I was quite young when I realized my "mind's eye" is blind.

Unlike the majority of people who can "see" stuff in their head, I do not. When I try to close my eyes and envision a red apple, I see only darkness. The closest I can get is to think about a red apple and describe it's attributes to myself while seeing absolutely nothing.

This condition is called "aphantasia."

And if you're wondering what I'm talking about, then there's a test you can take to understand it a bit. My answer to every one of the questions is the first one: No image at all, I only know I am thinking of the object. Coupled with this is also a condition called "Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory" (SDAM). This means that not only can I not envision things in my mind's eye... I also cannot re-experience past events.

An example of SDAM is me thinking back to when I was in Rome and staying at a hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps. I remember trudging up the stairs with a gelato cone. I can remember what the texture and color of the steps were. I can remember the buildings and the people. I haven't forgotten a thing. But when I close my eyes and try to re-live the experience, there's nothing there...

And so... now you know why I take hundreds of pictures whenever I travel somewhere. It's the only way I can visually re-experience what I experienced is to look at the images and videos.

Since I've had this condition since birth (or so I'm guessing), I don't know what I'm missing. I've never experienced it. But I am extremely jealous of people who can. I would love to be able to close my eyes and see my mom's face. Or the places I've been.

Between all this and my mild dyslexia, I'm assuming that my brain damage makes my life a bit less fun than most people's.

This also extends to how I dream.

In that I don't. I'm never having these vivid dreams where I'm flying... or walking on Mars... or whatever. It's always the same. When I'm "dreaming" it's like I'm sitting in front of a screen where I'm "drawing" the objects by description. I'm not actually seeing anything in my head. Which is not much fun at all.

But anyway...

The reason all this popped into my head just now is that J. Craig Venter died.

He's the genius geneticist who was the first to decode a bacteria genome, which lead to a genetics renaissance which culminated in decoding the human genome.

He also had aphantasia...

Rest in Peace, sir.

I bought my car in December 2024. It has never been washed. I park it outside when it rains and don't worry about any dust that accumulates. I just don't care about having a meticulously-maintained car. It's far from a priority in my life. Way down the list.

But then... I parked under a tree where birds ended up shitting all over it. Seriously covered. No amount of rain was going to clean it off. That was embarrassing enough that I relented and went to the carwash.

So now my vehicle is all shiny clean and I've marked my calendar to see if I can go even longer than I did this time before washing. In a day and age when fresh water is a vanishing resource, it seems like a responsible attitude to have!

Or I'm just lazy.

Though at some point, I should probably think about running a vacuum on the inside of it.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.