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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Note on their website that they have cut pieces which you can't cut out of even half their thick triangle... unless you shave down each one of them manually. It's like they know there's a problem already...

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.

The thing about being on YouTube more than any other streaming service is the sheer variety of things I get to watch. The algorithm there is very, very good at knowing what I like to watch and feeding me a steady diet of content that's right up my alley.

My latest obsession is cooking videos.

It all started when I wanted some better Japanese bread recipes. The milk bread that I'm making now isn't quite what I'm looking for, so I decided to find a new one. But first I found this, which I very much want to try...

Then I found a new milk bread recipe...

Which lead to this garlic toast and egg recipe that looks incredible...

And then this (which I would make without the bacon...

American breakfast needed to be represented, which is how I got this one I am hoping lives up to the hype...

Plus some Americanized French bread...

And then YouTube was all "fuck it" and apparently served me this one because it knows I love hummus somehow...

Once I got to popcorn, I knew I was done...

P.S. There was also a recipe for Air Fryer Ciabatta, Another Easy Recipe Everyone Is Making Now, which isn't able to be embedded for some reason, but sounds intriguing.

Now if I could only find the time to try cooking some of this stuff.

The charity organization I volunteered with... along with the traveling I've been fortunate enough to experience... has shown me exactly what hunger looks like. I've seen starvation first-hand. And it was enough to have me confident enough to say that nobody with a shred of decency should wish that upon anybody.

If you've seen it yourself, you wouldn't even wish it on those you proclaim to hate.

At least I would hope to God that you wouldn't, because it's horrific.

The first time I met starving children I died inside. Until that moment, "starvation" was an abstract concept. People say they're "starving" when they skipped lunch or show up late to a dinner party. "Starvation" is a news headline about something that happens to Other People. Except it's actually neither of those things. It's a brutal condition which should never, ever be acceptable to anyone with a heartbeat. People should never starve anywhere. This planet has the resources, technology, and knowhow to make starvation a thing of the past.

If there's one thing... ONE THING... that humanity should come together and agree on, despite all our differences, it's that regardless of whatever other tragedy people are enduring... they will not have to worry about starvation.

It doesn't matter if you're at war with a people. They will not have to worry about starvation.

It doesn't matter if you don't have the resources to feed them yourself. They will not have to worry about starvation.

It doesn't matter if what god they pray to is different, what color their skin is, how they live their lives, who they love, or whether you love them or hate them personally. They will not have to worry about starvation.

It doesn't matter if you need political leverage and withholding food is on the table. They will not have to worry about starvation.

And to anybody... ANYWHERE, regardless of your politics, beliefs, or what-the-fuck-ever excuse you may have, disagrees, then fuck you.

Fuck you sideways.

You don't get to speak to me on a subject from which you are so obviously willfully ignorant. Because not one person who understood what real hunger looks like could possibly disagree. Unless they are a complete and total monster. Which means their "opinion" on any of this doesn't fucking matter in the first place.

After dinner I was still hungry.

So I went through my refrigerator and my cupboards trying to figure out what I wanted to eat. Eventually I landed on a bowl of cereal. Except I was out of my all-time favorite for forever, Captain Crunch Peanut Butter, and had to grab the box I got on sale in my last grocery order, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. This is a cereal that I can eat, but it's never been the home run that other people tell me it should be. This is everybody's favorite breakfast cereal, but to me it's kinda just okay.

So I chowed down on my kinda just okay cereal while watching YouTube videos, where I ran across this gem...

Which lead to this gem...

Which lead to this gem...

And now I want an otter.

Or a pizza, because the kinda just okay cereal didn't do it for me.

I loves me some donuts. And, yes, I spell it "donut" because "doughnut" looks weird to me for some reason. Even though I think the the latter is the way most people seem to spell it.

But anyway... I was chatting with a friend and mentioned how thankful I was that my grocery delivery didn't substitute the box of chocolate-glazed old fashioneds I had ordered like they usually do because they're always sold out. That lead to a discussion about the best donuts we've ever eaten. After which I made a list.

It was actually pretty easy to toss out my ten favorite because they were my most memorable when I put "donuts" in my head...

1. Mini cake donuts from Daily Dozen Doughnuts at Pike Place Market Seattle, hot out of the oil. Nothing better.
2. Most everything from Doughnut Vault in Chicago. These are classic donuts with some nice surprises done very, very well. Especially the Old Fashioned (my favorite type of donut), which have all kinds of options and are incredible in the best possible way.
3. Most anything at Voodoo Doughnut. They are inventive, unique, and delicious. No visit to Portland, Oregon is complete without them.
4. Malasadas from Leonard's Bakery in Honolulu Their take on Portuguese donuts are the best you'll find, and I once ate an entire box of six in my rental car while parked down the street. They were fresh and warm. You'd do it too.
5. Mini cake donuts from Trish's Mini Donuts in San Francisco, hot out of the oil. Very close to Daily Dozen, and I love them.
6. Cronuts from Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York. Believe the hype. The donut was completely reinvented in a way that was not only trendy, but delicious.
7. Maine Potato Donuts from The Holy Donut in Portland, Maine. It's cool how both Left and Right Portlands have great donuts. These are beyond tasty. Whenever I was in Maine, this was my second stop after eating at Flatbread Company Portland Maine.
8. Most anything at Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle. Whenever I have work in the city, this is breakfast. Every time. Every single time. I've never had a bad donut here.
9. Most everything from District Donuts in New Orleans. Back when I was in The Big Easy on the regular, this was a must-stop.
10. Bumpy, lumpy, amazing donuts from HOLE in Asheville, North Carolina. I actually drove TWO HOURS from Pigeon Forge to give these a try, because the raves were overwhelming. And it was all true. And worth the drive.

AND NOW THE DONUT I EAT MORE THAN ANY OTHER... Chocolate-covered old-fashioned donuts from Franz Bakery Yes, these are mass-produced store-bought, but they are phenomenal... almost to the level of Donut Vault. Their old-fashioned donuts are already amazing, but with chocolate on them? Mind-blowing. The crispy glaze is still there giving them a bite and texture that is tough to beat. If you are in the Pacific Northwest and don't want to trek to a local bakery, this is the one to beat...

I can't be having loads of sugar, so I'm not downing the entire box in one sitting, of course.

But I'd like to.