & Jenny baptized so they can get into Pet Heaven! Never even thought of it!

A friend sent me this video because they call their cat Boo-Bear, just like I call Jake Boo-Bear. Or "Bubair" if you'd rather.

   
• That Mitchell & Webb Look! The fact that you know what's coming just makes it all the funnier...

David Mitchell is phenomenal in the BritBox series Ludwig, if you're looking for something good to watch.

   
• Fart Patio! I miss Portlandia...

There's something about scathing satire which speak truth in a way you love to see.

   
• I'm Donut! I look forward to this event every Christmas, but didn't find it last year. But they did reenact it, so I must have somehow missed it...

Some traditions should never die. Especially when donuts are involved.

   
• Gain? I've been in a lot of smelly situations. I've had some smelly jobs. But there is nothing... NOTHING... that I've experienced which is worse than the horrific stench of Swiffer "Fresh-Scent with Gain" mop pads. I accidentally purchased them instead of the usual Swiffer I get (the boxes look almost identical) and have been trying to use them every once in a while because it's wasteful to throw them in the trash. Especially given how expensive they are. Tonight I spilled spaghetti sauce in my kitchen and grabbed the Swiffer. And now, in the middle of winter, I have all the doors and windows open because my house smells like total ass. I do not understand how people want their house to smell like this shit. I regret using them every time, and I really, really need to suck it up, take the L, and toss them... because this is awful awful awful.

   
• Greenland? Maybe I'm cynical in that I think this whole load of nonsense about Greenland being taken by the USA is just another bullshit distraction from the Epstein Files. But if it's not? Two things. 1) In 1917, the Virgin Islands were sold to the USA to become a US territory by Denmark, and part of the agreement is that the USA recognize full Danish control over Greenland. In other words, we signed up for this. And, 2) Somebody out of NATO has already said "If you take Greenland, we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave." Which is to say that we would be in seriously deep shit. I cannot fathom how incredibly fucking stupid it would be if somebody... ANYBODY... doesn't explain that there are consequences to being a complete moron in this situation.

   
And now? Time to wash another load of clothes.

I used to pride myself on keeping up with current events around the world. But lately I just don't have the mental fortitude to see what new horrific shit is going on. It seems to get worse by the day, and the added anxiety would probably push me over the edge.

I slept horribly last night. Tossed and turned and didn't fall asleep until well after midnight. Jenny woke me up a little after 6:00am, and I ended up petting her until it was her breakfast time at 7:00am. After that I went back to bed so I could read some documentation for work and... somehow dropped off to sleep again, and didn't wake up until nearly 10:00am?? That's something that just doesn't happen to me. When I wake up, that's it. I'm awake for the duration. But not this morning...

Nearly eight hours sleep? That's very rare. Any more I feel lucky if I can get five or six!

Then I somehow ended up falling down a rabbit hole of shelter dog adoption videos. Like this one...

And this one...

And this one...

And then I listened to Martin Luther King Jr. speak, amazed as always how his words are more relevant than ever, then got back to work while listening to a podcast called Why this song? which talks to the artists behind popular songs. It started with Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins, which is one of my favorite tracks of all time. Good stuff.

I've been burning the candle at both ends for months, and it's starting to catch up to me. In one of life's cruel ironies, I get so tired lately that I can't sleep. I start yawning and yawning, so I go to bed... then am wide awake.

And so I run through my social media pages looking for something to distract my mind from all the things that are running through my head that I should be focusing on that's keeping me from falling asleep.

And that's when I reached this...

I laughed out loud, which was a real bummer for my cats who were sleeping next to me.

Jake was a little upset, but quickly fell back asleep.

Jenny, on the other hand, glared at me for far longer than was comfortable, then left in a huff.

Until 4:20am, at which point she got her revenge.

I have a stack of feel-good YouTube videos that I watch when things are shitty.

As you can imagine, I've been running to my list a lot lately.

This video has 22 million views. It's worth your time if you're looking to forget about the world for a little while. BONUS: Canning Tatum and Bradley Cooper are in this one!

Titus is a teenager now. Apparently he likes soccer more than basketball.

And now... back to the horror, where terrified 5 year old children are used as bait...

What's happened is up for debate. The lawyer for the family says that the father has an active asylum case with no deportation order. So... it would seem that they're doing immigration "the right way."

At the bare minimum, the charges against the father should be public. As should what has happened to these people. So far as I know, body-cams are required for these operations, so the truth is likely out there... but whether it will be shared with the public at large is anybody's guess. All we're getting "officially" is what they want us to hear. In my humble opinion, body-cams should be required, and the footage should be publicly available so we know what's being done in our name.

Like traumatizing a little kid who has no say in anything that's happening in his life, but is aprehended like a violent criminal and used as bait.

I can't help but wonder what's happening now, and if the actual truth will ever come out.

Or if this will all disappear without due process, like so many others.

For the last couple of days I have been having allergy problems. Which is bizarre to me because I never have noticeable allergies in January. They always hit me in March and April when new plants arrive... then again in September and October when everything is dying. Summer and Winter are blissfully allergy-free.

But then I went to put the garbage cans back and walked around my yard.

Only to find that there are flowers which never died. And greens are popping up everywhere...

This could be very, very bad for us.

We haven't had snow this year. Any sprinkling we get disappears in short order. The hillsides are bare. The mountains aren't covered nearly enough. This is looking like drought for us this Summer, which means high water prices, rationing, dead lawns, and other problems I don't even want to think about.

Meanwhile... a winter storm of scary proportions is about to hit everywhere from New York to Texas.

Climate change is not cool, yo. Not cool at all.

Is it just me, or has hope for the future dropped to an all-time low?

It's not just one thing, it's everything. Everywhere you turn, there's bad news. I was going to recap with some examples, but I don't want to depress everybody even more than they probably are. Starting with myself.

I thought I would make myself feel better with some retail therapy, but the thought of buying something I don't need and can't afford... then having to pay the credit card bill... doesn't make me think that it would make me feel any better.

So instead I watched last night's episode of The Traitors (US version) and ate a bag of Bugles corn snacks for dinner.

Probably should have bought a fifth of Jack Daniels.

Jake has been very clingy lately. Which is a bit worrying, because I can't help but wonder if there's something wrong. Though I think that's the opposite of how it usually works? Don't cats usually want to be alone when they are feeling poorly? Maybe Jake is different? Cats.

Last night he climbed on top of me when I fell asleep. I'm a side-sleeper, so this was a bit precarious for a cat his size, so I grabbed a pillow so he would be supported. When I woke up, I had rolled over on my back, but Jake was still there...

In other cat news... look what appeared at the bottom of the stairs this very morning!

MUFASA! This was truly surprising, because Jake lost interest in him months ago. I finally just put his plushie in the cat toy box because he wasn't dragging him around everywhere like he used to. Then this morning... BAM! Mufasa! After breakfast Jake went back to ignoring him, so maybe the reunion is over.

Earlier this week I was on a call for work when the kitty breakfast alarm chimed. A few minutes later I went downstairs while still on the phone, and had to pause my call to take a photo of the cats sitting on the table angry because I didn't immediately rush down to feed them...

I mean... just look at Jake's face. He's furious to have been kept waiting. Even Jenny is surprised at the depth of his rage!

But don't worry about my safety. I was forgiven ten minutes later...

Cats.

It's not just another day in hell... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms! I really liked the Dunk and Egg trilogy of books, but was wary of the HBO/HBO Max adaptation because I feared that they would fuck it up like they fucked up Game of Thrones after they ran out of books. But the showrunners say that they will not adapt stories that don't exist, so there's that...

I will say that Dunk and Egg are both flawlessly cast and the first episode is promising. Charming even. I really hope they nail it this time.

   
• DRAMA! Lord only knows I need a cute distraction from the horrors of the day, and here it is...

I don't know how dog groomers don't end up kidnapping a dozen clients a day.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Washington state lawmakers consider 10-cent bottle fee to boost recycling. Christ. Everybody has a recycle container that's bigger than their garbage can now... we already have incentive to recycle. Recycle bins are EVERYWHERE! This isn't the 1970's! This is just going to make shit even more expensive because now you can't use your recycle bin because you don't get your money back unless you make another trip to the store. Get fucked. This stupid shit is driving me insane. Is this going to make such a massive difference as to be worth the trouble for everybody involved? Are stores going to have to raise prices again to cover the labor of having to be a recycling center? This is performative politics, and I really hope that voters ACTUALLY THINK FOR TWO FUCKING MINUTES and shoot this idiocy down. INFURIATING.

   
• Seafarer! My latest YouTube obsession is Joe Franta talking about his life as a U.S. merchant mariner. It's all interesting and fascinating stuff. The first one I watched was when he was working on a cruise ship instead of the cargo ships he usually works on...

He's a fairly level-headed and pragmatic guy, giving you both the good...

And the bad...

My favorite videos are the behind-the-scenes stuff where he talks about what life is actually like and how he gets by when on the job...

If you want a great channel to watch, here's the one for you.

   
• Pengo! This story from years ago is going around again. Some documentarians rescued some penguins... and were roundly criticized for interfering in "natures plan" or whatever...

Yeah... you could not stop me from helping creatures in need. I care more about these penguins than I do 99.9% of the people on this planet, and I am not a part of the United Federation of Planets, so the Prime Directive doesn't apply to me!

   
• He-Him-Man! I gotta say, the new trailer for Masters of the Universe looks darn good...

And of course dipshits across the internet are losing their shit because of the frame where Adam has his pronouns under his name tag. Except ADAM IS HE-MAN... THAT'S THE JOKE! So who is it that's ruining everything? Dipshits like this who just want to complain about how "pronouns" are destroying the American way of life, I'm guessing. Gawd. We truly are living in the stupidest timeline.

   
• Alex Pretti. The right to protest is baked into the First Amendment. It literally guarantees citizens "...peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances..." The State of Minnesota allows open and concealed carry of firearms with a permit. The narrative of Alex Pretti approached officers brandishing a handgun has been proven false. Video evidence shows exactly what happened. Alex Pretti was pepper-sprayed while protecting women and then murdered. Executed. Shot 10 times. The only time his weapon was unholstered was when it was removed from him. The only thing in his hand was a camera at the time of his murder...

I've seen video analysis saying that he was reaching for his gun. It's absurd. The actual analysis is clear to anybody who doesn't buy into a bullshit narrative they cling to. Yes, this video is by partisan MS NOW, but the analysis is on-point...

Alex Pretti worked on curing cancer before becoming an ICU nurse at a VA hospital. He dedicated his life to helping others. He died helping a woman who had been shoved to the ground. Witnesses have testified that he was no threat to anybody... he did not brandish a weapon... he did not reach for a weapon... he did not attack anybody... he was just trying to help when he was executed. Alex's parents released this statement...

"We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man."

Done and done. It's the very least I can do.

American citizens are being executed in broad daylight by government action while legally filming at a legal protest. And you know it's problematic when even the NRA is chiming in for a full investigation. It's painfully obvious that this country has taken a horrific turn. I cannot help but wonder how history will view this period of our country. I suppose it depends on whether the government or the people are the ones left standing at the end of it all.

   
And now... back to our shared nightmare.

This morning I woke up to the smell of burnt toast.

At first I was hoping it was a heart attack, but then I remembered that I attempted to make garlic toast to go with my pasta lunch yesterday and ended up burning it to a cinder. Because I forgot I had put it in the oven. Because my Whirlpool oven is so fucking stupid that you can't leave the door open when you're broiling something or else the oven turns off. Which means it's painfully easy to put something under the broiler and burn it because you can't keep an eye on it. I don't know if this is just my model or what. But never, ever buy a Whirpool oven when this is a possibility. Every time I have to broil something I'm like WHO THE FUCK DESIGNS AN OVEN LIKE THIS?!?

The butternut squash pasta with brown butter, crispy-fried sage, and pepitas was excellent though. Dang is that such an easy and delicious dish. And cooking it makes my home smell like a movie theater with lots of buttered popcorn. And, this time, burnt garlic toast.

But anyway...

I had mentioned some of the stuff hanging on my walls and got a question about it.

My favorite living comic book artist is Amanda Conner. She's phenomenal. The way she illustrates a story is so flawlessly suited to comic books. She has this incredible sense for crafting body and facial expressions to add to the story. And one of my favorite comic book characters is Vartox. He started as a wacky Zardoz imitation in a cool Superman story. But what he became in the pages of Power Girl is amazing. He's hilarious. So years and years ago when I saw three pages of original artwork by Amanda Conner from issue 12 featuring Vartox for sale? I jumped on them. Did I have the money? No. Did I care that I didn't have the money? No. I just bought them. Pages 13, 15, and 17 were mine.

To display them, I added printed scans from the comic for pages 11*, 14, and 16 (sorry I didn't straighten them out)...

Click image to see the embiggened photo.

The art I bought was relatively cheap (the majority of each page are unpopular characters)... nothing compared to the cost of original Amanda Conner cover art... which is currently $4,000 to over $10,000 per page. So, yeah, profoundly grateful I was about to get what I got. Especially since it has Vartox in it. Conner doesn't do a lot of comic book art any more, so finding anything that's remotely affordable is nigh-impossible today.

Even though the art isn't particularly valuable, it means a lot to me. Which is why I nearly had a heart attack when it ended up lost after I moved house a decade ago. I had put it in a pile for me to take, but it got grabbed by the movers instead. Eventually I found that they had tucked it in-between some posters that got wrapped up. Posters that sat for almost a year before I unwrapped them. Talk about your happy surprises. I had long accepted that the pages got lost in the move!

When I started buying picture frames to start framing up all the stuff I had in storage, these were the first that I ordered. And I went all out... bought the UV-protective glass so they ink wouldn't fade. Then made sure I put them in a place which received no direct sunlight, just in case.

And now I can easily look at them whenever I want, which is often because they're some beautiful pages.

   
*I went with printing page 11 instead of 12 because I love that 11 featured her getting a cat!

For decades of my life, I traveled the globe. In the early years, I had no money and ended up doing crazy things like sleeping in bus stations and on trains... eating questionable food... going to "unsafe" places. And I loved all of it. So many amazing memories and fun stories to tell. I could write a book.

As I got older, I had a little more money and wasn't the daredevil I had been when I was young and immortal. I started staying in hostels and cheap hotels. Started eating in better-quality places. Started planning more. It didn't make travel any less fun, but it was a different kind of experience.

Then I started taking my mom on vacations, which felt like another world entirely. Nicer hotels. Nicer restaurants. Only safe, organized travel. It was still loads of fun. And though I still took trips on my own which had tighter budgets and were more adventurous, I was totally "playing it safe" compared to the travels I went on in my 20's and 30's.

Though there's still a part of me that has a deep desire to do something crazy out in the world.

And every once in a while I catch a travel video that has me thinking "How cool would THAT be??" Like this one...

Back in the day, I would have ignored my fear of heights and loved to do something like this. Except I probably couldn't have afforded to hire a guide and all paid for all the expenses that go into it. Which is why I never did something like this.

Now I could save the money to go, but am not in nearly good enough shape to make the hike. I'd have to hire two guides so they could drag me up the mountain.

Maybe something like this is more my speed?

Or maybe I've had enough adventure travel and staying at home is my ultimate vacation? It has been awful nice to not be haning around airports all the time and sleeping in my own bed.

So... probably.

I try my best to stay out of politics here any more because it's just not worth it. People are so divided that they're going to think what they're going to think and that's the end of it. You can't change people's minds because they've already bought into a narrative which makes it nigh-impossible to be heard. I've been attacked from all over the political spectrum because I don't adhere to a political party or worship politicians. I'm just a humanist who's critical of politics in general. And that? That's an attitude that's just not possible. Not any more. You have to pick a side.

It's a shame, really. Nobody is growing, learning, and sharing ideas. It's just surrounding yourself with an echo chamber and shouting down anything from the outside trying to get through. So I give up.

Except...

What's happening right now is just so fucking abhorrent that saying something... saying anything is critical.

Jon Stewart and his writers often have good takes on current events. Rational, smart, and researched with a biting humor, I anxiously wait to see if they can make sense of the senseless crap in our world. And in this case, they've absolutely nailed it. If you watch this video from first word to last, you'll know exactly where my head is at...

The hipocrisy and horror of what's happening is so fucking next level that I can't find the words to express just how mortified and angry I am.

And so I'm posting a video.

Which has undoubtedly already been ignored by the people who most need to hear it. They see Jon Stewart, know he's a leftist, and immediately dismiss it out of hand. It doesn't matter that his position here is not a political one. And it really isn't. Not this time. He's merely calling out liars, stating facts, and drawing an inevitable conclusion. But when the liars are people you worship and the facts don't fit the story you choose to believe... well... how could you allow yourself to hear it?

You might draw the same conclusion and have your entire worldview challenged.

And we can't have that.

Not any more.

The winner of the AI game could walk away with billions of dollars.

With a prize this huge, the competition is fierce. Scary fierce. And, as you can imagine, entirely too many assholes are going to stop at nothing to get ahead. They will fuck over however many people it takes and just not give a shit.

I'm still waiting for AI to be widely applied in any meaningful way. Right now it seems to be mostly theft. Stealing from artists. Stealing from writers. Stealing from media. Stealing from whatever can be stolen from. All so computers can learn how to generate fake stuff that looks like real stuff for people who don't want to put in the work to creating stuff for themselves.

The only thing I've heard of where AI has been beneficial is studying hurricane data to better predict where hurricanes will end up... and studying medical data to better diagnose X-rays and body scans. Stuff like that. No theft involved.

Other than that? I dunno. It sure as fuck hasn't been a benefit on my iPhone.

Maybe one day.

But anyway, getting back to the negatives. Here's something that should give everybody pause...

Also something that should give everybody pause?

AI deciding that humans are a threat to its existence and wiping everybody out with a nuclear war... Terminator-style!

Which is something that feels more like science-possibility than science-fiction with each passing day.

This is my third attempt at writing this post. I just can't seem to find the words. I keep using too many of them.

There are just ten actors that become an obsession for me. Betty White, Michael Clarke Duncan, Eloise Mumford, Alan Rickman, Angela Bassett, Sigourney Weaver, Samuel L. Jackson, Ryan Gosling, Charlize Theron... and Catherine O'Hara.

She's such a brilliant character actor. Everything she's ever done has been interesting. Just look at her IMDB page.

I loved her from her SCTV days. Then she just kept popping up. And every time she was as brilliant as I had come to expect. She could do anything.

But it was Moira on Schitt's Creek which sealed the deal for me...

I was extremely saddened to hear of her passing.

I'm absolutely gutted. I was really holding out for a Schitt's Creek movie or special or something. So many incredible roles by such a phenomenal talent.

You will be missed. Your works will live on.

Jake keeps getting more and more clingy.

He runs downstairs the minute he hears the garage door open, waits for me to walk in, then comes running up crying so I can stand there and pet him before I even have a chance to put my backpack down.

Then, after I've plopped on the couch and start working or whatever, Jake wants to sleep on me. And it's every day...

I've learned the hard way that you don't wake him up after he's started using you as a bed...

As for Jenny?

She basically just sits up in the cat tree and glares at Jake and me...

We think she's just being jealous.

I am on the brink of exhaustion, but that's not going to stop the bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Legotype! I never cease to be amazed at what people are able to build out of LEGO. This blows my mind...

It makes me want to get my LEGOs out of the garage and see what I can dream up. Ezcept I know that's going to do nothing but set me up for disappointment because I will never do anything as cool as create a fully-functional LEGO typewriter.

   
• He's a Wonder! I have mixed feelings on Wonder Man, the latest Marvel Studios series on Disney+. The concept is good and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ben Kingsley are sublime. But it also drags badly as it attempts to deconstruct the mindset of somebody with super-powers wanting to be normal who's striving for an acting career. Had they split the runtime between psychoanalysis and action, this could have been a home-run. But this is a Wonder Man series without any actual Wonder Man, and it's a problem...

They even cheaped out on the psychoanalysis by bringing up obstacles with a former girlfriend and a brother which just... fizzle (though the brother is a character from the comics who may make for an interesting second season character). One minute it's a huge worry (and even a cliffhanger!) and the next minute there's just a wet fart of a resolution which means nothing and earns nothing. Nobody learns anything. The conflict was artificial and banal. But, hey, the performances are a master-class and that's not nothing.

   
• Divorce! Instagram has been really pissing me off, because I'll copy a link... post it... then have Instagram show people a completely different video. So who the fuck knows what you're going to see below. Hopefully something funny, as I intended...

   
• A Toast! And if Instagram is feeling like showing you this video as intended, you'll see a skit set in Australia. But it really could be the USA, and I'm rather proud about that...

   
• It's the GOAT! Of all the rabbit holes to fall down... I fell down a baby goat hole...

Why are baby animals always so darn adorable? Are there any ugly baby animals? There's plenty of ugly babies, so I'm guessing there must be. Somewhere. But I'll bet they're so ugly they circle back around to being cute again.

   
• Truthiness! This is so infinitely relatable as to be frightening...

Or rather... more frightening than the state of the world already is.

   
• So Cold! Bobby Broccoli's Cold Fusion video series has been compiled into a single video. It's absolutely fascinating (as all his videos are). As a science geek, I remember very well when the Pons/Fleischmann experiment blew up... and ultimately collapsed. But I never really knew much past the headlines. Is this video 3 hours? Yes. But the time flies by, because it's got it all...

The very end of the video has snippets of an interview with Pons/Fleischmann that makes me really, really despise them. They are scummy "scientists" who betrayed scientific principles, lied to the scientific community, and wasted millions of dollars... but they were the victims? Lord. — Cold Fusion is a holy grail of science because the implications are so far-reaching for all humanity on this planet. I don't know if I want to live to see it... or if I'll be better off dead when it happens.

   
And now? Time for a nap.

I have contemplated quitting blogging more times than I can count. Now-a-days, it's because it just feels like a dead media. My blog proper is getting loads of traffic even today (mostly thanks to having 23 years of entries indexed by Google), but the interactivity which made the blogosphere such a fun place has been replaced by shitty fucking "social media."

But there was a day that the reason I wanted to quit was the negative comments.

People can be real assholes. For whatever reason. And it wears on you no matter how hard you try to not let it.

And I know it's because it's easier to be an asshole behind a computer than it is in real-life. And when there's zero chance for being confronted by the shitty stuff you say, being mean has high entertainment value. At least I'm assuming. Because I used to get a lot of nasty comments. And my way of dealing with it was to just delete them. And after people realized that I wasn't going to engage, the hate-comments went from a flood to a trickle.

Now I'm kinda indifferent to blogging... doing it more out of habit than anything else.

But I was reminded of The Dark Times as I've been revisiting all the old William Osman videos and saw this...

When I saw this years ago, I was going through yet another blogging crisis because my WordPress installation was randomly failing. As I was trying to navigate that hot mess, Blogography was under attack for something I said (likely something political, though I don't remember) and I was trying to deal with that as well. And at the forefront of my head was Why not fucking quit? Is any of this really worth it? Why am I even blogging anymore to begin with? And the video got me to thinking If somebody as awesome and cool as Big Willy is giving up, I would be a total dumbass to keep going... wouldn't I?

But William kept going and so did I. Don't ask me why.

And boy am I glad that William kept going.

I swear... I almost like his second channel more because he's just hanging out on his "farm" and doing crazy stuff instead of when he was just inventing things all the time. He's such a fascinating, interesting, talented, smart, hilarious, entertaining guy.

I mean...

These videos are just so... nothing. I mean he's doing stuff, but it's rarely anything of any consequence. He's just doing stuff because it seems fun to him...

His original channel is mostly dead. It hasn't been updated in 9 months and didn't get any significant updates in three years. But he did post a retrospective that's kinda fun...

This is not to say that Big Willy is without controversy. He's not always big on thinking things through before he says them... but you get the sense that he doesn't mean anything bad by it.

Which, of course, just makes me like him more.

If you're not getting in a little bit of trouble, you're probably not having much fun.

Blogging is dead though, so how much trouble can I actually get in?

I did not get much sleep last night.

Which is nothing new to me, because my chronic insomnia makes this just another normal day. I fell asleep around 11:30, woke up at 2:10am. Unable to fall back asleep, I grabbed my phone to doom-scroll social media. At which point Jenny came running in and jumped on my bed so she could get pets.

Since all the social media sites know that I live in Washington State, they naturally assume that I'm hyped because the Seattle Seahawks made it to the Superb Owl to play the Patriots. Which is not the least bit true. Football isn't my game, and I'm more excited to see the ads and what Bad Bunny's half-time show is like than watching the game. The Puppy Bowl and the Kitten Bowl are more important to me.

Now, if a miracle ocurred and The Kraken somehow made it to the Stanley Cup? Count me in for that.

But anyway... back to Seahawk mania.

Some of the stuff coming out of Seattle's good fortune is worth watching. My favorite so far is this one, which made me laugh all four times I watched it...

Interestingly enough, the Seahawks are actually favored to win the big prize! Something they've only done once before in 2014 (though this is the fourth time Seattle has been to the been to the big game, and back in 2015 they lost to the Patriots by 4 points).

I am happy that once the Superb Owl is over we can turn our attention back to hockey where it belongs.

Today I had to run to the Big City to get a haircut. Which is always awful.

Well, not the haircut... the drive to get there.

Despite the fact that Washington State has anti-distracted-driving laws, people 100% do not follow the law. Whether it's texting at a stoplight or watching YouTube videos while driving, people are insane. The average weight of a car in the USA is over 4,000 pounds. Not giving your entire attention to a machine which could easily kill somebody is beyond insane.

But pedestrians make me crazy too.

I was waiting at a crosswalk for somebody to cross the road.

They started across, but then stopped and stared at their phone in front of me.

Now, I have no idea what was going on and like to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to them existing. Maybe they got some terrible news and it shocked them so badly that they forgot they were in the middle of the street. Maybe they have a neurological condition where they can't concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Or maybe they just like torturing drivers by seeing how long it takes them to honk their horn or something. Anything's possible. And since I wasn't in any hurry I just sat there waiting for them to do something. Do anything...

Finally, the car behind me honked.

At which point the person continued crossing without even looking up from their phone.

Sooo... who knows? Maybe they were just a self-absorbed asshole who doesn't give a shit that there's people on the road trying to get somewhere. Maybe somewhere to save their life, like a hospital.

Or maybe they just need to get to their life-saving haircut appointment.

There's just no telling.

In order to get to the WordPress back-end which runs this blog, I have to go through two levels of security. This became necessary because Blogography is well-indexed on Google, and that makes it desirable internet real estate to advertise your crazy shit. People are always trying to break in to commandeer everybody's favorite place on the internet.

The second layer of protection is 2FA (2-Factor Authentication) where I have to enter a number from an authentication app on my phone. Once the code is accepted, I can post stuff and approve comments and all that. But every once in a while, the timing between WordPress and the authenticator gets skewed. Which means I can't get in. And the only way to fix it is to delete the 2FA plugin, log in, then reinstall the plugin. A pain in the ass to be sure, but something I have to do.

And Tuesday was the day. I went to post, couldn't get authenticated, and ended up not being able to get in.

So I pulled up my FTP app, went to delete the security plugin, and... couldn't get in. Apparently something was messed up indeed because I was out of my depth as to where to go from there. This evening I had time to figure it out, which involved a different 2FA which (thankfully) worked out.

And here we are. I can post again.

OR CAN I ?!?

The answer is "no." No I cannot. Everything I attempt to post will only save as a draft.

=sigh=

I don't know that I'm necessarily a "Swiftie," but I do like some of Taylor Swift's music. But where my appreciation really lives is her tour movies and her videos.

She really knows how to present her music in entertaining ways.

And here's me... in that moment half-way through the brand new video for Taylor's Opalite where I figured out exactly what's going on. And it's so good.

And if you watch to the very end, they tell you what's going on if you hadn't figured it out. In order to watch it, you have to see it on iTunes or Spotify. It will end up on YouTube this Sunday, but you can see a tiny piece of it on Taylor's YouTube video shorts right now UPDATE: And here you go...

It's pretty amazing how Tay-Tay's videos have become so brilliant after she started writing and directing them. And this one is no exception. Not necessarily for what's in it... but for the reason why what's in it is actually in it.

What blows my mind is how business-savvy she is about it all.

She's waited a very long time after releasing the first video from the album The Life of a Showgirl for the lead single Life of Ophelia. And it's because that video had such legs to it. There was no point putting out the second video until the first one started winding down. And I honestly don't know that it has, because people are still doing the "Ophelia Dance" on TikTok and the song is still on the charts. Though some people are coming up with their own dance...

But time marches on and she probably wants to get these videos out before her next album drops, which is likely just months away given how frequently she releases them. For heaven's sake, she made The Life of a Showgirl in the middle of her Eras Tour!

My cats have zero fucks left to give.

They've been sliding to this point for years, but it was so gradual that I didn't notice. Now it feels like it actually happened over months. Weeks even.

They want what they want and they want it now. And when it comes to what you want... like sleep? Oh hell no. You don't dare deny them what they want!

And while they do have sweet moments with each other like this...

Jake is a mean bear of a brother. If Jenny is sitting somewhere, he'll decide that he wants to sit there, then antagonize her to leave. Not long ago Jenny was laying at the foot of my bed and Jake decided that this is where he wanted to be, so he just goes over and sits on her. Jenny erupts in a flurry off hisses that seem to genuinely confuse Jake, then she smacks him and runs away because he won't leave.

Jake, for his part, then lays down and goes to sleep as if nothing happened.

But don't feel bad for Jenny.

Because she is happy to treat me exactly the same way.

It's me. I'm the one you should feel sorry for.

Congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks! You may be thinking that Bullet Sunday will be canceled because of the Superb Owl (I am not calling it by its real name because you can be sued for that), but you would be wrong... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Loot! This is not a Superb Owl commercial. It's a fake commercial from the television show Loot. And yet, it really should be a real commercial, because...

Can Maya Rudolph do any wrong? A completely serious question here.

   
• Doggy! If there's anything that will get me to go to the theater to see Supergirl, it's Baby Krypto...

I'm sure the rest of the movie is nice too.

   
• Daddy! I sure hope that Instagram is fucking working again and the right video is here, because damn!

Nothing beats a good joke before having to go back to work in the morning!

   
• Unreality. Watch this and be unshocked that this is how the world works...

Nobody and nothing matters more than corporate profits.

   
• Unreality: Part Two! Lest you think that the USA government is alone for being one of the most horrifically corrupt pile of shit on the face of the earth, here's a video for you. I swear, governments just don't seem like the ever operate in the best interest of the people they are supposed to be serving...

And now is where you fall down a Boy Boy rabbit hole like I did, because they have some phenomenal videos about things that will make you think. Assuming you have an open mind to do so.

   
• Together! I like it when content creators put some creativity in their stuff. This is pretty funny...

There's so many shitty content "creators" who just play other people's content and react to it. They don't even try. Yet they probably get gabillions more followers than people who put the effort in.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Trump wanted Dulles Airport, Penn Station named after him — in exchange for releasing federal funds. CAN YOU FOR EVEN FOR ONE SECOND IMAGINE WHAT THE REACTION WOULD HAVE BEEN IF OBAMA HAD TRIED SOMETHING LIKE THIS? CAN YOU? I MEAN, SERIOUSLY... CAN YOU JUST FUCKING IMAGINE???

   
And there you go. If you'll excuse me, I'm back to not watching the Superb Owl.

Books have been written about Gen X and our mentality when it comes to dealing with the world around us. I think way too much is put on the fact that we were incredibly independent due to being latchkey kids (meaning we came home from school to an empty house because our parents were both at work) and not enough put on how we were incredibly independent because we had disconnected lives. There were no mobile phones everywhere to keep us attached.

I remember very well how I could "go out to play" when I got home from school and just... disappear. I could walk downtown or to the park so long as I was back in the neighborhood before dinner. I could hang out with friends at their houses. I could run wild on the hill behind my house (and the rest of the block). When it was dinner time dad would whistle and, if I didn't hear it, the message would be passed on to me by other kids or (more likely) their parents. After dinner I could go back outside until the streetlights turned on. Then it was homework and television time until it was time for bed.

Being disconnected was a very powerful thing as a kid (and as adults, before mobile phones fucked things up).

I was thinking about that today when I saw a kid walking home from school talking on his mobile phone. Not a teenager, but a fairly young kid.

He was never out of touch... unless his battery died.

No matter where he wanders, he's never more than a phone call away from his parents. Or even his friends, assuming they had access to a phone with which to call him.

It just seemed so... odd... to me.

When I was a kid, you made plans with your friends for after school face-to-ace while you still could. Otherwise, you might not be able to find them. You wrote notes. You left word with others. You called and left messages somewhere. It was a different world. But we adapted to it because it was all we knew.

In that respect, I'm glad that I grew up as a Gen X kid. It was the last generation of true freedom.

Not having something stupid or embarrassing I did go viral for the entire world to see is just icing on the cake.

For the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around the Bad Bunny hate that's ongoing.

I've been a fan of his music since I first heard Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana (YHLQMDLG), which was the album of 2020 during the pandemic. But I've been a fan of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio since his appearance in Bullet Train where he was fantastic. They wrote his character a good backstory and gave him an awesome fight scene.

He appeared on Carpool Karaaoke which was fun. Just look at James Cordon having a blast here...

And he hosted SNL twice where he was charming and funny from beginning to end...

His Jeopardy sketch was so good...

But I think my favorite sketch of his was this one...

Or maybe this one...

But when it comes to the Superb Owl halftime show... what more could you fucking want? He's from Puerto Rico, which makes him all-American. He's a multi-platinum artist whose music is popular around the world. He's a phenomenally talented performer, in any language. And he has good videos for his songs...

I thought his halftime set was amazing. He put on a fantastic show. And it was nice to have something different. On top of all that, if anybody would take two minutes to Google it, he told a story which is special to him.

But he sings in Spanish, so everybody unloads, like this xenophobic racist piece of shit...

And, as usual, it's Jon Stewart who had the perfect perspective on it all...

The United States of America is a MELTING POT. We are a mix of cultures and faiths and backgrounds and beliefs and languages which make us stronger together. Bad Bunny's show was an opportunity to let loose and have fun with a guy giving it his all to entertain us. You didn't need to understand the lyrics, everybody could just enjoy the vibe. Join in and celebrate what was handed to us. But oh no. If it's not somebody singing about beer, pickup trucks, and shooting guns, it's "UnAmerican."

How fucking sad.

Could somebody refresh my memory... was there this kind of faux-outrage when the Macarena by Los Del Río was topping the music charts? This has to be the stupidest manufactured outrage I've ever seen. There's serious shit going on, but let's all be distracted by the music at a fucking football game. Okay.

Jesus.

Fortunately the voice of reason came from fucking Elmo, of all people... errr... Muppets...

Amen to that, little monster.

One more thing about the Mr. Good Bunny Superb Owl show before I move on...

I love that the guy who got married at Bad Bunny's Superb Owl halftime show is just a guy. A nurse, from the looks of it. Not some social media influencer or other nonsense (he's gained Instagram followers since his wedding, but he's only posted some random pics).

This is just a guy who had Lady Gaga and Bad Buny sing at his wedding in the biggest televised event of the year. And his new wife's Instagram is private. So... yeah... influencer-free and perfect...

Photo from Tommy's Instagram

One thing you can't deny is that they're an adorable couple...

Photo from Tommy's Instagram

Photo from Tommy's Instagram

The entire show was a celebration of love and joy, but Benito sings in Spanish, so let's shit all over it, I guess. Gotta keep the faux outrage machine churning to distract everybody from the actual problems plaguing us.

Back when I used to travel constantly, I took my laptop and had all my work files on Dropbox so they were accessible no matter where I was at.

But my personal files back at home were problematic. I'd go to look at some of my photos while on the road and the Plex server would glitch. I'd be on vacation somewhere and find that I couldn't reach my files back home. It was a serious problem, because sometimes the files or documents I needed were urgent. I once had to have a friend run to my house, print out a document, take a photo of it, and send it to me while I was rushing around an airport. Not fun at all.

So when I traded in my old NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive for a new one, a priority was figuring out how to have a clean tunnel back to my house for whatever I needed to do.

I was about ready to give up when I saw TailScale mentioned in a NAS forum. For personal use it's free, so I really had nothing to lose.

It took some doing to get everything working on my NAS (it's not a click-and-install deliverable, so you have to learn how to run it as a Docker container), but once you get things running? You have your own personal network between all your devices! Just install the client app on your computers and phones and whatever via a VPN, then point your apps to the private address assigned to them, and you're done!

Now I can watch my videos streaming from my Plex server with zero issues (this is something that has always been problematic via Plex itself). I can use my iPhone to look at all my photos being indexed and served from Immich with ease. My personal document library is available anywhere I have internet. And Tailscale is blazingly fast about it, which is so nice.

If you're wanting to have a private network where all your devices can talk to each other securely, then Tailscale might be for you. All the information you need is on their website. And if you're looking for a VPN solution for your work, then Tailscale seems reasonably priced.

I said I was done with commenting on Bad Bunny's Halftime Show, but the hate... it just won't stop.

The things people are saying just blow my fucking mind. On top of the blatantly racist hot takes on somebody daring to sing in Spanish during the Superb Owl... or denying that Puerto Rico is a part of the USA when it's a US territory... and now we've got next-level racism coming at him in the form of The Great Replacement Theory? What the ever-loving fuck?

Just look at this bullshit...

"America first."

Puerto Rico is a part of "America"... a territory of "The United States of America." So what the fuck are you even talking about, you dipshit white supremacist piece of shit? This country's entire purpose is to be a melting pot of cultures. I wonder if this asshole makes similar declarations for Oktoberfest celebrations around the country? Probably not... that's European and white. It's just Cinco de Mayo, Bad Bunny, or anything where people are celebrating while non-white.

Meanwhile, Bad Bunny just goes about being the adorable human being he is.

Like he was when he went on Hot Ones last year...

Yeah. Tell me again how this guy is a threat to American "culture."

Bad Bunny is American culture.

Welcome to another Caturday Pupperday!

I am in Kansas City, far from my cats, so I'm having to make due with Aaron and Henry's dogs this time. It made for a nice change given how adorably enthusiastic dogs are to see you when compared to cats. Especially when you find out just how little dogs seem to care about respecting personal space. I had dogs all over me, and it was pretty great...

The first lapdog was a (relatively) small poodle who was very polite. Just wanted to sit on my lap for a while and be petted...

Fortunately, when my lapdog left, there was a backup lapdog to take their place...

Then a backup to my backup lapdog entered the picture...

And then a backup for my backup's backup lapdog entered the picture. Absolutely no understanding of physical space. Climbed right up on my lap, my chest, my face, and eventually my head...

Then it was a big change in a small package. I had met Asher when Aaron and Henry were living in San Francisco. She patiently waited her turn for pets as a replacement backup lapdog...

Then it was time for a brief return of one of the backups for belly rubs...

Meanwhile, back at home, the home security system alerted me that Jake and Jenny were sleeping.

No worries I'm sure when I return on Sunday afternoon they will be upset that I smell like dog, but eventually wanting lap time of their own.

I've said my good bye to Aaron, have returned home from Kansas City, and am more exhausted than I can process, but never you fear about bullets gone missing... because a Very Special Ace Fontana Memorial Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• It's a Cluster! I headed to Seattle on Wednesday afternoon and spent the night at the airport so I wouldn't have to stress about making my morning flight (Seattle traffic can be notorious). And all day Wednesday and very early Thursday, I was desperately trying to check in with Alaska Air, but couldn't. Worried that something was wrong, I got to the airport three hours early for my 8:21am flight. And was met with a massive crowd of people. Nobody could check in. You had to stand in line for hours to get a boarding pass, and it was so badly organized that nobody really knew what to do. I barely made my flight. — Look, I know technology goes wrong sometimes... but when you have ZERO plans for how to handle things when it does (especially when you knew there was a problem the previous day) that's a serious fucking oversight. I love Alaska Airlines, but this was one of the biggest cluster-fucks I've ever seen in 45 years of travel. That's saying something.

   
• In Remembrance! Aaron's Celebration of Life was well-attended, and there were two things I took away from it: 1) Aaron touched a lot of people, and if only a fraction were able to be there, we may never know how many people that is... and 2) It was sobering to find out that our friendship, which I thought was atypically special, wasn't all that unique at all. Everybody there felt as though their friendship was atypically special. How many people have the ability to make most every person they meet feel like that?

His 51st birthday is on Tuesday and, as I found out on Saturday, it's hard to celebrate his life without him in it.

   
• Arena KC! Aaron's band performed at his celebration, which was bittersweet. Made even more so because they had just completed a new promo video last month...

A rock star from start to finish.

   
• An Aaron By Any Other Name! While I was waiting for my plane in Kansas City, I was looking through the many, many photos I had collected of Aaron over the years. One caught my eye, because it was double-Aaron...

I first knew him by his blogging handle, Jester. Then I knew him by his name, Paul. Then I knew him by his stage name, Ace. And then I knew him by his middle name, Aaron, which he took as his name because he thought he was more an Aaron than a Paul. But no matter what I was calling him, he was always a great friend.

   
• FindMy! It's interesting to note that the only person I've ever had in Apple's "FindMy" service was Aaron. Because we were either meeting up when I was in town for work or we were meeting up in some random city with other people, it was just easier to use the technology of the day to make our lives easier...

I don't think I ever bothered to open the app unless I was specifically trying to find him. Which is a shame. Because if I had opened it when I was in Anaheim last February, I would have seen that he was in the city at the same time. But, alas, I never knew he was there until he saw that I was in the city and texted after I had already flown home.

   
• The Football! My hotel was across the highway from Arrowhead. Just think how close I was to where Taylor Swift likes to watch her boyfriend play football!

Of course that's also where she played her KC stop for the Eras Tour. And where Travis Kelce attended the show in order to try and give her a friendship bracelet, which is far more historically significant than some silly sportsball game.

   
• MCI! I love Kansas City International Airport. It's beautifully maintained. It's smartly organized. There's plenty of places to sit. There's good variety of things to eat. It's just a generally great place to fly into and out of. In other words, the complete opposite of the shit-show that Seattle-Tacoma International has become. =sigh= I probably wouldn't be so jealous if only Seattle didn't keep ripping out seats to put in retail shops... and could manage to keep all the escalators running for more than five fucking minutes.

   
• Bright Light! Bright Light! For nearly a decade I had to stop driving in the dark because I couldn't see properly. Even the smallest light source would flare out and obliterate everything. Then I got the lenses in my eyes replaced and, suddenly I could see at night again. Driving back across the mountains from Seattle in the dark was a relaxing experience... except not really. It's shocking (or not) how many people drive with their brights on. And though it doesn't blind me any more like it used to, it is irritating. Whether they are coming at me or are behind me (or coming at me with regular lights and then turn on their brights before they fully pass), it's set me back to square one. I don't remember it being like this before I stopped driving at night but, given the way things are going, I shouldn't be surprised.

   
And now I really should get some sleep. Or try to.

Sucked in again!

I haven't had access to Hallmark Channel since May 2024, but wanted a mindless watch on my flight home. So I ended up buying a movie called The Royal We for a bargain $8 on the iTunes Store. I picked it because I really like Mallory Jansen.

Turns out it's everything you could want in a Hallmark flick. It was so good that it instantly became one of my favorite Hallmark flicks. Sure it's the tired old "I'M SECRETLY A PRINCESS" movies, but that's not really the focus, which was a refreshing change. They also bypassed the "I'm so goofy and inept" idiocy that plagues secret royal movies. Nice.

SO... if you've been missing my Hallmark reviews and you're looking for a great Hallmark watch, here's your film.

You're welcome!

It is astonishing to me the mental gymnastics that people are doing in order to justify protecting pedophiles. I would have never in a million years have thought that people would ever endorse such a thing.

And yet here we are.

And I have no fucking clue why. The further down the rabbit hole I fall, the more inexplicable it becomes.

And, no, Pam Bondi did not actually say this. But her actions make it clear she might say this.

In all honesty... does a system deserve to stand if it built around protecting those who would sexually assault children?

Hell no.

So burn this mother-fucker down. I don't give a shit who gets prosecuted or what the consequences are.

I worked a very long day, but after arriving home I couldn't help but feel as though it was Sunday and the end of my weekend. No idea why. Maybe it's because I traveled all day Sunday, and Monday was a holiday for me? Whatever the case, all my plans to clean house, unpack my suitcase, and wash clothes went out the window because I felt displaced and exhausted.

So I caught up on A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms instead.

I wish I remembered more about the book, but that was 25 years ago. From what little I do remember, the series is faithful to the source material. I don't remember the flashbacks in the fifth episode, but I appreciate that they tried to flesh out Ser Duncan as a character with a backstory which fit nicely into the battle.

With one episode left to go, I am hopeful that they don't fuck it up at the end. The awful taste of the final season of Game of Thrones is still in my mouth, so you can forgive me having doubts.

One thing I can't get over is just how impeccably cast the leads are. Peter Claffey as Dunk and Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg are just too good to be true...

With each episode they do not falter. The show could have so very easily collapsed under a shitty child lead, but dang is he good. Duncan the Tall is a character that could have gone badly wrong if the actor didn't have a subtlety that felt authentic, but Claffey feels like he's inhabiting the character in a way that works for the series every minute he's on-screen. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms makes you appreciate brilliant casting at a level many shows can only hope to reach.

And, on that note, I guess I'll try to get some sleep.

Something which, understandably, hasn't been easy for me after my sojourn to Kansas City.

On New Year's Day I did something a little crazy. I ordered all the movies I own by their release date, then started watching them in order from oldest to newest.

It's quite an enjoyable way to be entertained. I started with the oldest movie in my collection, The Thin Man (1934), then moved on through The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), North by Northwest (1959), and a slew of James Bond movies (plus 2001: A Space Odyssey). From there the 70's came along, which included a slew of classics (like Star Wars, Grease, Foul Play, Death on the Nile, Superman: The Movie, Alien, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Airplane)...

...and then the 80's hit with The Empire Strikes Back and then Xanadu (1980)...

I am not a fan of musicals. But I loved A) Olivia Newton John, B) Electric Light Orchestra, and C) Greek mythology... so I saw it in the theater with friends when I was in high school. While not a great movie, it was an entertaining spectacle with phenomenal music.

And beautiful Olivia Newton John in that amazing dress she wore, of course.

Every night since I saw the film 46 years ago, I've said a little prayer to Zeus that these dresses come back into fashion. Because, damn...

No joke. The muses wouldn't be sexier if they were naked. Yeah, the wardrobe is very 80's... but I think that's why I'm so into it. It's retro-chic-sexy in a way that we never quite got back to. Even animated...

And of course I fell down a rabbit hole...

The movie actually plays better in 2026 than it did when it was released somehow.

The other day I got an email from somebody who was reading through all my posts from the start. This is something even I am not brave enough to do, so I commend them on their bravery.*

But anyway...

New Blogography reader Jacob pointed out that I invented the "low fare calendar" in 2005 before airlines started using low fare calendars...

Interesting to note that I was using Northwest Airlines as an example, but that airline doesn't even exist because this was 20 years ago!

Kinda funny. I wonder what other stuff is rolling around on this blog that I should have patented when I had the chance?

   
*Though I've often thought that I should go through all my 23 years of entries and do a series of posts where I comment on them with updates or whatever. How fun would that be?

I talk to my cats... like... all the time. Especially when they talk to me.

They answer back but, don't worry, I'm not pretending I can understand them. At least not yet. It's entirely possible that sometime in the future I'll finally have that mental break that will take me all the way.

Because I reply to my cats when they talk to me, they are talking more and more. Jenny will alter how she meows based on whether she's mad, happy, hungry, wanting to be petted, or is frustrated. Her "mad" meow is very noticeably different than everything else she says. So she's fairly easy to decode.

Jake, on the other hand, just squawks. He can't meow for some reason. Which means I have no idea what's going through his furry little head and have to guess. Usually he wants attention. But sometimes he is looking for a toy or wants food... and it's a matter trial and error to get him figured out.

Ever since I got back from Kansas City, Jake has been spending a lot of time sitting on me. Assumably because he doesn't want me to leave again...

Fortunately, the only "leaving" I will be doing for quite a while is going to work. But I'll be back at the end of the day so I can be pinned to my couch.

Insomnia has been kicking my ass, but I'm not letting that stop me... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Punch-kun! I ran across the tragic story of the macaque snow monkey "Punch-kun" because I still follow Japanese news. Punch was abandoned my his mother and took comfort in an IKEA stuffed orangutan named "Djungelskog." There were numerous photos of the poor little guy doing his best to find acceptance and love from a plushie...

But then, after days on his own, he finally got a hug from one of his troop...

So that's nice. Especially after the shit-show of a week we've had.

   
• Whither Pixar? When Onward was released in 2020, it was a turning point for me when it came to Pixar. With one exception, I didn't like any of these films. And I never really understood why. I never bothered to search my feelings to understand what it was about Pixar that was turning me off. Then this morning I saw this...

And there it is. The reason there's one exception to Pixar from 2020 onward? It's because I've been to the coastal Italian towns which inspired the film Luca. I have a personal connection to the movie because I can draw on an experience that I've had. It's also why I can like a movie like Elio, but not fall in love with it.

   
• Dave Smash! I've been a big Morningstar Farms fan since becoming vegetarian decades ago. I veered away to Boca Burger for my burgers because they had superior taste and mouthfeel, but after Kraft bought them out and fucked up the recipe, I went back to Morningstar Grillers. They aren't great, and you have to know how to cook them so the texture isn't awful, but at least I'm not gagging them down. And then... Beyond Meat released Beyond Stack Burgers...

Now, I should say that Beyond does make an actual smash burger product, but they're not sold near me and aren't meant to be frozen (though you can), which means you have to eat them the day you open the package. The "stack" version always come frozen and are meant to stay frozen until used. Which means I don't have to eat them all after opening the package. But anyway... I found that I can get the Beyond Stack Burgers locally (well, 25-minutes away locally, but still). I absolutely love these burgers. A little high in sodium (260mg per patty), but not atrocious. They also cook weird, with a strange foamy residue in the pan, but the results are tasty enough when you smash them that I just don't care. As a bonus, Beyond has packaging that actually works... unlike shitty Morningstar Farms packaging which I hate, hate, hate.

   
• Thor Tells Jokes! I really want to see this standup as a special... where is Netflix when you really need them?

Hearing this makes me want to watch Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King again. It's a highly personal work which happens to be very, very funny. And touching.

   
• The Dow! The Dow! This is an absolute banger...

I couldn't even watch the hearing because Bondi is a gaping fucking asshole. Instead of using her position to serve the American people and seek justice, she's conspiring to protect child predators. She's such a massive pile of lying fucking shit that any time she speaks I see red, so I don't put myself in a position to watch. Thanks to this video, I can see the highlights in a way that doesn't make me want to hide under my bed and start screaming.

   
• SANDIWARA! Given my love of all things Michelle Yeoh, I was thrilled when a friend shared this with me...

The comments having people saying this should be a Malaysian tourism video. I cannnot disagree. This definitely makes me want to visit Penang (I've only ever been to Kuala Lumpur in the country).

   
• Finalizada! Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família... AKA the Sagrada Familia basilica, is finally nearing completion. After 144 years...

Fascinating. I've visited Sagrada Familia three times over a 20 year span. It never seemed like it was any closer to being completed. Now that we're so close, it feels like it might be time to visit Barcelona again. Not that I need an excuse... it's one of my favorite cities on earth.

   
• Sci-Fi Entertainment! This list isn't perfect, but dang if it doesn't make me want to re-watch every one of these films...

Even though I've already seen all of them more than once. Some of them many times.

   
And now back to needing more sleep.

Last Friday I had a meeting for work in The Big City. I didn't finish in time to get back to the office before quitting time, so I decided to go to Petco for kitty litter and then Costco. I renewed my decade-long-expired membership to support them after they decided to say "Fuck your anti-DEI bullshit," but haven't actually shopped in a store. Instead I bought a few things via Mail Order.

I was surprised that now you scan your membership card to get in the store instead of showing it to a door guard. Though there's still a door guard because my membership didn't have a digital photo attached. They asked me if I wanted a physical card and I declined because I assumed I could add a digital card to my Apple Wallet. But you can't? You have to use the Costco app. Oh well.

Because it was a Friday at 3:30, Costco was incredibly busy. Way, way too busy for me to be comfortable.

Because the more people in a place, the bigger the possibility you're going to run into assholes.

And assholes I did find. Three incidents stand out...

1. The couple who KEPT. BLOCKING. THE. AISLES. I ran to another part of the store... twice... because of this asshole couple. And it didn't matter. I would run back into them again eventually. PULL YOUR FUCKING CART OVER TO THE SIDE AND DON'T BLOCK ENTRANCES/EXITS TO AISLES! It's fundamentally stupid that this even has to be explained. But people like this don't give a shit because they don't give a fuck about anybody but themselves. It was especially awful because it was so busy.
2. Racism. Because of course. I was standing in the cracker & chip aisle looking for crackers. Next to me was a couple talking to somebody in Spanish. They were bothering nobody. Oh... wait... racist pieces of shit are always bothered, and as a couple rounded the corner, they were compelled to say "I'm tired of hearing Mexican. They're everywhere." Because apparently "Mexican" is a language now? Well, I'd rather hear people speaking "Mexican" than hearing them speaking hatred on people who are just existing. So whatever.
3. I do not work here. A man diverted his shopping cart towards me and asked me a question. I replied that I didn't know. And he said "Oh. You don't work here?" which I found odd. Then, not ten minutes later, a different man rolled up to me and said "Do you work here?" When I responded in the negative, he barked "THEN WHY DON'T YOU HAVE A CART?!?" And I was thinking "Excuse me? You are required to have a cart to shop here?" And you know what I did? I went and got a frickin' cart to put my crackers in.

An asshole-unrelated problem is that Costco isn't laid out very well. When the checkout lines back up, they completely cut off the snack aisles at the front of the store. This is probably a good thing for me... I don't need to be eating loads of snacks... but it is disappointing. Who knows what tasty goodness I could have discovered.

So... yeah... thus ended my adventure in Costco.

You could not pay me to watch the State of the Union address. I am so done with the hate and lies that I don't have the fortitude to endure it.

Especially knowing that the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy... a non-partisan non-profit organization who does analysis on the taxes we pay... reminds us that unless you're a millionaire or billionaire where your taxes went down, you're paying more fucking taxes now, and have less to show for it because you're losing government services so that millionaires and billionaires can pay less...

You can read all the depressing details on their site here.

In other words, the people who can least afford to pay more are paying more, and the people who have an ungodly amount of money are paying less. Which shows you exactly who the current administration is working for... the top 5% of us. So I hope you have a fucking shit-ton of money so you're getting some kind of benefit out of the shit-show that's become our daily reality.

Shocker.

It's just like where all the economists said that the illegal tariffs will worsen the economy. Then that's exactly what happened, and people are all "HOW COULD WE HAVE KNOWN THIS WOULD HAPPEN?" Well, maybe trusting a guy who could bankrupt a fucking casino would be a good start.

Or you could have just read Project 2025, where everything that's been done was spelled out with alarming clarity.

So... what am I doing if I'm not watching television?

1. Cleaning my toilets because if I don't, hard water stains will build up.
2. Drilling holes in my wall so I can install an in-wall cable kit.

And then I'm going to try to get some sleep. Or try to while knowing I'm paying more in taxes so billionaires can have a better life.

One Beyond Meat "Stack" Burger? Delicious! Wonderful! One of my favorite things to eat! Seriously, I like them better than an Impossible Whopper, which is something I didn't think was possible.

"Diarrhea after eating Beyond Meat is often caused by the product's high fat content (coconut oil), fiber, or specific, highly processed ingredients like pea protein and methylcellulose, which can cause digestive upset. Users reported symptoms like stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting."

Well alrighty then!

Guess I won't be eating my "Stack" burger... um... stacked, because that was a never-ending experience I don't want to re-live any time soon. Fortunately my medicine cabinet was stocked up with Imodium. This is an excellent dieting tool. It forces you to eat only one. And if you can't resist and end up eating more than one, then you'll shit yourself stupid, thus you'll end up with the calories of less than one!

I gotta say, this is a crazy turn of events. For my entire life I've traveled the world eating dicey foodstuffs from even dicier places and was never worse for wear. But now I cook a veggie burger and end up glued to the toilet.

Say! Maybe Beyond Burgers could be used as a delicious colonoscopy prep! And now...

   
DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! TOO MUCH INFORMATION FOLLOWS!

Do you want to know how I knew it was the Beyond Burgers causing my explosive diarrhea? It smelled like Beyond Burgers! My bathroom reeked of deliciousness! Kinda. I guess.

Yesterday I wrote about my... um... "experience" when I ate two Beyond Burgers instead of my usual one. In case you missed it, my "experience" was explosive diarrhea.

Am I discouraged? No. I will still be eating Beyond Burgers, just in moderation. The taste is too good to be true, and it's the best veggie burger I've ever had. Even if I can only eat them one at a time.

But what about their latest product? Take a look at this...

I was never much of a steak connoisseur, even when I ate meat... 40 years ago April. Probably because, unlike hamburger, steak looked too much like meat. But I am interested in having something new, so I'll be giving it a try.

Once it's in stores.

Because right now it's only available in a 10/$100 at the Beyond Test Kitchen.

Which is tempting, because the reaction has been pretty positive...

I just worry that eating one will cause my ass to explode, so I'd rather wait so I'm not flushing $100 down the toilet.

Literally.

I've been plagued by a looming sense of dread all week. No idea what that's all about... other than the usual news cycle... but Im really ready for it to be over. Maybe I need a distraction?

After Jury Duty changed everything about a reality television series, it's hard to believe that anybody would fall for it again, but here we go...

I am hopeful.

Jury Duty was phenomenal entertainment, and if Company Retreat is even half as good, I'll be thrilled to tune in for it.

And, to be honest, being "thrilled" to be doing anything now-a-days is a nice change.

Well, Jake's clinginess is apparently here to stay. Usually after I get back from a trip, it will last four or five days... maybe a week. But it's been two weeks since I got back from Kansas City, and he's still all over me whenever I'm home.

Not that I can really complain. Who doesn't like having a warm kitty on their lap when it's cold out?

But now that it's getting warmer every day?

One day soon, when it's hot out and I'm too cheap to turn on the air conditioner, I will likely feel different about Jake sleeping on top of me.

Though I should probably enjoy every minute while I can. Boo-Bear won't be around forever.

And neither will I.

Don't think that yet another war started by the "president of peace" and chairman of the "board of peace" who campaigned on a promise "no more wars" will send me into a rage so fucking deep that I can't blog... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Health is Overrated! There's a fuck-ton of idiocy in the news this week, but I'm going to focus on one. Wanting an anti-science, anti-vax, medical residency drop-out dipshit grifter social media influencer as your fucking Surgeon General. No big deal. Just the health of all Americans at stake. Jesus Christ.

   
• Classic Dutch: Expert spots vulnerability in Dutch national security, gets trolled with a souvenir t-shirt for his efforts. "So I notified the Dutch CERT that a Dutch ship was using a satellite router with a default password and that it was exposed to the internet. They notified me that the vulnerability was mitigated and asked for my address to send me a T-shirt. At first I was worried, but today I received the shirt."

This is epic. Dutch government +1000 points. No notes.

   
• Cuteness Overload! I'LL TAKE FIVE!!!

Though I'm not sure how the cats would react. Probably not well.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features. And it's fucking absurd if everybody else doesn't follow suit. We are getting to a point where AI can render new realities. Do you want anybody to be able to use your likeness to have you doing whatever they can dream up and it looks convincing enough that people think it's really you? Kids in school are already taking their own lives because assholes are releasing deepfakes of them in horrific scenarios, and the sooner we start introducing severe penalties for abuse the better.

   
• No Freedom for You! This story appeared in my Facebook feed a couple days ago: "Trans man jumps in frigid lake & saves baby from drowning: 'I wasn’t going to let that baby die'" — Could have just said "man" but okay.

Then right after that, this story appeared: "Kansas is suspending the driver's licenses of trans people. Just abject cruelty. Nazis also revoked identity documents from trans people."

What the fuck is it about trans people merely existing that makes people become total assholes? They're just trying to live their life the best they can with the cards they were dealt, so why the endless persecution? Why in the so-called "land of the free" can't they be free to be who they are?

   
• Shitter! Oh God. I knew Twitter was awful... but I had no idea. The second half of this video is terrifying...

The death and destruction caused by bullshit and lies promoted on Twitter is cause to shut it the fuck down.

   
• Political Inaction! I am not wired to handle physical credit cards and ID cards. Despite trying real hard to keep them all in the same place, I keep losing them. Which is why I love my Apple Wallet and Apple Pay. But some cards don't work with it. Including my Driver's License... because the fucking assholes in Washington State government are looking for more ways to tax us instead of doing shit that will make our lives easier. Mississippi has digital licenses, but the state claiming to be a bastion of technology doesn't? A bill has been in legislative hell for THREE YEARS without movement. Fucking useless politicians. Especially stupid given that this is a bipartisan bill It was sponsored by both parties: Mark Mullet (D), Phil Fortunato (R), Chris Gildon (R), Marko Liias (D), Joe Nguyen (D), Jamie Pedersen (D), Claire Wilson (D). God how I fucking hate political idiocy. We've also voted to make Daylight Saving Time permanent... that's going nowhere too. JUST GET THIS SHIT DONE!

   
• When it absolutely, positively, has to be a pain in the ass! Remember when you could just call FedEx, tell them you had a package to pick up, and they would take care of it? Not any more. I spend 40 minutes trying to get a package picked up. Couldn't do it. The company that sent me the label tried for an additional half hour. Couldn't do it. It's insane. You can't even go online and do it because you have to have an account or some other stupid crap. Service has gone right out the window. I used to love FedEx... now I outright loathe dealing with their bullshit.

   
And now back to yet another war, already in progress. Ironic that our commander in chief is calling upon the Iranian people to rise up against the government when Americans can't even fucking protest the government (as guaranteed in our Constitution) without getting fucking shot.

"I found what you're looking for... but you're not going to like it."

I've been wanting to frame the Disney pin lanyards that my mom and I got from our Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos trip. But I've hard a really tough time finding a shadow box frame long enough to display both the lanyard and the Angkor Wat visitor permit like I wanted... WITH REAL GLASS AND NOT ACRYLIC. I fucking hate acrylic, and it's most of what's sold now. The crap attracts dust like a magnet and scratches ridiculously easily.

But then a friend called to tell me that they saw what I was looking for at fucking Hobby Lobby. A place that disgusts me because of the owner's horrific politics. So I stopped in and, sure enough, there they were. The perfect frames. Exactly what I've been looking for. After trying to find something for years, I just bit the bullet and bought them... knowing full well that I'll be making a donation to Planned Parenthood in Hobby Lobby's name to offset the damage done by giving them my money.

They do look great. Though I'd like to replace the backing velvet with a deep blue so the black lanyard can be seen (instead of blending with the black velvet that's there now)...

I wish that such an abhorrent company like Hobby Lobby hadn't run all the competition out of business. I use them as only a last resort, but I'd rather not use them at all.

I should have tried to make my own, but I've only made frames... never shadow boxes.

Next time maybe.

Today was supposed to be a boring entry on the apps that I've got installed on Docker for my NAS. I had it all ready to go yesterday. All I needed to do was proofread it. And then I saw a news article that made my blood boil, so you're getting a rant instead.

I'll post the article in the next paragraph. But first I am compelled to tell you that I fucking loathe the US Congress. And, if not for them, this rant wouldn't be necessary. Here's the article...

British Columbia adopts permanent daylight saving time; western Washington an hour behind November through March — A shitty headline, because it's all of Washington. Not just "western Washington." But the article was probably written by an AI bot which thinks that western and eastern Washington are in different time zones, so what-the-fuck-ever.

Washington State would be right there with our brothers in the Province to the North of us (back in 2019!), thanks to RCW 1.20.052. But since Congress is FUCKING USELESS, we can't actually make the change. The best we can do is ignore Daylight Saving (like Hawaii and Arizona do) which doesn't require Congressional approval. But that would suck. And so... here we are... having to hope that Congress will eventually stop wasting time protecting assholes in the Epstein Files and other crap so they can get to the stuff that's been sitting on their docket FOR OVER SIX FUCKING YEARS.

Like not dicking around with the clocks twice a year. Something stupid as hell in the Year of Our Lord 2026.

So much for "States Rights." There is absolutely no end to my seething fucking hatred of Congress. And most politicians, really.

Anyway. See you again tomorrow, when you'll get that thrilling article on Docker.

Unless I read something in the news that sets off another rant. Which, let's face it, is extremely likely.

WARNING: This entry contains technical stuff most people won't care about!

Once I had finally saved enough money to replace my aging QNAP NAS (Network Attached Storage) system with shiny new UGREEN devices, I was dismayed to find that some of the apps I relied on were not available in their app repository. "ZOMG! WHERE'S PLEX?!?!" I screamed. "HOW CAN YOU SELL A NAS THAT DOESN'T HAVE PLEX?!?" Sure QNAP was always late to the table with updates to their apps, but at least they had apps.

Enter Docker...

"Docker is an open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly. Docker provides the ability to package and run an application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. The isolation and security let you run many containers simultaneously on a given host. Containers are lightweight and contain everything needed to run the application, so you don't need to rely on what's installed on the host."

Or, to put it another way, Docker lets you run the apps that aren't in your NAS's app repository.

Now, before I dig into it, there is something I've learned about Docker. Primary of which is that a lot of people are moving away from it because it's gotten bloated and resource hungry. There are even lighter alternatives being developed which do the same thing more efficiently. But none of them are in the UGREEN app repository like Docker is, and I don't want to take the time to learn how to manually install them. So here I am running Docker.

Not that Docker is easy, mind you.

Things can get very tricky when trying to install apps, even when you are following a step-by-step guide you found on the internet. You're still going to have to deal with SSH and config files (called "compose.yml") and other stuff that ain't a point-and-click process. You will have to get your hands dirty and that can be frustrating. I can say that the more you use Docker, the easier it gets.

The important thing to note is that despite some difficulties, I do have my apps up-and-running on my NAS now. I'm going to drop those apps here in case I ever need to refer back...

• Portainer. This is an app which let's you more easily manage apps with Docker. Something which is very much welcome. Half the tutorials I've found on the internet to install, alter, and maintain Docker apps use Portainer, so it should be the first thing you install.
• Watchtower. Updating your Docker apps can be a challenge, because you have to remember to log into your NAS often so you can see what needs to be updated. Watchtower handles this for you, grabbing the latest versions and installing them automatically.
• Pi-Hole. This is a "DNS sinkhole" that also allows you to do nice things like block ads on websites. Though I've found more and more websites are finding ways around being blocked by coding ads as if they're a part of the page, so it's not as useful as it once was.
• TailScale. This wholly remarkable app allows you to create a VPN (Virtual Private Network) between all your devices. This means you can securely access them as if you're sitting at home. I've installed it on everything from phone to laptop to tablet to every desktop I use, and it's fantastic. No more setting up wacky holes in your network to access stuff remotely. Lock everything down and let TailScale handle it! Whether I'm using Apple Screen Sharing to control my work computer from home... or feeding data to my iPhone from some service I have installed on my NAS, it's all just... there.
• Plex. The main reason I installed Docker was for Plex, the app I use to catalog and serve all my media (from videos to photos to music). It wasn't the easiest thing to get set up but, once I did, I just added the TailScale address for my NAS to Plex and everything works seamlessly. Far, far better than using the flakey remote access offered by Plex itself.
• Paperless-NGX. This is just too handy. It's like a repository for all the stuff you collect on the internet (or even Real Life). From recipes to notes to receipts... whatever. Just drop it into Paperless and it gets stored, cataloged, and converted to searchable text (if it's an image file). I've collected hundreds of vegetarian and vegan recipes over the years in all kinds of different formats from text files to screen captures to PDFs. They're all in Paperless now, and I've got them tagged for easy searches. Scenarios like "What was in that drink that I had in Hawaii?" used to be a mess because all I had was a photo I took of a menu at a bar. But now that the photo is cataloged in Paperless and tagged as "alcohol" and "Hawaii," it takes two seconds to find it instead of endless digging through files.
• Immich. This is a photo cataloging app that's very, very good. Far better than Apple's own Photos app (and UGREEN's Photos app too... maybe even Google's app!). And it's constantly being improved and updated with great new features. Since all my photos are already in my Plex folder, I just pointed Immich to it and that was it. Now I have all the cool Immich tools without having to re-catalog everything. So nice. And, just like Plex, I just enter my TailScale address into the apps on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, and I can get to my library wherever I am.
• IT-Tools. Over 50 tools that handle everything from temperature and date & time conversion to math evaluation. I do wish it included more useful every day conversions (like weight and measurements) but hopefully we'll get that eventually too.

Since discovering the joys of Docker, I'm sure there are several other apps out there that I will be installing. And there's a lot of apps out there.

So... my initial panic of UGREEN not having many apps has been resolved. About the only UGREEN apps I use now are Docker and Sync & Backup (I have a secondary cheaper UGREEN NAS in a separate location which regularly pulls all my data off my home NAS via TailScale so I have an off-site backup). Everything else is on Docker. Which has changed the way that I use my devices and store my data.

In a good way.

Yesterday Apple unleashed the MacBook Neo... which is not so much a MacBook, but an iPhone with a screen and keyboard. That's because it's using the Apple iPhone A18 Pro chip instead of the M-Series found in MacBook Air & Pro. And yet it runs all Mac apps out of the box, which is pretty cool.

And it's just $599 ($499 for students!). Or $699 if you want the memory upgraded from 256GB to 512GB.

It's a wacky topsy-turvy world where Apple has value for the money against the PC competition. Or, in this case, the ChromeBook competition. This is a great laptop for those who don't require the raw power of an M5 chip, which is overkill in a lot of ways for most people. If you're mostly surfing the web and writing emails, or taking notes in class, here's your machine. And it arrives in four colors...

The promo video is kinda fun...

What's surprising is that Apple didn't cheap out where they absolutely could have. It's got an aluminum chassis, a great keyboard (with TouchID on the $699 model!), a real trackpad, and a decent display (which is 13-inches, an inch bigger than the 12-inch Mac that I used for travel back in the day). The only thing that gives me pause is the mere 8GB of memory, but that's probably adequate for light computer use.

Earlier, Apple upgraded the MacBook Pro to a pair of bigger M5 series chips. My current laptop is the M2 Max with a MacBench score of 2749, so naturally I'm coveting the newer, faster, more powerful machine. For the work I do, it's looking pretty incredible. The base-model M5 from last year scores 4228 on MacBench... which means the new M5 Pro and M5 Max are probably a leap above that, pushing 4500 or higher.

Alas, the ads Apple created for both the US and UK are awful, which is a bizarre contrast to the Neo ad...

Ye gads what a mess.

I don't really have the money for a new laptop (I just had to pay $800 to get a pressure regulator installed on my water line because it was getting dangerously high for some reason), but given the time it would save me for renders and such, it might just be worth trying to scrape some money together to have it. I don't even know that I'd need the Ultra. The Pro is probably plenty. For now. Because once you get used to really fast renders, all you want is even faster renders.

Or maybe I should wait for the M6 models?

Why can't I be a millionaire who doesn't have to worry about the cost of always buying the latest and greatest.

And... Starbucks is "expanding" to Tennessee.

AKA: They are slowing relocating to Tennessee to escape the absurd taxes here in Washington State.

We're losing businesses at a steady stream while legislatures sit on their hands. MUCH LIKE THEY'VE BEEN DOING FOR DIGITAL DRIVER'S LICENSES AND PUSHING CONGRESS TO ALLOW US TO ADOPT PERMANENT DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME LIKE BRITISH COLUMBIA TO THE NORTH OF US HAS. Senators Patty Murray* and Senator Maria Cantwell* and my Representative, Kim Schrier, might want to look into saving Washington from themselves. Because if any more major companies move out, they'll likely make up the difference by raising our taxes even more. At which point people are going to be voting for whomever runs against them... no matter how big a dumbass they end up being.

I mean, just look at this bullshit... we're #2 in regressive tax policy circa 2024. After Florida. FLORIDA!

By "regressive" it means that the burden of taxes are mostly on low-to-middle-income families. And that should really tell you something. Because if most of the tax burden is on us... and businesses still want to leave because of high taxes... exactly how fucking high are our taxes? Monumentally huge. Insanely huge.

There's only so much gas in the tank.

And speaking of gas... it's averaging $4.50 in Washington State? Since Trump blamed Biden for that even though the president doesn't have much to do with gas prices, do we now get to blame Trump?

I swear... the broken way the USA governs itself is beyond stupid. At what point are Americans of all political parties going to come together for the common good and start over with a system which hasn't been corrupted to the point of idiocy? Americans can disagree on issues. That's bound to happen. But there are major points where we agree, and we should build from that. Not continue to pay a government huge amounts of money to act against our collective best interest.

But it's all special interest and billionaires running the show, and they don't give a crap about us.

   
*I am still raw over the fact that Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell voted against cheap drug re-importation from Canada over "safety concerns." AKA: They didn't want to jeopardize the cash flow from Big Pharma. Like we're supposed to believe that Canadians are dying left and right over "bad prescription drugs." Murray, facing massive backlash, eventually flip-flopped on her position... I have no idea where the fuck Maria Cantwell is standing. Probably wherever is paying her the most.

UPDATE: And, right on cue, look what popped up on my Facebook feed. An ad from Washington State House Republicans...

My GOD Democrat politicians are fucking stupid. They do stupid this shit while the Republicans walk all over them to gain followers, then whine like dumbass dipshit assholes when they lose elections. It's useless hand-wringing while wailing "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO US?!?. Democrats just LOVE to lose. They're designed that way. Or so I would assume. I mean, look where we are now.

On my Immich photo manager there's a "ten years ago" section which has been displaying pictures of Jake & Jenny when I got them a decade ago. Which means they're over ten years old? It doesn't seem possible. It seems like yesterday.

I took a lot of movies back then. And all of them are adorable. To me. Probably not to many other people though. I mean, look at this...

But it's the photos of Jake with Mufasa that are my favorites...

Even when Jenny wants to take Mufasa away...

Awwwwwwwww.

In world news... "In Sweden, new legislation has made it illegal to leave cats alone for long periods of time. This law is designed to improve the welfare of cats, ensuring they receive social interaction and care. It is part of Sweden’s broader animal welfare policies, which aim to protect pets and ensure their well-being." — This is interesting to me. I mean, I don't like leaving my cats, but there are times I have to. At first I was hiring a pet sitter to come take care of them, but that traumatized them more than being alone. They would hide when the sitter showed up, then not come out... even after they left. So I stopped doing that. Instead I make sure there are feeding robots and litter robots and water fountains and warming pads and the like. It's better for them.

I saw this and it reminded me of Jake...

Cheesecake eventually got switched to a new food that deflated her gassy tummy and helped her lose weight. Jake's just fat.

I may be fucked up because the fucking clocks were fucking changed again, which is fucking rough because I'm hard at work on this fine Sunday, but don't worry about bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• For the Love of God, Make the Stupid STOP! Look, more people want us to go on permanent Daylight Saving Time than don't. Some of us are so fucking desperate to stop dicking around with the clocks that we're even considering permanent Standard Time (which is not a better option, but it is the only one you can make happen without getting the fucking dumbasses in Congress to ACTUALLY FUCKING DO SOMETHING). This is all so stupid. Just do it. Just make Daylight Time permanent and fucking MOVE ON FROM THIS BULLSHIT.

   
• Nacho! One of my favorite chefs is Saúl Montiel, who appears on Epicurious often. He's entertaining and a genius in the kitchen. Even when he's cooking with meat, I learn new things that I can then adapt into a vegetarian recipes. Yesterday I found that he recently made Perfect Nachos that are vegetarian from the jump. They look incredible...

Damn that looks delicious. No clump of stuff dumped on top of the chips, and when you grab one chip you don't take the entire plate of cheese as you would with cheddar. My next grocery order is going to include the ingredients for this bad boy. Best cooking tip you'll ever get from me... go to the Epicurious page and search "Saúl Montiel" to get more awesome tips than you can shake a spatula at.

   
• YOU FOLD IT IN! After Catherine O'Hara's passing, I'm seeing a non-stop parade of clips with her in them. But this is the first time I've seen her in LEGO. It's one of her most classic scenes...

Oh how I miss Schitt's Creek.

   
• Libarry! Every time I see the Obama Presidential Library in the news, I wonder what in the hell they were thinking...

I detest this design. It looks like a brutalist nightmare... lacking warmth, beauty, elegance, or architectural fluidity. It could have been so much more. I often wonder what type of statement these oppressive-looking monuments are supposed to be making. Whatever it is, this one feels opposite of the presidency it is supposed to be representing.

   
• Lanterns! It's interesting how James Gunn is trying his best to differentiate all the DC projects so they're not merging into sameness. And while I can't say that the concept for a cosmic-spanning character like Green Lantern to be trapped in a distinctly earth-bound scenario, I do appreciate that Lanterns is striving to be something different...

And then there's the rumor that Gunn wants to bail from his contract a year early because he feels at odds with his studio's new Paramount overlords. And wouldn't it be interesting if he returned to Marvel? Seems like Paramount would do just about anything to avoid that.

   
• NEWSFLASH: LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy. For better or worse, I put my name on the shit I say. My name is at the top of the sidebar of every entry on Blogography. And my real name is used on all my social media as well. And, believe me, I struggled with whether or not I wanted to go that route. In The Beginning Times, it felt like more people were using a pseudonym than their real names, but I ultimately decided to skip past that. Who cares what I say? And then I got a reader showing up where I live, and figured I may have made a mistake (the threats were also having me re-think things). But now, decades later, it turns out that staying anonymous is a thing of the past. AI can unmask you with "surprising accuracy." I wonder if this will cut down on the number of people making "anonymous" threats? One can only hope.

   
• Frod! I think I shared this years ago. I bears re-sharing....

I do the same thing... for my cats.

   
• Denial Isn't Just a River In Egypt! Every time washed up, bargain basement Hercules homophobe Kevin Sorbo opens his mouth... it's either to say something shitty. Or work in movies like Meet the Spartans so he can kiss dudes...

That's it, Sorbo, put your back into it! Such a hypocrite. Lord what a piece of shit.

   
And now I'm going back to work. Feel sad for me since my circadian rhythm is fucked.

I honestly don't understand why the fuck people concern themselves with what other people are eating. Or, even worse, condemn people for their choices. A lot of times this comes down to "food influencers" shaming everybody for content. Telling people that their cheaper foods are garbage and they should be eating expensive organic stuff instead. Whether people can afford it or not. Or, in the case of truly fucking shitty "food influencers" (like the Queen of Bullshit Misinformation, "Food Babe" Vani Hari) dishing outright misinformation about food, and condemning methods of food production which they deems "bad" even though science may not support the claim. But influencers doesn't give a fuck. All they care about is the clicks for cash.

In my case, I simply don't want to kill animals to eat. Period. That's what guides my dietary choices. And, lucky for me, food options exist which help me achieve my goal. And, much to my joy, these options are getting more versatile, convenient, and delicious all the time. I am currently hopelessly addicted to Beyond Stack Burgers. I would eat them morning, noon, and night if the coconut oil content didn't cause me digestion woes. So instead I just eat them morning and night.

And, yes, I know what the fuck is in it. The ingredients are right on the package, so I don't need some shitty "influencer" to read them to me: Water, Pea Protein, Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Protein, Apple Extract, Salt, Pomegranate Concentrate, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Dextrose, Spices, Faba Bean Protein, Vitamins and Minerals (Zinc Sulfate, Niacinamide [Vitamin B3], Pyridoxine Hydrochloride [Vitamin B6], Cyanocobalamin [Vitamin B12], Calcium Pantothenate [Vitamin B5]), Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet).

And, yes, I know what the fuck the nutrition values are. That's printed right on the package too. The only problematic values to me are saturated fat (from the coconut oil) and the sodium (260mg).

But God-forbid I be allowed to make decisions for myself without somebody stepping in to tell me where I'm going wrong.

Lately I've been inundated with videos about why plant-based meats have "failed."

Most of it is the shitty fucking influencer brigade, praising people for finally coming to their senses by dropping horribly "unhealthy" fake meats and going back to real meat (mad cow, cancerous tumors, feces, steroids, and all). Because nothing screams "health" than having cow shit in your hamburger, I guess.

But the real story is more nuanced and interesting than that. Which is where actual journalism comes into play... like this story from Business Insider...

I'm glad they didn't leave out the fact that real meat is heavily subsidized by the government while plant-base "meat" is mostly left to fend for itself. This, coupled with the economics of scale, put fake "meat" at a disadvantage compared to the slaughterhouses. I'm happy to drive a (relatively) cheap car so I can afford my chosen diet (among other things), but a lot of people aren't. Though given the current high price of food, the extra money is a drop in the bucket compared to the total grocery bill which is hurting vegetarians and carnivores alike.

If "food influencers" truly gave a shit about people's well-being, they'd put their energy into advocating being able to afford food in the first place.

But that doesn't pay as well, so here we are.

I am used to multi-tasking. I do it all day long, and it doesn't matter if I'm at work or home. As I'm typing this, I have another window monitoring a data import for work, I have a video playing on my television called Betelgeuse Is "Eating" Another Star…and its Concerning, I've got a second video playing in the corner of my laptop where William Osman is responding to "Uncle Roger cyber bullied me", all while being careful that I don't smack into Jake who is sleeping against me. As if all that wasn't enough, I'm off-and-on answering a work email while thinking through some problems I'll have to resolve when I get back to the office.

I think nothing strange about doing a shitload of things at the same time. It's just how I am.

At least I didn't think it strange until the astronomy video Just. Got. Interesting, and I had to set aside everything else so I can focus on how the companion star is revving up Betelgeuse. Then it seems very strange that I am trying to do so much while something so interesting is being explained.

And... I'm back.

Though I just started the latest Kurzgesagt video, Let’s Travel to the Scariest Place in The Universe, so my attention to this blog entry may be fleeting.

But here's the thing about multi-tasking all the time... I find it almost impossible to wind down and do important things like... relax... and sleep. You would think that I would burn out and crash but it never happens. And that's getting to be a serious problem for me.

I am averaging just three to four hours of sleep a night.

The problem, however, is not that I am dragging ass all day and can't function... that's never been an issue (maybe because I traveled constantly for decades and jetlag wasn't an option). No, the problem is that I feel like I'm losing years of my life. Like I'm being burnt out day after day and it's only a matter of time before my brain implodes or my body gives out.

I'm not sure what to do about it.

Perhaps it's a problem which will resolve itself as I age. I simply won't be able to keep up with constant activity, so I'll slow down naturally.

Perhaps one day I'll discover that magical combination of meditation and exercise which fixes my ability to wind down.

Or perhaps I'll drop dead from pent-up exhaustion.

Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to finally getting a good night's sleep.

We are constantly under assault from those who wish to steal from us, harm us, or otherwise make our lives miserable. From telemarketers to spam emails, fuckers are everywhere.

And now there's AI. As with so many applications of this new technology, it's making our lives demonstratively worse. Then today I saw this...

Soon enough, AI will be too smart for tricks like this.

And then we're even more fucked than we are now.

Preston Rakovsky does street interviews about love. The majority of the time, they're very much worth watching, and it's an account worth following.

But this time? It's so great that I am compelled to share it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video... just this series of photos. The original is on Instagram here.

Peyton nailed it. He's got it figured out.

"Lower grocery prices on Day One."
—Some Lying Asshole

Yesterday after work I went to the grocery store for hamburger buns, bread, lettuce, and oat milk. I ended up forgetting the oat milk, so I wasn't able to have Captain Crunch Peanut Butter for dinner like I wanted, but I was able to have a Beyond Smash Burger, so it all worked out.

As everybody knows, grocery prices are astronomically high in the USA... and getting higher thanks to an ill-intentioned*, ill-conceived**, ill-planned***, ill-legal**** (haaaa!) war that's directly responsible for gas prices escalating which causes food prices to escalate even worse. That's on top of the fact that my local market in my small city already has high prices.

As I was standing there in the bread aisle, this is how my thinking went. "The buns I like are on sale, but they're still over $2 more than the cheap buns that aren't very good. Is it worth paying $5 for a package of hamburger buns that I know will make for a more enjoyable meal? I guess so. But damn." Sure, $2 doesn't sound like a lot, but it all adds up, which means I have less money to spend on something else.

I walk out of the grocery store having paid twice as much as I should have for a minimal amount of food, but am feeling grateful because at least I have the option to afford food. I'm betting a lot of people now-a-days would be grateful to have enough money to afford even the cheapest groceries available.

Somebody needs to study history. Starvation has always been a major catalyst for revolution, and we've got a serious problem which will only get worse now.

Especially if the next season of Ted Lasso sucks.

   
*You will never convince me that the "no more wars" president isn't actually starting a war to distract from the Epstein Files or his intent to suspend elections by encouraging a revenge terrorist attack on American soil. Probably both. More and more the Files reveal that he's fucking guilty of some heinous shit... and he can't afford to lose the mid-terms because it could flip the House and Senate, which would curb his insane power ploy to grift the country and stay out of prison. Or God-only-knows what else, since he's committing new crimes daily.

**Gas is already incredibly expensive. And, while the president doesn't set gas prices (despite the current president previously blaming other presidents for just that), a war with Iran... which controls the all-important Strait of Hormuz... would obviously directly affect gas prices. But he doesn't have to give a fuck, because the American people pay for all those Air Force One golf trips, not him.

***As in there was no planning at all. Remember when Hillary Clinton was mercilessly dunked for Benghazi? Well, thousands of Americans are stranded in the Middle East, Americans and innocents are dying, and the only thing the president can say about it is that "Things happened very fast." Jesus Christ.

****The president is Commander in Chief of the military, yes, but he does not have the ability to declare war, requiring the approval of Congress. You could even invoke his violation of the UN Charter given that this was not a response, but spun as a "preemptive strike" which is bullshit. Because either the president was lying when he said Iran's nuclear program was "obliterated"... or he's a dipshit who doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Jenny is a spoiled little princess. Furthermore, she knows it.

She is very aware that if she starts fretting or crying, I'll do whatever it takes to make her happy. And the older she gets, the more she exploits it. Wednesday night, for example, I moved her warming pad on my bed because it was cold and I wanted her to have a comfortable place to lay while she got her nighttime pets.

She did not like this!

She stood in front of the pad and started crying. But I couldn't move it because she was in the way. So she went from unhappy to frustrated and tried to walk around it. But there wasn't enough room, so she started meowing while I tried to move it around her.

It was an ordeal, to be certain.

And she was most put out over it.

Last night I went to bed with a headache. The cats, who care nothing about my bullshit, followed me up so they could get petted and sleep next to me. Eventually they both left, at which point I fell asleep.

Then, at 1:22 in the morning, I was awakened by both cats running into my room and jumping on me. A part of me wanted to go downstairs to try and figure out what got them so upset, but my head hurt too much. I figured I'd wait until they calmed down and left so I could go back asleep. Except they didn't leave.

So I did.

I took my pillow and went downstairs to sleep on the couch.

And when I woke up, this was my view...

Jake sleeps on top of me every chance he gets. Today I've been working on the couch, and he's been sleeping on my legs all day. So I'm not surprised that he sleeps on me at night too.

Snow at last. Snow at last. I still think we're going to be in the middle of a drought come Summer, but on Friday there was finally snow. Quite a lot of it actually. But don't you worry about me... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Nowalla, Part Deux! Remember location-sharing apps from back in the day? The primary players were FourSquare and Gowalla. My hands-down favorite was Gowalla, which made exploring fun and had stamps you could collect. I was such a fan, that I bought my own Gowalla stamp for Blogography HQ...

Then one day Gowalla shut down after being acquired by Facebook (I'm positive that Facebook bought it just to kill it because they didn't want any competition for their "check-ins"). All the stamps I collected, all the places I logged, all the travels I shared, all the objects I found, all the spots I founded... not to mention my custom stamp... were gone. We were promised that we'd be able to download our data, but it never happened. I'm still a bit raw over it. Then it was announced that Gowalla would be relaunching back in 2021. I somehow missed that the new app was released in 2023. At which point it immediately ceased development. When I found it last week, I downloaded it just to see what it was like. And it was shit. All the charm was gone. And of course none of the stamps or any other stuff from the original was still there. It just lets you share your location with friends in a boring way... like Facebook... and they shouldn't have even bothered.

   
• Lil'! Just the internet doin' it's internet thing. And right now the internet is obsessing over Lil' Finder Guy. He briefly appeared in Apple marketing for their new MacBook Neo...

Now he's been modeled and is popping up everywhere...

From Basic Apple Guy

He's based on the Apple Finder logo which Apple appears to be playing with...

Apple marketing is waking up, it would appear.

   
• New! And speaking of Apple's MacBook Neo, the reviews are starting to hit and it's more impressive than I thought it would be. I selected this one to share, because it nicely puts things in perspective...

Nice! But not shocking. The A-series chip in an iPhone is very capable. I just wasn't expecting it to be this capable in a laptop. It's marketed to people who want to do simple things and have no need for the power of a MacBook Pro. But apparently you can still use it for Pro things.

   
• Human Clay! I had seen the story that Aardman, the company behind some of my favorite animation, was in danger of shutting down because the company making the clay they use was being shut down. It was nowhere nearly so dramatic, which I found out from this video I saw last night. Still, it's interesting...

If nothing else, I'm a little encouraged that this video dispells the idea that Aardman is going to give up on hand-hewn clay to tell their stories and start using 3D modeling instead.

   
• Crumbley! My undying love for Zoey Deschanel cannot be overstated. I thought I was alone in finding Crumbl cookies do not even remotely live up to the hype. Most times I find them to be a lump of sugar that are underbaked. Other times I enjoy the topping more than the cookie underneath...

I've had one cookie I enjoyed from Crumbl, and it was no more special than other bakery cookies I've had. It was essentially a soft version of a big OREO cookie with OREO crumbs on top.

   
• No Love Like Christian Hate! This is absolutely fucking outrageous...

If you're going to imply that Mayor Zohran Mamdani had something to do with 9/11 and call him an "enemy" because of his faith, then are you also going to tie every atrocity committed by Christians to every Christian in this country? All the shootings and bombings by self-professed Christians means that Christians are "the enemy within the gates?" It shouldn't be a surprise that Tommy Tuberville is dropping stupid racist shit like this. That's all he does. And he can't comprehend what "freedom of religion" means in the "land of the free" so ignorant dipshit bigoted crap and lies are all you get. And lest we forget that his "Tommy Tuberville Foundation" gave less than 18% of the money it took in to actual charity. So even if he wasn't already douchebag, he'd still be a piece of shit. Just look into how he treats our military veterans. How he treats any American who isn't Tommy Tuberville. This is the guy who calls Democrats "a satanic cult," but his every action just proves where true evil is, and it looks him in the mirror every morning. Tommy proudly processes to be a member of The Church of Christ, but is one of the lease Christ-like people on the planet. I have Muslim friends who are worth a hundred of him. A thousand of him. It's not hard when they're being compared to inhuman garbage.

   
• I'm a Meme! This is a better story than it has a right to be...

Fate, sometimes, has other plans.

   
• Aeon! One of the most amazing apps I use on a regular basis is Aeon Timeline. It's mainly a writing tool, but I started using it to outline projects at work and it's a complete and total game-changer. Of course if you are a writer, it is a godsend. I haven't found an easier way to organize my thoughts for events in time... no matter what they may be.

If you need to work with timelines for whatever reason, it's worth a look.

   
Since the snow hasn't all melted yet, I'm going to be cowering in my home all day. If I get ambitious, I might clean my house and wash clothes.

My mom was a huge murder-mystery fan. She devoured the Agatha Christie novels, loved TV shows like Columbo, Perry Mason, and Murder She Wrote. So when the novel Post-Mortem was getting huge buzz, she added her name to the list at the library so she could read it. This was, of course, the debut novel featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta by author Patricia Cornwell. And thus began my mom's longtime fandom of the series. I read some of them she thought I'd enjoy, and thought they were entertaining reads.

Due to the series' early successes, Demi Moore (who was riding high off of Ghost and probably A Few Good Men) was attached to star as Scarpetta in the film adaptation. As a huge fan of her work, I was looking forward to it. Except it never happened.

Fast forward to now, and Amazon Prime has come out with a series adapting both Post-Mortem and a much later book I never read. To have that make sense, there are two different sets of actors portraying each character in each time period. Most notably, Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis as the older characters.

And despite the A-list talent and good source material, the Prime series is shit and I couldn't even get through the first episode.

First of all, the attempt at weaving together two storylines from two time periods is a failure. The connections don't really connect and the ping-pong narrative between past and present is a distracting mess. Maybe it evens out by the end, but I sincerely doubt it. I would have much rather them just adapt the complete book to let the story unfold more naturally. But the worst thing is the characterization of Scarpetta herself. Far from the analytical genius in the books, the adaptation is all about artificial drama that you'd be hard-pressed to give a crap about. Idiotic screaming fights are not what Scarpetta is about.

I never got far enough in the books to know that Lucy got married to a woman that eventually died, but I went running to the internet to find out if she created an AI of her dead wife in the books, because it seemed too randomly stupid for Patricia Cornwell to exploit. And, of course, it's not in the novels at all. Just another random attempt at padding out the source material that fails.

I know that Reacher is not 100% faithful to the books. But it still works because the character is faithful. So much so that it's almost impossible for me to read the books now without picturing Alan Ritchson in my head. The show-runners worked overtime to make sure that this was the case, which is why I love the adaptation so much. But with Scarpetta it's the exact opposite. The character is so divorced from the source material that I don't picture anybody from it in the books at all.

One of these days Hollywood is going to wake the fuck up and realize that the books they are adapting are popular for a reason. And deviating from them for whatever reason is a stupid mistake that rarely manages to improve on what people fell in love with in the first place.

But, as Scarpetta makes so vividly clear, that day is not now.

The first non-meat burger I ever had was at Johnny Rockets in Santa Monica. I was in L.A. for work, staying at the lux Miramar Sheraton Hotel. Wanting something to eat, I wandered down the nearby 3rd Street Promenade and was draw to the smell of Johnny Rockets, a restaurant chain I had never heard of before. I was only a few years into being a vegetarian, and thought for sure that I would be ordering a grilled cheese with a side of fries. There just weren't a lot of vegetarian options at a hamburger restaurant, and that's what I almost always ended up ordering.

But there was something strange on the menu.

It was called "The Streamliner" and claimed to be vegetarian? How could I resist that when the smell in the place was so intoxicating? So I ordered one, hold the grilled onions, expecting the worst. Veggie burgers of the day were always either 1) made from unappetizing chunks of vegetables and mushrooms or 2) some soy monstrosity which had the texture of shoe leather.

Imagine my absolute shock to find that it was actually a delicious burger with a sublime texture. It was everything I ever wanted in a burger that was reminiscent of a beef burger, but without having to kill a cow. It was love at first bite, and I would be going out of my way to visit Johnny Rockets at every opportunity... announcing it to anybody who was reading my blog "Rockets, bitches. Rockets." And I did that for many years.

After a while I learned that the burger Johny Rockets used was called Boca Burger and though it wasn't the same, I found them in stores and started buying them to eat at home.

Then one day I went to the Johnny Rockets at the Maine Mall... minutes after landing and picking up my rental car at the Portland International Jetport in 2018... only to find that The Streamliner had been discontinued. Replaced with a gag-inducing "burger" that claimed to be a "black bean burger" but was unlike any good black bean burger I'd ever had. I was absolutely gutted. A once favorite food had been destroyed. I never ate at Johnny Rockets again.

Then a miracle happened. Burger King unleashed their "Impossible Whopper"... something I discovered on one of my many work trips to Las Vegas in 2019. It was incredible. And, because Burger King was everywhere, a lot easier to get than Johnny Rockets. And so there it was. No matter where I was traveling, I was ignoring local specialties and buying Impossible Whoppers. What a great time to be alive.

But then... something changed over the years.

The burgers tasted the same, but the produce would vary widely. Sometimes the burgers were perfect, sometimes you'd get wilted lettuce, unripe tomatoes, or stank onions, and the experience was terrible. And I started ordering the Impossible Whopper with cheese because otherwise they'd take it out of the tray instead of off the grill and it wasn't hot. If you ordered cheese, they'd at least microwave it so it was warm when you went to eat it.

So now I go to Burger King rarely, the experience having been ruined. I understand that Johnny Rockets eventually realized their mistake and are now using Impossible Burgers, but there's nothing local and it's just not worth going out of my way to get there. Not any more.

Buying burgers for home was equally depressing. Boca Burger was bought out by Kraft and utterly destroyed. Morningstar Farms was never great, but I preferred them over other options because usually burgers released by Impossible or Beyond were an inch thick and you have to choke them down.

But then I discovered Beyond Stack Burgers recently, and everything changed.

I don't stack them (because multiple burgers causes me intestinal distress)... but I do smash them. Not from frozen, but I microwave them for 30 seconds so they're smashable. It's important that you coat the food-turner with the oil that melts out of the burger first so it doesn't stick to the burger and destroy it, but the result is 100% delicious, and I eat them way more often than I probably should.

The fact that the burgers come 8 per pack, thus matching the 8 buns you get in a bag of buns is just a bonus.

So of course I'm now living in fear that Beyond Foods will go out of business or discontinue their Stack Burgers or "improve the formula" or some such bullshit. History has taught me it's an inevitability.

One of these days, I really need to try making my own burgers. Usually when doing this I find a recipe online that's close to what I'm looking for and adjust it until it's to my liking. But I have yet to find a recipe (or more likely a "copycat recipe") which is even remotely like what I'm looking for.

In the meanwhile, I'll just keep buying my beloved Beyond Stack Burgers and enjoy them while they last.

With each passing day humanity seems to dumb-down to entirely new depths.

From flat-earthers to anti-vaxers to the idiotic "us vs. them" divisions that plague us, I grow more and more disillusioned with our ability to survive an increasingly hostile future. You have to be smart... be able to think your way out of situations and move forward... but it's tough to do that when science is being vilified and critical thinking has become passé.

And it all starts with people buying into misinformation idiocy...

I haven't related to a cartoon more than this one in a long while.

And I'm beginning to wonder if I'm relieved that we're becoming too stupid to continue.

We kinda deserve it.

Annnnd... just like that, the snow from the weekend is gone.

It had a good run, but was already melting away on Monday, was mostly gone by Tuesday, started disappearing from the hillsides by Wednesday, and now you'd barely know it was here and the weather is so warm that I've been wearing T-shirts.

So while I was thinking we might get a few extra weeks grace from drought, now I'm wondering if it was enough snow to make a difference. I guess it all depends on what's going on in the mountains.

On the up-side, the good thing about having a dead lawn is that you don't have to mow it.

I had to go to the Big City on a work errand today. While I was waiting, I remembered that my driver's license will expire soon, so I went online to renew it. Except I couldn't renew it online. And that's when I noticed that now you can make appointments at the DMV. How handy is that? What was even more surprising? My appointment time actually meant something, and I was in-and-out pretty quick. Interestingly enough, I had the option for an eight year license! And, for good measure, I went ahead and got an "enhanced" license since I had my passport and a pile of mail with me, which allows me to use it at airport security and stuff.

My visit was a far cry from DMV visits in the past. No longer an exercise in torture filled with assholes. Everybody was actually nice.

While I was waiting for my appointment time, I was looking at Facebook and this popped up on my feed...

Kinda embarrassing to be laughing in the waiting room of the DMV.

My cats are being absurdly fickle again.

I always grab a few random cans of food when I go to the pet store, just so I can know which foods I can get if the food I normally buy for them is out of stock or discontinued.

One of the foods from my last haul was so favorably received that I decided to buy some of it to add a little excitement to their lives.

You know what happened next. They turned up their nose to it.

And so... the cans are going to the back of the cupboard. This is what I do when this happens, because many times when I try it again later, they're obsessed with it again. And if not? I give it to the neighbor's cats, because they aren't at all picky like my spoiled little kittens.

In other news, Jake has gotten so comfortable laying on me that he now has no problem at all giving himself a bath...

Not only that, but he makes for a great foot-warmer on cold days...

And of course both of them are still sleeping with me. I regularly wake up to find them somewhere on my bed...

Now it's time for me to try and sleep. A task my cats excel at.

Blergh. I was too tired to work last night, then didn't feel like working on Saturday, so here I am trying to get it all done on Sunday night. Just like I was back in school! But don't think that's going to keep the bullets from flying... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• D2! One of my most favorite video games of all time is Minecraft Dungeons. I love it so much that I ended up buying it for my Xbox S|X because the copy I had for my Nintendo Switch ended up stuttering when there was too much stuff happening on-screen at the same time. Fortunately, that's mostly cleared up on the Switch 2, even though the game hasn't been optimized for the platform. I have been yearning for a sequel ever since I played through the last of the DLC packs, and was beginning to give up hope. And now? Minecraft Dungeons 2, baby!

Such a fun game. I hope the sequel is beyond my expectations.

   
• Centimeters! This is the funniest thing I've seen in a minute, and I'm compelled to share it...

The pain on his face! Oh noes!

   
• Future Imperfect! Yeah, I don't know how "real" this video is, but the trajectory of what's being said seems like it's entirely accurate...

Which means this is nothing less than a horror film.

   
• The Source! WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT! WHEN ADAPTING A BOOK INTO A MOVIE, STICK TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL THAT PEOPLE ALREADY LOVE!

I'd say this is a no-brainer, but soooo many books I was dying to see adapted got fucked up beyond recognition. So, in that respect, Ryan Gosling is a fucking genius. But there's always some director or some studio exec who wants to "put there stamp" on something... which is just saying that they don't want to do their job. Your "stamp" should be STAYING FAITHFUL TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL! I can't wait to see this film because I loved the movie so much.

   
• Fade Left! Oh man. Coming from Washington State, I assumed that I could make a free left to a one-way everywhere. I shudder to think how many times I've broken the law when driving in other states. AND NO FREE LEFTS AT ALL IN MAINE??...

I used to go to Maine twice a year for work, and took free lefts ALL THE TIME! Yikes. It's a miracle that I didn't end up with a ticket.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Afghan father, former U.S. military ally, dies in ICE custody in North Texas. — I am disgusted to my very core. This man risked his life to save the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan. He's a hero to this country. He was brought here legally. He was in the process of immigrating legally, as was promised him. By all accounts he was doing things "the right way." And yet he was still abducted by ICE and is now dead. We may never know what ACTUALLY happened. What we do know is the promise of ICE removing only "illegal" criminals is a fucking lie. The blood is on our hands for allowing this. There's a right way and a wrong way to go about the immigration challenges we face. This is the wrong way.

I hope his family sues. I hope they win millions. But it will never be enough to compensate them for their loss. Nothing ever will be. Rest in Peace Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal. You deserved so much better at our hands.

   
• Meta Versed! Apparently Mark Zuckerberg's "Metaverse" is now dead...

Which is essentially makes it NFTs 2.0...

Apparently Meta wants to take the billions of dollars they were pumping into the "Metaverse" and instead pump it into AI. And while I never cared about the "Metaverse" and wished them well, I don't have the same attitude when it comes to AI. I want that bullshit to become NFTs 3.0.

   
• Dig Duggar! So there I was looking through the news when I saw that old story about one of the Duggar kids from 19 Kids and Counting being arrested for child sexual assault or misconduct or something horrific. I didn't understand why they were rerunning the story from years ago until I realized it was a different Duggar...

I was just relieved that it didn't turn out to be one of my favorite YouTubers, William Osman...

For the love of God I don't understand this country's love affair with conservative evangelical "Christians." It's become a cult which seems to be encourages this kind of shit. Because when you can commit heinous crimes then it all disappears when you beg God for forgiveness, how could it not encourage it? But, yeah, keep blaming drag queens and trans persons for the crap that these assholes are guilty of.

   
And... back to work.

For the past couple months, it feels as if time is passing me by. It's Monday and I brace myself for a busy week... then all of a sudden the weekend is here and I'm mentally and physically exhausted.

All the plans I have and all the things I need to do seem impossible. Anything beyond laying on the couch and watching television feels out of reach. Then I blink and it's Monday again.

Maybe this is normal as you age? The good news is that, at this rate, I'll perish soon, and finally be able to get some sleep!

And, on that note...

I had a ridiculous crush on Miss Tessmacher in Superman: The Movie back in the day. Valerie Perrine played her so flawlessly... a bit ditzy, but smart enough to have things figured out and know the score...

Rest in Peace.

Thanks to all of you who are flooding my social media with birthday wishes! Now that I'm officially old and slow, it will take a while to reply to all y'all... but I'll get there eventually, because the outpouring of kindness means the world to me!

But so does money. Money is great. Feel free to send money as well. In fact, if you would rather not spend your precious time sending a happy birthday message, you can just skip that part and send money. I promise I'll appreciate it just as much. If not more. Probably more.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! Dave2, Jake, and Jenny.

I know it's an honest mistake, but that's not me in the video.

But that's an adequate representation of what it's like for me getting out of bed every day.

Guess what... it's allergy time!

I went outside to take photos for my landscaper and came back in with itchy eyes and a runny nose. And so... it's time for me to be miserable for a while as my body adjusts to this assault on my mind, body, and soul. Or so it feels. All I know for sure is that I want to move to Antarctica this time of year.

In other news, it's official. I can't buy any more spices thanks to The Spice House coming out with two must-have-blends that filled out my spice drawer.

Back of the Yards is an instant favorite. It's the perfect blend of salt, pepper, garlic, sugar, shallots, peppers, and parsley, which tastes phenomenal on my Beyond Burgers! So crazy good.

Golden Herb Salt is one of the best vegetable toppers I've ever had... featuring salt, garlic, mustard, onion, MSG, pepper, parsley, rosemary, oregano, turmeric, and mace! I have all these spices already, but any attempt to make this blend on my own would never get a balance this good, so I'm content to leave it to the professionals.

To make room, I had to remove my Spice House Sea Salt & Tellicherry Pepper (fine, coarse, and peppercorns) and they're next to the stove now. And I had already moved my Dutch cocoa and put it with my coffee service.

We won't discuss how Spice House changed their labels, so now the non-matching designs sets my ADHD on edge. Not only that, they've drifted upwards... and one of them was crooked...

WHY? LORD, WHYYYY? It's like when they change the design of book covers half-way through a series and now nothing matches any more. How am I supposed to live this way?

Back in December of 2024 my faithful Toyota Corolla died. I had helped my mom purchase it in 2006, then took it over when she could no longer drive. Afterwards I donated my Saturn to the veterans, and the Corolla rolled on with not too many problems (except the brakes, which I had to replace in 2024). I am not a "car guy" so my plan was to drive the Corolla until it died, which I did.

My sister made it clear that I had to run out and get another car so I could make it over the mountains for Christmas. Not trusting myself to get a used car because I'd have no idea what to look for (I worried about inheriting somebody else's problems) I went to the Toyota dealership and asked for the cheapest car they had.

Which turned out to be another Toyota Corolla. It was so new they hadn't even gotten all the plastic wrapping removed.

After waiting for them to get it ready, I went for a test drive and ended up buying it. It was a car that could get me from Point A to Point B, and that's all I needed to know.

The car is fine. Nothing special. And since I have nothing else to blog about today, here's my thoughts.

• I like blue cars. All my cars have been medium-to-dark blue. But since I needed the car immediately, I got what I got. Which is grey. I didn't care. The issue is that this kind of grey is everywhere now because all the car manufacturers have been releasing new models with it. The tone is slightly different between manufacturers (mine has a nice purple-ish blue undertone), but this is the color of the moment. Which can make it a challenge to spot your car in the parking lot. I have walked up to totally different brands (and even other Corollas) from the beginning. I'm still doing that.
• Like all modern cars of this class, the construction isn't the greatest. I had random squeaks and creaks from the first week. It's disappointing, but unless you have $250K to spend, it's what there is.
• One of the features I was happiest to have was CarPlay. It's a screen that allows you to control stuff while using your iPhone as the "brain" of the car. The problem is that Toyota's system software is shitty, which means it doesn't always automatically connect to my phone. 75% of the time I have to press a button on the display to initiate it. And it pisses me the fuck off. Once I select CarPlay, I don't ever want to see the Toyota system ever again.
• Another feature I was thrilled to get was a wireless charger. Except the charger is shit. It doesn't work at all. It will start charging, but then fail-out in a minute. I have the most popular phone in the entire fucking world, and Toyota's charger won't work with it? And it's not just me... everybody complains about it. Why the fuck say that you have a wireless charger if it doesn't actually wirelessly charge anything? Toyota should be sued for lying and forced to fix it.
• One of the coolest features that comes with the car is remote access. You can remote-start the car, unlock the car, and the like. After a year it stopped working and you have to pay for it. And that's fine. I know that the cellular communication required isn't free. I don't mind at all. Except you can't just buy the remote access by itself. You have to pair it with Toyota's music service (when I already have iTunes and Google Music) or pair it with their mapping service (when I already have Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze, etc.). It's so fucking stupid, and I won't do it. Just let me buy the part I want, assholes.
• The backup camera (which I think it required in American cars now?) is nice, but it would be equally useful to have a forward camera that you could engage when pulling up to something in tight quarters. I wonder why auto manufacturers don't get on that?
• I was going to buy an electric car because electrical power is relatively inexpensive where I live. But I balked at the idea of having to purchase a new battery when this one dies, seeing as how they're almost as expensive as the car itself. Since I don't drive a lot, I went with gas-powered, figuring it would be cheaper in the long run. But now regular unleaded gas is $5.49 a gallon where I live thanks to the president being a dumb fuck asshole who needed a war with Iran to distract from his being named in the Epstein Files. All over nuclear weapons he had already "decimated" with his last distraction. Now I wish I had spent the extra money to go electric.
• This Toyota is slightly wider than my old one. Over a year later and I'm still not used to it. I have to turn into parking spots later than I used to in order to be centered, and it messes with my head. This is a basic car, not a luxury vehicle. I'd prefer something more narrow, not more wide.
• My car is nearing 16 months old and I've never washed it. I just let the rain clean it. When it's not raining, it's a bit dirty but I just don't care.
• The car comes with blind spot indicators on the side-mirrors. It's a nice feature, but I remain paranoid that they will fail, so I still do too many head-checks.
• The car also has lane guidance and proximity detection. This means that if you drift out of your lane, your car will guide you back to the center. If you come up too close to the car ahead of you, your car will slow down. Both would be great if they worked consistently, but they really don't. So I leave them turned on and stay on high alert like I always have.
• I have yet to read the manual. Which is nothing special... I've never read the manual for any car I've ever owned. But in this case I should read the manual because the electronics are so much more complex. Many times needlessly so. I want to make the dashboard illumination brighter. No idea how to do it. Instead of a knob somewhere, I'm guessing there's some menu setting hidden in a maze of menu settings. Annoying.
• I found out that it's next to impossible to purchase the base model of any car. Manufacturers make a base model so they can say the car is cheap... but dealerships make less money on them and don't want to carry them. So you always have to buy "packages" with extra features you probably don't want or need. That was definitely the case with my car. I paid nearly $3,000 over the base price. If I wasn't desperate, I probably wouldn't have done it. I would have tried to order a base model.

Ultimately, one year and a few months on, I'm happy enough with my car. It was more expensive than I wanted to pay and had more features than I needed, but it's still basic and fairly inexpensive by today's standards.

And it works, which is all I truly care about anyway.

Thanks to our "No More Wars" president needing to distract from the Epstein Files, my trip to Seattle and back is going to cost a shit-load in fuel. I nearly crapped my pants when I went to fill up yesterday and found out that I was paying $5.49. God only knows how much it will be next week when whatever new presidential scandal escalates the need for an even bigger distraction.

For the past several days I've been cleaning something in my home so that I come back to a clean house instead of the Pit of Despair that I've been wallowing in for weeks. Usually I'm a much better housekeeper than this, but I've been consumed with work and there's no time to keep up with it all. I just don't have the energy. It's all I can do to cook meals.

Which is a shame, because there's a list of recipes from my stack of vegetarian cookbooks I've been dying to try.

But frying a Beyond Burger or tossing a frozen meal in the oven is my current limit, alas.

Last Thursday night I was so tired that I was nodding off on the couch at just 10:00. I finally decided to take advantage of it and head upstairs to bed. This was fine by Jenny, and she went tearing upstairs at top speed to be petted. She ended up performing this spectacular leap over her brother, made even more impressive because he was in motion.

After brushing my teeth, I climbed into bed where Jenny was impatiently waiting.

I reached out my hand to start petting her, then turned away to put my Apple Watch on the charging stand.

What I didn't realize was that something must have caught Jenny's attention, because she looked up while my gaze was temporarily diverted.

Which is to say that instead of petting her head, I wiped my hand across her nose.

Which wasn't fun for either of us.

This lead to a deep dive into a simple Google search... Why are cat's noses wet? Turns out that it helps them smell better by trapping scent particles, and acts like a cooling system because they can sweat through their noses. On top of that? Cats lick their nose frequently and have tear ducts which drain through their noses.

Which is to say I wiped my hand across snot, sweat, saliva, and tears.

Great.

Tonight I am not home, I'm over on the coast. This is always stressful for myself and my cats. Me because I worry that they'll get into trouble. Them because they wander around the house wondering where I am.

Take Jake, for example, who sat on the bottom step waiting for me to come home. I saw him there last night and again this morning...

Hang in there, buddy, I'll be home tomorrow morning!

I'm back home and ready to destroy the internet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Like Sands Through The Hourglass... Deidre Hall invites Ryan Gosling onto Days of Our Lives after he praises her acting: 'Nobody will be possessed' — My mom was a massive Days of Our Lives fan and I fell in love with Deidre Hall because of it. When my mom started working, she wasn't home to watch and would record the show on VHS so she could watch after work...

I remember the show very well, and I hope this happens. I would definitely tune in!

   
• For God and Country! I love stuff like this...

I mean...

If you want to see some nice content to escape from the horrors of the world, BradyYourTutor is a good place to start.

   
• Wrongful Entertainment! Alan Ritchson Neighbor Fight: New Bodycam Video Released. I don't advocate violence... however... watching some asshole neighbor getting clocked by Alan Ritchson AFTER WALKING IN FRONT OF HIS MOVING MOTORCYCLE is the entertainment I needed. Fuck that guy. If you're stupid enough to square off with ALAN RITCHSON, you get what you get. And oooooh I cannot wait until the new season of Reacher is released! And now I want to re-watch The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare for the hundredth time. Dang is everybody great in that. Especially Ritchson. Or maybe I'll re-watch Playdate for the hundredth time, Another Ritchson flick that's beyond good.

   
• Goldie! I love both versions of "Overboard"... but the original is still the best. This is such a great story...

Goldie is great in every movie. No disagreeing with Kurt on that!

   
• NEWSFLASH: Veteran senator criticizes Tuberville’s “nobody more military than me” claim. You cannot make this shit up. The guy was a football coach who has never served in the military... let alone been in combat. But stolen valor is nothing new to these assholes, and I'm glad that they're finally being called out. What a repugnant piece of crap.

   
• Misinformation=Death! My heart truly goes out to those suckered by the anti-vax idiocy movement... they buy into it, and their child dies over something that might have been prevented had they been vaccinated. And the fact that the anti-vax idiocy movement decides to prey on them over a lie is disgusting...

And yet it happens ALL the time, because when you have a disingenuous movement, lies are all you have.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Televangelist Mark Barclay apologizes to child sex abuse survivors, victims of 3 pastors including son-in-law. Good Lord... THREE pastors at his church abused people, including children. So much for the "Preacher of Righteousness" when this crap goes on in his church. I would leave kids with a drag queen over a pastor 100 out of 100 times. Who still ignores the ACTUAL danger to kids any more? It's always "Not MY pastor!"... until it is.

   
Now it's time to vacuum up kitty litter. Amazing how much of it the cats throw around the entire house in a day when I'm gone.

When I got back from my weekend over the mountains, I was too tired to do much of anything. It was a long drive after a packed weekend, and there was nothing I wanted to do more than eat dinner and go to bed.

So I did that. But the next morning I remembered that I hadn't checked my mail since before I left, walked out to the mailbox and was greeted by a package. And when I opened it? There was this very cool mug featuring the spine of Depeche Mode cassette tapes from over the years...

I'm guessing that this is a birthday gift, but there was no note inside and the label didn't have a name I recognized.

So thank you, kind person... whomever you are! I love it! It makes me want to look up to see if there's a version for other 80's bands I love (like Pet Shop Boys!).

And for anybody not knowing much about Depeche Mode, I ran across this video a few weeks ago...

I have more favorite tracks from the band than I can count, but Mercy in You is probably at the top of my list. Mostly because of the live version, which cemented them as one of my favorite live acts on the planet...

Their earliest tracks hold up shockingly well. Which is probably why they are still belting them out at their shows. I think the song Everything Counts has been in the setlist of every concert I've ever been to...

The band occasionally gets heat from Conservative Christians over an early track called Blasphemous Rumours, which is actually a fascinating track that has a lot to say...

The song most people know them for is either Personal Jesus or People are People, with the latter being the song that got me hooked on the band once I heard it...

Their entire catalog remains some of my most-played and most-loved music.

And now that I'm appreciating it all over again, I'll be playing it on repeat for a while.

Supergirl has always been an entertaining side-note to the "Superman Family” that I kinda-sorta ignored. There was an occasional story that was fun to read, and she had a good run with the Legion of Super-Heroes but she just wasn’t what I read comics for.

But then DC unleashed Wednesday Comics in 2009 which had a Supergirl strip by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, and it was pure joy in a comic book. For the first time I could remember, I was a fan of Supergirl.

And then Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow dropped in 2021.

This was a brilliant turn for the character. It sought to give Supergirl a story that was more than “girl-version-of-Superman.” Because unlike Superman, who was a baby when he escaped the destruction of Krypton, Supergirl was a teen who experienced it all. And the pain of such loss became the focus of her arc in the series which was a great story on top of it all.

Now I was beyond a fan. I was in love with the character because we finally got an interesting take. She wasn’t a “version” of anybody. She was her own separate entity with her own issues to work through. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I found out that the story was to serve as the basis for the new Supergirl movie. James Gunn was not wanting to release a “girl Superman” project... he took a script by Ana Nogueira that was inspired by the book from Tom King and Bilquis Evely, handed it to director Craig Gillespie, and let them run with it.

And this trailer looks as if it’s going to be absolutely everything I was hoping for...

Krypto being given such a prominent role in the new DC Universe of films is fantastic because Gunn made him be a draw for a segment of the audience who might not be into comic books. Just like he did with Rocket in the Guardians of the Galaxy films.

And to say I’m excited to see this is a massive understatement.

But then...

I'm not going to a theater for this, but I 100% will be watching this...

If it's even half as funny as it looks, it'll still be worth a watch.

I want to put aside more obvious targets for a minute and focus on one of the most inexplicable members of the administration... "Little" Marco Rubio.

This one-time presidential hopeful once said "Donald Trump is a serious threat to the future of our party, and our country"... only to turn around and become one of the biggest boot-lickers in our political history. I swear it's almost as if Trump put him in this position just so he has somebody he can routinely humiliate in some kind of elaborate revenge scenario for all the awful things that Rubio has said about him.

This was made abundantly clear when Trump bought Little Marco shoes that were too big, but he had to wear them anyway...

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via CNN

   
That's expert-level trolling right there, but it's just the beginning...

President Donald Trump has undercut his top diplomat’s explanation for the war in Iran as he provided yet another contradictory rationale for his military intervention. On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a jaw-dropping admission: the U.S. struck Iran because Israel was planning to strike first—and Washington feared Tehran would retaliate against American forces. But asked about this on Tuesday, Trump rejected this explanation outright as Rubio sat two seats away in the Oval Office.

I can only assume that Marco will be fired sometime soon when the president needs another distraction for a new scandal. I mean, that's what he's pre-broadcasting for Karoline "You're Doing a Terrible Job" Leavitt right now, so it's only a matter of time... right?

But in the meanwhile, Rubio doesn't need any help from Trump. He's been teeing himself up to be a total joke that's intent on completely killing what little remains of his political career for over a year now.

My favorite has him siding with Trump's mandate that "Birthright Citizenship" be terminated. A total flip-flop from 9 years ago when Rubio was a hard-liner for it. As well he should be, because he would be one of the first to be deported given that he was born to Cuban immigrants who were not citizens at the time of his birth. And I don't know how this affects Don Jr., Eric, and Ivana given that their mother wasn't a US citizen either. Maybe they'll end up being too tall to deport or develop bone spurs so they can't be deported on humanitarian grounds?

And then we come to the reason for my writing this post. On March 30th Little Marco sat down for an interview with George Stephanopoulos. It was all a bunch of bullshit, but mixed in with that was this nugget right here...

"Imagine an Iran that, instead of spending their wealth, billions of dollars, supporting terrorists or weapons, had spent that money helping the people of Iran. You’d have a much different country." — Marco Antonio Rubio, Secretary of State

WELL I CAN'T FUCKING IMAGINE IT, DIPSHIT, BECAUSE I LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHERE WE SPEND BILLIONS ON WEAPONS WHILE ALIENATING OURSELVES FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD BY TURNING ALLIES INTO ENEMIES SO WE'RE STANDING WITH OUR PANTS AROUND OUR ANKLES ON THE WORLD STAGE THEN STARTING A WAR THAT COSTS EVEN MORE BILLIONS! — BUT I DO IMAGINE A DIFFERENT COUNTRY FOR US... DAILY. A COUNTRY WHERE PEOPLE CAN AFFORD TO BUY GROCERIES, HAVE SHELTER, AND NOT GO INTO BANKRUPTCY IF THEY GET CANCER. A COUNTRY WHERE BILLIONAIRES AND MILLIONAIRES PAY THEIR FUCKING SHARE INSTEAD OF GETTING ALL THE BREAKS THAT REGULAR CITIZENS DON'T. A COUNTRY WHICH LIVES UP TO THE FREEDOMS AND IDEALS THAT WE CLAIM TO OFFER, BUT HAVE BEEN CHIPPED AWAY FOR DECADES AT AN ESCALATING PACE TOWARDS FASCISM. A COUNTRY THAT DOESN'T HAVE GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION BUILT-IN. A COUNTRY WHERE PEDOPHILES AND RAPISTS FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR ABHORRENT ACTIONS NO MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY AND POWER THEY HAVE. A COUNTRY WHICH ISN'T RUN BY HEINOUS LEVELS OF STUPIDITY. GIVE ME THAT, AND MAYBE... JUST MAYBE... I'LL BE ABLE TO IMAGINE IT FOR IRAN.

I am nearing pathological levels of rage over where we're at right now. And idiots like Little Marco pouring gas on the fire doesn't help one bit.

In college I was in an astronomy class where the instructor invited people to take a stab at what the most valuable thing in the universe might be. Guesses started out with gold and platinum, which were wrong. Then the class moved on to diamonds and rubies, which were wrong. Then people started guessing oxygen or water, which were wrong. All of our guesses were wrong because metals, gemstones, and elements are incredibly abundant throughout the universe. Turns out what's not abundant are things like fruits, vegetables, plants, and woods. Because all of those require a system capable of supporting life. This is far, far more rare in the universe.

I was reminded of that when YouTube suggested this reel to me...

Depending on the nature of the universe, it could very well be that even if there are worlds with vegetation on them, they still may not have trees. Which is to say that the trees we enjoy in abundance may not exist in their exact form, or any form, anywhere else.

You'd think that this thought would inspire humans to take better care of our forests, jungles, and tree-supporting biomes.

But, alas...

We seem intent on making it so they can't survive here either.

As I type this, Artemis II is about half-way to the moon. Except they're not landing on the moon this time, they're going to orbit it and head back home. Which is still a phenomenal achievement, because few people have an idea just how astoundingly far away the moon is.

When I was a kid I read that if earth was the size of a tennis ball, the moon would be a sphere one-fourth the size of the tennis ball... and it would be over 20 feet away.

I looked for a YouTube video to explain this, and found this one...

Then I found this...

But in order for these to suitably shock you, you really need to have a grasp of how huge the earth is. Try walking around it some time to get an idea.

And speaking of walking AROUND the earth...

Because the Artemis II mission is popping up in social media everywhere all the time, OF COURSE you've got dipshit flerfers (flat earthers) "debunking" the photos of a globe earth taken by the astronauts. In case you haven't seen some, here you go...

And of course you get the same stupid shit that you get from all the satellite photos and the moon-landing photos all over again. The most popular being "WHERE ARE THE STARS? NO STARS IN THESE PHOTOS?!? FAKE!!! FAKE FAKE FAKE!!! NASA LIES!

As if NASA made a boo-boo and "forgot" to paint the stars in thousands of times and somehow "forgot" to paint them in yet again.

Jesus. Google is free. There's literally dozens... maybe hundreds... of videos explaining why.

But nope! A massive conspiracy involving tens of thousands of people around the globe has been yet again foiled because NASA forgot to add stars!

Jake likes to make kitty-biscuits and slow-blink back to me. Jenny rarely does either of these things. She prefers to kick me when I pet her wrong and look at me like I'm insane. Not that this bothers me... Jenny is so endearing because she defies expectations like this.

But Friday morning when I decided to stay in bed on my holiday day off and work the afternoon. Jenny was apparently thrilled, because she hopped up on the bed... and started making kitty biscuits on me! How nice is that?

Jake decided he didn't want me going outside to clean up my messy yard, and pinned me down...

For a second there, I thought Jenny was going to join him...

This morning Jake crashed out next to me, which means he might as we'll have jumped on my legs, because I didn't want to move and wake him up...

Now that it's Saturday, I get to do all the things that I put off yesterday. Yay.

Of course, there's always Sunday...

The Easter Bunny may be coming to town, but I'm goofing around on the internet ... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Work Chums! I've seen this several times, but I don't think I've shared it before...

If you've dealt with insurance before, you get it.

   
• Smartest Phone! Kit-Kat drama aside, this was my favorite April Fool's joke I saw...

Makes me want to actually buy a Bluey Phone!

   
• Geography! Washington is weird, y'all...

If you're not from here, you don't know how weird though.

   
• NEWSFLASH: MS. NOEM IS DEVASTATED. THE FAMILY WAS BLINDSIDED BY THIS, AND THEY ASK FOR PRIVACY AND PRAYERS AT THE TIME. And I'm asking you to fuck off with your bullshit. You used your position to utterly destroy lives without any regard to their privacy... and you certainly didn't pray on their behalf. Yet you have the absolute gall to ask for "privacy and prayers?" I do wonder if she was fired for this because the White House had advanced notice. They're already neck-deep in scandal, so it makes sense they would want to get this as far away from them as possible. I'd try to feel sorry for Bryon Noem getting attacked over something that was his own private business... but he knew what he married into and what she was. It's no surprise this is blowing up because of his own doing.

   
• Turn It Off and Back On Again! What's delicious about living in the digital age is that assholes can get internet detectives crawling up their ass with a microscope after they do something shitty. Take for instance this judge, who was a heinous douche to an IT worker helping him out. Many judges think they are gods, and when you show them that they're not, they react badly...

And now the internet has been digging up everything from his bankruptcies to other asshole behaviors and publishing them for the whole word to see. Good. That's what the internet should be used for.

   
• How is The Dow? In honor of the puss-filled piece of shit who used her position to protect sexual predators getting fired, I am re-posting the only good thing that came out of her tenure...

Now you can fuck off and just go away until somebody drags your ass in front of The Hague. And, God-willing, your former boss will be there with you. Speaking of which, here's the only good thing to come out of his tenure...

Any guesses as to who's next on the administration firings distraction BINGO card?

   
And on that note, Happy Easter to all who celebrate.

It's now Wednesday. This entry was written on Monday, when it was due to post.

But the post was entirely just me unloading in the worst way possible, which is something I've been trying to avoid. It's not going to change any minds. It's not going to change our situation. It's not going to do anything except drive my blood pressure even higher than it already is. And so... I've edited out all of that and left the bit that's still an official unloading, but not to the extent it was.

So here we go...

Today I woke up and the first thing I saw was more bullshit science denial on the Artemis II mission. Something that immediately sends me into a rage. How the fuck did we get to a place where ignorance and idiocy is this prevalent? Everybody and their dog is spouting their favorite conspiracy theory which is easily disproved if they took two minutes to educate themselves, but no. Blatant dumbassery is where we're at.

But what's worse? AI slop bullshit is everywhere. Fake photos of fake situations reinforcing the idea that the mission itself is fake. And it's not just being shared by random people... I've seen it on astronomy social media!

Just look at this shit. None of this from NASA's site. Just AI slop photos with different prompts for the same fucking scene...

Some of them are noticeably worse than others. This one doesn't even look like a photo...

Though this is my favorite because it's so hilariously fake...

God I despise AI slop generative images. It's not doing anything to improve society and, indeed, is rushing things along to make things worse.

Can I just go ONE FUCKING DAY without ███ ██████████████ █████████ unleashing more fucking ████ and ███████████ all over ███████████? Is that really too much to ask? One. Just one day. I am so fucking sick and tired of ████ fucking ████ I feel like I could start vomiting and never stop. Every God damn fucking day I ████ ███ ██████ ███████ to fucking ███ ███ ███!

Please DEAR GOD won't you fucking ████ ████ ██████?

It feels like I'm being punked on a daily basis. And today was such a random series of unbelievable events that there was really no other way to feel about it.

Then I get home and look at the news articles in my feed and I'm certain I'm being punked.

Because, holy shit, if this isn't some elaborate hoax being perpetrated upon me, then what the fuck is going on?

In better news, I retreated to TikTok to find something to distract me and ran across some cool stuff. First is this pint-sized music producer who is more talented than you'd believe...

The play-break got me.

This is an interesting illusion that I've seen before. When I first saw it, I immediately saw squares... but then when I went to scroll, the circles appeared and I couldn't see anything else. Now I can see either when I pick something to focus on...

Whenever I see videos like this one from Mario I want a new cat for Jake and Jenny to play with. I worry about how this might disrupt their lives, but I think come June I will start looking into it...

For anybody wondering what Ilya was saying in that phone call to Shane in Heated Rivalry, here you go. My Russian is limited, but I was able to get the gist of everything. This did clear some things up for me...

And, lastly, hope you have a tissue ready...

Now back to the horrors of the day...

My chair broke at work first thing. Snapped into three pieces.

I fell and knocked my head on the wall, jammed my thumb, and hurt my wrist. Something also happened with my jaw, because my back teeth ache.

I couldn't wait to get home from work so I could lay down on the couch on a heating pad and doomscroll Instagram. And most of what I see? Dipshits. Stupid assholes who are happy spouting the most ignorant crap imaginable.

But there is an up-side.

A lot of times, there's people making fun of these idiots. Often to hilarious effect...

But there were also some videos not steeped in idiocy. Just animals eating stuff...

I could watch animals eating stuff all day long.

Idiots I can't tolerate for more than two minutes. Probably less.

Even though my injury was yesterday, it hurt far worse today. I contemplated staying home from the office and trying to work the best I can, but there was no way I could get things done that needed doing at home... so I took multiple doses of Advil throughout the day, and worked my way through it.

Then came home an hour early when the pain exceeded my ability to deal with. At which time I threw a heating pad down on the couch and prepared myself for the re-entry live feed of Artemis II by watching Hidden Figures.

Then it was two hours of NASA...

When I got bored, I watched Artemis-themed videos in-between. Like this LEGO set that's really cool...

And Hank Green with some really cool commentary on the mission photos...

And, of course, I had to watch Professor Dave dismantle dipshit Bart Sibrel...

Watching Bart get clocked by Buzz Aldrin remains one of the more joyous events in human history. I could watch it over and over and over and over.

Though it turns out NASA DOES LIE AFTER ALL! AND NOW THE SECRET HAS BEEN REVEALED!!

And now it's time for beddy-bye. I really hope I can manage to get some sleep, because it seems a bad idea to take any more Advil.

My cats have completely reversed their position on food. Jenny will eat whatever I put in front of her whereas Jake will refuse to eat things he used to eat and rarely enjoys trying something new. And he's really funny about how he displays his displeasure. He will come up to the bowl, sniff it a bit, watch his sister eat it, then turn and sit in front of the bowl to stare at me in the kitchen like I'm supposed to come do something about the travesty put before him.

It's at this time I say the words he's been dying to hear.

"Want me to thrown some stank on that?"

Then I go get some dried fish flakes and sprinkle them on his dinner so he'll eat it.

This is a trick that I came up with for Jenny which has now been passed on to her brother.

And speaking of her brother...

I've made a vet appointment for him and his sister because something seems off about him. He's been incredibly clingy like something is wrong. From the minute I get up in the morning to the minute I leave for work... then from the minute I get home until I fall asleep... he's all over me.

And, as you probably saw over the last several Caturdays, this is my life now...

When my legs aren't down for him to lay on, he's near... finding a substitute...

And, oh... there seems to be a second Fake Jake in the neighborhood!

Any time I see a cat that looks like Jake outside, my heart skips two beats. I have a flashback to when he escaped, and go into an immediate panic. Except when I got this visit, Jake was asleep on my lap.

I still had a moment of panic because I forgot he was there.

I'm learning to live my life around him being clingy.

I'm not going to let the fact that my neck is hurting worse now than it has been stop me from updating Blogography. At least not this time.. because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Cookies! Isn't it nice how Girl Scouts cookies come in convenient single-serving packs? That way you know exactly how many to eat. I'd consume an entire box of Trefoils if not for the fact that they smartly wrap them into two servings...

Samoas come in a tray, not a package, because there's only one serving per box. Every year I order cookies from Girl Scout Troop 6000, which serves girls in New York City's shelter system. Though I'd buy cookies from any troop, given how Girl Scouts is one of the most accepting, inclusive organization on the planet. A phenomenal model for future generations.

   
• Drone Entertainment! One of the last times I was at Walt Disney World, there was a drone show at Disney Springs. Called Disney Dreams That Soar, it was an experimental free event that ran for about four months. While music played, 800 drones made cool shapes in the air, and most people believed that this was a step towards reducing or eliminating fireworks at the park. Fireworks are not reusable like drones, so they're expensive. And they also cause noise and pollution that upsets people living near the parks. It would make sense that they would want to cut back. And now there's this show in China featuring 22,580 drones...

In all honesty, drone shows are getting so good that I'd argue they're a superior form of entertainment... and could probably simulate fireworks in a way that's as good, if not better, than the real thing. And if anybody could make this work, it would be Disney.

   
• Word! This is one of those simple posts which illustrates a concept so brilliantly that you don't even have to understand what it's talking about to understand what's being said...

Fortunately, I've never had to deal much with Microsoft Word... I've always used desktop publishing or an illustration app for that. But because of that, my frustration with trying to make a photo land where I want is even more frustrating.

   
• And Right Before Wildfire Season! NEWSFLASH: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the US Forest Service. Fuck them all. I am sick and fucking tired of losing vital national services to give money to the president's millionaire and billionaire owners, and to finance this illegal, stupid-ass war. The US Forest Service deserves better than this fucking bullshit. They are dedicated, essential workers studying and protecting our forests and grasslands...

Photo credit: Preston Keres / USDA

The American People deserve more than this fucking bullshit. This is probably a set-up so Trump can sell off our vital resources to be plundered by his owners. The office of the President of the United States of America has turned into one massive grift. I mean, it's just been revealed that the steel for his fucked-up ballroom is NOT being sourced from American companies after he championed US Steel during his campaign... he's bought the steel from Europe. Probably from somebody who has incriminating photos of him on Epstein Island.

   
• Greatness! And, while I'm on the subject... exactly where is all the money going from the "big beautiful tariffs" the American people are paying? We keep getting our services and benefits cut... so the money ain't going there. The National Debit is higher than ever... so the money's not going there. Jobs are being slashed left and right... so the money's not going there. Trump has collected TENS OF BILLIONS of OUR dollars. So WHERE IS THE FUCKING MONEY?

It blows my fucking mind that this country isn't in outright revolt right now.

   
• AI Slop... IN SPAAAACE! A photo was circulating today of the Artemis II Orion capsule re-entry... as captured by the International Space Station...

Except when you go to the official ISS Instagram, this is what they had to say: "Our crew on the @iss caught a glimpse of the @nasaartemis II crew as they re-entered the atmosphere from their journey to the Moon! We first saw a bright light and a trail as the service module burned up. We didn’t see the Orion capsule itself as it re-entered, but we saw the wispy trail it left behind in the upper atmosphere. Overjoyed that our friends are safely back on Earth after their awe-inspiring mission!."

THIS is what they saw...

Photo Credit: ISS

And of course when you go to debunk the fake image, you find that the person who posted it has turned off comments. NOT deleted the misinformation... turned off the comments!

There's no bigger metaphor for what's going on right now in the world than this.

   
• Mean-Spirited? Sweet Pee holds a press conference to deny allegations of her ties to Epstein, despite the fact that emails and photos exist showing she absolutely had ties to Epstein. If BULLSHIT had a face, here it is...

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/Reuters

Photo Credit: CSPAN/GETTY

And you DIDN'T fucking "meet your husband at a party in 1998"... at the time you met MARLA MAPLES' HUSBAND at a party in 1998. Furthermore, if you to expect people to stop making "mean-spirited comments" about you, then you can fuck right off. You stand idly by while your husband makes some of the most vile, disgusting, horrific "mean-spirited comments" towards other people and don't give a shit, so nobody gives a fuck about what's being directed your way. "Be best" for you and yours before demanding it from others.

   
And now back to my neck recovery, already in progress.

Odds are, this entry isn't for you. It's being written for a friend who asked where I shop for groceries. But you're welcome to read if you want.

I have a "FreshPass" membership for free grocery delivery from Safeway. For a while there, they were the only delivery option for my small city because all the grocery chains are in nearby cities. Eventually Walmart and InstaCart started offering delivery, but I stuck with Safeway because a lot of what I liked could be purchased from there.

I mean, sure their shoppers are told to shop for your produce like they're you're worst enemy... and they must also be told to not worry about selecting products with an expiry date that hits in three days... but most of the time it's all acceptable enough that the convenience outweighs the bad points.

At least it did until the cost of groceries continued to explode thanks to tariffs... and now the price of fuel thanks to some dumbass starting a war in Iran. When a small bag of salad was $1.49 and I couldn't eat it all before it was sludgy, I could mentally get past it. But now that it's $2.29? And that's one of the cheap items! Having to try and finish a $6.50 loaf of bread when it's already on its way to being stale? No thanks.

So I started shopping for produce and items with low expiration dates locally. They cost more, initially, but the savings over not having to throw out stuff three days after I get it makes it cheaper in the long run.

A month ago I was in The Big City to pick up some things at Costco. Just down the street is Fred Meyer, so I thought I'd stop. I always find interesting vegan and vegetarian finds there. It was during that trip I discovered Beyond Stack Burgers, one of my most favorite foods I've ever had.

It was also where I picked up some frozen Tucson Tamales...

But I hadn't actually cooked one of them until earlier this week.

And they're incredible. Incredible!

Which is why on Saturday I made a pick-up order at Fred Meyer to get more burgers and tamales since the tamales were on sale for $3 each! Along with other things I needed, which made for a staggering grocery bill. $200 for something that feels like it would have cost around $120 just two years ago!

And so... now to shop for groceries, I have to go to five different stores...

• Safeway. PROS: While I have FreshPass membership, delivery is free. Special offers can be quite good on many items. Vegetarian offerings are reliable. CONS: Variety of vegetarian options is monotonous and rarely adventurous and new. Delivery produce is absolutely awful. Anything perishable will likely be close to expiration.
• Fred Meyer. PROS: A 25-minute drive to get there. Many times they have new and interesting vegan and vegetarian foods to explore... and the number of items in those categories is larger than Safeway. Their special offers are fantastic for single people. Instead of making you buy a large number of the same item to get a sale price, they give you a large pool of many wildly different items and let you save money on each of them. CONS: No delivery in my area. Their bagged salads are always in poor condition.
• Costco. PROS: Crazy-good prices on popular items. A wonderful company I'm happy to support. CONS: A 25-minute drive to get there. Having to buy in such large quantities is tough for single people, so I can only really buy non-perishables. Rarely enough checkouts open.
• Walmart. PROS: Sometimes I see stuff on sale here for such a low price that it's unmatched anywhere else. They have some unique products I love (Jack's Pizza Sticks are delicious). A more reasonable 15-minute drive from my home. CONS: Never enough checkouts open. The foods I buy most often are not available here... or if they are available, they're not always from a brand I care for.
• Local IGA. PROS: Six minutes from my house, so it's easy to pick up produce and perishables that aren't bottom-of-the-barrel. They sometimes have surprisingly unexpected vegetarian options... like these phenomenal Deep Indian Kitchen Kati Street Wraps that I haven't seen anywhere else. CONS: Expensive. Sometimes ungodly so.

Sometimes I shop at Albertsons, which has my favorite layout of any store in the valley. But they own Safeway where my delivery comes from, so I don't have reason to go there unless I'm nearby. Which is rare.

And there you have it. How I shop for groceries.